With his record, an eyewitness, and Cassidy’s bruises and cuts, there was little Orson could do. He was sentenced to ten years in prison in North Leighton Correctional Facility. He did surprisingly well in jail. He used his cunning not to stand out and draw attention, but also not to be a dog that everyone beat on. He made himself useful to those higher up in the hierarchy of prisoners and guards, while not being needy or dependent on them.
He was still in prison when the zombie outbreak happened.
***
Orson had one true friend while he was in prison. Hank wasn’t as blind as a bat, because bats could at least see something. Hank was truly and completely blind. Orson had gotten him as a cellmate a year ago due to his cautiously balanced, good nature with both the other prisoners and the men who guarded them. Hank had to be in a special ward and got special treatment because of his affliction—if you could call it that. Hank was one cool cat. Despite being blind, he always seemed to find his way. He had a cane, but he almost never used it. Even when they took him to new places, he rarely used it. Orson had asked him about this once, about how he managed to navigate places he had never been. Hank had replied that the objects told him where they were, that they spoke. Everything in the world had minor vibrations to them, these small sounds, an inner rhythm; you just had to know how to listen for them. Orson had asked Hank how he had learned to do that, and Hank just gave him a sly grin. He responded with a question of his own.
“You said you’re a painter; how do you paint?”
“I practise.” Orson couldn’t see how the two things were related.
“Practice is part of it, yes, but how do you paint things no one has seen before? How do they come to you? Are you one of those painters who just attack the canvas and sees what comes out, or do you know what you’re painting beforehand?”
“I know what I’m painting beforehand. I imagine it first.”
“And can you imagine the small details of this painting? Say, the stripes on that cat you told me about? The look of the man’s face who was fighting it?”
“Sometimes I can imagine the details beforehand. Not all the details, and not every time, but sometimes.”
“Your imagination is like a normal blind man’s hearing; becoming acute with use. Now use that imagination to picture someone with talent, someone who can see every detail of the painting before he begins.”
“So you’re saying, you’re a grand master of hearing? A natural-born talent?”
“Not just talent; remember there is practice in there as well. I’ve had a lot of practice.”
Orson couldn’t quite wrap his head around it, but he sort of saw where Hank was coming from. He guessed it was one of those things that you couldn’t quite describe unless you were in the same condition. He understood the practice part though, and Hank had a lot more practice at listening than Orson did at painting. Hank had gone blind when he was only five years old; he said he had stared at the sun too long, if he was to be believed. Hank was now forty-five, with a wife and two children outside the confines of the prison. Hank was in that prison because of them.
Orson had yet to see it, but apparently, Hank could have quite the mean streak. To the general public, and to Orson, he came across as a suave, generally well-spoken, cool guy. To his family, he was a brutal tyrant. He would insult them, yell at them, and beat the hell out of them. His wife had been to the emergency room a few times, but she never pressed charges. Hank called her his tame cow. Orson knew exactly what he meant; he had one of his own once. However, one time, Hank beat his daughter just a little too hard. She had to go to the emergency ward, and with the other marks on her body and her mother’s record, the police knew what was going on. Hank would still have been fine, but his daughter opened her mouth and ratted him out. When he got out of prison, Hank was planning to give her such a whipping, but only Orson knew that. Hank was polite and gentlemanly to everybody. He got along with them even better than Orson did. Orson knew he could learn from this man.
Orson also liked to hear about Hank’s rebellious daughter. She was the strong one of Hank’s three family members. She was the only one who stood up to Hank about anything. Apparently, Hank’s son was older than the girl was, but if it wasn’t for her insistence, he never would have gone to university. Not because he wanted to stay to protect the family or anything so noble, it was just because he was a cow as well. A cow too afraid to move. Nevertheless, the girl had convinced him to apply to the University of Toronto and he had actually managed to get accepted. They knew Hank would never pay for him to leave Leighton, but with the savings both the boy and the girl had collected from jobs Hank insisted they have, as well as student loans, they managed to get him into the school and out of the city. Out of Hank’s reach. The part that made Hank the most furious was that he had no idea any of it was going on.
The girl was smart. When she was younger, she would try to get back at her blind father in small ways: leaving toys on his seat, rearranging the furniture, moving his clothes around in his closet, putting spices in his food. They didn’t work ninety-nine percent of the time. Hank could do that weird hearing of objects, feel the different fabrics and cuts of his clothes, and smell the spices. What his daughter had finally done though, was learn sign language. She learned to sign, and taught her brother when she found out that writing wasn’t good enough; Hank could hear the scratching of pens and pencils on paper. Hank knew something was up, he could hear the rustling of fabric if they had sleeves on, and feel the movement of air as their arms passed through it when they were making grand gestures. He had eventually figured out what was going on, but he had no idea what they were saying to each other. And he couldn’t always tell when they were doing it. It infuriated him.
Orson liked to hear of this strong girl. When he got out of prison, he was going to pay his own visit to her. He liked Hank, and so he was going to break his daughter for him. It would be fun, and hey, what were friends for?
His second visit would be to Cassidy. He would be careful, and take his time so as not to put suspicion on himself. But he would go see her. He would go see her and show her what rape really was. He would also show her his other talents.
***
The day of the outbreak started like any other day. Wake up call, breakfast, exercise, work in the laundry, and lunch. It was after lunch when things changed. The guards sent everybody back to their cells instead of letting them out for their second, shorter yard time. Word was that they got some call from some bigwig. These calls had happened before, but they usually affected only the prisoners who were in for life. Some lawyer would come down from Marble Keystone and make deals for the lifers. Apparently, these were chances to get out, in return for being guinea pigs. Nobody really knew exactly what happened, because none of the lifers ever came back. Some said they had gone free and given new identities; others were more pessimistic and said they had just been sent to another prison, and of course, many of them believed they had been killed outright.
Orson and Hank waited in their cell, sitting on Hank’s bottom bunk together. Orson was reading him a book about a band, Gathers Moss. Hank was an avid music lover and liked to learn about his favourite groups and bands. He said Gathers Moss was one of the best rock bands in the history of music. Orson had to agree. It was a shame they had stopped playing.
Hank held up a hand for Orson to stop reading, and so he did. A moment later, a guard opened the door to their little neck of the prison. They were in a special mini-ward, as Orson liked to call it, a small branch off the main prison block. A few of these mini-wards were used for special prisoners. Special prisoners was a broad category; they could be handicapped, a threat to other prisoners, a threat to themselves, a rat for the guards, a high profile prisoner, someone useful to the guards, someone overly dumb, someone overly smart. Really, anything that the guards wanted. The hall that Hank and Orson were in had ten cells with two prisoners in each of them. Orson liked his hall because they didn’t fight each other, and everyb
ody was quiet at night. Orson had even been practising to use his ears, although he knew he would never get as good at it as Hank.
When the guard opened the door, all the prisoners went silent. Many, including Orson, went to stand at the bars where they could see the guard. Hank continued sitting. He could hear just fine from where he was. The guard was the one who Orson thought looked like a weasel. He was a weasel too, always snivelling and sucking up to management, and then trying to be all tough and badass around the prisoners. His put-on persona seemed to have fallen away, however. He stood in the doorway, his mouth opening and closing silently like a fish, staring at a point on the floor in front of him. He suddenly seemed to remember why he was there and looked at a clipboard in his hands.
“Terrance Bitterton,” he read off the clipboard. It was the name of one of the other inmates in their hall. “Orson King. Hank Paige. Franklin VanHassen. Please hold your hands through the bars and prepare for transfer. The rest of you can return to what you were doing.” The weasel sounded like he wasn’t sure about what he was saying. And considering that the word ‘please’ was used, he was probably reading those lines straight off the clipboard.
The prisoners obliged. Orson placed his hands through the bars while Hank got up to do the same. The weasel came to their cell first. He locked handcuffs on both Orson and Hank, binding them to the bars, which was something they usually did only for the trouble prisoners. He then opened their cell and walked in. The weasel was being uncharacteristically silent; normally he would be jeering and name calling, making himself feel tougher than he really was. There was a moment of hesitation when he didn’t seem to know what to do with the clipboard. He finally placed it face down on the bottom bunk. He patted down Orson and Hank, making sure they didn’t have any items on them. Orson wasn’t stupid; he had hidden the shiv he had made inside his ratty mattress. Once the weasel decided they were clean, he unlocked their hands and then locked them again behind their backs.
“You know you shouldn’t lock a blind man’s hands behind his back, right?” Hank commented.
The weasel ignored him.
Orson and Hank were directed toward the exit door while the weasel went to deal with the other two prisoners. Outside, a gorilla guard was waiting for them. He got Hank and Orson to stand together against one wall. They were in the open block, where cells lined both sides of the long hallways on all five storeys. The area in the middle was open, so that the light from a line of dirty and heavily barred skylights could shine through the whole place. It was so that a guard on one floor could hear and see what might be happening on another. This was the general population of the prison, Ward A.
Once the two prisoners and the weasel had joined him, the gorilla guard led them through the prison. Orson assumed he was being moved to a new cell, but he quickly figured out that this was not the case. While a small handful of other prisoners was being prodded in the same direction they were going, larger groups were being prepared to be moved as well. And judging by the leg and wrist irons, they were going outside the prison.
Orson and his group were led into the visitor centre. Orson’s mother and stepfather tried to visit him once a month, so he recognized it right away. They had believed him when he said he was innocent, that he was set up. Even if he had lied about it, they would have believed him. After entering the visitor centre, all the handcuffs were removed. The weasel and the gorilla left, leaving only the assistant warden and some military-looking guy Orson had never seen, in charge of the whole room.
“There is clothing in the bags. Find the bag with your name on it and put on the clothes inside,” the assistant warden told them. The assistant warden seemed a little nervous about the military-looking man.
Orson looked around the visitor centre, and saw that several other prisoners had already been led here and changed their clothes. At least two others were in the middle of changing.
“I’m going to need your help, Orson,” Hank spoke beside him. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to read the labels and find my bag.”
“No problem.” Orson began to walk around the room, navigating around the tables and reading the labels on the bags. Behind him, Hank followed perfectly, not once bumping into anything.
“Mind telling me where we are?” Hank spoke again. “I’m quite certain I’ve never been in this room.”
“We’re in the visitor centre.” Orson knew that Hank had never been here. His family never came to see him. Why would they? And he didn’t have any close friends. Orson liked to think of himself as a close friend, but they didn’t need to use the visitor centre, now, did they? The only person who ever came to see Hank was his lawyer, and there were special rooms set up for that in another part of the building.
Hank walked, turning his head from side to side. It almost looked like he was assessing the room with his eyes behind those large, dark, plastic shades of his, but it was more likely he was assessing it with his ears. He also had his hands out slightly in front of him, not searching or groping or the way that one would normally think a blind man navigated, but just subtly held out, testing the air currents of the space.
Orson found their bags together on the same table, with one other bag that had already been emptied and abandoned as trash. Hank sat himself down, and Orson slid his bag over in front of him. By feel alone, Hank opened his bag and began taking the clothes out, feeling for buttons, creases, and hems to figure out what article of clothing was what.
Orson opened his own bag and found two complete sets of clothes inside. One was the simple suit he had worn to his trial and in which he was then brought to the prison; the other was a new set of clothes he had never seen before. The new set consisted of blue jeans, a simple grey T-shirt, a white pair of socks, and white tennis sneakers. Orson didn’t know what was going on, but he decided to change into the new clothes; he felt he would be more comfortable in them. Hank, on the other hand, wore his suit. He had crisp black slacks, a shiny white shirt without a single spot on it and opened at the collar, and a black vest to top it off. On his lean frame, with the spotless black wing tips and dark sunglasses, it was a very cool look. Orson knew that Hank relied on shop clerks to tell him what looked good, and they did their job well. Orson had never seen him in anything other than orange jump suits and white T-shirts, which didn’t look good on anybody, so the sudden change was almost a shock. Hank also had a black jacket and tie, which he opted not to wear, but no doubt also looked very cool. Hank was a very cool guy.
“I feel so much better now,” Hank said as he finished buttoning up his vest. He could find the buttons on his shirt and vest better than Orson had ever been able to find his own. “I feel so much more like myself.”
“I know what you mean,” Orson agreed. He hadn’t realized just how much he had missed wearing a good pair of jeans. He also hadn’t realized just how much weight he had put on. His old pants might not even fit him anymore. He used to be a skinny but well-muscled guy; now he was still muscled, but he had put on pudge. His belly had some flab to it, and when he felt around, he realized his legs, arms, and even his face did as well. He suddenly wanted a mirror, but there wasn’t one in sight. He hadn’t noticed how much his body had changed in prison; he had only noticed that his dark hair was thinning. What else might he be missing? Might there be sags under his dark eyes?
“So what do you think is going on?” Hank got down to business.
“I don’t know. There are at least twelve other prisoners already in here,” Orson told him what he could. “It also looks like there are maybe six clothing bags left sitting on other tables.”
“Twelve, plus us two, plus six more. Twenty extra-special prisoners in all.” Although Hank spoke aloud, Orson had the feeling he was talking to himself more than anyone. “I know that was the assistant warden I heard speaking to us when we got here, but who was the other man? I could smell him and he had a vastly different scent than the guards and us prisoners. It was like metal and dirt.”
“I d
on’t know. He looks like military.”
“Looks like military, or is military?” Hank asked for clarification. He understood that Orson could just be comparing the man to a soldier.
“Hard to say,” Orson admitted. “He has a large rifle and a pistol on his hip. He’s built like a block and has a shaved head. He’s wearing camouflage pants, and a black T-shirt with some sort of insignia on the shoulder. Oh, and he has dog tags on.”
“What about the way he’s standing?”
“He’s relaxed, but the rifle’s in his hands. He keeps looking from us to the windows.”
“Seems a little loose for military but it’s hard to say,” Hank thought aloud again. “You should try to get a look at that insignia.”
Orson nodded, but of course, Hank couldn’t see it. He got up and made his way over to the assistant warden.
“What’s going on here?” Orson tried to ask in a nonchalant manner, as if it was of no importance.
“You’ll be informed of what you need to know, when you need to know it,” the assistant warden answered him. Orson expected the answer. The assistant warden glanced over to the pseudo-military man while he answered, but that man paid them no attention. At least, not direct attention. Either way, it gave Orson a good look at the patch on his shoulder. He hurried back over to Hank and sat down next to him.
“I saw the patch,” he told him. “It was an old-style key crossed with a sword inside a square.”
Survival Instinct (Book 2): Adaptive Instinct Page 7
