After Midnight

by Joseph Rubas

  May 26, 2013- Yep, son of a bitch; we’re on lockdown. I have a book, but I’m too goddamn steamed to read. It’s a beautiful day out there, and I don’t get to experience any of it thanks to that nigger and spic. Uggggg. I don’t even feel like writing right now.

  May 27, 2013- We’re still on lockdown. It’s cold and rainy out, so it’s not like I’m missing any yard time, but the boredom is fucking terrible. Just imagine sitting in an empty room all day with nothing to do. If you’re not careful, you’ll go crazy. I’ve seen a few guys lose their minds after being in their cells too long. It ain’t pretty. They get red and clenched and start shaking, and then they blow like dynamite and start yelling and screaming and kicking and punching. That’s when they call in the prison S.W.A.T. to come in and subdue them. They get the guy into this chair with straps and belt him in, and then they put a mesh spit-guard on his face and wheel him off. There’s something about it that just disturbs me. How degrading! I thought the Bill of Rights outlawed cruel and unusual punishment.

  Yeah, well, we’re on lockdown. That’s cruel and unusual. If I had a book it’d be better. I’ve just been laying here, thinking about life. Or trying to. I never got too in-depth because that fucking assclown Billy’s been doing anything and everything to piss everyone off today. Man, I could kill his ass.

  First, at four in the morning, he started screaming out some racist song about niggers and wild Indians from the plains at the top of his lungs.

  “Man, shut the fuck up!” muffled voices cried tiredly as their owners reluctantly stirred. Tina finally came out and told him to pipe down, and he did for about five minutes, then he started acting like a woman in the throes of orgasm, screaming, moaning, and screeching “Oh, God, yes!”

  By five, with most of us up thanks to his bitch-ass, he starts singing out insults for everyone within earshot.

  “Benson’s a four-eyed faggot!”

  “Goldberg’s a dirty ass licking kike!”

  “Muro’s a nigger-loving WOP wannabe!”

  When lunch was served, he kept flicking bits of corn into my cell. I tried to let it go, but I just blew it. I took my cup of corn and threw it across the hall; it hit his bars and showered Billy’s smug little face.

  “I’ll kill your ass if you keep it up!” I shouted, and I meant it, too.

  He launched into a tirade of threats and insults, but before he could really get going, a guard came out and made his threat: If we kept acting like assholes, we’d get an extra day of lockdown. You better believe everyone’s been good as gold since, except Billy, he cries out every now and then, jarring our nerves.

  June 1, 2013- This morning after breakfast and before rec time, I was sitting in my cell reading when one of the guards came and told me my lawyer was on the phone. I followed him to the office, a drab, Spartan space with tan wallpaper, rusted metal desks crammed with papers and computers, and sat in an uncomfortable chair. He picked up the white handset, stabbed a red button, and handed it to me.

  “Hello?”

  A wave of static crashed. “Benny! How are you?”

  David Sawyer is in his mid-fifties and wears his iron hair in a Shemp Howard fashion, hanging in his eyes if not tucked behind his ears. He has a vast selection of bowties which he wears religiously and his glasses are like huge Coke bottles. I think he consciously tries to affect the air of a Southern attorney from the forties, and pulls it off quite well. As well as anyone in 2013 can, that is.

  “Pretty good,” I replied.

  “Staying out of trouble?”

  “Yeah. I read a lot, you know.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Still…” another blast of static cut him off. Odd. The reception has always been fine in the past.

  “What was that?”

  “…Reading that Stephen King stuff?”

  I smiled. At my trial, Dave tried to blame what I did on my love of SK books. He even went so far as to read three of them before court, and happened to find a scene eerily similar to my crime. In fact, I’d never even read that book. Still haven’t.

  “Not so much anymore.”

  “Life’s starting to feel like a Stephen King book,” he said, and then nervously tittered.

  “Weird out there, huh?”

  “More than that,” he said gravely, and then paused. “That’s actually kinda sorta the reason I called.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. I know my monthly appointment with you is on...” papers shuffled, “the thirteenth, but I won’t be able to make it.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah. My wife and I are going to West Virginia tomorrow. We have a cabin up there in the woods. We’re going to wait this thing out.”

  “Is it really that bad out there?”

  “Yeah, Ben, it is. Hey, look, I gotta go. I gotta make a dozen more of these calls. Take care, okay? I might see you in the fall.”

  Without ceremony, he hung up.

  I might see you in the fall. Might.

  The guard took me back to my cell, and for a long time I just brooded. Now that I think about it, a lot of the usual guards haven’t been in in a while. And my therapist, an old hippy guy named Bill, called in his vacation time last week. I guess it’s really not that weird. I wouldn’t come in if I were them. Why the hell fight my way through packs of killer zombies just to get to work?

  June 3, 2013- Things keep getting weirder and weirder around here. Maybe David’s phone call opened my eyes and I'm just now noticing it, but I don't think so. It seems like things are getting bad quick. Reminds me of the Titanic. Strange analogy, I know, but that's what it puts me in mind of. That motherfucker sat there for two hours, lights blazing and music playing, and in ten minutes it was gone. One moment the deck's a little off kilter, the next everyone's in the water like "What the fuck?"

  I guess everything has a point at which it breaks wide open (again, like the Titanic). If that's so, then we reached it.

  The most noticeable thing is the atmosphere. It's crackling with this dark tension so thick it could choke you. And the guards aren't themselves. They're starting to worry, and it shows. The normal facade is still up, but it's starting to crack.

  Yesterday Sean Fields, one of the afternoon COs, told me that at least ten guards had called in that morning. Said it was getting too dangerous to come in anymore, and that he was probably gonna take some time off. Later he got a phone call from home and rushed out the door in a panic. When the shift supervisor tried to stop him, he quit right on the spot.

  And then there’s Charlie, an older black guy who works weekends. I was working out this morning when he came by doing the headcount like nothing.

  "Benny! What's up, man?

  "Hey, Charlie. What're you doing here?"

  "Ah, they called me in last night," he said, leaning against the door. "Working short.”

  He couldn't talk much longer. He said he was going home, but when we were let out for breakfast he was still around. "Workin a double," he sighed as we were led into the cafeteria.

  At lunch, I counted only two guards in the cafeteria where there should have been four. The two I saw stood nervously by the payphones and whispered back and forth more than they watched us.

  When I mentioned it to Cory Knight, he nodded.

  “And get this,” he looked left and right, and then leaned in conspiratorially, “they canceled all infirmary visits. I was supposed to go for a check-up, but…”

  Jimmy jumped in. “Yeah, they canceled my Bible class, too.”

  “I heard they’re gonna cancel yard time.”

  “Man, what the fuck?” Quincy perked up. “Why?”

  Cory shrugged. “Daryl Haines said people aren’t coming into work anymore.”

  Daryl Haines is a floater, that is, a guard who doesn’t work a particular unit, just where they’re needed.

  “Said admin’s been gone since the day before yesterday. No one even knows if they’re gonna get paid.”

  Later, around midnight, as I was lying in bed struggling to sleep
, I heard Charlie and Tina arguing. The pod door clanged open, footsteps.

  “I can’t stay,” Charlie said…or rather pled.

  “You have to,” Tina replied, “I’m alone tonight.”

  “I been workin twenty-four hours straight. I can’t.”

  “Charlie, listen…”

  “No,” he retorted firmly. He passed by and went out the other door. Tina returned to the control booth muttering curses under her breath.

  This shit is starting to get scary.

  June 4, 2013- I was up and outta bed at my regular time, doing pushups (what’s that Chuck Norris “fact”? When he does pushups he’s actually pushing the earth down?) and getting myself in a state to face the day, when Tina, as big as life and twice as ugly, comes down the hall pushing a cart laden with trays.

  “Motherfuck,” Quincy sighed from his cell.

  “Watch your mouth,” Tina spat, passing a tray through the slot in my door.

  “We on lockdown?” Jimmy asked.

  “No,” came her surly reply.

  “Then…”

  She threw him a glance that warned against further questions and shoved his tray through. She went on, one cart wheel wobbling and squeaking.

  “What the fuck?” Billy looked through his bars after her, his eyes narrowed and almost predatory.

  “This sucks,” Quincy shook his head.

  “If we aren’t on lockdown…”Jimmy started.

  “We are,” Quincy said definitively. “They just trying that diplomacy shit.”

  Some of the guys down the way kept it up for much longer, shouting back and forth at each other, commiserating, laughing, growling. I ate my breakfast, and when Tina came back around and took the trays, she said in general: “Okay, listen up!”

  Everyone fell silent.

  “No yard today.”

  A babble of disappointment.

  “But you still get rec. Extra, even.”

  That softened the blow, but not by much. They let us out an hour before lunch, and didn’t make us go back in until dinner. I ate at one of the tables with Quincy and Jimmy. After lunch, we held an impromptu race, but Tina leaned out of the office door and yelled at us. I caught a little Fox News with Billy. Glenn Beck was on, sitting on the edge of a leather upholstered couch before a chalkboard adorned with pictures of Obama, Bill Ayers, and the SEIU logo. He broke his monologue once to glance behind him at the board, and then tittered bitterly. He urged America to stand as one now, that liberal and republican, socialist and Nazi didn’t, mean shit.

  “None of that” – he swept his arm back – “matters right now.”

  Toward five-thirty, as dinner was being passed out, he bowed his head and asked everyone watching to pray with him. Though he believes in Jesus and I don’t, and though I’m at least a few miles to the left of him, I bowed my head and prayed…or at least tried to.

  June 5, 2013-Today we’re officially on lockdown. Tina didn’t have the balls to tell us until we were eating lunch. Everyone exploded, excluding me, Quincy and Jimmy. And probably Cory Knight. Billy was the loudest mouth there, his shaky voice rising above the din. The whirlwind kept up for hours until everyone was too hoarse to even whisper. I’ve been reading a Dean Koontz book since it died down, but my focus isn’t very good. I can barely remember the last fifty pages.

  Anyway, at three, when everyone was still going crazy, Tina left and the weekend shift came in. Or two of the weekend shift came in: J.T., the manager, and Jason Haggerty. They brought us dinner, but didn’t come around again until lights out.

  “Bedtime, Benny,” Jason said through the bars as he passed.

  “Alright,” I said, putting aside my book, and then it struck me. “Jason?”

  “Huh?”

  “What’s going on?”

  He looked at me for a long time. “Bad shit, Benny.”

  “What kinda bad shit?”

  “Bad shit.”

  June 6, 2013- Haggerty came around with breakfast two hours late, and hinted around that he had to make it himself.

  He passed by an hour later in his street clothes, a jersey and a pair of jeans. He ignored the questions thrown at him.

  A half hour later after that, Tina (who couldn’t be more out of place) hurried by with a piece of paper crumbled in her meaty right hand. She came back with J.T. and announced that Governor McDonnell was pardoning all non-violent offenders and convicts with less than three years left to serve. Jimmy’s gone, but he promised he’d come back and get us out if things got real bad.

  With almost everyone gone, the block is about as deserted as a country road at midnight. At dinner, Tina’s cart held five trays: Me, Billy, Quincy, and two others down the block. None could be Cory Knight, I saw him go out the door earlier.

  It’s eerie being here with only four other people. Empty. Dead. Even at night there was a…a feeling of life. Now it’s as void as the basement of a deserted house in the woods. The only sounds are the industrial air systems whirring on and off and the occasional cough or stir, which startles me every time. I was reading earlier and almost had a heart attack when the door to the pod clanged open. Tina, dressed in a pair of khaki shorts and a lumberjack cut off, strode purposely by. I guess she's going home to stay, like Haggerty.

  June 7, 2013- Breakfast came about three hours late today. The guys were getting rowdy when J.T. came down the line with the trays. He looked like shit, dark bags hanging under his pink, sleepless eyes. He handed out the cold cereal and hard toast as quick as he could. Some of the others hurled abuse at him, others asked him desperate questions, but he ignored them all. When he came by my cell, I took the tray with a muttered thanks.

  As the door to the block closed with an ominous, echoing finality, I looked at the slop in the metal bowl before me and wondered if this is the end.

  Pushing those thoughts aside, I ate my cereal. When I was done, I laid back on my bunk and gazed at the cracked concrete ceiling, trying my best to focus on anything other than zombies and Armageddon.

  Dinner didn’t come until almost ten. J.T. was acting strange.

  June 8, 2013- I could have added this yesterday, but I was too depressed. J.T. killed himself after he brought dinner. Or at least I assume he killed himself. No one knows for sure. But about ten minutes after he went back to the control room, a single gunshot startled all of us from our meals.

  Quincy’s head jerked up, his brow furrowed. “What the fuck?”

  Billy hopped off his cot, went to his door, and strained to look up the hall.

  Quincy sat aside his tray and tried to have a look for himself. I sat where I was, already knowing I wouldn’t see anything.

  We were speechless, I think. Nobody said a word.

  No one came to investigate the shot. It was loud as hell. Must have come from something like a .357; they had to have heard it elsewhere. Maybe J.T. was the last.

  No. No. There was another. An hour after he died I saw someone else. My window overlooks the main entrance, and I was gazing out it, thinking and silently praying, when a car came up the little service road and stopped, the red taillights glowing in the rain. Someone got out, opened the gate by hand, and drove off.

  June 9, 2013- I crawled out of bed around noon with a throbbing headache and a nauseous stomach. I felt like a guy coming down off a monster drunk. I didn’t fall asleep until dawn, and spent most of the morning starting awake from horrible, half-remembered dreams. In one of them J.T. was a zombie, even though the bullet had splattered most of his brain across the control panel. The spookiest thing about that one is that he wasn’t a mindless thing, he was…like a person. He came down doing the morning headcount with an evil grin on his face, the top of his head a black and red mess and his white uniform shirt drenched in blood.

  “Good morning, kike.”

  “Morning, J.T.,” I replied. I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t have to look at him, but I could still see him through my lids.

  In another, I was out of my cell and alone, wandering through
dark, echoy halls and desperately looking for someone else. I heard things scratching and clawing and sniggering in the gloom behind me, but that’s all. I tried to run, but it was like my feet weighed a thousand pounds each. I finally found a door and burst into daylight…and the arms of about a dozen zombies.

  The sun was hot on my flesh when I woke. Billy was up and quietly doing sit-ups in his cell.

  “Mornin', kike,” Billy said, and I was instantly reminded of J.T.

  “Fuck you,” I muttered, sitting up and rubbing painful grains from my eyes.

  Most of the afternoon was quiet. I watched the roadway like a hawk, but no one came or went. The gate was still open.

  Around three or so I heard voices, guys from another block shouting themselves hoarse for someone to come and let them out. One of them must have worked loose a bit of his cot rigging, for the screams were accompanied by a monotonous clanging. One of them had a set of pipes AC/DC would envy. I could actually make out a few words: “HELP ME! OPEN...FUCKING DOOR!”

  “Shut the fuck up!” Billy screamed back, but I don’t think they heard him.

  Sometime before five a phone in the control booth started ringing. It went on and on and on and on.

  When night fell, the floodlights along the fence didn’t come on. S. Shawshank is an old place. They aren’t automatic.

  "Well, we’re officially fucked,” Billy said.

  "Someone's around," I sighed without conviction. “They gotta be. Jimmy’ll be back for us.”

  "No," Quincy spat. "They left us for dead."

  "You got that right," Billy concurred, beginning to pace like a caged animal. "See, that's what happens in a capitalistic society. The fat fucks weren't getting’ paid so they said fuck it and took off."

  "They probably wanted to be with their families," I feebly countered, "the way things are."

  "Bullshit. If they were really that goddamn worried they'd bring their families here. We got tons of food, guns, a fence, medical supplies. This is the perfect fortress. But, newsflash, kike: shit ain't that bad. They just left because they weren't getting’ paid."