CHERUB: Maximum Security

by Robert Muchamore

  ‘I guess I’ll have to face them some time today,’ James said pensively. ‘So go and earn yourself some merit points by telling them I’m right here.’

  After what had happened to the last passer-by, Abe didn’t sound keen. ‘Why don’t you go over to them?’

  James pointed a finger at the armed hack standing on the roof of the cellblock less than ten metres away. ‘I feel safer here.’

  Abe reluctantly set off across the dirt towards Elwood and the others. His steps seemed to slow down as he got closer. At one point Abe changed direction so much, James thought he was going to chicken out and walk straight by.

  Abe got off with a nod of thanks for his trouble. Elwood immediately set off towards James, backed up by an entourage that included Kirch and three younger skinheads, with Curtis dragging up the rear.

  James looked up for comfort, only to discover that the hack on the roof had disappeared.

  ‘You look pale, Rose,’ Elwood said, when he got up close.

  ‘I figure six against one is never good,’ James said, trying to keep the fear out of his voice.

  ‘True,’ Elwood grinned, looking back at his crew.

  ‘What is it you want?’

  ‘I liked the way you dealt with Stanley Duff.’

  ‘Those two started it,’ James said. ‘I didn’t go looking for trouble.’

  ‘I’ve got no beef over that pair of walnut brains,’ Elwood said. ‘But you gotta understand my concern, when guys like you and your brother arrive in my cell and start turning people over.’

  James nodded.

  ‘I’ve either got to cut you to pieces, or cut you a deal; unless you’ve already got one with the Latinos.’

  ‘My brother said Cesar was trying to stir up trouble between us,’ James said, feeling a glimmer of confidence, as he sensed that he might get through the meeting unscathed. ‘But Cesar only cares about the other Latinos.’

  Elwood nodded. ‘Your bro’ sounds smart.’

  ‘When he stays awake,’ James said bitterly.

  ‘So why’d you accept gifts from Cesar?’

  ‘Because I was hungry.’

  Elwood roared out with a false laugh, which set off all his cronies. ‘I guess free food is free food, wherever it comes from … So what about your bro’? You got word?’

  James shook his head. ‘That hack, Frey, pulled me over. He wouldn’t tell me when they’re letting him out of the hole.’

  Elwood laughed again. ‘I’ve been in that hole enough times, but the max is forty-eight hours if you’re under eighteen. After that they either put you in a single cell, or back in the dorm.’

  ‘Right,’ James said, relieved that Dave would probably be back soon.

  ‘So, to business,’ Elwood said. ‘Me and Kirch run our cell. That means everyone kicks up to us, including you.’

  James nodded; not that he was in any position to negotiate.

  ‘I want you and your brother to give me ten bucks of commissary each, every week. In return, I’ll give you Abe.’

  ‘Abe?’ James said, confused.

  ‘Abe’s your personal property. Rip off his commissary, beat his brains in; do what you like. I don’t want you touching any of the others, they belong to Kirch and me. I’ll also set you up with decent prison-issue clothes and blankets, and I’ll make it known that I’m on your side when the Duff brothers come back.’

  ‘Sounds fair,’ James nodded, as they shook on the deal.

  ‘Did you lose anything good when you came in through reception?’ Elwood asked.

  ‘Only my trainers.’

  ‘For ten dollars of commissary, I can get them back if you want them.’

  ‘Course,’ James said, looking at his canvas slip-ons. ‘These things are rubbish.’

  ‘You better stick with us until your brother comes back,’ Elwood said, scratching at the swastika on his neck. ‘Not everyone around here is a sweetie-pie like me.’

  18. BEASTS

  James loved animals when he was tiny: the furry toys on his bed, the singing characters in animated movies and the overweight cat that wandered into his nan’s garden, knowing it would get a saucer of milk just for bothering to turn up.

  Aged seven, James did his first school project on lions. His mum taped a show off the Discovery channel that was on after bedtime. He watched the female lions licking their cubs and lazing under a tree in the sun. Then the animals went hunting.

  The lionesses chased into a herd of antelope. They dragged down a straggler and began tearing it apart. Ripping off its legs, clawing open the stomach and then dipping their snouts inside the twitching carcass; tearing out hunks of flesh and running their long tongues through the blood on their faces. Until that moment, James had no idea nature could be so brutal.

  He got as far as the living-room door, intending to find his mum and start bawling, but something changed his mind. He went back to the couch, tentatively rewound the video and watched it again. He watched it over and over, appalled, but utterly fascinated by what the lions were doing.

  The in-your-face nastiness of the young skinheads in the Arizona Max exercise yard reminded James of the video for the first time in years. They brought out the same mixture of feelings: power and viciousness, combining into a perverse kind of glamour.

  James showed off, working up a sweat on the chin-up bar, before lying back in the dirt next to Elwood and listening to him talk about things the gang of skinheads had done. Elwood pointed out scared kids who handed their commissary form to him each week, in return for not getting beaten up too badly. He revelled in stories about people he’d tortured, stabbed, poured boiling water over and bullied to the point where they’d tried to kill themselves.

  The history of violence wasn’t all one way. Elwood proudly showed off scars on his leg, chest and back from three different knife attacks. He said you could never judge who would snap and come at you with a knife. It was as likely to be the puny little bookworm as the brooding psychopath with arms like joists.

  James was appalled, but he listened intently and laughed when he was expected to. It was mostly out of relief. The last forty-eight hours had been amongst the most traumatic of his life, but with the skinheads offering some protection, the tight ball in his stomach had eased off. He finally felt he was getting to grips with the mission. The next step was to chum up with Curtis.

  *

  Lauren didn’t have much to do back at the house; her part of the mission would only begin once James and Dave escaped. She welcomed the chance to catch up on sleep and relax after basic training, though it would have been more fun if there’d been someone like Bethany to hang out with.

  John took her to a shopping mall and even let her drive part of the way, so she could get used to handling the car in traffic. Unfortunately, the pair had radically different ideas on shopping.

  Lauren would have happily cruised the mall all day: nosing around, maybe buying clothes and some things for her new room on campus, before stopping off at the food court for lunch. John’s idea of shopping was to write a list and take the place by storm: finding the quickest route between shops you had to visit on the map by the entrance and then charging from one to the next. When Lauren suggested that they have a look around before leaving, John scowled at her like she was a three-headed alien and steamed towards the car park.

  The latex swimming sock was the one good thing to come out of the trip. Lauren could pull it over the small dressing on her foot and it would keep dry while she was in the pool. It was the hottest part of the day when they got back to the house and she put it to immediate use. She swam a few gentle lengths, but mostly just floated on a blow-up lounger and laughed at the rude bits in a teen magazine she’d got at the mall.

  John had threatened lunch, but after an hour Lauren dripped into the kitchen, only to find him yelling at a telephone.

  ‘As far as I’m concerned … Well … I don’t know if he can do it … Sure James has his head screwed on. But we are talking about a thirteen-yea
r-old boy … So what does Scott Warren say?…OK, OK…If he can get me in I’ll drive up there straight away.’

  ‘Was that Marvin?’ Lauren asked. ‘Are the boys OK?’

  John had been so involved in the call he hadn’t noticed Lauren standing behind him.

  ‘James is fine,’ John said. ‘But there was a fight and Dave ended up in the hole. He’s had a bad night in there and … Listen, everything’s up in the air and I don’t know all the details myself. Can I leave you here on your own for a couple of hours? Don’t spend any more time in the pool, you’ve got fair skin and it’s not used to that kind of sun.’

  ‘What if anyone calls?’

  ‘I’m on my mobile,’ John said, snatching his keys and a false FBI badge off the kitchen cabinet. ‘Don’t wander off from the house. I’ll pick up something for dinner on the way back.’

  *

  James’ hot lunch was watery mash, peas and a rectangular slab of mincemeat that everyone, including the servers, referred to as baked turd. Dessert was a comparatively edible fruit sponge, washed down with the inevitable government-surplus milk.

  ‘Not bad, compared to the filth you get in Omaha,’ James said. ‘Practically gourmet.’

  ‘You want another dessert?’ Kirch asked.

  ‘Mmm, sure,’ James said. ‘Can I go up to the counter and get one?’

  The five skinheads around the table laughed.

  ‘Just tax one,’ Curtis said.

  James looked over his shoulder at the table behind him. He realised he’d look weak in front of his new friends if he didn’t rip off someone’s pudding, but fate had twisted the knife: out of the four kids at the next table, Abe was the only one who hadn’t started eating his sponge.

  James stood up. ‘Abe man,’ he said awkwardly. ‘You eating that pudding? Only …’

  ‘I’m eating it,’ Abe said guardedly.

  The skinheads roared with outrage.

  ‘You cannot say that, man,’ Elwood gasped, shaking his head and pounding on the table. ‘Serious disrespect.’

  Abe realised the error of his ways and pushed the plastic bowl towards James. But it wasn’t fast enough for Kirch, who reached over and dragged Abe off his chair by the scruff of his shirt.

  ‘You got no manners, boy,’ Kirch shouted.

  He banged his fist against Abe’s mouth, then dropped him to the floor, before spitting a mouthful of milk and chewed-up food in his hair. James looked anxiously at the hack standing behind the serving counter, but it was exactly like Scott Warren said: hacks didn’t interfere as long as nobody was getting killed.

  ‘You’d better start learning,’ Kirch growled.

  Elwood and the others were laughing as Abe crawled back to his seat with milk streaking down his face. James joined the laughter as he took Abe’s pudding and sat back down, but he really felt terrible. Abe had saved his life by waking Dave up a few hours earlier. Now he had to sacrifice their friendship for the good of the mission.

  It was the middle of the day when they trawled back out on to the exercise yard. With the temperature touching the forties, Kirch led the gang to the cell. With no air conditioning, it was no cooler indoors than out, but at least you were shielded from the blinding sunlight.

  James’ status as an associate of Elwood and Kirch meant a bed nearer the door. Kirch took five seconds to bust open the combination locker on the bed opposite his own. He threw out Stanley Duff’s belongings, while James collected his things from his old bed in the middle.

  Stanley had some decent stuff. James grabbed his deodorant and shampoo, as well as a bunch of snack foods and a radio. What James didn’t want got thrown out for the weaker guys to fight over. Abe grudgingly accepted first pick of an electric razor, some rice crackers and a half used toilet roll.

  ‘That was messed up in the canteen,’ James whispered guiltily.

  Abe had a fat lip from the punch. ‘A guy like you and a guy like me were never gonna move with the same crew for long,’ he said casually.

  James found Abe’s acceptance of his low status depressing. Abe was doing twenty years, and looked like spending most of it getting slapped around and bullied. James wanted to think up some desperately clever scheme that would make everything fair, but he knew the world didn’t work that way; least of all inside a place like Arizona Max.

  James’ new bunk was comfortable. The bed had three thin mattresses laid on top of one another. Extras were only supposed to be issued to inmates with bad backs, but inevitably it was the bullies who gained the extra comfort.

  Elwood’s connection in the prison laundry had already delivered James a spare set of sheets and an extra pillow, plus a towel and some underwear. It looked years newer than the rags he’d received in reception and his black Nikes were supposed to be on their way.

  James laid back on his bed reading a book about the Mafia that had belonged to Raymond Duff. It wasn’t as exciting as the cover suggested, but it was all James had to take his mind off the heat, until a hack leaned over the gantry above his head and shouted his name.

  ‘Rose, you got an EA.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Educational Assessment,’ Curtis explained, shouting over the bed between them. ‘They must have sharpened their act up, it usually takes weeks to sort out the new inmates. I’ll show you the way if you like. I can ask if my books have arrived.’

  19. CURTIS

  The education area was built above the cells, but to get there you had to go outside on to the yard and walk around the edge of the building, along a path enclosed in a wire cage. It was James’ first chance to get to know Curtis, who kept to himself in the presence of the more powerful skinheads.

  ‘What courses do you do?’ James asked, as they walked side by side.

  ‘Everyone’s supposed to get three hours’ education a day,’ Curtis explained. ‘But there’s not enough teachers for normal classes, so they just give you textbooks to read. I only go because you’re allowed to buy extra books. It’s supposed to be related to what you’re learning, but the censor only stops a book if it tells you how to make explosives, or if it’s porno or something.’

  ‘Do they force us to go to class?’

  Curtis laughed. ‘It’s compulsory; but imagine you’re a teacher and you’ve got twenty guys like Elwood in your class. How hard would you try to make them turn up?’

  ‘See your point,’ James grinned.

  ‘I’d like to do an art course,’ Curtis said. ‘All I ever did when I was a kid was paint or draw, but all they’ll let you have here are the stubby pencils like you get with your commissary forms. I did get a box of colouring pencils smuggled in, but the hacks wouldn’t stand for any big stuff.’

  James tried to gently move the conversation towards the idea of escaping as they rounded a corner.

  ‘So, you ever getting out?’ James asked.

  ‘Doesn’t look like it,’ Curtis said. ‘You?’

  ‘Eighteen years,’ James said.

  ‘Not bad,’ Curtis said. ‘You’ll be in your thirties. You’ve got a shot at living some kind of life.’

  ‘I’m getting out way before eighteen years,’ James grinned.

  ‘Nobody escapes from here, James. This place is new-built; state of the art.’

  ‘Me and Dave worked out a plan when we were in Nebraska. If they’d ever let us out of solitary, we’d have pulled it too. But here’s the weirdest coincidence: Omaha State and this joint are exactly alike. They must have been built by the same people.’

  James knew that Omaha State and Arizona Max were twins: designed by the same architect, built by the same construction company and opened within six months of each other. It was an essential detail in the background story that explained how James and Dave could know how to escape from Arizona Max within days of arriving.

  ‘The exact same?’ Curtis said.

  ‘More or less. Same security systems, same kind of cellblocks, even the same fixtures and fittings. When me and Dave were in solitary, we had this hack o
n our landing who used to talk to us all the time. He’d come over to my cell door for a chat. I think he felt sorry for me because I was young, but he was one of those guys who loved his own voice. He moaned non-stop. I mean, I’m the one locked in solitary twenty-three hours a day, but he’d be whinging about his life. His wife, his kids, his house and about the superintendent busting his balls and keeping him on night shift.

  ‘Whenever he moaned about work, I started asking subtle questions. Like, how many staff there were on duty at night and what kind of security passes they used. Dave’s cell wasn’t far away and he started doing the same. By the time we’d been in solitary for a few weeks, this big-mouth had told us way more than he should have.’

  ‘You really believe you could escape?’

  ‘I reckon I’d make it out the gate. The tricky part is what to do after that. You need money, and connections to pay for a false identity and set up a new life. There’s no point going on the run for a few weeks, getting caught and ending up buried in solitary with ten years added to your sentence. You’ve got to find a way of avoiding the cops for the whole rest of your life.’

  ‘How would you break out?’ Curtis asked. ‘You’ve got to get out of a locked cell for starters.’

  ‘No offence,’ James said, ‘but the only people who’ll ever know that are the ones going out with me.’

  Curtis seemed to understand the need for secrecy and they were nearly at the metal door of the education unit anyway. A hack padded the boys down, before they passed through another metal detector. It was two flights of stairs up, then past three small classrooms to a door with Education Officer written on it.

  ‘You mind if I go in quickly first?’ Curtis asked. ‘I want to ask Mr Haines if my books have arrived.’

  Curtis knocked on the door and got hailed in by a voice James recognised as Scott Warren.

  ‘Isn’t Haines here?’ Curtis asked, looking surprised as he pushed the door open.