Refuge From The Dead (Book 1): Lockdown

by Joseph A. Coley

  Wind blew dust from the yard onto the boulevard. The place looked like a ghost town most days, but today it took on an even more eerie look. The yard itself was almost as secure as the buildings that surrounded it. The yard for Alpha and Bravo buildings were on the left, Charlie and Delta on the right, with another razor-wire fence enclosing both rec yards. A long concrete sidewalk separated the two.

  As he walked down the boulevard, inching closer to Delta building, a deluge of thoughts came to mind. What happens if I don’t follow the orders? Well, what’s the worst that could happen? One way or another, the prison will be free of convicts. If for some reason they actually recover from this shit, I can tell them that we executed them all and buried them in a mass grave in the woods.

  Listen to yourself, Robert. Talking about digging mass graves out in the woods? Executing people in the name of humanity? What kind of talk is that?

  It’s the kind of talk that’s going to keep me from losing my mind later on.

  Don’t you think that ship has sailed, Robert?

  Winston shook off his wayward thoughts. In the few moments he became lost in them, he had managed to traverse the length of the boulevard. As Delta building loomed over him, he tried once more to talk himself out of doing this on his own. He was the de facto warden now, so all decisions pursuant to Black Mountain belonged to him. Right? This was going to be his decision and, like it or not, it was going to take responsibility for it one way or another.

  He just hoped it was the right decision.

  Captain Winston buzzed the control room to let him into Delta building. As soon as he opened the door, he was greeted by the skeleton crew that was working the building. Above him, directly ahead, was the porthole for the control room, along with the officer assigned to it, Officer David Putnam. Putnam was a three-year employee of the Department of Corrections, but had recently decided to the DOC to pursue a career in law enforcement. He was scheduled to take a job with the Bluefield Virginia Police Department in less than a month. Those dreams being shot all to shit, he was now manning the Delta control room in the middle of the end of the world.

  Funny how life throws a curveball.

  “Captain Winston! How’s it hanging, sir?” Putnam hollered from the porthole.

  Winston had to smile. Despite the situation, Putnam was doing his best to stay upbeat. That was good. He was going to need that same sense of humor later on. Putnam noticed the sidearm holstered on Winston’s side. That couldn’t be a good indication of his intentions, good or otherwise.

  “Not much, buddy. Who’s working the floor over here?” Winston replied.

  Putnam looked behind him, glancing at the monitors behind him. “Henderson, sir. She’s over on three side right now. You want me to get her over here?”

  “Yeah, tell her to come up to the control room. I’ve got something that we need to do, and I’m not sure how it’s going to work. Holler at the other buildings and tell them to send whoever they have available over here. We are gonna need all the help we can get.”

  Putnam nodded. He had an idea about what Winston was going to try and pull off, and he wasn’t sure how it was going to work, either. Putnam conference called the other buildings and told them to send what spare officers they had left. Every building acknowledged, minus Alpha. The Alpha control room said that he didn’t have anyone left to send over. Cunningham was still handing out trays in Alpha, and that was probably for the best. Putnam didn’t care much for the young upstart. Too much mouth and not enough balls. He stuck his head back out the port hole.

  “All right, Captain. We have seven more officers on the way over,” Putnam said.

  Winston gave him a thumbs up. “Buzz me up there, Putnam. We need to talk.”

  Putnam nodded slowly, the smile slowly leaving his face. “I’m sure we do, sir.”

  * * *

  Officer Janey Henderson stood with her arms crossed, trying to figure out whether Captain Winston was full of shit. It was easier to think that he was, just spitballing ideas until one stuck. No, that wasn’t the case. See, she figured that the time for decision-making was going to be a group effort, not just some random rambling of the highest-ranking individual. There had to be some sort of democracy to the process. There wasn’t much of a reason to ask the inmates what their opinion was; no one really gave a shit anyway. At least with his way there was a chance it could work. The alternative, well, maybe not so much.

  “So the Governor wants us to kill all of them? All of them? And why aren’t we doing that?” Henderson asked.

  Captain Winston was leaned back, looking absently into the pods. “If you want to, then by all means, have at it. You just have to figure out how we’re going to do it without inciting a riot and getting any sort of compliance out of them. Then you can convince the rest of the people at this institution that there is no other way to get rid of them, when there clearly is.”

  “Captain, I’m with whatever your decision is. I don’t care to shoot them, hang them, or send ‘em packing with a can of beans on a stick. We gotta do whatever it takes to stay safe. If you think this will work, then we have to try. Right?” Henderson said.

  “Beats the alternative. Now, what are we going to tell them?” Putnam said.

  Winston shrugged. “We tell them everything.”

  “Yeah, that sounds logical. ‘Attention, inmates of Black Mountain State Prison. The world as you know it has come to a screeching fucking halt. Due to our inability to care for you combined with our lack of fucks being given, you will now be pardoned for your crimes. If you choose not to leave the premises, you will be shot,’” Putnam said jokingly.

  Henderson glared at Putnam.

  “In the head…” Putnam continued.

  “That’s about the long and the short of it, don’t you think?” Winston asked.

  “So how are we going to pull this off, Captain?” Henderson asked.

  “One tier of one pod at a time. It’s gonna take us quite a while to do it all, but we don’t want to get too outnumbered. We let an entire pod or an entire building out at once, they are gonna riot on us, and then we’re screwed,” Winston answered.

  Henderson let out a long sigh. She hated the idea, but admitted that it was the best course of action. The inmates hated her, if not because of her being a lesbian, then for the fact that she didn’t take any shit off them. Henderson did her job – not exactly by the book, but successfully nonetheless. She wasn’t above cussing out one of the inmates for stepping out of line, or handcuffing them and bringing them to the Sergeant’s office for a thorough ass chewing.

  Some of the more conservative inmates saw her because of affirmative action; only getting the job because she was a white female and a lesbian. She didn’t care. One of the more well-liked officers, Janey Henderson was an Iraq veteran at the young age of 25, along with a top honor graduate of the DOC academy. It didn’t matter to them that she was an excellent officer; they just had one more reason to hate her.

  A long silence passed. Putnam was mulling over the cameras, trying to act like he was busy doing something. He was just as hesitant to open the doors to the cells.

  “All right, Putnam. Open the top tier and tell them to have a seat in the day room. We have a lot to talk about.”

  CHAPTER 15

  Ryan wheeled the GMC Savana van into the parking lot of Bluefield Regional Medical Center. The parking lot was nearly empty, save for a few cars sporadically parked in the rear of the hospital. As he rounded the corner of the parking lot and headed towards the ER entrance, the big issue they had seen from across town showed its ugly head.

  Half the hospital was on fire.

  From the ER entrance across to the main entrance was either shooting flames or copious amounts of thick, black smoke. A hundred yard section of the front of the hospital was charred black, the blue sign for Bluefield Regional halfway melted and hanging from the façade. The four-story hospital looked to be a total loss. There were no fire department or rescue vehicles nearby.
The place had been given up.

  Ryan barely got the van in park before Michael jumped out.

  “Michael! Wait!”

  It was too late. Michael jumped out of the still-moving van, hitting the ground running – literally. The heat from the fire was intense, immediately causing him to second guess his haphazard run towards the ER entrance. Michael slowly stepped back, fighting off tears. He slowly looked back up and started stalking towards the ER entrance.

  “Caine! Wait, goddammit!” Ryan said. He quickly stepped in front of Michael and stopped him from going any further. Michael shoved him off and started towards the entrance again.

  “We gotta go see if she’s all right!” Michael screamed.

  “What are you going to do, Caine? Fight fire with a twelve-gauge? We need to figure out where she went to. There’s no way that she stayed here!” Ryan said.

  “Fuck!” Michael yelled. As much as he wanted to run into the blazing building, he was neither trained nor prepared to do so. He punched the air, fuming mad.

  Several gunshots popped.

  Michael immediately snapped out of his shock. The shots came from close by. Very close by, judging from the fact that he could hear the gunfire over the roar of the flames. He brought the 870 up, swinging it around and trying to get a fix on where it was coming from.

  “Ryan! Where are they?” Michael yelled.

  Ryan was already stalking forward with the AR-15, heading in the direction of the back of the ER. “Over here, Mike!”

  Something told Michael to follow. Although it wasn’t in their best interests to go looking for trouble, something told him that they needed to investigate the gunfire. As he ran to catch up to Ryan, the reason became evident. Against the passenger’s side of a Bluefield Virginia Rescue Squad ambulance, there were two of Michael’s DOC coworkers. As he slowed for a moment, he was elated. Maybe they could tell him where Lindsey had gone to, or if she was even still alive.

  She’s alive. Get that shit out of your head.

  The two officers hunkered down against the big blue ambulance. One looked to be reloading a handgun, the other was moving towards the front of the ambulance.

  “Hey! DOC officers!” Ryan yelled.

  The two officers both snapped to and immediately waved Michael and Ryan over. They trotted over and took cover behind the ambulance, still unsure as to why they were hiding, or what they were hiding from.

  “Officers Caine and Helton,” Michael said.

  “Officers Trent and Flannigan! Get the fuck down before they see you!” Officer Flannigan yelled and grabbed Michael down quickly.

  “All right, Trent and Flannigan. What the fuck are we hiding from?” Helton said.

  “We aren’t taking cover from anything. The hood of the ambulance makes a nice platform for shooting these dead fuckers. Look over the top of the hood. About every thirty seconds, one comes wandering out of the hospital, so we cap his ass!”

  Officers Trent and Flannigan weren’t exactly the sharpest tools in the shed. Trent had the propensity for genius, but rarely showed it outside of his enormous book smarts. Street smarts…well, that was lacking quite a bit. Sheltered for most of his life, Officer Thomas Trent had recently become aware of the outside world. Home schooled since age five, he’d had a grand scheme to become an integral part of rehabilitating the community that he lived in. After graduating from high school at age sixteen, he’d immediately dove into college coursework. Four years later, he had a bachelor’s degree in criminology, and three years after that, a master’s. Trent had taken a job at DOC to get on the fast track to be a counselor to the inmates, someone who was responsible for their programs and counseling. Each inmate was required to take nine months’ worth of classes to ready them for life outside the prison walls, a metaphorical rebirthing time. While Trent had an IQ of somewhere in the high 160s, his street smarts were horribly lacking. He didn’t have the common sense that God gave a wet dishcloth. Not that he wasn’t smart; he just overthought things to the point of non-action.

  “So why don’t you just leave?” Michael asked. “Nobody is coming back here.”

  Officer Trent nodded towards the ER entrance. While the fire had not spread to the parking lot, it had made its way to the awning adjacent to the entrance. Michael hadn’t noticed it, but there were several charred vehicles underneath the awning, one of them looked remarkably familiar. Although the fire had destroyed most of it, the GMC van was unmistakably one of the DOC’s.

  “Shit. Well, come on. Our van is in one piece. You can hitch a ride with us,” Michael said.

  Officer Flannigan fired off two more rounds at a charred walker wandering from one of the side entrances of the hospital. He sat back down and looked at his Glock, the slide locked back.

  Lester Flannigan was the polar opposite of Officer Trent. A local, born and raised, he’d lived in Southwest Virginia his entire life. Barely scraping by in high school, he had no idea what he was going to do when he graduated. A football injury in his sophomore year prevented him from joining the military – his first option – so he decided the try to make a living working in the mines. Coal mining was a great source of income when it was dependable. Nowadays, coal jobs were still a great way to make money, but were entirely too unreliable. One week you could work sixty-plus hours and make a thousand dollars, the next week, you were unemployed. One of the only other stable jobs in the area was DOC, so that’s where he went. Flannigan barely scraped by at the academy, but graduated nonetheless. He had a knack for dealing with the inmates, and the inmates respected him for it. There was no bullshitting when Lester Flannigan was around.

  “Well, I’m outta ammo. Guess we might as well hit the road, boys. Where are ya’ll headed?” Flannigan asked.

  “Well, we came here to get my wife, but she’s gone. You guys have any idea where they went to?” Michael asked.

  “Most of ‘em packed up and went to Mitchell Stadium. Red Cross had some kind of center set up. We would have went, but we had to cover them. Bluefield PD left outta here and didn’t bother coming back. Sorry assed fuckers,” Flannigan said.

  Michael perked up. He scooted closer to Flannigan. “Did you see my wife? Lindsey Caine? She’s about five-four, a hundred forty pounds, brunette. I think she had navy blue scrubs on today. Did you see her?”

  Flannigan rubbed his forehead. “I don’t recall her specifically, but if she was one of ‘em that got out, they took ‘em to Mitchell Stadium. I’m guessing that you got the state van from Black Mountain. You guys plan on heading back up there once you get done?”

  “Yeah that’s the idea. You guys have anybody you need to get? Any family or anything? We can get ‘em while we’re out.”

  “No. We just figured we’d just hole up for the night and see if the world was still here tomorrow. I have my doubts,” Trent said.

  Helton nodded. “I hear you. Let’s get the fuck out of here before the van catches on fire.”

  “Heads up, guys. We got company,” Michael said. He got up and brought the 870 to low ready. A lone walker shuffled along the side of the van. The poor bastard couldn’t hold himself up, sliding along the side of the van. A brown trail of blood smeared against the door. As Michael started moving towards the van, more and more infected started pouring out from around the vehicle.

  Ryan grabbed an extra magazine from his mag pouch and handed it to Flannigan. Flannigan dropped the empty mag and shoved the new one home. Without a word, Trent and Ryan got up as well. They stalked towards the van, weapons ready.

  “Watch your fire. Not gonna do us any good if we shoot our ride out of here,” Michael said.

  While Officers Trent and Flannigan weren’t the best marksmen – somewhere just south of mediocre on the scale of good to piss-poor – they still managed to nail headshots about one out of three. The DOC didn’t stress shooting much; a week at the academy for people who had never held a gun didn’t help most of them.

  After a barrage of bullets and a quick walk around of the vehicle, all f
our men piled in. As Officer Flannigan opened the door, Michael noticed a bandage on his right hand. He nodded to his fellow officer.

  “What happened to your hand, Flannigan?”

  Flannigan pushed his sleeve down, covering most of the bandage. He replied with a nervous smile. “One of the intakes bit me. That’s why we were up here.”

  Michael nodded and got in the van. He fumbled with his seatbelt for a moment before latching it. He leaned over to speak to Ryan. “Get on the STARS radio back to Black Mountain and let them know what our situation is. See if they’ve found out anything of use.”

  CHAPTER 16

  In a room full of convicts, it wasn’t difficult to make someone stand out, especially when that someone was Captain Robert Winston. Winston was a relatively large man, still in good shape for a man of his age, and had a very professional demeanor about him. That professional demeanor wasn’t a weakness; he was not above cracking skulls and putting foot to ass to get something accomplished. It wasn’t his demeanor or professionalism that made him stand out right now, though. The Glock 23 he held in his right hand did.

  The inmates weren’t stupid. Although they had very little interaction with one another, or anyone else for that matter, information always had a way of leaking in somehow. They knew what was going on. Maybe they didn’t know the extent of what was happening, but they were being quickly brought up to speed.

  “The world as we know it is coming to an end. There is a virus that has reached epidemic proportions and it is killing nearly one hundred percent of those who are infected. The virus – once you are infected – kills you in a matter of hours. Shortly after you die, you reanimate as an infected, only it’s not you. The virus causes the dead to come back to life. If you want layman’s terms, you become a goddamned zombie.”