“Well, what the fuck do you want us to do, Captain?” a Hispanic inmate named Gutiérrez asked.
Winston was in the middle of the pod, surrounded by dozens of anxious inmates. Although he hadn’t had an issue with fearing any of them, seventy five of them in a room together that were finding out about the end of the world was a different story altogether. He kept his Glock handy, opting not to put it back in the holster. The seven extra officers he had called upon were standing behind him at the door. Each one knew that the situation could go all to shit at any moment.
“I am going to read to you what we received from the Governor. You can believe it or take it as complete bullshit, but I will enforce this if necessary,” Winston said. He cleared his throat and continued. “Authority of the National Warning System. By order of the Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia on orders from the President of the United States of America, a state of emergency has been declared nationwide due to the Mortui Virus. This document is legal and binding to all who receive it, and has the full support of the President and the Governor of Virginia. Effective immediately, all incarcerated prisoners at all jurisdiction levels are to be executed immediately, regardless of their crimes. Prisons are to be repurposed for the handling of refugees and survivors, with the Warden or Chief of Security acting as a provincial overseer. This order is initiated to assure the continuation of the human race, despite the cataclysmic circumstances of the Mortui Virus. Godspeed and good luck to anyone who receives this document.”
Winston expected a calamity of epic proportions, but none of the inmates said a word.
“I will enforce this if necessary, as I said. I am, however reluctantly, giving you an option,” Winston said.
“And what is that?” one inmate asked.
“I’m giving you your freedom. I am giving all convicted offenders one hour to gather your things, and then I am opening the gates. If you decide to stay, you will remain locked up as you are now. We might run out of food, water, and other supplies, and if we do, you will be the first left out. I will take care of the general public first. It’s either that…” Winston paused, “Or I take this order to heart. If you try to fight, riot, or otherwise give us a hard time, you will be shot. I am not fucking joking. Take this opportunity and leave now.”
Inmate Gutiérrez stepped forward slowly. Winston gripped his Glock tighter. Gutiérrez licked his lips as he approached Winston, sizing up the Captain. Gutiérrez smiled.
“Sounds like we ain’t got much of a choice. What do we get?”
“You get your freedom, Gutiérrez. Take it or leave it,” Winston said, unflinching.
“I ain’t goin’ out there with no fuckin’ zombies and no fuckin’ weapons. You can kiss my ass, homie.”
Without thinking, Winston brought his Glock up to Gutiérrez’s forehead. The peanut gallery behind him took notice. The ones seated got up; the ones who were already up started inching towards him. The seven officers at the door all drew their weapons. The metallic clack of slides racking echoed through the pod. Winston put his arm up to hold his officers back, and then looked over Gutiérrez’s shoulder.
“Tell ‘em to back off, Gutiérrez. You die first. Got that? Your friends here might get me, but we will mow down every fucking one of them before they make the door. You will all die – you first, asshole.”
Gutiérrez smiled again. “You ain’t got the cojones, Winston. Fuck you and your pig-ass cops!” Those were Gutiérrez’s last words. He reared back to throw a punch, but Winston was faster on the draw than the Hispanic inmate was.
Winston pulled the trigger. The deafening sound of the .40 caliber Glock echoed through the pod. Each one of the extra officers jumped back in surprise, instinctively bringing up their weapons. Gutiérrez had no chance to move. His brains flew out the back of his head, and his body no longer held itself up. He fell to the ground in a heap. A bright red mass of blood and brains oozed out from the gigantic hole in the back of his skull.
Winston waved the Glock around, pointing it at each one of the remaining inmates. “Get your shit! All you motherfuckers are leaving! NOW!”
* * *
Lindsey Caine was scared shitless.
She had no idea what was going on, and no idea how to fix it. She was trapped, and there was no way out. There were four other survivors huddled in the bathroom with her, desperately clinging to whatever hope they might have left. The dingy, foul-smelling bathroom was going to be their tomb, and there wasn’t a damn thing they could do about it. Without any guns or any other weapons, they had no way of fighting off the horde outside. The dead pounded on the door outside, bowing the door and banging it against the doorframe each time they hit. The chilling sounds of nails scraping against metal and the guttural growl of hungry monsters echoed in the small space. It would not be long until they broke through, and there was no escape.
Lindsey sat down on a toilet in one of the stalls and pulled her legs into her chest. She covered her ears and tried to drown out the sound of the undead outside the door. While in her solitude, she started to pray.
Please find me, Michael…
CHAPTER 16
The back exit to Bluefield Regional was clogged with several cars and two more ambulances. As the DOC van drove past, Michael looked into the back of the one of the abandoned meat wagons, appalled by what he saw. The back of the truck looked like a slaughterhouse, sprays of blood all over the pristine white of the truck, along with unidentifiable parts of human anatomy. Something had been torn all to shit in the back of that ambulance.
Michael shook his head and rested his forehead on the barrel of the 870. For a moment, he wanted to eat the business end of the twelve-gauge and pull the trigger, but the feeling quickly passed. Lindsey was still out there, as was Anna. With no way to get hold of Lindsey’s mother, he was best suited to try to find his wife and then get back to his daughter. Lindsey’s father and mother were both good people; they would die before they let anything happen to his daughter.
“Black Mountain CV3 to Black Mountain master control. Lane, are you there?” Ryan said over the STARS radio. The radio was one of the high-tech pieces of equipment built for withstanding the end of the world. The radio did not work over traditional UHF of VHF frequencies like most police, fire, and EMS. The STARS system worked on cell towers, much the way that cellphones did. In the days of the push-to-talk Nextel phones, the Commonwealth of Virginia bought the technology from them to use in the radios. No matter where they were at in the state, the radio system would pick up. The system itself was not cheap, though. There was a running joke among Virginia State Police and DOC that if they ever wrecked a state vehicle, they were to report it immediately and make sure that the STARS system wasn’t damaged.
“Black Mountain master, go ahead CV3. How’s it going out there, Ryan?”
“Not great, but we’re still kicking. Caine’s wife wasn’t at the hospital. You need to let Captain Winston know that Bluefield Regional is a total waste. The damn thing is up in flames, completely wiped out.”
“Jesus. I’ll let him know, but he won’t answer the radio right now. He took that letter and headed inside.”
Ryan looked to Michael with a shocked expression. “Fuck me, Mike. You don’t think he’s executing all them, do you?”
Michael thought it over for a moment. While he said that Winston did have the balls to pull it off, he wouldn’t have done it by himself and he damn sure wouldn’t have done it without telling someone. There was another plan in place, hopefully a better one at that. Michael shook his head.
“No. I don’t think so. That is too big a job for him to do by himself. He’d need some help to pull it off. If he has a better plan, maybe he’s trying it on for size. Like you said, we need to trust his judgement.”
Ryan keyed up the radio. “Copy that. We are headed to Mitchell Stadium. We picked up Trent and Flannigan at Bluefield Regional. They said that the Red Cross has a shelter or something at the stadium. We are headed there now to see if she
’s still there.”
“Copy that, Ryan. You guys be careful out there. Everything is…”
Ryan frowned. Lane had trailed off mid-sentence, but the radio was still keyed up. He couldn’t hear anything going on in the background, but something obviously had her attention. He couldn’t key the radio on his end until she let go of the push-to-talk. A painfully long few seconds passed before the radio went silent again.
“Lane, are you all right? You cut off mid-sentence.”
“Guys, there is a long line of prisoners headed down the boulevard towards the front. It looks like there are a half-dozen or more officers escorting them out. I think that Captain Winston is letting them go! I think he’s talked them into leaving!”
“Hot damn! Are all of them headed out?” Ryan asked.
“Looks like just one building at a time right now, but it shouldn’t take long to clear the place out. I don’t know what he did, but it worked!”
“10-4, Lane. Keep us posted if anything changes.”
“Sounds like this might work out, Ryan. Just gotta find Lin…SHIT!”
Michael was looking ahead, but Ryan was not. In the low light, it was difficult to make out anything aside from silhouettes. The headlights on the van fell on several dozen walkers, outlining the creatures in the fading light, and drawing their attention simultaneously. Without thinking, Ryan spun the wheel, trying to avoid hitting them. He was unsuccessful. The van lurched to the left, nearly turning over. The left front side of the van ran off the road, bounding into the soft shoulder of the road. Ryan grabbed the wheel and corrected, getting the van back on the road. Infected bodies bounced off from all directions, running into the vehicle and flailing against it.
“Motherfucker!” Ryan exclaimed. He slammed on the brakes, skidding the van to a halt.
“Easy there, Helton! That rattled my sphincter!” Flannigan yelled from the back seat.
The infected horde slowly descended on the van. At first, only a few detected the vehicle, aimlessly smacking at the hood and doors. Within just a few seconds, the rest of the horde began to take notice. Bloody hands and faces pressed against the glass, desperately trying to get at the four COs like sardines in a can.
“Shit. Ryan, get us moving or we are gonna get stuck. Last thing we need right now is these dead fuckers breaking a window out,” Michael said.
Ryan threw the van into neutral and reached down for the transfer case gearshift. He shook the gearshift, desperately trying to get it into four-wheel-drive. Within a few seconds, the gear ground home. Ryan shifted the transmission back into drive and mashed the gas, heaving the truck forward.
“Come on, you big bitch! Let’s roll!” Ryan yelled at the van, trying to will it to go forward.
The van rolled back onto the pavement and straightened up. They were still more than a mile away from Mitchell Stadium, and the dead were starting to make more of a presence. Ryan slowed the van down, trying to avoid hitting too many of them, but some collisions were unavoidable. When the sun went down, the dead came out to play.
As they rounded the next curve, Mitchell Stadium loomed.
* * *
Officer Lane paced back and forth, gripping the Kenwood radio tighter and tighter. For the last ten minutes, she tried getting hold of Captain Winston, with no luck. Even though she could see him on the monitors, and he knew that she could see him as well, he had been reluctant to answer the radio. Over the camera, she could see him walking down the boulevard, making no indication that he could hear the radio.
“Master Control to Captain Winston,” she said, irritated. “If you can copy, SHU has not checked in for the last hour. Can you please stop by and make a check?”
Lane looked at the camera overlooking the boulevard. Although it was grainy, she saw Captain Winston finally stop and grab the mic. “Bout damn time, sir,” Lane whispered to herself.
“Copy that, Master Control,” Winston replied.
Winston sighed and turned around. SHU was prone to not answering the radio and it was common for them to be busy. Under other circumstances, he would have sent one of the other officers to investigate. Such as it was, there were no other officers available, nor were there any other types of supervisors around. Maybe some promotions were in order. Give what little help he had a reason to stay.
Winston stalked over to the SHU and grabbed the door. After a few seconds, no one had opened the door. Winston tapped on the one-way glass that held the control room for SHU. He tapped on it again a few seconds later. Realizing whoever was in the control room wasn’t answering, he grabbed the emergency keys from his key ring and manually unlocked the door.
“Dammit, Stowers. You better not have fallen asleep,” Winston mumbled to himself.
There was a metallic clank as he turned the key, unlocking the door. Immediately Winston felt something was wrong. The SHU was never this quiet, for one thing. At least one inmate was constantly yelling, screaming, or otherwise btiching about something. As soon as he swung the heavy door open, Winston saw what was amiss. He pulled the Glock 23 from its holster and slowly stepped inside; making sure that the door did not latch behind him. Since there was no one in control of the SHU, a quick escape was out of the question. He brought the Glock up and swept right to left. Off to his right was the entrance to Intake and Property, where all the incoming inmates were processed and their property – from either a local jail or other institution, depending on where they came from – was stored. Those who came from jail had their civilian clothes and belongings stored there.
Walking into the SHU, Winston saw blood. Lots of it. Blood on the walls, blood on the floor, smeared blood on the windows to the sergeant’s office. There had been a slaughter in the SHU, recently by the consistency of the blood. It was still wet; most of it had not coagulated yet.
Winston grabbed his mic. “Master Control! Send me some help to SHU! I don’t know what happened in here, but there’s blood everywhere!”
Master Control answered him, but he was too preoccupied with the CO slowly staggering towards him. It was Officer Brad Stowers, one of Michael’s former classmates at the academy. Stowers had come into work a couple hours before Michael, but had been assigned to the SHU, meaning there was very little time for him to take a break. Normally the SHU was supposed to be manned by a senior officer, but they were in very short supply.
Winston’s tone changed quickly. “Jesus, Stowers! What the hell happened in here?”
Stowers vomited in reply. Copious amounts of bright, red blood splattered all over the floor in front of Winston, causing him to jump back. He holstered his Glock and moved forward. Blood dripped from a wide gash in Stowers’ shoulder. It had already bled through the gray polo shirt and soaked most of the front of it. Winston could see the muscle rippling through the torn shirt and deep cut as Stowers moved.
Winston took a deep breath and calmed himself. Christ, Stowers was fucked up. There shouldn’t be a reason for him walking around the way he was. Then it dawned on Winston – he shouldn’t be walking around…
Winston took a step back, his hand slowly moving towards the holster again. He held his hand up to stop Stowers, placating the man until he could tell whether he was friend or foe. Scratch that, he was friend; it was just a matter if he was a living friend.
“Cap…Wins…Help…” Stowers managed out. The sound of his voice was choked by more blood.
Stowers lurched forward, moments away from planting face-first into the floor. Winston reached out and caught Stowers as his knees hit the concrete floor. Stowers’ glassy stare looked up at him, a significant portion of the young officer’s blood drained from his body. He wasn’t long for this world. God knows how long he’d been this way; it had been an hour since SHU had checked in.
“Captain…I couldn’t get ‘em to…they were so violent,” Stowers said exasperatedly.
“It’s all right, son. What happened? Did one get loose? Did he bite you?”
Stowers slowly nodded. “I was trying to get the leg ir
ons on…bastard fell forward. I thought he was dead, so I opened the door. Since we have no SHU control, I had to leave him. I got back over and he’d…changed. I rolled him over…fucker bit me…God it hurts…”
Winston looked up quickly. “Did you kill him? Where is he?”
Stowers nodded, almost imperceptibly. “Bashed his fucking skull in…He ain’t coming back…”
Stowers closed his eyes. His breathing was rattled and sounded like he was drowning in his own body fluids. As if to confirm it, he coughed violently, a smattering of blood flew from his mouth and landed on the back of his hand as he weakly tried to cover the cough.
Stowers grabbed Winston by the shirt, startling him. “I am not turning into one of those fuckers. Shoot me in the head, Winston. I don’t want to fucking turn.”
Winston was taken aback. He didn’t want to have to shoot Stowers any more than Stowers wanted to be shot. Is this what things were going to come to? Executing friends when they are infected? There had to be a better option.
“Don’t overthink it, Captain. Just fucking do it…” Stowers said.
A flash of anger hit Winston unexpectedly. He didn’t like being out of control, and he damn sure didn’t like taking orders, especially from a rookie. He swallowed that misplaced anger, pushing it down. The kid didn’t want to become a monster. This wasn’t the way to live.
Winston quickly drew his pistol and put it on Stowers’ forehead.
“I’m sorry, Stowers.”
* * *
Charles Witwer jumped at the sound of the gunshot. The heavy metal door between Intake and the SHU didn’t do much for deadening the sound. As he sat huddled in the corner, he knew he was out of sight. Even with the myriad of cameras surrounding Black Mountain, there were still blind spots where one could hide, completely out of sight. He’d originally gotten stuck in intake, waiting for another officer to show up. Instead, he was stuck in the intake area. The officer assigned to him was long gone, bolting out the door at the first sign of trouble. For some reason, none of the other officers had made rounds in the last few hours, but he wasn’t complaining. He knew what was going on outside.
Refuge From The Dead (Book 1): Lockdown Page 10
