Char’s hand trembled. She closed her fingers on her things, but thought she might drop them. She brought them to her chest, and pressed them tight against her body. Her throat felt dry, and it was difficult to swallow. She wondered about bathing. Her last shower was in the hotel up top, and aside from stepping into the frigid river to clean up, she couldn’t recall how long it had been since she’d had that shower.
Char waited while Kyle used a key to unlock her door. “I open this door, you step out, and you stand here until I have all of the other doors unlocked. I give the word, you turn and follow the person in front of you. You guys head down the stairs and fill in the tables below. Sit where there is a food tray—that is if you want to eat. Understood?”
He pulled open the cell door. He tapped a long black rod onto his thigh. The handle displayed a yellow lightning bolt. She guessed the baton was electrified. He wanted her to see it, maybe to stop her from getting any funny ideas. Char wanted to tell him she hadn’t had a funny idea in over three years.
She nodded, and then stepped out of the cage. A man stood to her left. He had his hands in front of him, holding onto his mask and gloves. Eyes forward. He couldn’t be more than five-nine, with unkempt mixed dark and gray hair. She followed his lead and step forward toward the single safety rail and stared ahead with her gear held in front of her.
Peripherally she watched Kyle size her up for a moment, his eyes roamed over her from foot to head. He nodded, but still tapped the baton on his thigh. Perhaps finally satisfied that she wasn’t going to run or get any other funny ideas, he turned and walked away.
She’d been holding her breath, but hadn’t realized it until she exhaled. It was a slow, calming exhale. Then as soon as her lungs emptied, she sucked in another deep breath. The death grip on her gloves and mask was to keep her hands from shaking. It wasn’t working. She needed to get it together. Char did not want these guys, the other prisoners, sensing her fear. Fear was weakness.
Eight prisoners occupied a cell on the second level. They all stood by the rail and stared straight ahead. Seven men were now being let out of their cage on the first.
Kyle stood by one of two staircases and waved his baton.
The group on the second level turned. Char turned with them. They walked toward Kyle, proceeded down the stairs, and went toward the picnic tables in the center of the prison.
Char walked up to a table.
The man from the cell next to her shook his head. “Not there. First three tables are for the guys on the first floor. We’re over here.”
She walked behind him.
“Sit here,” he said.
As she sat, she turned to look at the first three tables. A man with a curved and jagged scar running from his chin to the top of his cheekbone watched her. The corner of his upper lip twitched. The seat where he sat was the one she’d been eyeing.
“Ignore him,” the man next to her said. “If you can, ignore everyone at those tables. Don’t look at them. Don’t talk to them. Do your best to stay clear. Got me?”
Char nodded.
The man set his mask and gloves on the table ahead of his food tray, and then offered his hand. “I’m Ross MacNeil,” he said.
“Char,” she said, shaking his hand.
“This guy over here is Frank Ryan. And next to him is Chris Paleo.”
Everyone said hello.
“What are you in for?” Ross said.
Char shrugged. “Self-defense. I defended myself against a group of people who attacked me and my friends.”
“Fighting,” Frank said, “same here. Had a bit too much at the Bent Elbow. Broke some chairs, some tables, and some noses. Told the judge it wasn’t me, it was the alcohol. She didn’t go for it.”
Frank was big, burly. If he had a long curly beard, she’d of sworn he was Rubeus Hagrid from the Harry Potter films.
“It’s not what I heard,” Chris said.
Ross shot him a look. “What have you heard?” Char said.
Chris looked at Ross, as if for approval.
Ross said, “Rumor is, you’re down here for murder.”
“Self-defense,” she said.
Ross held up his hands. “Just what’s going around. That kind of puts a target on your back. You know the old saying, take out the biggest and the badest to establish a name, build a reputation? You aren’t so big, but you might be the worst down here. No offense.”
“Yeah. None taken.” Char looked at the brown bag on the food tray. “What is this?”
Ross used teeth to tear open the plastic bag container. “M.R.E.’s.”
“Meals ready to eat,” Chris said. “Chicken fajitas.”
Char opened her bag, dumped the pre-wrapped, pre-cooked food onto the table. There was a bag of corn chips, the fajita, an oatmeal cookie, dried apple slices, packets of pepper and salt. “This is okay to eat?”
Frank was biting into the fajita. “It’s not bad.”
“Cold? We eat it cold?” Char didn’t feel hungry. She did not get dinner last night, and should feel like she is starving. Food was food, but something about shrink wrapped meals stored in potato chip-like bags didn’t excite her.
“Eat up. Dinner is a long way off. You’ll need your energy. Trust me,” Ross said.
She opened the corn chips. “What do we do, exactly?”
Ross looked up from his meal, looked over at Frank and Chris. “It’s not pleasant,” he said.
She’d gathered as much on her own.
“We basically walk on a treadmill, or ride a stationary bike. It’s how they power the generators that supply the town with its electricity.”
“Treadmills?” Char said. It couldn’t be like what she now pictured.
“You have to keep at a steady five miles per hour. Over five is fine. Under, and Kyle over there will remind you to pick up the pace with his lightning stick,” Chris said.
“Same for the bike, you have to pedal between six and eight miles an hour. It doesn’t sound fast, but after a while it isn’t as easy as it seems,” Frank said. “I run what’s called the wheel. I crank it around and around by hand.”
The chips crunched between her teeth. The taste of food hit her. She realized now how hungry she actually was. She opened the chicken fajita and took a bite. It tasted roughly like dry chicken with peppers and onions. Nothing Mexican about the flavor, other than it was wrapped in a tortilla. “But how is the power working if all of us are here eating breakfast? We generate that much power that we can stop at night and start again in the morning?”
This time Frank looked around the table. “We’re not the only ones running the plant,” he said.
“People choose to work down here? With prisoners?” Char couldn’t believe that. It was a claustrophobic’s worst nightmare. The sulfur in the air alone should keep people away.
“Not exactly,” Ross said. “You get to meet any of the Gathering Patrol? They’re a special unit with the sheriff’s department.”
Char pictured Benjamin Forti in his uniform. He’d mentioned more than once something about gathering, but couldn’t recall anything specific. “Yes,” she said.
“Let’s say they help staff the generator plant who work twenty-four-seven down here.”
“The Gathering Patrol works down here?”
“No, they find bodies to fill the positions,” Ross said.
“I’m not getting it. You just told me that people don’t work down here with us.”
“They don’t,” Ross said. “Zombies do.”
Chapter 28
It was hard to believe that the generator area was yet deeper into the bowels of the mine. They took an elevator similar to the one she’d ridden on with the sheriff. They descended four at a time, plus a guard.
“Stay close,” Ross said. “If Lou’s any kind of a guy, he’ll keep you segregated from the gang and let you work near us. Near me.”
Char could not believe the transformation. She felt like she’d stepped into a power plant. The place was
loud. She was surprised they hadn’t been given ear protection. There was a row of boxes about five feet tall with flashing lights and an array of toggle switches. The area was well lit. Lamps lined the ceiling. The walks were cement, and in certain areas, bright yellow handrails sectioned off hazardous areas.
Beyond were the guts of the operation. Her eyes saw but her brain failed to register what was in front of her. The central hub was a cylindrical shaped pillar. It rose at least fifty feet high. At the top, the head was bulbous, and translucent where strands of white lightning sizzled and danced against a glass encasement. Around the pillar it resembled a fitness gym. There were treadmills and stationary bikes. At the center, beside the pillar, she saw the giant wheel where Frank worked. Wires connected from and to everything.
“They built this in three years?” Char said.
“No. Arcadia has been planning for the end of times since the town’s inception,” Ross said.
If infected weren’t already running the place, she’d have thought this was part of a futuristic lab from a Mary Shelley novel put in place to resurrect the dead.
The infected were running the place.
“Hello. I understand you are Charlene McKinney and will be with us for some time. Me, I’m Lou Kilmer. I’m the foreman down here. I’m your boss. I tell you to do something, you just do it. It’s really that simple. I’m going to have Ross give you a quick tour—quick, being the key word,” Lou said. “Then, Ross, you set her up on a mill next to you for the day. Good?”
“Yeah, boss,” Ross said.
Lou Kilmer was tall and thin. He’d removed his mask to introduce himself. He had dark eyes under bushy eyebrows and a cleft in his chin. His Carhartt was rustic orange. Traditional. It helped him stand out from what the prisoners and guards wore.
“He pretty cool?” Char said.
“Far as bosses go, he don’t bother you as long as you work.”
She followed Ross.
“This is why you wear the Carhartts,” Ross said, pulling at the lapel on his jacket. “The zombies are tethered with chains to the mills. It’s what we call the treadmills. Mills. They can’t go anywhere.” He pointed at an infected walking on one of the mills. The shackles on his ankles gave just enough slack for it to amble forward. Cuffs bound its wrists to the handlebars on the side. “They don’t ride the bikes, for obvious reasons. Usually those are for Gonzales and his guys, anyway. Guess it makes them feel like their cruising on Harley’s or something. I don’t know. I don’t ask.”
The infected plotted along. It couldn’t be going five miles an hour. “How many are there?”
“Zombies? Around two hundred, two-fifty, give or take.”
Char saw close to thirty under the lights. She squinted and noticed that beyond the light, extending deep into the darkness of the mine was row after row of infected on makeshift treadmills. She could not believe her eyes, or her ears.
They moaned. It was a constant sound, rolling sound.
It was not the usual moaning she’d come to expect from infected. She hated to think it, but they sounded sad. Made her think about the times she went to the zoo with her brother and father. When they got there early, the animals were up and active. By ten, they could care less about the visitors. They always stood at the Bengal exhibi and the majestic beast simply paced from one end of its cage to the other. Back and forth. It was perfect for the people watching the animal; it was clearly pathetic if you were the animal. It might not want out, but it surely did not want to be where it was. She remembered telling her father one day that she didn’t want to go to the zoo anymore. Cash didn’t understand. He loved the elephants and lions, the penguins and seals. Her father understood, though. She couldn’t remember ever going again.
This was far from the same thing, only it wasn’t. Tony refused to call them zombies. They were people once. That was his rationale. He was right, too. They were people who were once free, healthy, and alive. Seeing them enslaved didn’t upset her, but neither did it sit well inside her.
“I like the mills,” Ross said. “It is almost relaxing. The trick is to close your eyes while you walk. Imagine you are on a wooded trail somewhere. Picture birds, or falling leaves, or something peaceful, and just believe you are there. Not here. It’s not always easy to do. The noise, the smells, but once you can escape to that happy place, it makes all the difference.”
“How much time you get?” she said.
Ross stopped walking. “I’m out in another month or so.”
“What did you do?”
He shook his head. “We need to start working. Boss gave us some leeway. I’ve showed you around. Now we’ve got to walk.”
The first row of mills behind the rows of bikes was open. Ross pointed to the one on the end. Chris was on a mill, walking fast, swinging his arms back and forth. He reminded her of any guy on a treadmill at any gym. If he’d had earplugs, and was listening to music, she’d of sworn she was at a gym.
“You walk there, I’ll take the one next to you,” he said.
She could see Frank as she stepped onto the belt. He didn’t wear his Carhartt. His muscles bulged as he turned the crank. The big wheel spun moved fast. It was dizzying to watch, almost hypnotic.
Chris nodded to them. Char waved.
“Are these powered?” Char said.
“Be self-defeating, don’t you think? Manual.”
“But the infected?”
“The who?”
“Zombies.”
“Look closely in front of each of them,” Ross said.
Char turned around. Fishing wire dangled a small piece of something in front of them. “Is that...meat?”
Ross nodded.
She didn’t like the infected walking behind her. It made her feel like she was being pursued. Her skin crawled, the hairs under the jacket stood on end. “What kind of meat?”
“I don’t know. I don’t ask.”
She didn’t like the answer. It made her feel apprehensive. “I don’t see how us doing this supplies the city with enough power.”
“Start walking,” Ross said. “It isn’t just us. That thing in the middle there, it goes down further into the earth. It somehow converts the heat from the core into electricity. Then there is the underground river. Its power is harnessed as well, and turned into current Arcadia can use. The combined methods give the town just enough juice to be effective, and up top, they’re not wasteful. It is used conservatively. It’s not a bad operation when you think about it.”
“But what if there were no prisoners to help?”
“People are always going to break laws, dear. It’s human nature to fuck up. Excuse me,” he said.
She smiled. He wouldn’t see. Not through her mask. “I’ve heard worse,” she said.
“Pick up the pace,” Ross said. “We don’t want to get talked to. You get one warning if you fall under the five mile an hour.”
“What happens after a warning?”
“No dinner.”
“A third? No breakfast?”
“Bingo.” Ross shook his head. “The M.R.E.s might taste like shit —sorry, but they have the nutrition needed to stay healthy. And down here, you want to get as many vitamins as possible. You might not have noticed, but we don’t get too much sunlight here. Bam, there goes any Vitamin D you might need. Sometimes surprised we don’t all have jaundice.”
“Jaundice?”
“Babies get it. It’s a Vitamin D thing. You need your Vitamin D. With those M.R.E.s you get what you need.”
Ross was positive and upbeat and seemed to be a stickler for the rules. He was what you’d call a short-timer. She wasn’t sure how much time he’d spent down here, his response being a little evasive, but with a month to go she felt confident he’d want no part in an escape plan. Still, he seemed to know the ins and outs. Picking his brain for information without alerting him to her plan might prove a challenge. “That river, it’s underground?”
“The Chowan. It’s mostly out in the open, but th
ere’s a part of it passes right under the mountain range.”
“This far down?”
“No. It’s more parallel with where our cells are,” Ross said. His breathing was deep. He gripped the side rails and walked heavy. Each step fell hard on the conveying belt.
She looked ahead, concentrating on her walking. Each question he answered sparked more questions. If she fired them off, he’d get suspicious. The older guy might have taken her under his wing, but she didn’t know him. Because she didn’t know him, she couldn’t trust him. The last thing she wanted to do was tip her hand. He might report it. Turning over information on a suspected escape plan could get him out early. She didn’t know who Ross MacNeil was up top.
“You finding that happy place?” he said.
“Trying,” she said.
“Give it some time. Close your eyes.”
She closed her eyes. She heard her breathing. She heard and felt her heart beating.
Opening her eyes, she turned around. The infected lumbered on their mills. Some had milky white cataract-like covered eyes on the meat that dangled, but others, she thought, focused on her. The ones she thought were drooling with thoughts of her as their meal seemed to walk a little faster. The piece of meat was nothing compared to an entire person. It had to be why the front row of mills was reserved for the living prisoners. Motivation.
The white lights went red, and spun. She thought of the light bar on top of a police car.
A siren revved up from a squeal to a scream.
Char stopped walking and pressed her hands to her ears.
“Don’t stop walking,” Ross said.
“What?”
He rolled his hand around in a circle. “Keep walking.”
She’d heard him. She began walking again. “What is it?”
Ross motioned with his head. Two guys were off their bikes, throwing punches.
“One on the right, that’s Gonzales.” Ross pointed.
Gonzales removed his mask. Even from where she was, with the red light spinning, she could see his facial scar. He threw a punch into the other man’s gut. As the guy doubled over, Gonzales grabbed the top of his head and slammed it downward toward his rising knee. The faceplate cracked. Gonzales tore the mask off the man and flung it toward the giant pillar.
Arcadia (Book 1): Damn The Dead Page 19
