I had five people with me: Fiona, Caleb, Eric, Demetrius Lazar, and Dominic Lazar. The other law enforcement and killers had been left in the cafeteria, law enforcement and serial killers alike, working to figure out who the bad guy was. I wasn’t going to hold my breath that it would be sorted when we returned.
Fiona and I were leading the charge, mainly because if they were holed up, it would be from protecting themselves. Just like the men were in the cafeteria, they would be less likely to shoot us on sight. After all, they were the only women on site. Also, Fiona was determined and I didn’t want her tramping off and running into something big and bad. Caleb and Eric were covering the rear. I trusted them the most at the end of the line. If someone attempted to sneak up on us, they’d have to deal with the two psychopaths first. Ideally, Malachi and Gabriel would be with us, but we needed a psychopath with a badge in the cafeteria. Gabriel could hold his own, but I felt better leaving him with Malachi than with the rest of the normal law enforcement agents. Then there was Patterson and that was all I could say about that.
We checked the window of the second security door and found the corridor empty. Dominic Lazar entered the code and the door whooshed open. I looked at him, then the door, then the curved wall of the hallway. Someone had let the men out or had given the men the codes. Originally, I thought maybe they had just hit a button or something and opened all the security doors. Yet, both of these were still closed. None of the security doors in the men’s ward that I had been forced to walk down with Deacon Priest had been closed.
“Can the security doors on the men’s wards be opened all at one time?” I asked Dominic.
“No, they have to be opened individually. In the event of an emergency, we can open all the security doors. Why?”
“Because every hallway I have been down, the security doors have been open, except this one. If it is inmates with the codes, then that does not explain how the killers from the secure ward got out.”
“We can open each door individually and leave it open with a master code, but I don’t have that code.” He looked at me. “We each have individual codes to open doors. Normally, my code wouldn’t open these doors, but since we are in lockdown, the computer system recognizes there is a problem and allows it. To leave doors open, you have to enter a master code and only a handful of people have those. However, once a master code has been entered, it will unlock all the doors connected to that circuit. The secure ward is on the ground floor. If someone entered the master code into checkpoints one, two, and three on a floor above one, the corresponding doors on the ground floor would open. This is not true of the women’s ward. It has a different master code.”
“So, they could all be safe and sound and not even realize there’s a problem,” Fiona stopped.
“They know there was an alarm, an announcement, and an automatic attempt to shut down all the security doors. The master code had to be entered after the riot alarm was triggered.”
“Maybe she will be happy to see you,” I told Fiona.
“She will be. It doesn’t mean I’ll be happy to see her. She dismembered my fiancé, and that’s not something you just get over.”
“Well, maybe she had a good reason, like Eric.”
“The irony of that statement,” Fiona sighed. “My sister dismembered my fiancé a week before our wedding. She was arrested the day I was supposed to get married for his murder. She also killed one of my other sister’s boyfriends. Being jealous is one thing, but dismembering over it, is another.”
“While they were alive?” I asked.
“Yes,” Fiona answered.
“Brutal,” I tried not to smile. I had a feeling I was going to like Fiona’s sister and it was going to be a problem.
“Wait, you both have family inside the Fortress?” Demetrius asked.
“Yes,” Eric answered. “Bella wrote me a nice thank you note when Fiona was transferred to the SCTU, glad that my sister would be keeping her sister alive.”
“That was nice of her,” I said and wished I hadn’t. Fiona’s face darkened, her lips thinned, her cheeks turned red, her eyes narrowed, drawing her eyebrows together, and her forehead filled with wrinkles. “It is nice because she is impressed by what you do and happy that she thinks you have found someone that can protect you,” I quickly explained. Fiona and I had sort of become gal pals as of late. She wasn’t Nyleena, but I would go out of my way to hurt someone that hurt her. Truth be told, she and Nyleena were my only gal pals besides my mother and Elle. So, of the four females in my life, only one wasn’t related to me. I was pretty sure that wasn’t normal.
I didn’t dislike women, they disliked me. They couldn’t handle being friends with someone who was constantly on the verge of being killed or killing someone else. It was hard for guys to be my friend, and girls were almost unfathomable.
We headed through the second security door. The third made my stomach flop. There were three dead bodies in it, all male, all slowly being squished by the pneumatic system that controlled the door. Their bodies were an obstacle, but the door was intent on winning. Despite having killed a few people in my time and watching Xavier do countless autopsies, touching dead people still bothered me. Dead bodies could still transmit diseases and release toxins as their organs exploded inside their rotting bodies.
The dead bodies were a problem, so we were going to have to move them. So was the new information about how the Fortress operated. I wasn’t entirely convinced one US Marshal would be able to enter master codes in each of the different cell blocks, even if they only had to enter them into three doors on each block. This would mean that there was more than one Marshal, possible two or three or even five, since the women’s ward seemed untouched. I didn’t like conspiracy theories. I found them wishy-washy. Yet, I appeared too wrapped up in some sort of massive conspiracy that could shake the very foundations of law enforcement. If the US Marshals were involved, it would explain why the federal buildings had been taken so quickly. US Marshals guarded those as well as the Fortress. Our fingers were in many things and something like this could end the oldest organized federal policing agency.
The only bright spot at the moment was that the Secret Service guarded the FGN and FGA. They recruited specifically for that job and preferred to hire out of the military. The people in our guard booth and patrolling our streets would die to keep our families, and theirs, safe. They all lived in the same place we did. It was a job perk, cheap, incredibly sturdy housing. The government charged all of us about half the building cost and provided a vetted network of service companies to tackle any situation that arose. They didn’t charge us. They charged the government.
Being a cop had always been dangerous, but being a cop in the twenty-first century was the equivalent of signing up to stand in front of a firing squad. Serial killers, mass murderers, drug cartels, anarchists, and organized crime killed about two thousand officers a year. I was sure that this event would double if not triple the rate for this year. Prosecutors, paralegals, judges, and even public defenders were also prime targets with about five thousand of them dying each year. These numbers were staggering, but, oddly, we were not the worst country to live in.
That dubious honor went to a country in Asia where the population was dropping much faster than it was rising. The only reason it wasn’t being considered a civil war was because serial killers were spearheading the decrease in population. Last year, a mass murderer and serial killer had teamed up and attacked a police barracks. They had killed everyone inside. Eventually, they were caught by organized crime figures, and handed over to the military for punishment. Things were beyond bad when organized crime was handing over bad guys for execution.
“Hey, do you want to help?” Fiona asked, tapping my leg. There was an arm in her other hand and she was bent over trying to remove the body on top with the help of Eric and Demetrius.
“Absolutely, move,” I answered and walked over to the door. I looked at the panel, studying the buttons I could see. Non
e of them said emergency lock, so I hit all of them and kicked it. The door whined for a second, then it clicked twice and the pneumatic hinges shot the door into the locks. The bodies were now in two pieces. One had been shot down the hallway past us.
“Seriously?” Eric raised an eyebrow. “Do you just go around kicking everything?”
“Normally, no, but today, yes.” I waved my hand at the key pad. Dominic walked over and entered his code. The door opened. The smell was repulsive. The gore was beyond belief, dripping down the steel and seeping from the holes where the bottom locks slid in and out of the door. However, we could easily step over the bodies now with no need to touch them. “Watch your step. You do not want to slip in this stuff.”
“I have no words,” Demetrius said.
“I have several,” Eric answered. “I’m also beginning to wonder if the right Clachan is locked up in here.”
“Patterson’s here,” I told him.
“You have issues,” Eric frowned at me. “Serious issues.”
“Do not judge me, I did not climb to the top of a building and start killing convicts inside a prison recreation yard,” I snipped at him. “Everyone in the door was already dead. They can charge me with desecration of a dead body. Considering the circumstances, it would probably earn me a slap on the wrist and maybe a Post-It note in my work file.”
“You should find a therapist. What you just did was not normal,” Eric suggested.
“My therapist is in Witness Protection. It might be part of why I’m feeling so hostile.” I looked at him. “That and I feel like I’m trapped in some stupid reality TV show and I keep waiting for someone to jump out and claim it was all a joke and I have won the grand prize; a year’s worth of ice cream. Conspiracies do not happen in the real world. They happen in the mind and in movies. Yet, everywhere I look, I see one giant conspiracy and it is getting worse not better.”
“That, I agree with. Whoever is doing this is well connected, has a large bank account, and a serious dislike for someone in law enforcement that is being covered up by mass killings,” Eric said. Everyone looked at me.
“I cannot be the only police officer on the planet with enemies. Malachi has plenty too.” I didn’t know about anyone else inside the walls of this damned prison, but it was likely they had enemies too.
Sixteen
There were drag marks on the floor, bloody drag marks. Someone had intentionally stuck dead bodies in the door. It was foreboding. We still couldn’t see the women’s tower. The curve was not yet complete. Dominic estimated another ten feet would give us line of sight on them. I was hoping the doors were not smeared with blood. That would be bad.
There was a growl from behind us. I hung my head and had a feeling I knew who had dragged the dead bodies to the door. Some of the giants did not have advanced language skills, meaning they talked slowly and lacked vocabulary. Two had zero language skills, relying on grunts and growls. Both had been VCU cases.
My reasoning for it being one of the giant serial killers wasn’t just the fact that he growled, it was the deepness of the growl. It held far too much bass, making it sound inhuman. If I had been in a rain forest or an African savannah, I would have imagined a large cat with a preference for human blood was behind me. However, I was trapped in the Fortress and there were no big cats here, unless our mastermind had brought a few just for giggles.
My feet forced my body to turn around. I raised my head and just kept moving upwards, craning my neck fully. The growl had definitely come from a man and he was definitely a giant. I didn’t know his name or recognize his picture. Everyone was backing up, moving closer to Fiona and me.
It had sounded like a great idea at the time, but now that it had been put into practice, releasing the demons from the secure ward had been anything but great. Eric and Caleb flanked me. Fiona, Demetrius, and Dominic moved behind us.
“Oscar Von Geldberg,” Caleb said.
“Um, no, he is a German serial killer; the Ogre of Worms. He was ripping the limbs off his victims and beating them to death with said severed body parts. He never committed a crime in the US.” I sized up the giant and wondered what the hell he was doing in the Fortress.
“That’s true, but we have a few imports that European prisons have had trouble containing. Von Geldberg is one of them,” Dominic answered.
“We are importing serial killers?” I looked at him. My mouth wouldn’t close.
“Only six or seven, all of them in the secure ward,” Dominic answered.
“They are not listed on the roster of inmates. There were supposed to be about a dozen guys in there. Are you telling me that was wrong?” I looked at him.
“Yes, it’s an international nightmare. However, the international court in The Hague approved the moves after they went berserk in the prisons where they were being held. The replica Fortress is not being built in the US. It’s being built in The Hague,” Dominic answered. “Oscar killed twenty-seven inmates, thirteen prison guards, and two doctors in a matter of two hours because they wanted to check his heart.”
“Since he officially suffers from gigantism, he is high risk for internal organ failures and deformities,” Caleb added as if it was somehow important.
“The Fortress has the staff and security to deal with these sorts of serial killers,” Dominic responded. “No one else does. Another one, Anton LeFebre, came to us from France after he ripped off his cell door and used it to beat several inmates to death for taking his dessert.”
“Their governments secretly pay our government a stipend for housing them while the EU attempts to build their own super max,” Eric said.
“Why do you know that?” I asked.
“Word gets around. There are about a hundred serial killers and mass murderers in this prison that are not on the official books. Most are just in the general population, but a handful are in the secure ward.” Eric bit his bottom lip. He was thinking. “Von Geldberg likes female victims, which might explain why he’s hanging out here. How he got the door open after you destroyed his gate stoppers is beyond me.”
“We are going to have to try to do this without killing him. Germany will not take kindly to that,” Caleb said.
“I was afraid of that.” I dug out my Taser and hit him with the prongs. He pulled them out. If he had gotten any electricity from them, he didn’t show it. I needed a stronger Taser.
“That isn’t going to work,” Caleb answered. The big man had not moved forward. “I think he’s hanging around hoping we open the women’s ward for him.”
“You go low, I’ll take high,” Eric said. “Caleb, do something psychotic and scary.”
I glanced sideways at my brother. Considering the size of the man in front of us, psychotic and scary wasn’t going to cut it. Short of Caleb ripping his own face off and throwing it at Von Geldberg, I doubted anything the smaller man could do would be crazy enough to get more than a shrug. The man had beaten his victims to death with their own limbs. That wasn’t a particularly common way, even for psychotic serial killers to act. That kind of stuff only happened in the movies, usually slasher films. It was the first time I had heard of it happening in the real world.
Caleb seemed as unsure as I was about what qualified for psychotic and scary. He stood there, frowning at the big man. Everyone in my world seemed to frown a lot. It was no wonder I never smiled.
Eric, once again, handling my baton like a professional, dashed the distance between Von Geldberg and us. I pulled my gun, took aim, fired, and the gun clicked. I attempted to eject the magazine and realized that it had been damaged. I was lucky it hadn’t exploded in my hands. I pulled my second gun only to find it had been damaged. I pulled a backup gun off my waist and found that it too had been damaged. For a moment, I wondered how they had been damaged and then I remembered I had been blown up. My coat and jeans had some burn holes in them. Dried blood stained my shirt and jeans. The rubber grip around the handle of my Taser had melted. This meant Eric had my baton and I had me.
<
br /> On your average psychopath, I could inflict some pain. I knew the weak spots. On this monstrosity, I wasn’t sure those weak spots existed. Unfortunately, my brother was already on him. He had spider monkey climbed up the giant and was slamming the baton against one of his shoulders. My ears waited for the sound of bones cracking, but were met only with the air whistling as the baton swung down.
My brother was not a large man, standing five feet nine inches tall and weighing about one hundred and fifty pounds. He looked like David wrestling with Goliath. Only problem was that David had a sling shot and didn’t have to be within reach of Goliath. My brother was and the giant had figured that out. His hand had already reached over his shoulder and grabbed my brother. He latched onto Eric’s wrist, clenching until the knuckles turned white. The baton didn’t fall as the bones in Eric’s wrist popped like popcorn kernels.
I wasn’t sure what I was planning to do as I ran forward. Caleb ran with me. We both lowered our shoulders, preparing to hit like linebackers. Caleb was just over six feet tall. His shoulder slammed into Von Geldberg’s body at heart level. Mine went much lower, catching him just above his hip.
The abdominal area is usually a little fleshy with some give to it. Not this guy’s, it was hard as a rock, sending me back a few steps after hitting him. Caleb and I had hit him on opposite sides and it had almost no impact. He rocked back on the heels of his feet for a moment, then rocked back forward and the fight was on. He grabbed at Caleb, catching the man’s face. One massive palm with long fingers locked onto the top of Caleb’s head and scalp. The knives on my wrists were melted into the holders and probably my flesh. I pulled the one from my belt. It was a large, double-edged hunting knife that I rarely found useful. One side was serrated, the other was smooth and finished with an edge that was sheet metal sharp. The smaller knives were better for close quarters combat. However, I had little choice, since it was the only weapon left at my disposal unless my brother dropped my baton.
Fortified Dreams Page 12
