The last of the new workers stepped through the doorway, and Cam recognized Ed immediately.
Ed was looking around the enclosed space, probably looking for an escape. He saw him scanning the woods beyond. Searching.
Was he looking for Zs? Was he looking for Cam? Cam couldn’t risk trying to signal him yet. The new ones were being watched too closely for now. Ed would know soon enough that Cam was here.
He watched Ed accomplishing his tasks the rest of that day. He saw that Ed spent most of his time near a certain section of fencing. There was a row of bush beans there that he was picking. Sometimes he would glance down at the back fence next to him.
What did he see there?
As the sun was setting, the workers were led back in. Cam saw Ed limping and hoped he was able to rest.
Cam knew what he was going to do.
◆◆◆
That evening Cam returned to the cabin and packed a few extra things in his ruck. He took a small bottle, a small knife, and some bolt cutters. He also jotted down a quick note and folded it carefully. He then donned his NODs and took off through the woods.
The short journey was uneventful. Cam ate a protein bar on the way, hoping it would stave off his hunger for a while longer. He had a mission to accomplish. He reached one of his numerous hide sites in the woods and removed his ruck.
He took out the bottle of pills, the knife, and the bolt cutters. Several of the pills and the knife went into a small Ziploc bag. The bolt cutters he carried. He pulled a small, folded square of paper out and slipped it into the bag as well. He left his ruck hidden beneath his tree, covered with several small leafy bushes.
At the tree line, he lowered himself to the ground. He searched the entire back of the prison, including the guard towers on the corners. He saw that the two towers near the front were manned, but they didn’t seem to be particularly interested in what was happening to the rear.
The two towers in back were empty.
He was going to make good use of their lack of security. He wasn’t sure if the leader of this group was stupid or just over-confident. Either way, he was going pay for his mistakes. He was going to bring this place down.
Seeing no patrols or guards, he started his high crawl toward Ed’s favored section of fence. He wished he could wait a few more days and make sure Ed continued with that same spot, but he didn’t feel comfortable waiting. Anything could happen to him in there, anything at all.
He continued crawling across the overgrown field, thankful that the long grass gave him some concealment from anyone looking out the windows.
He rested halfway through and scanned the area again. Still clear. He kept going.
Upon reaching the fence, he first searched the area that Ed had seemed particularly interested in. His search revealed that a small section at the very bottom of the fence had been cut, then covered with dirt to disguise it.
It was definitely not large enough for a person to fit through, but that would change…with time.
Cam dug down to the next intact section and carefully clipped the thick metal. He winced as the fence popped and rattled along its length. It seemed very loud in the dark, silent night.
When he determined that nobody was coming to investigate, he clipped one more. Another loud metallic pop and rattle. Another interval of waiting for discovery.
Still, nobody came.
These people were fucking idiots.
Cam pulled the small Ziploc baggie from his cargo pocket and pushed it into the loose dirt under the fencing. He covered it carefully, leaving a small corner of the transparent green top sticking up. That was Ed’s first message. Phase One was complete.
Phase Two began.
Ed
The first day Ed had arrived, his ‘friend’ Lonnie had led him to his ‘room’.
His room was in cell block A and consisted of a six-foot by eight-foot space. He had a bed, a desk, a toilet, and a sink. A small window, almost like an arrow slit, was against the back wall. If he pushed his head against the side of the window, he could just make out the corner of the fence that led to the prison garden.
Lonnie had told him to make himself at home while he went to get his linens, so he went and sat on the bed, propping his feet up with relief. They weren’t doing well at all. The pain was terrible, and he had nothing to take for it.
He didn’t even have a heating pad or a hot water basin to help with it.
“Here we are,” Lonnie said, coming back into the room with a stack of folded linens.
“We’ve got your sheets, blankets, pillowcase. Here’s an extra pillow and some towels.” He set the stack on the desk.
“Now, I know this is a prison, but you aren’t a prisoner. Jax wants his people to feel like valued members of the group. This cell block is for the garden workers. You are all free to walk around and chat and play games. There’s a television out there and everything. You’ll get your meals in the cafeteria like everyone else. The block captains will lead you all over there for every meal.”
Lonnie stopped and looked at Ed for a moment. “Are you okay, buddy?”
“I was hoping maybe I could get some medication or something for my arthritis? I can’t get much work done if I can’t walk,” he reasoned.
“Sure thing. We’ll go on over right now and see Doc. He usually has patients but I’m sure he could squeeze you in.” Lonnie smiled his oily, ingratiating smile and gestured for Ed to rise.
Ed got up, grunting with the effort and the ache in his feet and ankles. He followed Lonnie out of his cell and back through the main area of the cell block.
Here and there at the tables, people were gathered. They were speaking quietly amongst themselves until they saw Lonnie.
They went silent as he and Ed passed by.
Lonnie waved to them all and offered a big hearty smile. Ed wondered what Lonnie had done to make these people so afraid.
◆◆◆
After winding their way through various hallways—often ending in locked doors— they finally made it to the infirmary.
Lonnie walked Ed through and seated him on a chair. There were no other patients around. The walls were institutional beige, that mass-produced in-between color that also coated the ceiling and floors. It was very monochrome, and faintly sinister.
“Doc?” Lonnie shouted to the empty room.
His voiced echoed off the painted cinderblock walls and faded into an indistinct, tinny reverberation.
A door opened in the back and Ed heard footsteps approaching from the back hallway. A man came into view then, and Ed studied him closely.
He was a younger man, perhaps fifty. He had thinning brown hair, sprinkled with grey. He wasn’t very tall, maybe five-foot ten. He wore thin-rimmed rectangular eyeglasses and had a mustache. His white coat was dull with repeated washings.
“What can I do for you, Lonnie?” he asked tiredly, as if Lonnie was a frequent visitor.
“Doc, Ed here has some trouble with his feet. Take a look at him and bring him back to cell-block A when you’re finished with him.”
Lonnie waved a goodbye to Ed and left the infirmary.
“I’m Doctor Forsythe. What’s going on with your feet?” the doctor asked, taking a seat on a nearby chair. He rolled a footstool toward Ed and motioned to Ed’s feet.
“Take your shoes off and prop your feet up there,” he said.
Ed stared untying his boot laces as he spoke. “I’ve got arthritis, gout, in my feet and ankles. I’m having a pretty bad attack right now. I didn’t get a chance to grab my medicine before Lonnie brought me here.”
He propped his feet up on the stool as the doctor donned a pair of blue nitrile gloves.
He winced as the doctor probed the joints of his toes and his ankle. They looked pretty bad this time, he only hoped it didn’t last too long.
“Yeah, I see you’ve got some issues here. When were you first diagnosed?” the doctor asked.
“Several years ago, I forget exactly when. They gave
me some medication for it and told me to eat healthier and lose some weight. I’ve lost quite a bit since this whole thing started, but these attacks just seem to keep coming anyway.”
“What medication do you take?”
“I take some anti-inflammatory pills occasionally and steroids when the attack gets bad. My doctor prescribed me allopuri-something before this whole zombie thing happened. I kept taking it afterward. I refilled it myself at a pharmacy I found. I haven’t been able to take it yet today.”
Ed decided to be honest with the doc. “I’m not exactly here because I want to be. They didn’t let me take anything with me from home. I’d appreciate it if you could help me out.”
Forsythe sighed and rubbed his head. “There is nothing I can do to get you out of here. None of us want to be here, except maybe the guards. I was in charge of this infirmary before the disease wiped everyone out. After that, I was made to stay on. There isn’t really anywhere else for me to go anyway.”
“What I can do is this: I can give you some medications for your arthritis, and I can get you out of work for a week. I wish I could help you all get out of here, but I can’t. My power here is very limited, and if I overstep my bounds, I will end up like the prisoners that used to be here—the actual prisoners,” Forsythe said.
“What happened to them?” Ed asked.
“Moran had most of them executed. Six hundred people…shot in the head and buried in a mass grave nearby.”
He looked into Ed’s eyes.
“Don’t ever go against Moran, not if you want to live.”
◆◆◆
The days passed, trickling by like sap from a sugar maple.
Ed spent most of his time in his room, leaving his feet propped up. A man in the next cell over was a prolific reader and had loaned him some books, so Ed used his time wisely. He read.
The doctor had given him some stronger painkillers in addition to his usual meds and he was thankful for that. He was going to need them when he started having to go out and work in the garden.
At the communal meals, he saw how exhausted the outdoor laborers looked by the end of the day. He wasn’t looking forward to spending every day on his feet out in the hot sun.
There was no question of not doing it. He learned that from talking with some of the others. None of them were here voluntarily. Another one of the older people even had his arm broken when he refused to work one day after suffering heat exhaustion. They had brought him in, taken care of him, then one of the guards was ordered to teach him a lesson.
They did.
Ed learned which of the guards took their job seriously, and which of them didn’t really enforce most of the rules. None of them would ever openly go against the warden, even the ones who hated him.
The worst of the guards was reportedly Margot Rosen. She was in charge of all the guards and was also the warden’s girlfriend. She was rumored to be evil incarnate. Ed had only seen her once, and that was the very first day he had arrived. It was her leaving the warden’s office.
A rumor had spread that it was she that was responsible for the mass execution of the prison’s former occupants. Ed didn’t trust rumors generally, but there must be some truth to it somewhere. He resolved to stay out of their way as much as possible. Maybe they would overlook him, being an old man and all.
The morning Ed was to begin work came around soon enough.
The sun rose bright and hot, no clouds anywhere within sight. It promised to be a long miserable day. The only consolation was that he had his pain pills if he needed them, and they were allowed to get water as often as they wanted.
After a breakfast of powdered eggs, oatmeal, juice, and coffee, they were led single file out to the garden.
After a week of being cooped up inside, the fresh air of the garden was ambrosia. He breathed deeply while looking around. The heat was already oppressive, and it was only eight in the morning. It was like a hot, wet blanket smothering them. It felt like breathing underwater.
It was still better than being in the cellblock.
“Get over there and work on the beans,” a guard told him.
He went.
He walked slowly, limping still, and scanned the trees beyond the field. They were so close, yet so far away. How he wished he could be in the woods right now, or better yet, back on the island with the others. It seemed like forever since he had seen his friends.
He wondered what they were doing right now. He wondered if Cam and Jim had come looking for him.
He reached his designated row and began to pick the growing pods, putting them in his bucket. He had to alternate sitting on the ground, kneeling, and standing up. He was too old to be in one position too long.
He made his way along slowly, being thorough. He knew there would be more beans to pick here again in a day or two. They grew pretty fast about this time.
When he reached the middle section of the row, he happened to drop a bean pod. As he leaned over to pick it up, he noticed something peculiar about that section of fencing. The bean bushes concealing his movements, he carefully dug around the base of the fence.
Well, hell! There’s a hole at the bottom of the fence!
He examined it.
Someone had managed to cut the bottom links, the ones buried in the dirt. It wasn’t enough to squeeze a person through, not yet. It would take cutting another six or eight links to be able to roll under the bottom.
He didn’t know if or when it would be possible to accomplish, but he would remember it. He would keep it in mind. Maybe he could find some bolt cutters and sneak out here one night and just run off into the trees.
What do you mean run, old man?
He turned back to his work before the guards got suspicious. He would come back tomorrow and see if he couldn’t dig a little more. He wanted to know how deep the chain link fence was buried.
◆◆◆
The next morning dawned identically to the one before it.
Ed was tired, sore, and sunburned. The guards issued him a wide-brim hat and some sunblock, but the damage was already done. He went outside, intending to go to the same row as before and pick up where he had left off yesterday. As he picked up a bucket and headed in that direction, one of the two guards stopped him.
“You. You’re working over in the other field today. Start on that last row of tomatoes. Barnes wants them all picked by sundown today.” The guard nodded his head, indicating Ed’s assigned section. At least it had a little shade. Maybe the guard was doing him a favor.
Ed nodded then turned to go. “Who is Barnes?” he asked back over his shoulder.
“She’s in charge of the cafeteria. Get to work.”
Ed looked longingly over at his fence. He had really wanted to see just how deeply it was buried. It was the perfect place. Not much overwatch by the guards. Right now, it looked like they had everyone over on tomatoes though.
Ed picked throughout the day. By lunch, the irritating leaves and the acidic juice from the tomatoes had caused his skin to itch and sting. He kept having to rinse it off when he went to get a drink of water.
They walked them into the cafeteria at noon and allowed them a short break to use the restrooms and wash their hands. Ed took advantage of the soap and washed his thoroughly. He found that he much preferred picking beans.
Going through the cafeteria line, the kitchen workers ladled out the day’s lunch. It looked like it was soup and cornbread. He hoped it was good. It smelled okay. He got to the end of the line and noticed a large woman in a white kitchen uniform. She was shouting orders and getting immediate compliance from her hapless underlings. Perhaps they had it better than he did.
That must be Barnes.
She turned her large stern face onto him and gave him a death stare.
“What are you looking at?” she challenged.
“Nothing,” Ed said, hoping to avoid a confrontation.
“Nothing! I hope you didn’t just say that to me!” She shouted, hands on her hips.
Ed thought she was all bluster and tried to change the subject.
“Are you Barnes?” he asked her, still holding his tray.
“Might be. Who wants to know?” she asked suspiciously.
“I was just wondering. See, I was out picking the tomatoes today. They said you wanted them all picked by sundown. What are you going to do with them all?” he asked.
She narrowed her eyes before answering, as if judging his reason for asking.
“I’m canning tomato sauce and tomato juice. Why?” She crossed her arms, looking bored with the conversation.
“Just wondering what they were going to be used for, is all.” He grinned a bit. “I think I prefer picking beans,” he said, raising a red, swollen hand.
The acids in the tomatoes had done their job for sure. He never had a reaction like it before, but then again, he had never spent a whole day picking them without gloves either.
She frowned at that before turning away and dismissing him.
“Go eat. Your time is almost up,” she ordered, pointing to the table.
He quickly ate his meal. It was good. Great, actually. He wished he could have had more.
Cam
Cam watched in dismay as Ed was assigned to work in a different section of the fenced in field today.
He spent the entire day watching to make sure nobody got too close to Ed’s little care package. There wasn’t any guarantee that Ed would even find it the next time he worked on the fence, but Cam hoped he would. Either way, he would still get him out. It would just be easier if he knew what was going to happen beforehand.
Cam would spend one more day watching the field, then he would begin the second part of his plan. The one where he finally got to take action. To this end, he spent the evening hours preparing the forest that surrounded the prison.
He put out weapons and ammo at several different locations, well-hidden in the brush. To these little caches he added some heavy-duty firecrackers, a pack of cigarettes and lighter, and a few other things.
Refuge From The Dead | Book 3 | Dead Fall Page 5
