Chapter Seven
PRESIDENT CANCELS SKI WEEKEND: No Reason Given [USA Today, 3/19/05]
“Can we get some lights on? Surely there’s emergency lighting in there. Let’s get it on.” Bannerman Clark stood rigid before the polycarbonate window, not sure what he would see once the lights were on in the Special Housing Unit. The Special Horror Unit, more like. Whatever could possess a man and drive him to cannibalism—possess a rational man with a good job and a family, no less, as it had the prison guards—wasn’t going to look pretty.
The Assistant Warden shrugged when his underlings looked to him for confirmation of Clark’s order. “I’ve been relieved of command. Do what he says.”
It had taken six phone calls to have Bannerman Clark assigned as the Local Incident Commander for what had yet to officially become an Incident. After September Eleventh the system had been considerably streamlined. Clark’s Captain’s bars hardly warranted the kind of power and influence he was then authorized to wield but this was an OOTW (Operation Other Than War) and a civilian could have been drafted for the job if it was considered necessary.
Having somebody in charge was about to become very, very necessary.
“We thought it had to be drugs,” Glynne said. “That’s what we’re trained to look for. I sent in men who don’t even take aspirin when they have a headache. They didn’t make it back out.”
It did not surprise Clark at all that Glynne would look no further than the end of his nose. In 1997 an inmate had been murdered at ADX-Florence and the body wasn’t found for four days. The prison was so tightly circumscribed and controlled that any deviation from the standard timetable—even a dangerous one—just didn’t register. He flipped open his phone and thumbed a quick text message to a First Lieutenant at the Buckley Air Force Base with the 8th Civil Support Team, the Guard’s WMD task force. It was quite clear to Clark that the men in that holding area were not under the influence of drugs. Only some kind of virulent disease could cause this cannibalistic behavior. Perhaps a mutated strain of meningitis. Or rabies.
“We had men go in there in full riot gear with electric prods. We filled that room with CS gas. We turned high-pressure hoses on them and everything. Whenever I sent a man in there they just ripped off his armor and tore out his throat. I personally fired six rounds from a .357 into the chest of one of those assholes. He spun around like a top but then he just kept coming. He’s still down there, walking around. Eating my guards.”
An emergency lamp near the ceiling of the Black Hole turned orange in the darkness as it started to warm up. It was designed to do that—if the inhabitants of the SHU were exposed to bright light without warning they could be temporarily blinded. Clark took the image enhancement optics off of his head and laid them neatly on his desk as the lamp ramped up to full power.
In the new illumination Clark saw one of the afflicted stumbling across a mound of trash—unspooled rolls of toilet paper, torn newsprint, pieces of ripped riot armor. He moved like a frog in a terrarium, his legs extending slowly to find purchase, his upper body motionless. The rest of them wriggled in their pile, naked and unashamed as they fed. They looked up at the light but they didn’t blink. Clark grunted despite himself. The victims were in bad shape. One man had lost his ears and lips. Another had most of his midriff torn away, everything between his rib cage and his pelvis. How could anyone get up and move around after sustaining such an injury? How could anyone survive it? Clark shuddered and recovered himself. He had a job to do.
“I need your entire staff here. Wake them up if you have to and bring them in. The next twenty-four hours are going to be crucial in containing this. We need everyone who might have been exposed to stay locked down here in quarantine until we know we aren’t going to spread it.” He turned to the technician who had turned on the lights. The man at least knew how to do something useful. “Glynne here was described to me as an Assistant Warden. Where is the actual Warden while all this is going on?”
The technician glanced at Glynne.
“Vacation. He went to visit his family. In California,” the Assistant Warden announced.
Vegans Go Home: This is Meat Country! [Billboard outside of Grand Junction Colorado, leased by the Colorado Beef and Buffalo Cattlemen’s Association, 05]
The nurse in the panda bear jacket came back, finally, wheeling an EKG machine into Nilla’s cubicle. She looked tired, near exhaustion and sweat had soaked through the armpits of her coat. Without a word she dragged her cart to Nilla’s bedside and started tearing open plastic bags and unsealing tubes of gel. When she pulled Nilla’s shirt up, nearly exposing her breasts, something had to be said.
“What’s going on?” Nilla demanded. “I’ve been lying here for hours in these restraints. Surely if I was rabid I’d be foaming at the mouth now or something.”
The nurse stared at her with a pained look. “Rabid? Who said you had rabies? This is ridiculous. I’m in the middle of a double shift I got assigned with no warning and no lunch break. I’m hungry and tired and I want to go home and now I have to listen to patients who’ve seen one episode of ER and think they can diagnose themselves. Can I just do my job, huh? Do you think I can just do my job? I don’t have time for this.”
Nilla couldn’t help but be chastened. She understood what it was like to be hungry and tired, after all. She was pretty much nothing but. “I’m sorry,” she said.
The nurse just shook her head. She squeezed a tube over Nilla’s stomach and icy cold gel dripped on her skin, making her wince. Next came a series of electrodes that had to be patted down. Finally the nurse switched on her machine and turned a few knobs.
“Come on. Come on,” the nurse muttered as the EKG warmed up. “Come on already.”
The screen of the EKG finally lit up and simultaneously an alarm tone sounded. On the screen a flat line etched its way from left to right with no deviation whatsoever.
“Jesus,” the nurse swore, and thumped the machine hard. Nothing changed. She switched off the alarm. “Another malfunction!”
“What—what did that mean?” Nilla asked, suddenly terrified. “I don’t have a heartbeat? What’s going on?”
The nurse swore again and yanked the electrodes off of Nilla’s body. “It means my machine is fucked, and now I have to get another one, from the other side of the hospital, and that I don’t get my smoke break for another half hour! That’s what it fucking means. Jesus, would you calm down?” She grabbed for Nilla’s bound wrist and shoved her index finger into the pulse point. After a few seconds her mouth jerked in bewilderment and she shoved her palm underneath Nilla’s nose, trying to feel her breath.
“Oh, God. Doctor!” she screamed. “Code blue, code blue!” She turned to run out of the cubicle just as one curtained wall twitched back. The two police officers who brought Nilla in—Emerson and Pankiewicz, she remembered—stood there. They didn’t look so good. Their skin looked positively blue in the fluorescent light and their eyes were vacant, all but rolled up in their heads. Emerson’s shirt was badly torn and Pankiewicz was missing his hat.
“Please,” the nurse said, “please get out of my—”
Emerson grabbed her by the head and bit off her nose. Pankiewicz staggered forward and into her stomach, knocking her against the bed. The three of them fell to the floor in a heap, a writhing, spasmodic heap that screamed sometimes, but not for very long.
