Chapter Five
MORMON BISHOPS FORBID POLICE INVESTIGATION: Tabernacle Could be Hiding Terror Cell, State Bureau of Investigations Warns [Deseret Morning News, Salt Lake City, 3/18/05]
They left her there for hours, strapped to the bed, unable to move. She didn’t grow stiff or uncomfortable but she couldn’t even reach over to turn on the television set mounted in a steel bracket above her bed. She tried to sleep but she failed at that, too: her body refused to truly relax, not when she kept hearing screams outside her room. No more gunshots, at least. She tried to calm down and failed.
It left her with a lot of time to think. To try to remember. She pushed hard into the dark parts of her brain, like developments full of houses with no lights on at all and nobody home. In the abandoned suburbs of her mind she tried to piece together anything, anything at all: the faces of her parents, her lovers, her friends. Did she have kids? Did she have a home somewhere? She tried not to color her thoughts with half-hearted guesses, but failed: the clothes she had on, the piercings had to mean something, at least, that she wasn’t homeless, that she didn’t work in an office, at least. These superficial deductions got in the way, though. They summed up a caricature of a life with no detail, no texture at all. She tried to put them out of mind and remember something. She dug for any shard of memory at all. A birthday party. A trip to the mall. Where she had left her purse. She tried to remember her own name, even her initials.
She failed.
WEIRD: Horse bites dog in Wyoming. Apparently the horse was sick and the dog was a jerk. Cats and dogs still not living together. [Fark.com news portal, 3/16/05]
The Blackhawk set down well clear of the prison fence. There were pressure plates and laser sensors and dogs trained to attack without barking in there. Searchlights stabbed out from the guard towers and bathed the helicopter in a brilliant glow. As the rotor spun down Bannerman Clark jumped down to the sandy soil of the outer perimeter and looked for the man he was supposed to meet.
Assistant Warden Glynne of the Florence Administrative Maximum Corrections Facility greeted him with a snappy salute he did not return. Military personnel were not supposed to salute civilians and vice versa and Clark already knew enough about Glynne to know the man had never been a soldier.
“Welcome to the Big One,” the Corrections Officer said, unfazed. The man hadn’t shaved in days and his tie hung loose from an unbuttoned collar. “I’m glad you came so quickly. Things are degenerating and we could really use some help.”
“I understand you have a riot on your hands, Mr. Glynne and that it’s been going on for three days. I’d appreciate knowing why I’m here, though. Surely this is a problem for a SWAT team or the CBI. The National Guard shouldn’t be called in unless—”
Glynne spoke over him. “This isn’t a riot, Captain. This is a complete protocol failure. It’s been going on for seventy-nine hours. You’re here because this is something we’ve never seen before. Follow me, please.”
They passed through the main gate of the prison and into a well-lit series of rooms painted and repainted so many times the light switches and doorknobs had taken on a softened, rounded look. Glynne lead him through a series of tight passages with heavy iron doors that had to be unlocked manually and which snapped shut and locked with an electronic buzz once they were through. “There are ten thousand doors in this facility, Captain. In an emergency lockdown all of them close and lock automatically. Nobody ever gets in or out unless we know about it. We’ve got eyes everywhere, even in the CO areas. That’s the good news.”
“All I see here is bad news,” Clark said, glancing around in distaste at the dusty corridors.
“This is a supermax prison, Captain Clark, where the real dead-enders go. Violent inmates who can’t be allowed to mingle in a normal prison environment. We impose twenty-three hour per day solitary confinement. Prisoners have to wear leg and wrist shackles when they go to eat. They get one four-inch-wide window in their cells and the toilets had to be designed so you couldn’t fit a human head in them. They do that, you know. If you give them an opportunity to do something, no matter how sick or perverse, they’ll do it. Just to fuck with you.”
Clark made a grunt of understanding. Beyond one last door lay a control center, a red-lit claustrophobic space filled with computer monitors and desks and half-empty coffee cups. A dozen men and women in Corrections uniforms sat slumped in uncomfortable chairs, most of them gathered around one dimly flickering monitor. Two other men stood before what looked to Clark’s eyes like a black wall until his vision adjusted and he saw it was a slab of transparent polycarbonate (more bullet- and impact-resistant than glass). The men wore image enhancement optics—AN-PVS 7B night optic devices—and were rapt by what they saw on the other side of the window.
When Glynne spoke again it was in a whisper as if he were afraid something on the other side might hear him. “This is where the real bad guys go, one of our special housing units. The inmates call it the Black Hole. There are a hundred and forty-eight punishment cells down there which we keep darkened and sound-dampened at all times. Nobody can stay violent for long in an environment like that. It’s been psychologically proven.”
Clark picked up a set of optics from a desk and strapped it onto his head and chin. He switched on the unit and looked down into the SHU. It took his brain a moment to make sense of the false-color images the goggles created but quickly enough he saw what was happening. In the cells prisoners lay motionless on their beds or paced endlessly around their tiny rooms. Some stood at their doors patiently as if waiting for them to open while others smashed at their walls with arms and heads and shoulders. He looked straight down at the center of the unit and had to gasp in disgust. Two dozen inmates were milling about in a central open area, many of them naked and clearly injured. He saw arms and legs that hung limp, faces contorted by lacerations, fingers and eyes missing. Another ten or so inmates lay in a pile in one corner, their bodies wriggling like fat worms. “What are they doing?” Clark demanded.
“They’re eating each other,” Glynne said, his voice flat. “Some of them… some of them eat, and some get eaten.” The energy had gone right out of the CO.
“Good God! Where is your staff? Where are your guards? You need to get them in there and stop this at once!” Clark demanded.
“You don’t understand, Captain. The inmates are never allowed out of their cells in this unit. The men in that open area you’re looking at? Those are my guards.”
