The Bomb and the Cage: Doree Anne (13 page)

Chapter 29

09/18/2004 1105 Hours

Inmate Robby Victor

When that siren went off the monsters outside moved towards it. That sound was my savior. I watched them leaving the area around me and I was thankful. I stuffed a carton of cigarettes in the back of my pants and tightened my belt to keep it in place before leaving. Part of me wanted to stay, and part of me wanted to run away from the confinement. I knew it would be a bad idea to stay with them, but what other choice did I have? I hadn’t seen a single normal person here except for them. If I were going to have a chance at surviving then it would have to be with them. At least until we found others, but would they accept me? 

Outside there weren’t many of those things near the canteen now. The ones even farther away, near the Control Room, Alpha, and Bravo Dorm didn’t seem to care about the sound.
Maybe it wasn’t loud enough for them
?

A group of the monsters were running into the fences behind confinement, towards the sound. They weren’t intelligent to know how to get out of here or at least so far it seemed that way. Now, thanks to the siren going off we knew one of their weaknesses, sound. This could make life easier for us.

I was close to the unit now. Jacobs opened the gate and two men, Brandon and Dale came out dragging another inmate. The came out and threw his body to the monsters. I could hear the man’s screams as the monsters went for him. I ran faster hoping to use him as a distraction too. As I got closer to the unit Jacobs started letting out  two more groups and as the last group left, he kept the gate open for me. I ran through it and heard it slam behind.

“Welcome back Robby.”

“Glad to be back.” Jacobs followed me into the control room where Williams and Sparring were waiting.
Since Sparring didn’t go out with the others, did that mean he was running things with the officers
? Sparring was always one of those
do boys
for staff. I was surprised to see him still in the box. Normally someone like him would spend a day or two then when one of the Captains saw him. He was back on the compound. However, he must have screwed up this time, because I heard he got sixty days in
The Box
. 

“Glad to see you’re back.” Williams said.

“I’m not bringing good news with me. The news is saying it’s not national, not yet anyway. However, it doesn’t look like they’re mobilizing anything either. My guess, they were caught with their pants down.”

“Just as I expected.” Williams said giving a look to Jacobs and Sparring before continuing. “You’ve done a great job! The next step is to establish a base in town and start to rebuild.” Williams took a deep breath.  “I have a feeling things are going to get a lot worse before they get better.”

“Worse? It can get worse than this?”

“Oh yes, much worse.” Williams said, taking a step closer to me. “There will be
civil unrest
. People will be killing others for supplies. You will see how bad things will get when food runs out. When there are no longer people in place to control us, to enforce laws, to protect us! We must step up to the plate, and be those people. The town of Clearwater is just ten miles away and I do believe it will be a place we can make our own, a place we can protect.”

“On the news, the pictures they showed, the reports about Clearwater were all bad. I think it’s too late.”

“Then we will rebuild it!” I could tell Williams had made up his mind, so I stopped and nodded in agreement.

Something about Williams worried me - actually, it terrified me. He talked about making the town ours, but what if the town was someone else’s already? Would he take it from them? The group he was making was all men with extremely violent histories and they had no business being on the outside. Even I shouldn’t be free. I broke the law just like everyone else in here had. I deserved to be locked up too. This was madness.

Chapter 30

09/18/2004 1108 Hours

C.O. Carlos Mendez

We decided that Ted would stay in the tower while Gus and I got the bucket truck. I was fine with this because I wasn’t a good shot and I felt Gus might have gotten lucky before. We left the tower and thanks to Fender were able to get out without a single biter waiting downstairs.

The truck was a large white diesel truck and had a large orange crane with a large white bucket on the end. I checked the driver’s side door, it was unlocked, and just as Fender said the keys were in the ignition. Gus got into the driver’s seat and I got in the bucket lift. The very loud diesel truck roared to life. Maybe it was because we were trying to be quite or maybe it was always like that, but on this particular morning the truck’s engine seemed to be twice as loud as normal.

Gus pulled the truck onto perimeter road and just as he did, the siren stopped. It must have been on a timer, or worse the power was out again. Gus pulled up to the tower and I raised the lift. The
Biters
were running back to the tower, towards the loudest thing in the area now, the truck.

There were two gunshots. Ted stood at the top of the tower with his rifle aimed towards the front of the truck where two
Biters
that were lying motionless on the ground. Ted fired another three shots. Three more corpses laid in the road just beyond the truck.

Once at the top, we loaded the lift with the weapons and ammunition. Then Ted got in the lift. For a moment I thought it wasn’t going to hold our weight, but it did, and we were able to lower it as Gus started to drive through a group of the
Biters
. We needed to stay as far away from the Maintenance building as possible. So we did a U-turn and pulled around the other side. Around the last turn, I finally got to see the main control room, and it was everything I expected.

The fires had stopped, leaving behind partially standing walls covered in black soot. The damage to the control room was far worse than I could’ve imagined. The main fence that once made up the front gate was ripped completely from the ground. Pieces of it were tangled with the ruble from the cinderblock walls.

Fender broke the window to the control room and came out and around the right side. There was a
Biter
there that was naked and burned so badly that I couldn’t tell if it was male or female. Clack shot it with a pistol and its body flew backwards to the ground. Ted got out of the lift and climbed on top of the truck as we backed into the main gate.

Below the
Biters
swarmed the truck. The lift moved slowly towards the control room roof and I for a moment felt the truck lean towards it. Four duffle bags were tossed onto the roof. There was a four foot gap between the lift and the roof, this was as close as the lift would allow without risking tipping the truck. I made the jump from the lift easily and started taking the bags and throwing them into the lift. When the last bag was in the lift I gave Fender a hand getting on the roof. The ladder he had was only five feet and even with standing on the top rung he was too short the make it the rest of the way up.

“Let’s get out of this place!” Fender yelled.

“Sounds like a good idea.” I said then jumped into the bucket lift. I had jumped early and almost didn’t make it. Fender on the other hand didn’t have any issues getting into the lift. The lift lowered back down and I heard Ted yell at Gus to get out of here.

“So where are we going to go now?” Fender asked.

“We’re going to the gas station a few miles down the road towards Clearwater. Go from there. Have you talked to your wife Fender?” Fender looked away.

“Yes, I called her phone earlier, after the people started getting back up. She’s a nurse for the hospital in Leefield. I’ve given up hope of finding her. She said the hospital was overrun with those things. Said they were waiting on local police to save them. Next thing I know I hear the sound of wood breaking and yelling, screaming.” Tears were streaming down his face. “I could go there and join her body. I don’t know if it’s safe there or not, heck, I don’t even know if there is such a thing as
safe
anymore. That’s Leefield! Leefield is almost twenty miles away. This is it. Hope you’re ready for the long haul. This plague might only be the beginning.”

“I couldn’t agree more. Do you think there is anyone left alive in the prison?”

“I saw some inmates on the cameras right before you got to me coming out of the confinement unit. The crew down there today was Sergeant Williams, Officer Jacobs, and Officer Roberts.”

“Jacobs and Williams is a very bad mixture. At least they have Roberts there to keep them in line.”

“I couldn’t agree with you more.”

Chapter 31

09/18/2004 1115 Hours

Inmate Brandon Smith

             
It only took ten minutes for our groups to meet behind the administration building. The
Gray
Eyes
as I heard them being called were so fascinated with the sirens and Rogers, poor Rogers. Too stupid to know when to keep his mouth shut. At least he served a final purpose, luring the
Gray
Eyes
away from the door.

              When we came out of
The Box
, I saw all those monsters. The only chance we had was to outrun them. Dale stayed just behind me and we hugged the dorm all the way to the fence. Then we repeated it with the fence till we were at the admin building.

Dale and I were the first to get to the Administration building. Once there, we checked the area before settling in and waiting for the rest of the groups. The explosion didn’t touch the Admin building and there were zero
Gray
Eyes
there. Max and Eugene were the next group to arrive, followed by the slow as always Battle brothers. I don’t even know why they picked them. Sparring must have owed someone money, not that it mattered. Everyone left was going to be monster food. They were as good as dead just like Michael.

***

I enjoyed killing Michael when the power went out. It was dark, but there was enough light for me to make out his face. I grabbed him by the throat and kicked in his kneecap. His scream was muffled by my grip. We fell to the floor with me on top. I was straddling him, staring at him. With all the chaos around us, with the screaming, and the banging, there I was, serving justice. He started begging for his life. He told me everything I expected to hear. I yelled at him

“Denounce God! Give your soul to Satan and I will not take your life!” I waited a moment and when there was no response I slammed his head down on the concrete. “Say, I denounce God, I give my soul to Satan!”

Michael was a born again Christian, or so he said. I wanted to make sure there was no possible way for him to go to Heaven. I wanted him to go straight to Hell where he belonged.    

He started to cry, in the darkness I couldn’t see the tears, but I knew they were there.

“I... I… I denounce God…” I slammed his head back down.

“Say it again without stuttering!”

“I denounce God.” I pulled my right arm back while still holding his neck I jab him in the throat with a shank. IT was a good shank too, not the normal toothbrush with a razor type. No this was all metal, made from one of the metal spine of a binder. Took me a long time to make it, but when I was done, it looked just like a real knife. The sweet sounds of him choking on his own blood. Then before death took him I stabbed him in the crouch repeatedly. I was sure I severed his penis. I could hear him scream through the blood using up the little left of his oxygen. Later when his body got back up, I thought I was next. He was dead, I watched him die. When he got up, I knew it was the end of times.

“Hey, snap out of it!” I wiped my hand across my eyes, clearing them.

“Sorry.” I said.

“It’s okay brother. It’s game time.” We got into the cage vans. We called them that because of the very heavy metal cage that was built into them. The cage would be good for protection at night. However, we would need a blowtorch to cut a small hole in the door so that we could unlock it from inside first.

The vans were late 90’s model Fords and painted white with the words
Clearwater Correctional Institution
on the sides in big bold writing. Since we didn’t have the keys, Eugene and Max had hotwired the vans. Luckily, all three vans started without issues. However, there wasn’t a lot of gas in them. We would have to stop nearby to fuel up.

The Battle brothers had gotten into the lead van, Dale and I into the second, followed by Max and Eugene in the last. We pulled onto Perimeter road in a tight group and the Battle brothers picked up speed, plowing through a group of
Gray
Eyes
that were too stupid to move out of the way. Max started to honk his horn and Williams, Sparring, Jacobs, and Robby ran out. Eugene jumped out and opened the back up. They were in before the first
Gray
Eye
knew what happened. We peeled out and kept going until we got to the front of the prison.

There was a small tan cinderblock building with a green shingle roof with a loading bay and two large roll down doors left of the prison and far enough that it was untouched by the explosion.  A sign just off the road read
Mailroom
.

The van with Williams and Sparring took the lead and pulled up to one of the loading bays. Eugene got out and opened the back of the van. Everyone got out and walked to a door that was to the left of the roll down doors. We pulled over and got out just as the Battle brothers pulled up next to us. Williams kicked in the door and yelled back at us.

“Okay guys, let’s get to work!”

This was more than just a mailroom, inside was also the arsenal. The room was large and there was a stack of pallets in the middle of the room. There were two offices with large glass windows. Past the pallets was a large old wooden door, the kind where the top half was separate from the bottom. Sparring kicked in the door.