CHERUB: Maximum Security (16 page)

The leader looked up at the two guards on the rail. ‘Get us a medical team.’ Then he pointed at Dave. ‘Take
that
to the hole.’

Two of the PERT team put their hands under Dave’s armpits and picked him up. His eyes and nose were streaming and he had a huge red welt on his ribs where he’d been hit by the plastic bullet.

James trembled as he watched Dave get dragged out of the cell, with his bare knees grazing along the concrete floor. James knew it could as easily have been him who’d ended up being hauled away in agony. Or even worse: what if Stanley had got the knife in?

With Dave locked in the hole, James felt vulnerable. His need for sleep finally overcame his fear at around 4 a.m., an hour after Stanley Duff had been stretchered off to the prison hospital.

The cell door and the gates on to the exercise yard opened at nine, but most kids were still asleep as James limped towards the bathroom, with his bar of soap and toilet roll. He had the sharpened toothbrush handle tucked into his waistband, just in case.

BAM hovered with his mop, while James took a dump. The steel bowls were mounted on the wall, without doors or partitions, so you got zero privacy. The shower was even worse. The water only ran while you held the button down and the lukewarm dribble meant you couldn’t get soap out of your hair.

James dried off quickly, desperate to get out of the rank cell and breathe fresh air. A corridor led past three other cells and up a short ramp. To get to the exercise yard, you stood in line to get padded down by a hack, before passing through a metal detector.

As James’ canvas slipper took its first step into the sand, another inmate passed him a white paper bag containing his breakfast. James got called back before he had a chance to see what he’d got.

‘Rose.’

Superintendent Bob Frey was the pot-bellied, yellow-toothed man who’d crushed James’ foot in the reception room the previous afternoon. Frey took James under a veranda and made him stand with his back pinned to the cellblock wall.

‘Been in
my
cellblock less than fifteen hours, haven’t you?’

‘About that, sir.’

‘I got two brothers in the hospital. One of ’em’s just a busted nose and concussion, but the other fella’s got neck damage that’s gonna cost this prison tens of thousands in medical bills.’

James shifted awkwardly, not knowing how to answer.

‘Then I got your brother in the hole,’ Frey grinned. ‘You ever been in the hole, boy?’

‘No sir.’

‘You got no light, no ventilation, not a strip of clothes and no toilet. We hose it out once a day, like an animal cage. Any more trouble and that’s where I’ll have you. Understood?’

‘Yes sir,’ James nodded. ‘How long’s Dave in there for?’

‘Long enough,’ Frey grinned. ‘Now get out of my sight.’

James opened up his breakfast bag as he walked on to the sun-bleached yard. The milk was warm, the three pieces of fruit were past their best and the muffin was on the dry side, but it was edible and James was starving. His last decent meal had been the fried chicken two nights earlier.

The yard was oval-shaped and the size of three football pitches. It was scooped out of the desert basin around the back half of the cellblock. The facilities were basic: shelters to keep off the sun, a few basketball hoops and chin-up bars and the small prefabricated building where lunches were served. Beside the perimeter fence was a five-metre stretch of concrete behind a red line, which was known as the shooting gallery. No inmate was allowed on the shooting gallery and to make it clear, the notices dotted along the fence had a little stick man standing inside a gun sight with
Lethal Force Authorised
written beneath him.

‘Hey,’ Abe said, jogging up behind James with a banana in his hand.

James smiled. ‘You did me a big favour last night. Dave was
supposed
to be watching my back … I just gotta hope Stanley doesn’t have any pals popping out of the woodwork.’

‘The two big white guys were in the shower when I went for a piss. They asked if I’d seen you.’

‘Which guys?’ James asked anxiously.

‘Elwood, and the one with the German name.’

‘Kirch. What did they want?’

‘They just asked where you were.’

‘Did they sound angry?’

Abe shrugged. ‘All they said was one sentence.
Have you seen the little psychopath?
I told them I thought you were already out on the yard.’

‘They called me a psychopath?’ James said, unsure if this was a bad sign or a mark of respect.

‘I think you broke that guy’s neck.’

‘It was me or him: he
was
about to slit my throat.’

James threw away the core of his apple and took a slug from his bottle of milk. He was frightened. If Dave had been around, Elwood and Kirch would have been manageable. But with Dave in the hole, he’d be outgunned if things turned heavy.

‘I’ll wait for them to come on the yard,’ James said. ‘At least there’s space to run away out here.’

James and Abe found a spot under a shelter with a view over the whole yard and sat together in the dirt.

Kirch came through the metal detector first. He was a seventeen-year-old skinhead, two metres tall, with massive pectoral muscles inside a sweat-stained vest. Elwood was taller and thinner, shaved bald. A swastika with
MOM
written underneath it was tattooed on his neck. Curtis came next. He was an average build and the same height as James, but he looked undernourished standing between his massive bodyguards.

The three boys joined up with a bunch of similarly fierce looking skinheads from another cell, who were standing around a set of chin-up bars taking it in turns to do sets. The gang was bigger and meaner than James had expected. He realised they were going to have no problem hurting him if they wanted to.

A couple of minutes later, while Kirch was on the chin-up bar, Elwood spotted a little guy passing by. He tucked the kid’s head under his arm and squeezed until it turned red. After a while, he let go and knocked him down with a savage right hook. The kid was fighting tears and holding on to his face as he walked off.

‘I gotta split,’ Abe said, shocked by what he’d just witnessed.

James knew Abe wasn’t going to be any help in a fight against the Elwoods and Kirches of the world, but he appreciated having a friendly face to talk to.

‘What’s your problem?’ James asked.

‘They already asked me where you are. If they find me with you, they’re not gonna like it.’

‘I guess I’ll have to face them some time today,’ James said pensively. ‘So go and earn yourself some merit points by telling them I’m right here.’

After what had happened to the last passer-by, Abe didn’t sound keen. ‘Why don’t
you
go over to them?’

James pointed a finger at the armed hack standing on the roof of the cellblock less than ten metres away. ‘I feel safer here.’

Abe reluctantly set off across the dirt towards Elwood and the others. His steps seemed to slow down as he got closer. At one point Abe changed direction so much, James thought he was going to chicken out and walk straight by.

Abe got off with a nod of thanks for his trouble. Elwood immediately set off towards James, backed up by an entourage that included Kirch and three younger skinheads, with Curtis dragging up the rear.

James looked up for comfort, only to discover that the hack on the roof had disappeared.

‘You look pale, Rose,’ Elwood said, when he got up close.

‘I figure six against one is never good,’ James said, trying to keep the fear out of his voice.

‘True,’ Elwood grinned, looking back at his crew.

‘What is it you want?’

‘I liked the way you dealt with Stanley Duff.’

‘Those two started it,’ James said. ‘I didn’t go looking for trouble.’

‘I’ve got no beef over that pair of walnut brains,’ Elwood said. ‘But you gotta understand my concern, when guys like you and your brother arrive in my cell and start turning people over.’

James nodded.

‘I’ve either got to cut you to pieces, or cut you a deal; unless you’ve already got one with the Latinos.’

‘My brother said Cesar was trying to stir up trouble between us,’ James said, feeling a glimmer of confidence, as he sensed that he might get through the meeting unscathed. ‘But Cesar only cares about the other Latinos.’

Elwood nodded. ‘Your bro’ sounds smart.’

‘When he stays awake,’ James said bitterly.

‘So why’d you accept gifts from Cesar?’

‘Because I was hungry.’

Elwood roared out with a false laugh, which set off all his cronies. ‘I guess free food is free food, wherever it comes from … So what about your bro’? You got word?’

James shook his head. ‘That hack, Frey, pulled me over. He wouldn’t tell me when they’re letting him out of the hole.’

Elwood laughed again. ‘I’ve been in that hole
enough
times, but the max is forty-eight hours if you’re under eighteen. After that they either put you in a single cell, or back in the dorm.’

‘Right,’ James said, relieved that Dave would probably be back soon.

‘So, to business,’ Elwood said. ‘Me and Kirch run our cell. That means
everyone
kicks up to us, including you.’

James nodded; not that he was in any position to negotiate.

‘I want you and your brother to give me ten bucks of commissary each, every week. In return, I’ll give you Abe.’

‘Abe?’ James said, confused.

‘Abe’s your personal property. Rip off his commissary, beat his brains in; do what you like. I don’t want you touching any of the others, they belong to Kirch and me. I’ll also set you up with decent prison-issue clothes and blankets, and I’ll make it known that I’m on your side when the Duff brothers come back.’

‘Sounds fair,’ James nodded, as they shook on the deal.

‘Did you lose anything good when you came in through reception?’ Elwood asked.

‘Only my trainers.’

‘For ten dollars of commissary, I can get them back if you want them.’

‘Course,’ James said, looking at his canvas slip-ons. ‘These things are rubbish.’

‘You better stick with us until your brother comes back,’ Elwood said, scratching at the swastika on his neck. ‘Not everyone around here is a sweetie-pie like me.’

James loved animals when he was tiny: the furry toys on his bed, the singing characters in animated movies and the overweight cat that wandered into his nan’s garden, knowing it would get a saucer of milk just for bothering to turn up.

Aged seven, James did his first school project on lions. His mum taped a show off the Discovery channel that was on after bedtime. He watched the female lions licking their cubs and lazing under a tree in the sun. Then the animals went hunting.

The lionesses chased into a herd of antelope. They dragged down a straggler and began tearing it apart. Ripping off its legs, clawing open the stomach and then dipping their snouts inside the twitching carcass; tearing out hunks of flesh and running their long tongues through the blood on their faces. Until that moment, James had no idea nature could be so brutal.

He got as far as the living-room door, intending to find his mum and start bawling, but something changed his mind. He went back to the couch, tentatively rewound the video and watched it again. He watched it over and over, appalled, but utterly fascinated by what the lions were doing.

The in-your-face nastiness of the young skinheads in the Arizona Max exercise yard reminded James of the video for the first time in years. They brought out the same mixture of feelings: power and viciousness, combining into a perverse kind of glamour.

James showed off, working up a sweat on the chin-up bar, before lying back in the dirt next to Elwood and listening to him talk about things the gang of skinheads had done. Elwood pointed out scared kids who handed their commissary form to him each week, in return for not getting beaten up too badly. He revelled in stories about people he’d tortured, stabbed, poured boiling water over and bullied to the point where they’d tried to kill themselves.

The history of violence wasn’t all one way. Elwood proudly showed off scars on his leg, chest and back from three different knife attacks. He said you could never judge who would snap and come at you with a knife. It was as likely to be the puny little bookworm as the brooding psychopath with arms like joists.

James was appalled, but he listened intently and laughed when he was expected to. It was mostly out of relief. The last forty-eight hours had been amongst the most traumatic of his life, but with the skinheads offering some protection, the tight ball in his stomach had eased off. He finally felt he was getting to grips with the mission. The next step was to chum up with Curtis.

*

Lauren didn’t have much to do back at the house; her part of the mission would only begin once James and Dave escaped. She welcomed the chance to catch up on sleep and relax after basic training, though it would have been more fun if there’d been someone like Bethany to hang out with.