The Bomb and the Cage: Doree Anne (6 page)

I walked to door number one, looked inside, seen there were two beds and two inmates, and I closed the cell door, and locked it, no one said a word. In fact, no one said a single word the entire time I was there.

Once I secured the rest of the wing, I called Roberts in. He propped the wing door open with a broom. We went to the three inmates. As we got to them, I could see there was blood around them. One of them had left a trail from one of the cells leading to the body. Roberts bent down and checked the three for pulses, and as I thought, they were dead.

“What do you want to do about these bodies?”

“Leave them for now. If we have to, we'll move them later.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

Roberts was still on the ground next to one of the bodies when it grabbed his arm. He dropped his flashlight and it rolled across the floor in a half circle shining on the cell doors until it rolled around and faced us. There was no way this was happening. With the light shining on them, I saw the inmate was Henderson. Henderson was about six foot two and was as skinny as a rail. It was obvious his neck was slashed to the bone and there was no way he could still be alive.

He was holding on to Roberts’s arm and Robert was trying to break the grip. I hit Henderson on the head with my flashlight and it didn’t faze him. Roberts fell over one of the other bodies and Henderson climbed on top of him. Roberts started to scream loudly as one of the other inmates started to get up. I pulled on Henderson from behind, but I was unable to break the grip he had. I continued to hit Henderson with my flashlight. After the fifth hit I felt the metal of the flashlight concave the side of his head and he fell over. I shined my light on the inmate and just as it illuminated the body revealing Henderson’s face covered in blood and loose flesh I was grabbed from behind. I side stepped and broke the grasp. The inmate fell next to where Roberts was rolling around, trying to get away from the other inmate. 

“He’s biting me! HELP ME!” I swung my flashlight at the other attacker but it slipped out of my hand. The metal bounced off the concrete floor a few times, hit a wall and rolled back towards me. 

Roberts’s screams stopped and the two attackers turned towards me. I ran off the wing, just as I got through the door I tripped over the broom that was propping the door and fell on my face as the door slammed shut behind me. I turned around and pulled out my backup flashlight, which was a
Mini Maglight
, I twisted the end, and the window lit up. One of the inmates was facing me. He was covered in blood and his neck was cut from behind the ear, down to below his jaw, and across his neck. His face dragged across the window, as he went from side to side, it left a trail of blood behind.

I got off the floor and stepped to the window. The inmate’s eyes were gray and lifeless. I saw movement behind him and I shined my light it. I watched as another person came to the door. He was much slower than the other inmate and as he stepped into the light, it was obvious why. It was Roberts. His intestines were ripped from his stomach and dragged behind as he walked. His face and neck were covered in bite marks. Each mark displayed the white bone underneath. Roberts stared at me with those same gray eyes. 

Chapter 12

09/18/2004 0919 Hours

Officer Ted Bryant

When I pulled onto the road that led to the prison, I saw the ambulance drive straight into the lake. Several people were running after it and when the group got to the edge of the water, they stopped. The group turned around and ran back to the road. I drove slowly towards them, as I pulled up; they stopped moving, and faced me. They were all covered in burns and soot. It didn’t look right. Some of the people were severely injured and shouldn’t even be alive let alone running around. There was one woman standing in the front of the group. Her dress torn, barely hanging onto her body. She was missing her left arm and a chuck of flesh missing from her face where I imagined debris from the blast struck her. She walked towards me every step a jerky motion of deliberate action. She moved, while the others stood idly behind her waiting to see my reaction. I didn’t move. She stepped into my bumper and screamed at me.

***

The scream was the kind that you never forget. This was the kind that can unlock a memory that you’ve buried in a sea of alcohol. Back then, I was still in training. I was working the night shift. There was a call to one of the apartment complexes in town.
Raspberry Apartments
, the newest and most expensive apartments in
Clearwater
. There was a report of a domestic disturbance, it had been going on since about one, and it was almost four now. On our way there my Field Training Officer, Officer Carlos had asked me several questions about the laws surrounding domestic violence. When you’re in school to be a law enforcement officer they tell you day after day to always remember that no call is ever the same. Always, always expect the unexpected and make plans for how you will handle those situations. I wasn’t thinking about the
what if’s
that could happen while we were on our way to the call, I was thinking about the differences between
battery
and
assault
. 

I can never forget the feeling I got when we arrived on the scene, it was as if the air was heavier, like the world was collapsing around us. Officer Carlos felt it too. I knew this because when we got out and started walking towards the apartment he flipped the hood on his holster down. The holsters my police department used had a three-step detention system. This meant that three different actions had to be made in order to draw your weapon; the hood was the first step.

The apartments were grouped in four and went from left to right by letter A to D. The call was for apartment C. We walked up to the door and Officer Carlos told me to get on the left of the door. I heard the sounds of screaming from inside.

KNOCK… KNOCK… KNOCK… The sound of Carlos’s knocking barely drowned the sounds of screaming. Carlos drew his gun, tried the door, I was unlocked. I drew my gun and followed him inside.

The front door entered into the living room, which opened up into the dining room and kitchen. The hallway on the left led to three shut doors. There was blood and trash everywhere. In the kitchen on the floor was a woman, facing away from us screaming, her long blonde hair caked in blood. It was hard to fight the urge to run to her rescue but we needed to make sure the scene was clear before we proceeded.

I looked around the living room making sure it was clear of the assailant. When it was, I went to her, kneeled down, and told her who I was. She kept screaming. I pulled her towards me to make eye contact, maybe then she would stop screaming. Her hands were covered in blood and hiding her face from me. When I pulled her hands back, I saw her face had been cut off.

I was never into horror movies. I hadn’t expected to see this. A busted up face sure, but not this. It caught me off guard. I jumped backwards and hit my shoulder into the kitchen cabinets. They made a large bang and Carlos who was covering the hallway started to run to me. I looked towards Carlos just as someone, a male, came running out of one of the doors in the hallway. He was covered in blood and had something in his hand, it was a knife. I fired my gun three times. The first struck his left arm. His arm jerked back as the second round struck his chest. His legs gave out and he begun to fall just as the final shot struck him in the head. His head jerked back and the blood, bone, and brain sprayed the white walls of the hallway. He was dead before he hit the ground. Carlos started yelling into his radio and I went back to the woman who had stopped screaming, she was dead.

After help arrived, we were relieved of duty, which was a standard procedure for my agency just like most agencies where deadly force is used. The shooting was investigated and I was found to be acting within the guidelines of the law. The local news trucks showed up and interviewed people who lived at the complex and not a single one of them talked about the domestic call or ill of the couple. If someone had talked about it, than those news agencies just didn’t report it.

***

I stared at the woman bumping into my cruiser. She stopped, screamed, and stepped forward again. The rest of the crowd walked towards me, surrounding my car, and started pounding on the windows and sides of my vehicle. I turned on my siren and drove forward but they didn’t move out of the way, they kept banging against the car. One of them broke through my passenger window and began to climb in. The face was covered in burns so bad, that I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. There were deep, empty craters where eyes had once been. 
It’s not human! Kill it
! I pulled out my
Glock
semiautomatic pistol, pushed it into the person’s mouth, and fired. The gunshot ringed through my head, making the noises around me cease to exist. I slammed on the gas and plowed through the people in front of me with the body of that monster half inside and half out.

I made a left around the prison’s
perimeter road
. If there wasn’t a safe place to stop
, perimeter road
went around and back to
Highway 27
. I picked up my radio and announced that I had been attacked upon entering the parking lot, that deadly force was used, and advised all units not to enter the road but to make
a staging area
on the highway at the entrance road. When I pulled around back, I saw a gun tower at the back of the prison. An Officer was standing at the top waving at me.

The tower was solid concrete and was twelve by twelve and thirty feet high. There was a metal door in the front and at the top; there was an enclosed office with a walkway with enough room for someone to walk around the outside. 

“Good morning Officer, The names Gus.” The man at the top yelled down at me in a welcoming tone.

“Good morning? Are you serious? Good morning doesn’t even begin to explain my day.”

“Well why don’t you come up here and I can tell you what’s been going on around here?”

“Okay, that sounds like a good idea.”

Chapter 13

09/18/2004 0920 Hours

C.O. Carlos Mendez

Smith had stopped screaming. I wanted to help him, but I knew that I couldn’t. Even if I had been able to stop all those monsters from eating him alive he would never have made it to the hospital. I pulled out my lighter and lit up the mop closet the best I could. There wasn’t much to work with, several different bottles of cleaning supplies, a large box of toilet paper, a few rolls of trash bags, one mop bucket, two brooms, and two mops. All this amounted to nothing that would save me. If only I could just get inside that control room, but without power there was no hope of that. I’d have to get the generator running. Everyone knew it was a terrible idea to put Ryan out there in charge of maintaining the generators. He had failed the academy and then they turned around and gave him a job as one of two maintenance workers. The guy wasn’t but half there, but it paid to be good friends with the
Warden
.

I heard movement outside, it sounded like they were leaving. Maybe something caught their attention. I slowly opened the door and looked around. I didn’t see anyone, so I stepped out of the closet and slowly closed the door so that it didn’t lock, just in case I needed to retreated back to it. I walked quietly towards the control room. Smith’s body was gone but remnants of his torn flesh and blood where still on the floor where he had been.

Fender was at the window waving and pointing to where the drop box was.

“There’s a gun and keys in the drop box!”

I opened it and pulled a
Smith and Wesson Model 16
six shot revolver, four speed loaders, and set of master keys out and dropped everything but the gun into my pockets.

“You need to get generator two running! Here take this too.” Fender took a cell phone out of his pocket, put it in the drop box, and pushed it out. I’ll call you in five minutes. Now get out of here.” 

Something grabbed me from behind. I spun around and pulled up the gun. It was a short heavyset woman. She was missing her right arm. Her face was partially torn off but I had recognized her, it was Tiffany King, a regular visitor around here. I rammed the pistol into her face. Her gray eyes were motionless. I pulled the trigger making a tiny hole just above her left eye. The sound of the gun going off attracted more of those things. Three more came out from the back and I fired four more shots hitting one in the head. The other three rounds went too low. I took off running back towards the prison, back towards medical. I was running full speed but they weren’t far behind me.

I made it back to the recreation yard; I could see Gus at the top of the tower aiming his rifle at me.
Please don’t even try to shoot these things
.
Please, just let me out run
the
m
. Every year you had to recertify with all the weapons and Gus always had problems. He was one of the worst shooters here.  Gus fired and I heard the bullet wiz past me and strike one of the things behind me. I heard the sound of flesh hitting the ground. I ran faster. There were five more shots. Behind, there was only one of those things was left. Gus had saved the day.

Medical was thirty yards away and Nurse Janis was standing outside medical.

“Get inside! Get inside!” I yelled, waving the gun in the air. When she didn’t move, I fired it. That was all it took and she ran inside as I came through the door, it slammed closed. I looked back to see that the monster hadn’t made it in time.

I didn’t recognize the man standing in front of medical, a white male in his late twenties. At one point he must have caught on fire, because his shirt had been burnt badly and the flesh that showed through it was blistered and black. He pressed his face against the window of the door.

“What happened to him?” Janis said. She walked up to the door.

“I don’t know if it’s some sort of
chemical weapon
. Everyone there that has died is coming back to life as one of those things. I watched Officer Smith eaten alive by those things. I tried to help him but there was too many of them. I need you to stay here and watch for any survivors that might be trying to get in. I’m going to try and break out and get generator two running. Once it’s running we’re breaking out of this place.”