The Zombie Room (8 page)

‘Alright everybody, pipe down.’ Annabelle said, authoritatively. ‘OK now, Les, I want you to tell me which words are the adjectives in this sentence.’ She turned and began to write on the whiteboard: ‘The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs’.

The distraction appeared to work and the room quietened again as Les switched his attention to the whiteboard. His brow at first crinkled and then furrowed deeply in concentration, or perhaps frustration. A few mutters went around the room, which further deepened the ridges in his forehead.

‘It’s quick and brown, Miss,’ Tazeem said, in an effort to relieve the mounting tension.

‘Fuck off you Paki cunt, I was just about to say that,’ Les roared, and flipped the table over as he sprang to his feet.

Mohammed seized the opportunity and did the same, hurling a torrent of racial slurs that only he and Tazeem could understand. Annabelle pressed the panic button on her desk and a siren began to wail in the corridor. There was an immediate jingling of keys like incoming sleigh-bells as guards sprinted towards the classroom.

Les was standing in the middle of the room, gripped with fury. Veins pulsed in his temples and spittle had gathered at either side of his mouth, lips pulled back tight over snarling teeth. So far he had managed to resist the urge to pummel Mohammed, who continued to taunt and abuse him.

Tazeem backed away, keeping out of the altercation. They all knew that any violence would result in them immediately being shipped back to a high-security facility, possibly with time added onto their sentences.

The first guard burst into the room, quickly assessed the situation and walked purposefully toward Les, who seemed unaware of his presence. Two more guards followed a few seconds later. Mohammed had fallen silent and adopted his ‘butter wouldn’t melt’ look, playing the victim to avoid punishment.

The first guard put his hand on Les’s shoulder and quietly but forcefully urged him to follow them. For a moment his fixed stare flickered between Mohammed and Tazeem before something appeared to click back into place inside him, and he allowed himself to be led from the room.

‘You reckon he’ll get shipped out then, Decker?’ Mangle asked at the lunch table after Tazeem had finished telling the story.

‘Hard to say. He’s got a screw loose, no doubt, but he’s kept out of trouble since he’s been here so they might give him another chance.’

‘I guess that answers the question,’ Tazeem said pointing towards the door.

Les walked in with the guard who’d arrived first in the classroom earlier. The guard exchanged a few words with Les and then left the dining hall. Les picked up a blue plastic tray and took his place in line without looking around the room.

‘He’ll have been in front of the Governor. Looks like Les is here to stay.’

Tazeem looked down and pushed the remaining food around the plate with his fork. He hadn’t really wanted Les to get shipped out, but after staring into those coal-black eyes, seething with rage, Tazeem didn’t relish the prospect of working alongside him in the kitchen.

5

‘How do you know where to go?’ Tatiana asked as they walked briskly through the city streets on a cold, wet Sunday morning. Broken bottles, discarded items of clothing, and used condoms were a visible record of the previous night’s enjoyment for some, and misery for others.

‘The girls on the street talk about it a lot,’ Natalia said, turning to face her. ‘It is what most work for these days. Drugs and alcohol are not the only way to cope with their lives; there is hope for the future.’

Natalia led the way towards an old stone church, although any evidence of stained glass windows was covered over by thick wooden boards. A grim-faced man in a black leather trench coat stood smoking a cigarette by the door. He stopped them from entering as they tried to walk past.

‘What do you want?’ he asked, and flicked his cigarette butt over Natalia’s shoulder.

‘I have money, and we want deals for working visas,’ she told him, and produced two envelopes. The man opened them, flipped through the bills and slid both envelopes into an inside pocket. ‘We want to go to Garden Heights,’ Natalia said.

The man’s laughter sounded like a landslide. ‘You don’t get to choose. Your contracts will be auctioned to the buyers; you will go where they have work.’

‘We’re dancers,’ Natalia protested. ‘That is the work we have come here to do.’

‘Yes, dancers,’ the man nodded as he ushered them past.

Inside, the pews had been dumped haphazardly in a pile in one corner. Six folding tables were surrounded by moulded plastic chairs, occupied by expensively dressed, expressionless men. A dark-haired girl wearing just her underwear stood shivering in the centre of the floor.

‘Seven hundred,’ said a man with a pencil-thin moustache from one of the tables.

‘Eight hundred,’ was the response from two tables over.

Pencil moustache glared at the man who’d outbid him, before saying, ‘A thousand’, through clenched teeth.

‘Fifteen hundred,’ came the immediate reply. Pencil moustache folded his arms and shook his head.

‘Sold,’ said a skinny man with a cigar as thick as his wrist from the front of the room, as he tapped his ash onto the floor.

The girl tentatively picked up her clothes and followed the buyer through a door at the back of the hall.

‘You,’ the skinny man said, pointing at Natalia. ‘Lose the clothes, you’re up next.’

‘We’re a package deal,’ she said defiantly, and grabbed Tatiana’s hand. The skinny man’s gaze swept the room for any objections but no one spoke up.

‘Alright then, both of you strip.’

Tatiana looked to Natalia as she hesitantly reached for her top button. ‘I’ll take them,’ a white-haired man wearing a purple cravat said in clear, unaccented English. ‘Five thousand for the pair.’

‘This is your lucky day,’ the skinny man said with a squinting leer and a wave of his arm. ‘Follow him. You’re leaving for Garden Heights.’

*****

Decker set off early the next day to collect a half jar of coffee, owed from the previous night’s card game on A wing. He decided to knock for Tazeem and Mangle to walk into work together on the way back. The corridor was narrow and dimly lit and smelled faintly of bleach as the cleaning crew had recently mopped the floors. As he approached Tazeem’s room, he saw some white lettering on the dark blue paint of the door. He gave three slow knocks and waited for Tazeem to open up.

‘Decker, what brings you up this way?’ Tazeem asked when he saw who it was.

Decker didn’t answer but pointed to the door.

‘“Paki go home.” Not exactly original and I’d be more than happy to go home if it wasn’t for all the guards and fences.’

‘It looks like toothpaste so it’ll come off, no problem. Suppose you should go fetch one of the guards, they’re meant to log any racial stuff.’

‘Nah, I’ll just wash it off. Don’t wanna make the situation any worse than it is. Besides, if Mohammed or any of his lot see it, things will kick right off.’

Tazeem came into the kitchens about ten minutes after the start of shift looking jaded and squirrely. Decker had knocked at Mangle’s door and explained what had happened as they walked to the kitchens, and told him not to mention anything for now. Mangle’s immediate response was outrage, as he and Tazeem had become pretty close. Being imprisoned day after day, month after month, with the same people, tended to amplify the impact and importance of situations that surrounded them. Friendships bonded quicker than they would on the outside. Decker still received letters from guys he’d served time with early on in his sentence, proving that the prison cliché, ‘out of sight, out of mind’, wasn’t necessarily true.

Rivalries and disputes were also magnified, though, and could quickly turn into blood feuds. Having spent most of his adult life looking for warning signs to avoid trouble before it began, Decker’s
gut feeling told him to distance himself, but something he’d learned from Alf returned to him now: ‘Family are one thing, but blood will still let you down. But true friendship, that’s real family, and if you find someone who will stick by you no matter what, then you do whatever’s necessary to hold onto them.’

He had a good feeling about Mangle and Tazeem, and he admired the way Mangle was determined to stand shoulder to shoulder with his friend, but having seen just what could happen when things went off, he knew neither Tazeem nor Mangle were prepared.

Decker watched them from his spot by the ovens, going through their usual veg-prep duties. Les was working alongside Jim, chopping portions of meat from a huge side of beef. Jim was a lifer, the same as Decker, and had perfected a knife juggling routine over the many years he’d spent working prison kitchens. He watched as Jim effortlessly tossed and caught three bloodstained cleavers. Les ignored him, having seen the routine any number of times before. He raised his own cleaver up high before slamming it down into the chilled cow carcass. If the writing on Tazeem’s door was anything to do with Les, then he was giving nothing away.

Decker checked the timers on the ovens and went outside for some fresh air, as the atmosphere in the kitchen was thick from heat and humidity.

Under other circumstances the countryside view from the doors to the kitchens could have been described as tranquil, with clumps of hazel and beech trees and fields of barley under a panoramic blue sky. Most shrubs had been removed from within the grounds as prisoners used them to hide contraband that was thrown over the 30 foot fence from outside. Decker watched two squirrels scamper around the trunk of a solitary elm; another ran expertly along the chain link fence.

The serrated howl of a siren behind him snapped Decker out of his moment of relaxation. He turned and ran back into the building, hearing shouts from inside even over the deafening
alarm. His first thought was that someone must have been stabbed.

The kitchen staff, contracted from outside the prison system, weren’t trained to deal with physical altercations. All three huddled within the main office. Lawrence, the head cook, was stammering into a radio held between shaking hands. Decker rounded the bank of ovens to see most of the inmates gathered along the far wall beside the industrial-sized dishwashers.

Jim stood in the doorway to the raw meat section with a gleeful look on his face, two cleavers gripped loosely in his left hand. Les stalked in the veg room, brandishing another cleaver so tightly that his knuckles showed up as white as ivory. Mangle was trying to talk him into dropping it and Tazeem, with a long red slit down his right forearm that splashed blood like rose petals onto the cream-tiled floor, orbited the large aluminium shredder in clockwise revolutions.

No prison guards were on the scene yet, and judging from the intent on Les’s face they would arrive too late. Decker backed against the ovens and began to edge nearer, attempting to stay out of Les’s line of sight. If he could make it unseen to the raw meat room, he’d be within half a dozen steps of Les.

‘Leave it, Decker, this is none of your business,’ Jim said in a voice loud enough to carry as Decker moved past him.

He glared at Jim, who now adopted a smug grin, and then looked back at Les who had turned 45 degrees to keep both Tazeem and Decker within his field of vision.

‘Fuck off, Decker, don’t make this Paki one of your pet projects.’

Decker kept edging closer and said nothing. He knew he would either have to watch Tazeem get cut open, or he’d need to rush Les, who was now very aware of his presence.

Something scuffed against one of the benches behind him and Decker spun halfway around as Jim made to grab him by the neck. Decker gripped Jim at the wrist and elbow joint, dropped to one knee and threw his assailant over his shoulder. A satisfying
snap from the forearm and resulting scream of pain told him Jim would be no more trouble, but Les had made the most of the distraction and was almost on top of Tazeem. Decker got to his feet and rushed towards them just as Mangle seized a tray of chopped lettuce and threw it in Les’s face. Les momentarily lost composure and flailed wildly with the large steel blade.

Decker jumped him from behind. Wrapping his right forearm around Les’s throat he flexed his bicep tight against the carotid artery and gripped Les’s wrist in his left hand. Tazeem swung forward with a chopping board, knocking the cleaver out of Les’s hand, and then backed into the corner beside Mangle. Spittle frothed at Les’s mouth as he swore vengeance on Decker through clenched teeth.

‘Easy, big fella, you’re almost out,’ Decker said, clinging tightly to him.

Les sank to his knees. Then his hands, which had been clawing at Decker’s forearm, fell limp by his sides.

‘Decker, get the fuck off him and back up against the wall,’ a guard yelled, arriving just as he was no longer required.

Decker relaxed his grip and Les slumped forward face first onto the blood-splashed floor. Decker held up both palms and slowly backed away as two more guards arrived and ran to the fallen men. Another moved cautiously behind to cuff Decker.

‘Well, look who it is,’ Mangle said, glancing up from his chicken biryani.

‘Alright boys, you miss me?’ Decker said, putting his tray down at his usual seat at the table with Mangle and Tazeem.

‘Always, man. So what happened?’ Tazeem asked, looking concerned. His hand instinctively moved to touch the bandage covering his lacerated forearm.

‘I went before the Governor yesterday and gave my statement. He’d already had all the reports in from the kitchen staff and you lot, and Les and Jim’s twisted version of events. I’d been in solitary for two days so I had no way of corroborating with
anyone, and what I said must have tied in or I’d be on a bus out by now. I take it there’s been no sign of those dickheads?’

‘Nah. You think they’re already gone, then?’ Tazeem asked.

‘Definitely. How’s your arm anyway?’ Decker asked, gesturing with his fork after spearing a piece of chicken.

‘Eighteen stitches, but I’ll live. It would have been a whole lot worse if you hadn’t stepped in,’ Tazeem said, briefly making eye contact with Decker before looking back down at his plate.