23 Hours: A Vengeful Vampire Tale

27.

After Malvern left the command center the half-deads went back to their tasks, some watching monitors, some trying to make the warden more comfortable. Her breathing was heavy and her face went very pale. She sat down heavily in a chair and put her head between her knees. For a very long time she just sat like that, not moving or speaking, while the half-deads tried to adjust her clothing or mop her forehead with wet towels. Clara stood by, watching it all, unable to do a thing to help anyone.

Then the warden sat up very suddenly and stared around the room with a wild eye. “I’m fucking fine! Don’t you dare touch me,” she shouted, one hand lashing out to smack the face of the approaching half-dead. The creature squeaked in pain and spat teeth onto the ground. It had only been trying to change the bandage on her eye. “It’s not going to have time to get infected,” the warden insisted, “and that antibacterial shit stings like hell.”

She started to get up out of the chair, but clearly losing an eye had taken its toll on her. She nearly collapsed and had to let a half-dead ease her back down to her seat. She looked up at Clara and just breathed for a while, which seemed to be about all she was capable of. Then, with an effort of will that made sweat pop out in beads on her skin, she pushed herself up out of the chair and headed for the door. “Hsu, you stick with me,” she said, grabbing the door frame and holding herself up with both hands. “I don’t trust these bastards. One of them might try something when I’m not looking.” Clara walked over to the door and tried to take the warden’s arm, but the older woman pushed her away. “You’ve got no reason to be nice to me,” she said.

“You’re a living, breathing human being. The only one in this room other than me,” Clara suggested.

The warden snorted in derision. “Living,” she spat out. “It’s not all it’s cracked up to be. Not when it makes you feel like this. Come on.”

The warden was wobbling a little on her feet, but her voice hadn’t lost any of its steel. She stumbled through the corridors of the prison, Clara hobbling along behind her, careful not to take too long a stride. The warden stopped at several doorways to bark orders in at groups of half-deads who were gathered around radiators or television sets. “Get breakfast going! I’ve got more than a thousand assholes to feed. And you—I want a detail to check every dorm, every hour. Half these women hate the other half. We’ve got members of the Aryan Brotherhood crammed in the same cells as Latin Kings. If you don’t watch them at all times they cut each other to ribbons, because it’s what they think their boyfriends would want them to do. You see a shank, you take it away. You see them fist-fighting, you separate them. It isn’t rocket science. What? No, I don’t give a shit if they fuck each other. That’s what women in prison do, to pass the time. It’s not like they’re real dykes, they’re just bored.”

Clara’s shoulders tensed in anger, but then she saw the glazed look in the warden’s remaining eye, and the way her hands trembled. The older woman stopped suddenly in midstride and pressed one hand against her forehead. She looked like hell. It was hard not to feel a little sympathy for her—whether she deserved it or not.

“Are you feeling alright?” Clara asked. “Maybe a little feverish?”

Bellows snarled at Clara’s concern. Then, slowly she recovered her demeanor and answered the question. “Cold, actually,” the warden admitted. “I’m shivering. And there’s a ringing in my ears. I think I might be going into shock.” She set her jaw and shook off Clara’s hands. “But shock is something you can gut through, if you’re tough enough. I’ll be fine. I have work to do. For one thing, I have to kill your girlfriend.”

Clara’s heart shriveled in her chest. “What? No—no, that’s not how it’s supposed to happen. Malvern gave her twenty-three hours. Malvern wanted her to join her, to become—”

“Malvern’s not in charge right now. I don’t know why she’s wasting time on Caxton, honestly. I mean, I get the joke. It’s really funny, make the deadly vampire hunter into a vampire herself, ha ha. But that’s like asking a dog if he wants to guard your Thanksgiving dinner. He’s still a dog. He still wants to jump up there and get his snout in the gravy. No,” she said, “turning Caxton is a lousy idea. So I’m going to knock her off before sunset, so we don’t have to worry about her ever again.” She squinted at Clara. “You think Malvern will really be that upset? Caxton’s been a thorn in her side for so long, she’s not going to cry if she wakes up and finds her dead.”

“You can’t do that. You can’t!” Clara said.

The warden grinned through her pain. “Watch me,” she said.

At the next door they came to, the warden reached in and physically pulled a half-dead away from the television set it had been watching. Clara glanced at the screen and saw that it showed one of the prison’s shower rooms, currently empty. She was too frightened for Laura to worry much about what the half-dead had seen there.

“You. Get as many others together as you can and go down to the loading dock behind the cafeteria,” the warden ordered. “Kill Caxton.”

“No! You can’t do this!” Clara howled, but no one was listening.

The half-dead’s ruined face scrunched up in thought. “But, um, Miss Malvern wanted—” it managed to stammer out.

The warden grabbed the half-dead by its shoulders. “Miss Malvern is currently a puddle of goo in a coffin. Whereas I am very much awake and ready to pull your arms out of their sockets. Do this quietly, do it quickly, and don’t give her a chance to fight back. Do we understand?”

“Yes, ma’am,” the half-dead murmured, and then headed off down the hallway at a run.