23 Hours: A Vengeful Vampire Tale

41.

Gert leaned up against the wall, next to the room’s only door, and stood there, giggling. She had her hunting knife in her hand, holding it tight until her knuckles turned white around its handle. “This is. This is. This is. It. Right?” she said, her breath whipsawing in and out of her lungs.

“I ought to leave you right here,” Caxton said. “That was idiotic what you did. It could get both of us killed. I can’t believe you took drugs at a time like this.”

“Keeps me. Keeps me. Keeps me.” Gert swallowed noisily. “Focused. Alert. Awake. You coming?”

“Hold on,” Caxton had time to shout before Gert tore open the door and ran out into the hall. Cursing, she followed her celly her shotgun held in both hands so she could bring it around quickly when she needed it. She wanted to grab Gert, pull her back into the room, and beat some sense into her— make her understand the plan better before she went rushing into danger. But frankly, she seemed to have the plan down already.

It was simple enough: kill anything that moves.

They found their first half-dead at the end of a short corridor. It poked its head out of a door as if looking to see what was making all that noise. The answer was Gert, who roared as she stabbed and cut her way through the door, leaving the half-dead in pieces. On the other side of the door was a broad room filled with old ratty couches and darkened vending machines. A staff lounge for COs, perhaps, in better times. The only light came through the door behind the two women, but it was enough to show them the three half-deads crouched around a dead television monitor.

“Get clear,” Caxton yelled, as she brought her shotgun around to blow away the one nearest to her. Gert ignored her and jumped onto the half-dead she’d been aiming at, grabbing its ear and yanking its head sideways to stab at its throat. The other two tried to scramble over the back of the couch, but Caxton was waiting for them. She knocked one’s face in with the butt of her shotgun, then brought the other one down with a shot to the back of its neck. The plastic bullet passed right through its throat and its head slumped over to the left, dangling by a few scraps of skin. It kept running. Caxton followed close on its heels and knocked it to the floor, then smashed in the back of its skull with one quick blow.

There was a stairwell on the other side of the lounge. Gert was already racing down its steps, into deep gloom. Caxton followed more slowly, knowing that Gert could be rushing into certain death. Half-deads were cowardly and not very bright, but they were perfectly capable of setting cunning traps for the unwary.

At the next landing down someone had left a votive candle burning to give a little bit of light. It showed Caxton a door leading into the second floor of the central tower. Gert slammed into the door with her shoulder hard enough to knock it off its hinges. She didn’t need to—it was unlocked, and it slapped open with a loud bang as Gert staggered out into a large open space.

Caxton reloaded her shotgun as she ran after her celly knowing that if Gert’s drugged-up recklessness was going to get them killed, this was the precise moment when it would happen. The room behind the door would be full of half-deads, she thought. Or it would be booby-trapped. A net would fall down over them as they passed through the door, or who knew? Maybe someone had left land mines lying around. Caxton doubted that a modern prison would have many land mines in its inventory, but she wouldn’t put it past SCI-Marcy from what she’d seen so far. She expected to find machine-gun nests inside the big room, or lines of half-deads holding wicked carving knives, or even a cohort of live, human COs holding assault rifles, turned to Malvern’s cause through some trickery.

The last thing she expected was to find the warden working at a desk, apparently all alone.

“Gert, get back,” Caxton said, as Gert started rushing toward the older woman.

Warden Bellows was sitting behind a massive desk that was bathed in yellow light. A generator sat on the floor behind her, chugging away and pouring black smoke up at the ceiling. The light came from a pair of portable metal stands holding miniature searchlights, both of which were focused directly on the desk. The warden’s face was only partly visible, only her mouth and her nose lit up enough to be recognizable. In the darkness beyond the reach of the light one of her eyes twinkled.

Caxton couldn’t see much of the rest of the big room, but she had the impression it was full of cages, full of small prison cells made of nothing but bars and locks.

The warden looked up and must have seen Caxton staring into the shadows. “This used to be the psychiatric ward,” Bellows said. “Now we use the cages as cooling-down rooms. When prisoners get too violent we bring them here and let them sit in a cage for a while. Never more than twenty-four hours. If they can’t calm down after that long, we move them to the SHU.”

“I need guns,” Caxton said. There was no reason not to get to the point. She had her shotgun pointed at the warden’s head. The plastic bullet inside wouldn’t kill the woman—she was still alive, and therefore had more structural integrity than a half-dead—but it would make her very, very unhappy. “Real guns. Where’s the armory?”

“Downstairs.” The warden picked up a piece of paper from her desk as if this were the kind of question she was asked every day. “You’ll have some trouble getting in, though. When the lights went out I sent most of my half-deads down there to wait for you. There was nothing for them to do up here, and I figured no matter what your next move might be you would have to go through the Hub.”

“The Hub?” Gert asked. “What are you, what are—you talking—”

The warden stared at Gert as if she were some kind of rare insect. Fascinating and repellent at the same time. “Uh-oh,” she said. “Someone’s been naughty. The Hub is where every long corridor in the prison comes together. It’s designed as a choke point. In case a riot breaks out in one dorm, we can lock down the Hub and it can’t spread to any other wing. Believe me, you won’t get through it.”

“Even if I use you as a hostage?” Caxton asked.

“That would be a good plan, normally. With Malvern in her coffin I’m in charge, and if I told the half-deads down there to back off, they would have to. You would march right through there, presumably with one arm around my neck, right? Then I could unlock the armory door for you, and you could go in and get all the guns you wanted. There’s a problem with that, however.”

“Oh?” Caxton asked.

“Yes. I’m not going to let you take me hostage.”

Caxton steadied her grip on the shotgun and leaned forward into a firing stance.

The warden leaned forward into the light. For the first time Caxton saw that one of her eyes was missing, a ragged hole in her face ringed with crusted blood. It wasn’t even covered by a bandage. “I’ve had one shit day,” the warden said. She pulled a pistol out of a drawer of her desk and before Caxton could shoot she brought it up to point at her own temple. “You give me a reason, any reason at all, and I’ll blow my own brains out,” she said.