Outpost Season One Read online

  “That’s why it was second degree.” He laughed again.

  It was getting harder to hold it down.

  “Don’t worry,” he told her, “I can get you extra commissary. And when the thing’s born we’ll all look around and go ‘How the fuck did this happen?’ and go about our lives.”

  “And our baby?”

  Chris glared at her. “Your baby,” he said slowly, “will go to a good home.” He finished buttoning his uniform, and left her there.

  She took a long, hot shower. The water dancing along her skin with enough pressure to make it tingle. When she was done, she walked, steaming, to the mirror. Her hand made a brush stroke across it.

  Standing behind her was her child’s father.

  Five

  Sam Watkins turned the radio back on but only got static. He tried every channel, the search program going through every frequency three times before he punched it back off.

  “Piece of shit,” he swore. Craned his neck to make sure the car’s antenna wasn’t frozen over. It was fine. He shrugged. Then something else caught his eye: Birds. Up above and far to the right. Medium to large – maybe crows and hawks – circling a specific spot off the highway.

  He slowed, studying them.

  Assorted birds of prey: hawks, crows, turkey vultures, all dancing in a circle for a few moments before diving down and disappearing into the brush. Did they come back out?

  He pulled to the side and put the car in park.

  For a feeding frenzy like this, it had to be big game, but it was past hunting season by a month. He checked his watch, looked off to the distance where Brennick was just a long shadow on the horizon. The highway was completely empty. He hadn’t seen a single car since he left his house.

  He took his shotgun and got out.

  Six

  Erin Gibbs opened his eyes to the jangle of keys.

  “Cell one, Gibbs, coming out.”

  He heard the key go in, the lock retract, and the door swung open. Gibbs got out of bed and went out.

  “Gibbs,” Officer Rococoa said, his pale, shaved scalp glowing under the fluorescents.

  “Roc,” Gibbs returned. Tall, lean, clean shaven, his gray skin contrasting the orange of his jumpsuit.

  Rococoa nodded to the guard beside him, who kneeled down and started putting the manacles on Gibbs’ ankles and wrists, then joining them all in one set.

  “Better stay out at least a week this time,” Roc told Gibbs. “We’re spending so much time together; I’m starting to feel like we’re married.”

  Gibbs smiled at him. “You wish,” he said.

  The guard, Mark Jenson, finished his work and stood up. “All set,” he said.

  Roc nodded to him. “Take the man away.”

  Erin and the guard turned and started down the hall. They went down the right, staying in their clearly marked lane. Arrows instructed the illiterate on which direction they should turn, when they should walk, and when they should stop.

  They passed through the first gate, Rococoa calling after them, “And so the lion returns to the jungle: General Population!”

  Seven

  “What the fuck’s wrong with the TV?”

  “Yeah, why’s the TV not working?”

  “We’ve got rights, you know.”

  “Yeah, the fuck?”

  “Shut up, all of you,” Chris roared. “You don’t have any rights! If the Warden wants, he’ll lock all your asses back in your cells and keep them there until his Lord and Savior gets back. Is that what you want?”

  Two hundred felons growled at him.

  He turned back to Smith - Just Smith, as he liked to say – and said, “Come on, man, these guys are gonna fucking eat us if we don’t get it running soon. And I left the tear gas in my locker.”

  “It’s not me,” Smith told him. “I’ve done everything. It’s the cable company, I guess, we’re not getting any signal.”

  Chris returned his attention to the inmates. “Cable’s out, boys,” he announced.

  A collective groan echoed off the concrete walls.

  “I don’t see why you’re so pissed,” Chris said. “There’s fifteen hundred people in this here house, and now we’re all gonna miss the season finale. We were gonna Tivo for the other shifts.”

  There was only one Media Room – which held the television and twenty, heavily censored computers – and they couldn’t let all the men in at once. They split them into shifts based on racial and criminal affiliation. If they put all of them in one place at one time, they’d never be able to control them. Either whites or blacks or Hispanics would walk out, but only one. The women had their own Media Room, and Chris knew it was the same exact situation on their end, even if there were fewer ladies than men at Brennick.

  “We’ll call the cable company, try to get it worked out.”

  Chris pulled out his cell phone. Held it up to prove his point, and then squinted at it.

  “What?” Smith asked.

  “No service.”

  “It’s the walls,” Smith explained.

  “No.” Chris shook his head. “I always have service,” he said. “Look.” He pointed to the wi-fi detector on the screen. “No internet, either.”

  “Cable’s down.” Smith shrugged.

  “Let’s check with the Man.”

  Eight

  “Just tell me what happened,” Marcia Vasquez told Mercedes.

  “I got jumped.”

  “By who?”

  “You know the rules,” Mercedes told the nurse. “I rat her out, she kills me next time.”

  Marcia sighed and held a cotton swab to an alcohol bottle, tipped it upside down twice and removed it. Touched it to Mercedes’ bruised cheek. “It’s just not right,” she said.

  “She’ll get hers’.”

  “Excuse me?” Marcia asked, a penciled eyebrow rising up into her tan forehead.

  “I said: ‘It’s no big deal.’”

  “Of course.” Marcia finished cleaning Mercedes’ face, and then sighed again. “You’ll mend up just fine. I suggest you stay in your cell, get some rest, and think about telling me who did this.”

  Mercedes looked at her. Marcia huffed a bit and then rambled off in a frustrated, motherly tone: “You all can’t just keep beating, raping, and killing each other. She beats you, you kill her, her friends kill you, your friends kill them, and then I have to have a parade of dead women in here, and I know all their names, and they’re good girls who got caught in a bad world and made bad mistakes, and they’re in here hurting each other for no reason. Just tell me, stop the cycle, and we can go to the Warden and…”

  Mercedes touched her hand gingerly, stopping her.

  “We’re still in a bad world,” she said. “And even you can’t change that.”

  Nine

  Sam got to the edge of the brush and stopped, squinting to see inside. Breath seeped from his lips in ragged clots of steam. His shotgun cradled in his arms. The scavengers above still circling and diving – but individually not coming back up for minutes at a time.

  There had to be hundreds of them.

  He looked down the road in both directions. Still not a single car had passed.

  Took a deep breath, gripped the shotgun tight, and barged into the scrub. It tore at him as he went in, and tried to hold him as he made his way out into the forest beyond. He stopped. Looked around. Trying to get his bearings. He had only gone ten feet, but the forest floor was a different world. Trees stood as dense, monolithic guards in all directions, making his internal compass rotate like an over-wound watch.

  “The highway’s behind me,” he said aloud. It was suddenly nerve-racking not to hear the sound of cars passing on pavement. “The birds were a hundred feet in, and fifty to the left.”

  He started forward, shotgun held loose, safety off. The forest was awash in sounds. Trees cracking. Needles rustling. And birds – so many birds – screeching and tearing at something. He thought he heard fabric separating, the sound ricocheti
ng off the trees and playing along the forest floor.

  He kept on. The sounds getting louder. Now he could see the shadows flickering here and there as the birds flew overhead or swooped down. They were to his left now. He adjusted course and homed in. Twenty feet. Fifteen. Ten.

  He broke into a clearing and blanched. Shook his head to clear it, and fired a shot into the sky. The birds leapt off the body and took to flight, leaving the hollow carcass in the grass.

  Sam fumbled with his left hand, his right holding the scatter gun tightly, and took out his phone.

  Ten

  Chris, Smith, and Dave Sanders stood huddled in the communications office. Chris and Smith had no idea what any of the equipment did, but they were confident Dave knew all.

  “I don’t know what you guys want me to tell you,” Sanders said.

  Chris stared at him. “Do you know what will happen if these fuckers don’t get to watch Dancing with the Stars?” he asked. “The word ‘riot’ isn’t violent enough. Jesus, what do you expect them to do for entertainment? Read?”

  “The thought crossed my mind.”

  “Well, uncross it. They’ve been locked down for three weeks, all it’ll take is a nudge and we’ll have a war zone in here.”

  Dave shrugged, his glasses slipping down to the point of his nose at the movement. He pressed them back in place.

  “It’s not me,” he said. “Everything’s down. I tried to call it in and get someone to take a look at the lines, and the phones aren’t working. None of them. Land line or cell. Internet’s down. TV. The whole nine. And our phones don’t go down. We have a direct line to the governor’s office for emergencies.”

  “Did you try it?”

  “Over Dancing with the Stars? No. You’ll have to take it up with the Warden. But I already know what he’s going to say.”

  They waited. Dave looked at them, enjoying it.

  “Yeah?”

  “’I was looking for volunteers anyway.’”

  Eleven

  Erin Gibbs paused at the gate.

  "One coming through," Jenson called.

  There was a clack as the bolt came free and then an electric hum as the motor slid the gate along its track.

  Brody, the gatekeeper, called out from the other side of Plexiglas, his voice projected through a speaker in the wall: "How ya doin' Gibbs?”

  "How would you be doing if they threw you in with those animals, Brod?"

  "Maybe I should close the lock back up, send you back to solitary. Would you like that?"

  The "lock" was the gate, there were hundreds of them in Brennick, separating each section of the prison in the very likely case of a riot.

  Gibbs shrugged.

  "Tell you what," the voice scratched out, "I'll let you in if you promise to play nice."

  "Deal. The next time I take a shank off someone in the middle of the night, I'll give it right back."

  Brody glared at him.

  "And not in his belly this time," Gibbs assured him.

  They passed through the lock. Behind them, the motor started back up and the gate closed.

  Clack.

  Twelve

  "This is a prison, not a retirement home. I don't give half a shit if they have TV."

  Chris started to say something, but Warden Bowers held up a palm.

  "The phones are a different story. We need those phones operational."

  Chris nodded.

  Bowers keyed up his intercom and said, "Sharon. Get a team out of maintenance down to check the fiber optics line. Every inch. I want those phones back up and running."

  "Yes sir, on it."

  "Do you feel better?" he asked Chris.

  "What about the cell phones? Why aren't our cell phones working?"

  Bowers sighed and punched the intercom. "And have them check the power lines to the cell tower. Chris was right in the middle of a hot sexting session and we ruined it."

  Sharon giggled back: "Can do, Warden."

  "Now," he said, "I don't want this to become a union issue, but how about you two get back to - I don't know - guarding prisoners. Sound good?"

  They nodded.

  "Dismissed."

  Thirteen

  Sam Watkins cursed his phone again and held it up. The little signal bars were gone, and in their place it said "SOS."

  "I’m calling the fucking SOS," he grumbled. If a cell phone can't find its own network, they're designed to operate on any network if only to make emergency calls. This close to Brennick, he should have been picking up the prison's cell tower. Sam pocketed his phone and looked down at the body.

  It had been a woman. At some point. Now it was a hollowed out shell. Blood was haloed around it in a circumference of about fifteen feet. The head had been neatly - and quickly - picked clean of eyes, ears, and lips. She hadn't been dead long by the look of it. The animals had been very efficient with this corpse. Far more efficient than Sam thought possible. It would take a pack of wolves to do this. With the birds finishing it off.

  "More like a hundred," he said to no one.

  It wasn't just the intestines that had been gnawed at - they were all gone - but the legs, arms, neck - everything was torn and shredded.

  He tried his phone again: Nothing.

  "Shit."

  He looked around him, did three hundred sixty degrees and then made a decision. The birds couldn't do any more damage than they already had. The body would keep until he got to the prison, got on the phone and got the right people to the scene.

  Something struck him. He hadn't even thought about it. Amazing how quickly instinct and training took over. He couldn’t be here. He couldn’t find this. Not now. Not ever.

  He looked around again, then backed his way out of the clearing.

  Fourteen

  Jessie looked up from her novel as Mercedes came into their cell.

  “How’d it… oh,” Jessie said. She came up close and looked at the bruises. “Not well, I guess.”

  “As well as I could have expected.”

  Mercedes saw Jessie’s jaw working.

  “He did this to you?” she asked.

  Mercedes shook her head. “No,” she said. “Random coincidence.”

  “Don’t be a bitch.”

  “I’m serious. It wasn’t Chris.”

  “Who then?” Jessie flicked her head and the bit of red hair that always hung in her eyes flipped back and then dropped into its normal place.

  Mercedes squirmed. “Just two fucking hos, okay?” she told Jessie. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “So it was that limp dick piece of shit.”

  “What are you gonna do? Take out a guard? A male guard?”

  “Cocksucker isn’t even supposed to be in our wing. He comes over for…” Jessie trailed off.

  Mercedes looked at her, eyebrows raised.

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s fine. He’ll get his. They all will. Sooner or later, they’re all going to get what’s coming to them.”

  Fifteen

  “You poor, stupid, unlucky bastard,” Mike Sanchez told Tall Bill Mahone.

  “What?” Bill asked.

  “He’s out,” Ray Torez explained.

  “Who?”

  “Your new cell mate.” Torez pointed so Bill could see. “Erin Gibbs,” he said.

  “He doesn’t look like much.”

  “That’s what they always say,” Mike whispered, “just before he snaps their neck like a pigeon’s.”

  Tall Bill squinted at him. “He white or black?” he asked.

  “Neither,” Sanchez explained. “Or both. Right down the middle, really. But in here: he’s neither.”

  “What’s with the box?” Bill pointed at the box Gibbs carried in his now unchained hands.

  “Oh,” Mike said, and laughed. “That’s his personal effects.”

  Bill Mahone looked at Mike and then at Ray.

  Ray explained: “See, usually when you get sent to solitary, they just leave your shit in your cell. The id
ea is it’ll be sitting there when you get back.” He laughed this time. “Unless you’ve got a hell of a cellie, it’s all gone when you get back.”

  “But,” Mike cut in, “in this case, he made such a mess they just went through all his stuff, anything without blood on it they stuck in that box and put it in the basement.”

  Bill looked sick. He opened his mouth a few times to talk, but couldn’t find words.

  “Said his cellmate came at him with a shank,” Ray said, shrugged.

  “You poor, stupid, unlucky bastard,” Mike repeated.

  Sixteen

  Sam pulled up to Brennick’s front gate and stopped. Twelve feet tall chain link with razor wire spun neatly atop it, it was the last line of offense against escape.

  “You’re late,” all four hundred pounds of Tim Harper said.

  “You’re an asshole,” Sam told him.

  “Both good points.”

  “Open the gate.”

  “You know,” Tim drawled, leaning comfortably against the guard post he had manned for nearly a decade, “Warden’s gonna have your ass if you keep this up. He can’t have his number two late three days a week. He takes that personally.”

  “It’s fine,” Sam growled, “I’ll just tell him you wouldn’t open the gate.”

  “You could have just called ahead,” Tim continued, seemingly unaware of the threat. “I would have opened it and you wouldn’t’ve even needed to slow down.”

  “I tried, my cell didn’t have a signal.”

  “Oh, that’s right, Wardens got some boys out looking at the cell tower and phone lines.”

  “Good.”

  Tim shrugged. “Strange for them all to go out at once.”