Bloodstained Oz Read online

  There came another clatter, a bang of metal, and all of the doors on cell block E opened at once, swinging out an inch or two. Relief flooded through Hank and he laughed softly, the uneasiness of the prior moments eclipsed by this turn of events.

  “Emergency procedures!” called an inmate, triumphantly. “They can’t just let us burn to death. Got to let us loose.”

  Men started to push out into the corridor, tentatively at first. Awash in that crimson light, they did look a little bit like the residents of Hell. Then they broke, like wild horses at a sudden noise, and ran for the doors that would take them into the main hall and then out into the yard.

  Hank held onto the bars of his cell door and for a moment a ripple of fear went through him and he was tempted to pull the door shut, lock himself back inside. It was a wild, lunatic impulse and he had no idea where it had come from. He laughed at the foolishness of it, then turned and ran to his bunk, where he had hidden the emerald necklace he had found earlier in the day. It was warm to the touch, just as the bars had been cold.

  This was his future. These jewels, the gold, they were going to give him another life, a kind of life he had never even allowed himself to imagine.

  He ran out into the now empty corridor, the cell door clanging as it swung open.

  “Hank,” a voice said.

  Haskell Prosser was still in his cell. The door hung open a few inches but Prosser hid back in the shadows, the red light washing over him, then throwing him into darkness once again.

  “What you doin’, son? Run.”

  Prosser shook his head. “You try to run off, the guards’ll beat your ass. Me, I’ll wait for order to be restored, and take what comes.”

  Hank shrugged. “Never been in me to just sit back, take what comes, you know? Be seeing you.”

  “Maybe,” Prosser replied.

  By then Hank wasn’t listening. He ran down the corridor and pushed out into the main hall. None of the doors were locked, which made sense. What the guys had said was right, the guards couldn’t just leave them all there to burn.

  Those were the sorts of ordinary thoughts—sensible thoughts—that were in his mind when he emerged on the catwalk above the main hall. Then his eyes beheld the scene that unfolded below.

  In the hellish strobing of the emergency lights, and with the bleating of the fire alarm filling the air, a slaughter was in progress. Bodies were strewn on the floor, some of them cut open, others with limbs torn off, bone jutting from ragged stumps. J.D. Cotton lay at the bottom of the stairs only a few feet away from Hank, his head torn so violently aside that it hung onto his neck from a flap of throat and gristle.

  The blood was everywhere, pools of it gleaming black in the red light.

  Screams competed with the fire alarm.

  At first he thought it was the inmates that had done it, that with the cell doors open they had gone on some kind of rampage. But then he saw that some of the corpses wore prison blues, and with a blink the reality of this carnage struck him.

  The guards and the cons were both being slaughtered and trying desperately to fight back, some of them side by side as they attempted to survive.

  The killers had no weapons other than their hands. In the darkness they moved with a swiftness that seemed impossible, appearing in one place during this flash of red light, and another during the next. They were hideous: men and women with long, lithe bodies, and fingers that were like knives. Even in the strobing scarlet, their flesh seemed pale, tinged with a deathly green. Their mouths were stretched impossibly wide as though their jaws were unhinged and filled with gleaming yellow fangs as long as knitting needles.

  But their eyes were the worst.

  They were emeralds.

  The monsters, the killers, whose claws and faces and needle teeth and arms were splashed with blood, who tore into prisoner and guard with equal fervor, thrusting long tongues into fresh wounds with the zeal of a whoremaster . . . they had emeralds for eyes. Gems exactly like the one Emmett had found the day before; Emmett, who had screamed in agony at first in the Hole, and then later in terror, and then finally not at all. Down in the dark, alone. Poor, dead Emmett.

  The gems glowed bright green, even in the weak red emergency light.

  The necklace weighed Hank down like his pocket was full of rocks. He gritted his teeth and clapped his hand over the bulge it made and it still felt warm there. Frantic, he glanced down and saw that the jewels in the necklace glowed now, just like their eyes, shimmering through the fabric of his pants.

  Screams resounded through the hall. He spared one last look at J.D. Cotton’s messy decapitation and then peered over the railing again, knowing he had to go back, had to hide himself, but also knowing that there was nowhere to hide. If he was like Prosser and just hid in his cell, they would come to him eventually.

  The main doors had been torn off of their frames, glass shattered and steel twisted. The wire mesh was shredded. A half dozen guards had created a small phalanx off to the right of the door, and now they leveled shotguns at the monsters that came through from outside. The guns exploded with thunder, punctuating the fire alarm, and the creatures—these emerald vampires—twitched and danced with the impact. One of them was thrown backward in two pieces, completely cut in two at the middle.

  As it hit the floor, the vampire’s upper body began dragging itself toward the pelvis and legs.

  One of the guards saw this and turned his shotgun on himself, blowing brain and bone across the floor.

  The massacre continued. There were far more prisoners and guards than there were monsters, but the emerald vampires kept coming through the door, and the men—the living—were being slaughtered, the odds changing in favor of the dead with each passing moment.

  “There!” called a voice like shattering glass.

  Hank looked down and saw that he’d been noticed. It had to happen. He’d been a fool to just stand there. The female had long, black hair thick and knotted with drying blood. She stared at him with those emerald eyes, pointing.

  A prisoner, a huge black man he knew only as Moon, caved in the back of the vampire’s head with a metal chair.

  Hank ran. He’d gotten lucky once. No way was he going to get that kind of luck again. The necklace was heavy in his pocket as he ran up to the next level, where the warden had his office and the guards had their lunchroom.

  As he hit the top of the stairs and rounded a corner, someone stepped in front of him, shotgun aimed at his gut. Hank twisted even as he lunged, grabbed hold of the shotgun barrel and yanked it past him just as it went off. The bones in his hand and arm rang with the blast but he was hadn’t been hit.

  The guard wasn’t anyone he recognized. Hank ripped the shotgun from his hands and cracked him in the forehead with the butt. The man went down hard and without a sound, either unconscious or dead. He didn’t slow down to find out which.

  Doors slammed as he ran past. No one else came out to challenge him. Whatever members of the prison staff had been on the warden’s floor when the monsters attacked, they were hiding out, fooling themselves into thinking there was anywhere here that they might be safe from those things.

  Hank was an optimist, but he wasn’t a jackass. There was no hiding from the things he’d seen downstairs. The only option was getting out, getting far enough away that either they couldn’t track him, or couldn’t be bothered.

  At the end of the corridor was a window. Screams still echoed from downstairs, but any second they’d be scuttling up the stairs, and once they came around the corner back the way he’d come and got a look at him, he was dead.

  He kicked the window out, shards of glass spraying out into the night and showering down into the prison yard. Shotgun clutched in one hand, he forced himself into the frame, boots crunching the glass that remained, careful not to touch the jutting fragments.

  Things moved in the darkness of the yard. Several guards were out there, shooting into the night. Unearthly cries made Hank shudder, but all he could focus
on was the drop below him. Half a dozen feet away from the wall below was a work shed where many of the tools they used out in the field were stored at night. There were two fences around the prison . . . but the work shed was outside the inner fence. Couldn’t have the prisoners getting their hands on shovels and hoes and scythes unexpectedly.

  Perfect.

  He dropped, pushing off the frame with a crunch of glass, and landed on top of the shed. The shotgun shook loose from his hand as he crumbled into a roll that took him off the metal roof. With a grunt he hit the dirt and sat up quickly, checking himself over, gleeful to discover that nothing in him had broken with the impact. The shotgun had clattered to the ground a few feet away and, remarkably, had not discharged. But the sound of him landing on the metal roof had been like thunder and he was sure it would bring them running.

  Hank grabbed the shotgun and looked around. He was between the two fences. To his right, the outer fence beckoned, the razor wire at the top gleaming in the moonlight, slashes like grinning mouths laughing at him in the dark, daring him to climb. But he had no other choice.

  He started for the fence, and then heard the hissing behind him.

  Hank spun around and saw three of them climbing the inner fence. They’d made it into the central prison yard, but now they’d heard him or smelled him, and these three had diverted from the attack on the people within and come for him. Their dagger fingers curled around the metal fence and their emerald eyes gleamed bright green in the night, staring hungrily at him as they climbed, needle teeth bared. One of them had a long, thin rivulet of drool hanging from his mouth.

  That was the one he shot.

  The shotgun jumped in his hands and the blast tore a hole in the thing and blew it right off of the fence. The other two didn’t even flinch, only kept climbing. Hank cocked it and fired again, but his aim was slightly off and the shot sheared the left arm off the one nearest the top.

  One-handed, it did not even slow down.

  And on the dirt behind them, the third one began to stir, one hand clutching the wound in its chest.

  Hank felt cold inside, as though his bones were ice. He wanted to scream at them, to curse them, but it was clear they were already cursed. His words would mean nothing.

  He cocked the shotgun again, but there were no more shells.

  “Shit,” he whispered, staring, throat working, unable to swallow. He began to shake, but forced himself to be still.

  Frantic, he spun and ran to the shed. With the butt of the shotgun he broke the lock and tore the door open. The gun clattered, useless, to his feet and he reached into the shed and grabbed the first sharp thing he set his eyes upon: a long, sharp, scythe. It felt familiar in his hands from the years he’d spent working with such a tool in the prison fields.

  Without looking to see how near they were, he ran for the outer fence. Then one of them screeched at him, a terrible, bestial sound, and he could not help looking back.

  The monster at the top had tried to climb over and become tangled in the barbed wire, its single arm not enough to free it. Mouth gaping sickeningly wide, needle teeth gleaming, it stared at him and thrashed in the barbed wire, desperate to reach him, to gorge itself on his blood, but only getting itself tangled even more.

  The one he’d shot in the gut was still flopping around on the ground, trying to rise, but now the third reached the top of the fence. It drew the barbed wire together in one powerful hand, twined long fingers around it, and then leaped over, dropping to the ground on the other side, nothing separating it from Hank except for forty feet of parched Kansas dirt.

  It ran at him, swift and graceful, eyes merciless. Hank knew he was going to die. He raised the scythe in his hands, but knew it was useless. But then the vampire faltered, slowing, and stared at him, moving more cautiously as it approached.

  Confused, wracked with terror and desperation, he glanced down to see what it was staring at, and only then felt the warm weight of the necklace in his pocket. The emeralds within glowed through the fabric.

  Hank tugged the necklace out and threw it into the dirt five feet in front of him.

  The vampire dove for it.

  He swung the scythe and its head came off with a dry crackle, like husking corn. It split when it hit the ground, and the thing’s body went down on its knees, beginning to wither and shrink even as it fell over. When he pulled the necklace from its hands, its fingers disintegrated. He stuck the necklace back in his pocket, liking its weight all the more now.

  In the prison yard, the one he’d gutshot was crawling toward the inner fence, still trying to get at him. It looked like the wound in its abdomen was healing up pretty quickly now.

  He figured he’d keep the scythe.

  Carefully, but quickly, he climbed the outer fence. Hank twisted the blade of the scythe in the barbed wire to knot it up tight, and managed only to scrape one leg a little as he swung over, braced on the other side, pulled the scythe out and dropped to the ground.

  Free.

  For now.

  Chapter Ten

  In the back of the wagon, Elisa sat on the bed and sang softly to her baby, holding Jeremiah in her arms and rocking him to sleep. Her own mother would have been horrified to see her, would have told her to let her little boy cry himself to sleep, to learn to go to bed that way. But Elisa could not stand to hear Jeremiah cry.

  “It don’t mean a thing, if it ain’t got that swing. It don’t mean a thing, all you’ve got to do is sing.” Her voice was low, barely above a whisper as she cradled the baby against her. The song was incongruous, a bouncy tune that made for a strange lullaby, but it made her happy, and if she sang it quietly and a bit more slowly, tapping Jeremiah’s bottom along with the rhythm, it always put him to sleep.

  “It makes no difference if it’s sweet or hot. Just keep that rhythm, give it everything you’ve got.”

  A contented smile touched her lips and she glanced down at Jeremiah’s cherubic face. His eyelids fluttered as he struggled against sleep, but he was drifting away. His tiny mouth was slack, lips in a pout, and a thin line of drool ran down his chin. Her heart swelled with love and she felt almost giddy. There were times when nothing else mattered but this moment, with her baby in her arms and the tangible certainty of her love for him.

  “It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing,” she said, voice dropping even lower now.

  Elisa stopped rocking the baby and leaned back against the wall of the wagon. She sang under her breath, but the words didn’t mean anything to her anymore. Another few minutes and she would lay Jeremiah on the bed and go out to help Stefan clean up after dinner. Perhaps they would sit by the remaining embers of their campfire. Perhaps they would make love.

  She thought she would like that. It had been too long since she had felt his hands upon her, rough and tender at the same time.

  The night was hot, but a breeze whisked through the open flaps on either end of the wagon. The horses were grazing close by, but far enough away that the smell did not linger.

  Elisa did not want to stay in Kansas any more. She missed the east. Truth be told, she missed the old country as well. But anywhere else would do. Anywhere but here. Kansas had a blight upon it, she thought. Stefan would not even consider leaving, however. His faith would not allow it. He was convinced that God would provide, that the Lord did not burden a man with more than he could handle.

  As she held her baby close, Elisa stared around the back of the wagon at the images of Christ and of the Virgin Mother that hung from the walls and the roof. A rosary dangled at the front, just behind the opening that allowed passage from inside the wagon up to the driver’s seat. And the crucifixes . . . there were nearly as many as there were bottles of Romany Elixir. So many that anyone poking their head into the back of the wagon would presume that the travelers sold crosses as well as elixir. But they were not for sale. They were Stefan’s, symbols of his faith.

  Elisa did not believe in God. If He existed, she was certain He cared not
at all for ordinary people. Never in her life had she felt any hint of His presence. Stefan insisted that Jeremiah was proof, that the love she felt for her child was a part of God’s love, but Elisa hated that notion. She and Stefan had made love and created a child between them. Cows did the same thing, but didn’t presume God was paying them any special attention.

  Her love was her own, and that was what made it precious to her.

  Again her gaze swept the back of the wagon. Stefan’s gun sat propped against the inside and she shuddered to look at it, thinking of the lion they had seen that day. It seemed impossible to her, but when she thought about it, she decided it must have escaped from some traveling circus. Not that she’d heard of any such show passing through the area, but what other explanation was there?

  A small snore came from the baby in her arms. She laughed softly to herself and studied Jeremiah again. With her right hand she brushed at the thickening hair on his scalp. Time to put him down, now.

  “All right, my darling,” Elisa whispered. She slid off of the bed and turned, putting the baby onto the bed. There was a small cradle in the back of the wagon, but she rarely used it. She and Stefan were thin enough that there was room for Jeremiah with them, and it felt safe, having them both so close to her.

  With her son snoring lightly, Elisa smoothed her skirt and went to the back of the wagon. Stefan had buried the remains of their dinner in order to keep animals away, particularly after they’d seen the lion. As she climbed out of the wagon, Elisa saw him walking back from where the horses were grazing. It was getting cold, as it so often did out on the plains at night, even when the summer days were at their warmest. The fire flickered, beginning to die, and she considered throwing some thistle onto the flames to make them last longer.

  “Jeremiah’s asleep,” she told her husband.

  Stefan smiled at her and reached for her. Elisa took his hand and let him pull her into an embrace. There by the fire he held her, and she thought that perhaps life on the plains was not so terrible after all, even with the storms and the traveling and the clash between her husband’s faith and his willingness to say whatever was necessary to sell his magical “elixir.” How he justified it, she did not know. It was something—like her lack of belief in the Lord—that they avoided discussing whenever possible.