Hell and Gone

locker. Tagged, bagged, and put into indefinite storage. Unless Deke had managed to check it out and send it to Kendra. Last personal effects and all that. All the time that had passed—weeks, maybe even months—they had to think he was either missing for good or dead.

No, that wasn’t right; Deke still believed. Because she’d said it herself:

Deke sent me.

Hardie lay down on the stiff mattress and tried to put both hands behind his head. His left arm set off little fireworks displays of agony, as if to say NO, YOU MAY NOT DO THAT. Hardie settled for his right hand, balled up into a fist, behind his head, and his left arm resting loose and semistraight. He put his feet up. He closed his eyes. He tried not to think. Just for a little while…

A knock jarred him out of his reverie.

“Warden,” a soft voice said. “May I see you?”

Hardie sat up, using his right arm for support. It was Whiskey. She was short, dark-haired, compact, and wore a deadly serious expression meant to offset the fact that she looked like a teenager. Hardie said nothing. She took his silence as an invitation, and walked across the room before sitting down at the edge of the bed near his feet. Okay, then, make yourself right at home. Whiskey remained seated at the edge of his bed, staring at him with big brown eyes. Hardie was confused.

“What is it?”

She inched closer, then unceremoniously placed her hand on his crotch.

Hardie acknowledged that he’d left himself wide open, so to speak. But she couldn’t seriously be hitting on him, could she?

Whiskey’s hand, though, pushed against his balls like she meant it. This was no accidental brush. She gave them an experimental squeeze, looking him dead in the eyes, the ghost of a smile on her face. It was the kind of strange smile that some people could make by turning the corners of their mouths downward; the smile was all in the eyes.

And then she squeezed his balls hard as a vise and pushed Hardie’s entire half-crippled body up against the wall. Her other hand flew to his throat and squeezed that, too.

“You will never do that again.”

Hardie’s body didn’t know to do with the pain on two fronts. His air had been cut off expertly—strongly. Whiskey’s grip was unreal. But the pain in his balls was the stuff of legend. Entire organ systems seemed to want to shut down immediately. Hardie gasped. Whiskey leaned in closer.

“You will never embarrass me in front of prisoners, Warden.”

Yes you crazy bitch yes I’ll call just take your hands off my testicles, please…

The twin grip on his balls and throat suddenly released. Her head cocked. Someone was speaking to her through the bud in her ear. Hardie could hear the faint buzzing. Then she turned her gaze back to Hardie, said “never” one last time, and ran out the door.

As soon as his internal organs unclenched enough to allow him to do so, Hardie sat up, reached for his cane, then started after her as best he could—cane-leg, cane-leg, cane-leg, cane-leg—through Victor’s empty room. Nobody was in the control booth, either, or Yankee’s quarters, or the food delivery room. Instead he found all four guards in the break room, batons in hand, yelling at someone.

“The hell’s going on?”

Hardie inched forward and saw that it was the prisoner called Horsehead.

Out of his cage.

The mask had slid up so that his mouth was uncovered. And he was snarling. Spitting. Cursing in Italian at them all. Holding his hands palms out, fingers curled like claws.

Victor turned his head quickly and noticed Hardie. “Stand back, Warden. We’ve got this.”

How the hell did the prisoner escape from his cell? Granted, the bars were old and rusted, but it still didn’t seem possible.

“Everybody ready?” Yankee said.

X-Ray nodded, as did Whiskey.

“Let’s do it,” Victor said.

Four against one—it wasn’t really a proper fight. Even for a foe as formidable as Horsehead, who lashed out with a flurry of fists and elbows and even a few desperate head butts, trying his best to gouge an opening in the wall of human bodies that were standing all around him. But the guards had electrified batons and saps that quickly pounded the resistance out of the prisoner.

After the beating, two of the guards dragged Horsehead back out to the main floor, a guard on each limb. Hardie trailed behind. By the time Hardie reached the main floor, the stage was already set. The sirens were blaring, the lights flashing. The other three prisoners were stirring, climbing to their feet and moving toward the bars like toy robots with comically large heads.

“What’s this, now?” Hardie asked.

“Escapes aren’t treated lightly here,” Victor said. “The other prisoners have to learn that any attempt will be met with an extreme—”

“You’re not understanding me. What are you going to do?”

“Standard procedure.”

“Do they bust out of their cages that often?”

Horsehead was on his knees, X-Ray and Yankee standing guard on either side. Whiskey carried over a rubber hose, which was attached to a wall fixture. When Horsehead saw the hose, he didn’t react. Not at first. He lowered his head, resigned to what was coming, as if it had happened before.

Christ, were they going to pull the old police trick of beating him with a rubber hose?

When the hose reached him, Horsehead launched a punch into Yankee’s stomach, then spun a few degrees on his knees and tried to do the same to X-Ray. No fancy moves, just blunt-force trauma. But X-Ray dodged the blow. Horsehead climbed off one knee, foot planted on the ground. X-Ray slammed a baton into Horsehead’s left shoulder blade and squeezed the trigger. ZZZZAP. Horsehead screamed in Italian and then Whiskey jammed her baton into his chest—almost as if the guards were trying to complete a circuit through the man’s heart.

Hardie took a step toward them.

Victor, circling on the periphery, said: “He’s fine. He’s going to be fine. The batons are tuned to nonlethal charges.”

Horsehead’s body got the message. His knees slammed back down onto the concrete, and his large muscled body wobbled there for a moment before collapsing to the ground. X-Ray and Whiskey zapped him a few more times on his head, neck, and the bottoms of his feet, and Horsehead’s body wobbled like a creature who’d been deboned.

“Goddamn it!”

“It’s almost over,” Victor said.

But it wasn’t. The guards were intent on finishing what they started. Horsehead was hauled back up to his knees, held in place. By this time, Yankee had recovered. He slapped Horsehead, slapped him again, a third time, then a fourth until his mouth finally flopped open and the hose nozzle was jammed in. Another guard held it in place by squeezing the top and bottom of Horsehead’s face, forcing his jaw shut. The water was turned on. The gush was violent and uncontrolled. It seemed to spray everywhere, out of the sides of Horsehead’s mouth and nose as his whole body began to writhe and guards struggled to hold him in place.

“Oh, fuck this,” Hardie said, and started forward with his cane.

Victor held up a hand, curled into a fist, and pointed it at Hardie. “Warden, stop.”

“Let him go,” Hardie said, a few steps closer now. He’d smack the guards with his goddamn cane if he had to. There was a difference between discipline and torture.

Then something squirted out of Victor’s wrist, nailing Hardie in the face. By the time he was trying to wipe it away with his sleeve, his eyes and nose were already on fire. Hardie, now blinded, screamed and lashed out toward Victor with his cane. Someone tackled him from the right. He yelled and tried to spin in midair, crashing onto the concrete floor with Victor on top of him.

“I told you not do that! You don’t understand! You stop this and we lose! Be sensible!”

“Get off me.”