Fear Me

So he lay on his rack and read his book and tried not to look at him. Which wasn’t easy, because the kid kept looking at him. Palmquist was pacing back and forth, rubbing his palms against his prison-issues, hugging himself, shaking his head. Half a dozen times now he’d stop, pitch a glance at Romero, open his mouth like he was going to say something, then just shake his head and go right on pacing.

“Why don’t you fucking relax?” Romero finally said. “You’re getting under my skin.”

Palmquis ~ith Gking relaxt sat down, then stood up, sat down again. “It’s gonna be dark soon,” he said.

“No shit?”

But the kid wasn’t having it. He studied his hands, thinking things and maybe wanting to say them, but not daring. He was pale as unleavened flour, his eyes like bruises punched into his face. He was jittery and nervous, couldn’t seem to sit still for more than a few moments at a stretch.

“That night,” he said. “The night Weems got it…did you hear anything?”

Romero dropped his book an inch or two. “Yeah, I heard you snoring.”

“Anything else?”

“What else would I hear?”

Palmquist nodded, rubbed his eyes. “I’m tired.”

“So go to sleep, do us both a fucking favor.”

But he just shook his head. “I don’t want to go to sleep. I don’t think I ever want to go to sleep.”

“Why is that?”

The kid looked at him and his eyes were practically bleeding. “Oh shit…if you only knew…”

And the bad part was, Romero figured he already did.

18

C Block this time.

About 2:10 A.M. it started.

There was screaming, but not the screaming of one man but the screaming of two and within seconds after it had begun, like an infectious disease, it spread from con to con on C until they were all going out of their minds.

Bobby Parks pulled the duty.

He had at least ten years on the rest of the guards and when it started, he told them to stay at their stations, told them to get Sergeant Warres right goddamn now.

And then he was racstarted, hs running, walkie-talkie in hand, calling for them to unlock doors as he made his way down to the end of C. The cons were out of their minds, hollering and yelling and clattering their bars and demanding to be let out. But Parks ignored them, went numb to all they said and did, concentrated on what was happening down at the end, must have been in cell #75 or #76, that general vicinity. He was hearing those screams that at first sounded like the inmates were being roasted over coals…gradually becoming something that human lungs were not capable of.

#75, all right.

Parks, big and pumped-up and more than a match for any of the trash that prison could throw at him, suddenly felt very small, very vulnerable, very afraid. He was thinking about Houle. About Jorgensen cracking up.

Man up, he told himself. Man up for chrissake. Do your job.

But those sounds…Jesus, he didn’t know what he was hearing.

A high-pitched screeching that was shrill and strident, piercing his eardrums, making his guts become cold, coiling snakes that twisted and mated, slithering up the back of his throat and filling his mouth. He wanted to turn back the other way, get away from that godawful racket that went right through him, made his molars ache and his marrow go to ice. The cons were all reaching out of their cells, demanding protection or sobbing and screaming, more than a few praying in broken voices.

The screeching was weird and sharp and echoing, had the tonal quality of buzzsaws tearing into planks. And there was a stink rising up, too, something flyblown and fermented and dirty.

Parks, his throat full of cinders and dry flaking things, got on his walkie-talkie as he neared #75. “It’s me,” he said dryly, breathlessly. “Open Seventy-Five…”

“Open it?” The guy on the other end couldn’t believe this.

“Do what I fucking said…”

Inside the cell, that screeching sound nearly drowned out the noise of things being slammed around, thrown against the bars. Wet sounds, ripping sounds, sounds like axes hacking into raw meat. Sounds Parks could not believe…the sound of something moving with moist undulations like snakes sliding out of swamps across wet leaves.

Parks edged in closer, clicked on his flashlight and saw He wasn’t sure what he saw, only that it made him take two fumbling steps back and that he nearly dropped his flashlight. He saw Heslip…he thought it might be Heslip…come slamming up againmmi/p›

And in that grim instant, before he was yanked away, Parks saw that Heslip was drenched red like somebody had dipped him in red ink and his body…broken and contorted, his face a bleeding husk, entirely fleshless like somebody had carved the meat away with a knife.

Then Heslip was yanked back and away.