In the Lone and Level Sands (85 page)

A path led up to the main entrance of the
prison. They parked on it, gathered their guns and supplies, and
headed for the double doors. Layne noticed water was trickling out
from under them. More came rushing out when he opened the
doors.

There was a lobby obviously not designed for
looks. Everything was cold and drab. What stood out was that there
was water everywhere. The sprinkler system had been engaged, and
was still going. The water went halfway up Layne’s shins.

“How long do you think this has been going
on?” Katie said.

“Days,” Layne replied.

There was a desk at the back wall, and to
either side was a barred gate. Beyond that, the zombies roamed
free. The ones that weren’t dressed in orange jumpsuits were
dressed in guard uniforms. They wandered slowly, weakly.

“They probably haven’t eaten in a long
time,” Ralph said.

“Hopefully it’ll work to our advantage,”
Layne said.

“What if this Norman Peters guy starved to
death?” Dex asked. Layne didn’t want to think they had come this
far just to find a bony body lying in a cell. He said nothing.

The drenched map on the wall told them that
the warden’s office was in a separate building, behind the prison.
Layne decided that was a likely place to find a manifest. He took a
set of keys from the desk and opened the gate to the right.

They didn’t wait for the zombies to notice
them. The survivors opened fire, and the sound of pouring water
drowned out the sound of their arrival. Most of the zombies fell
into the reddening water without noticing them, and the ones that
did notice hardly had time to move.

The survivors made their way down a long
hallway filled with offices. The water made movement difficult, and
they stayed on their guard. They couldn’t hear any better than the
zombies could.

They rounded a corner and down another
hallway that would’ve led in a large rectangle back to the lobby,
if not for the other hallway halfway down, which led out back.

The yard was also full of zombies, these
ones not impeded by water. Layne went outside first, firing at the
oncoming zombies, holding the door for his friends. Garrett moved
out, followed by Katie. They stayed back against the wall and
fired. Zombies fell, bursts of blood and chunks of them flying off.
They were swifter and smarter, but the guns the survivors had found
proved useful. The zombies were all dead by the time the rest of
the group made it outside.

Layne saw the warden’s office and headed for
it. There was another gate separating it from the rest of the yard,
and Layne tried the keys from the desk. None worked. “Well, what do
we do now?”

“Wait, you didn’t try this key,” Garrett
said. He took a grenade he had collected back in the makeshift
city, pulled the pin, and placed the grenade between two bars,
right above the lock. Everyone backed up as far as they could.

The gate blew off of its hinges, and much of
the surrounding fence was also torn away, leaving ample room for
the survivors to get through. Some of the razor ribbon from the top
dangled, and Layne warned the others to stay away from it.

They reached the warden’s office and tried
the door. It was locked. Layne broke the window on the door with
his gun, then reached in and unlocked it.

“Do you think the warden is still alive in
here?” Ralph said.

“I’m not sure, but let’s be careful,” Layne
replied. They entered the small building. It had a few rooms in it,
all had closed doors.

“Hello?” Katie called.

“Anybody home?” Keely said. Lacie fiddled
with a stack of papers on a desk.

“I don’t think there’s anyone here,” Layne
said. He saw a door labeled “Warden’s Office”, walked toward it,
and knocked. “Hello? Is anyone in there?”

There was no response. Layne tried the door,
but it was locked.

“Okay,” Garrett said. “Let’s break it
down.”

He and Layne got a running start and charged
the door, but bounced off. Shoulders sore, they charged again, and
this time the door gave. As they fell forward, all Layne saw was
clothes. He landed face-first against a moving body and shouted,
reaching for his gun, still stumbling. The body moved backward, and
he fell forward, saw nicely polished shoes rush toward his head,
and then he hit the ground. The body swung back and forth above
him. Lacie let out a little shriek when she looked into the
room.

“Don’t worry, he’s dead,” Garrett said. He
offered Layne a hand. Layne took it, and Garrett helped him up.
Together, they summed up the scene: A balding man in a nice suit
hung from the ceiling, his head to one side, eyes rolled back. His
suit was clean and untouched, a chair lay overturned a few inches
away.

“Guess he wasn’t a big fan of being eaten
alive,” Keely said.

“I’ll check his desk,” Layne said. His eyes
stayed on the warden even as he passed, just for safe measure. When
he was a few feet away, Layne turned his attention to the desk. He
rifled through it, checked the drawers, searched through papers.
Garrett searched a nearby closet, and Lacie looked through a filing
cabinet behind the desk.

“Found it!” Lacie said. She pulled a file
from the cabinet and set it on the desk. The folder read “Manifest
of Prisoners” on the front, and Layne opened it up. There were a
lot of codes and things that he didn’t understand, but he tried to
make sense of it.

He searched through the list, which was
alphabetized. “
M
…
N
…
O
…
P
.” He moved
his finger down the page. “I don’t get it. He’s not on here.”

The group exchanged glances.

“Maybe you misread it?” Katie said. Layne
checked again, then shook his head.

“That guy,” Ralph said, “the one who told us
about him. He said people didn’t want the word getting out, right?
Maybe they put him down under a different name?”

“That’s brilliant!” Dex said, patting Ralph
on the back.

“Maybe,” Layne said. “But we have no way of
knowing.”

He sighed, turned from the paper, and placed
his hands on his sides. He stared between the shades, out the
window. The sun was shining, it was warm out, and the grassy hills
and the buildings beyond them looked peaceful.

Katie flipped through the papers. “Hey,
there’s a prisoner number here with no name on it.”

Layne turned around and studied the page.
There was indeed a number with no name attached to it. He looked
through the other info. “Block D. Cell 605.”

“It’s worth a shot,” Garrett said.

The survivors headed back out of the office,
across the yard, and into the prison.

****

The water hadn’t subsided much while they
were gone, and it was still pouring from the sprinklers above their
heads. They went back toward the map in the lobby. Their path
remained clear of zombies. All that impeded them was the water.

“Maybe there’s some way we can turn this
off!” Garrett said over the deluge.

“We’ll check for a utility room when we get
to the map!” Layne said.

They went through the barred gate and back
into the lobby, where Layne brought them to a stop before the map.
They searched together.

“Here,” Keely said, pointing to a tiny green
square on the map marked “Utility”.

“It’s through one of the cell blocks,”
Garrett said.

“Then let’s hope the prisoners were locked
up when it happened,” Layne replied.

Still itching to get to Cell 605, Layne led
the way up the stairs. It was difficult, as a thick stream of water
poured down them. They were also difficult to see; there were no
windows and the power was out. Emergency lights shone, but were
very dim.

“Watch your step,” Layne said. The handrails
on either side came in handy as the survivors trudged step by
cautious step up the stairs.

The stairs led into a huge, open rectangle
with walkways before the cells. The walkways were barred to keep
people from falling over, but the bottom two feet consisted of
solid cement. Water had built up within these walkways and was
cascading over the cement like waterfalls. The same went on for
several rows of cells upward. Screams and moans could be heard, but
just barely. Bodies rested against the bars in some places,
floating in the water but too big to fit through the railing and
fall to the ground floor below. A few zombies moved around in their
cells. Some of them wandered the walkways, but none on the second
level, where the survivors were.

The water was more cumbersome than ever, and
the walkway they went down led them to another barred gate. This
one came down from the cement above, separating two of the cell
blocks.

“Well, now what do we do?” Dex asked.

“There’s no lock,” Layne said. He looked up
again. On the ceiling was a box, where a round yellow light blinked
every few seconds. “It’s electronic. Maybe we can force it
open.”

The bottom of the gate was under the water.
Layne reached down and tried to lift it. Garrett joined in,
followed by Dex and Katie. The cramped walkway didn’t allow for
much room to maneuver, and prevented the others from helping.

After a few moments of heaving, the bars
finally began to lift into the thick concrete ceiling. The
survivors lifted as high as they could, with Dex and Katie having
to eventually let go because they could no longer reach, and the
bars seemed to give more and more as they went up. Layne and
Garrett gave one final push, hands above their heads, and the bars
clicked into place.

Layne let go cautiously, and then Garrett
did the same. The bars didn’t move.

“Okay, let’s do this quickly,” Layne said.
“The utility room should be at the end of this walkway.” He headed
beneath the gate, and Katie followed. Garrett went through, but
waited there and ushered the others along, keeping a keen eye on
the metal bars above. Keely passed by Garrett, followed by Warren
and Lacie.

“Come on, guys, I don’t know how this thing
works,” Garrett said.

Dex passed beneath the bars, and a loud
grinding sound rang through the prison. The little yellow light
turned red, and the bars slid down. Garrett jumped forward to grab
them, but they pulled him down, too. Dex, whose first reaction had
been to look up, was hit in the chest and knocked down.

The bars stopped somewhere beneath the
water. Dex lay below them, his torso pinned underwater, his feet
kicking and splashing. Lacie screamed.

“Help!” Garrett said. Layne trudged back to
the gate. Ralph tried lifting, still on the other side of the bars,
looking for Dex’s face. Layne joined in with the gate, but the bars
would no longer move.

“What the hell happened?” Layne said.

“It must be some kind of lockdown!” Garrett
replied. “It won’t fucking move!”

“He’s drowning, help him!” Lacie cried.

Ralph let go of the bars. He searched below
the rushing water, felt Dex’s head. He tried to lift it above the
water, but it wouldn’t reach. “He can’t breathe! He can’t get his
head up!”

Layne and Garrett kept trying to lift, but
the gate wouldn’t budge.

“Layne, the utility room!” Katie said. “We
have to shut the water off!”

Layne stood up and looked down the hall. He
turned back to Garrett. “Okay, keep trying to get him out of there,
see if you can slide him out, just do something! I’ll try to shut
off the water!”

Layne made his way down the walkway, the
water pushing him back with every step. As he was wrestling the
thought that even if he shut the water off, it would never drain in
time for Dex to breathe, Layne lost his footing and fell into the
water. Now slowed even more by his wet clothes, Layne stood back up
and kept going.

A zombie around the corner of the walkway
noticed him. Layne reached for his gun and pulled the trigger, but
nothing happened. The gun had been soaked. “Help!” he shouted.

Back at the gate, the others were still
trying to lift the bars. Katie heard Layne and turned to look.
“Someone go with him, we’ve got this!”

“I’m on it,” Keely said. Easily the lightest
of the group, the water had the biggest effect on her. She used the
walkway rail for support as she made her way toward Layne.

The zombie had made its way between Layne
and the utility closet. He lost sight of it when it fell into the
water. He searched for movement, but in the dim light, all he could
see was water. He thought he felt something grab his leg, and he
stumbled backward, nearly knocking Keely over. She drew her
gun.

“Where is it?” she asked.

“I don’t know, it went into the water!”
Layne kicked his leg around, but felt nothing.

It had been far too long already. Dex had
gone nearly a minute with no air. Keely aimed at the water and
fired several shots, each a few yards apart. “I can’t see shit!”
she said.

“We have to keep moving!” Layne replied.
“Cover me, keep your eyes open!”

They stayed close together and moved a few
steps forward. Layne saw the closet fifteen feet ahead. Then, the
zombie roared as it lurched up from the water right in front of
him. Barely able to control itself in the water, it dove for him.
Keely put a bullet between its eyes, splattering the back of its
head. Chunks floated in the water beside its body.

“Thanks,” Layne said. “Let’s go!”

Lacie had started to cry. Warren was trying
to help raise the bars as well, but it was no use.

“He’s not moving around anymore!” Ralph said
to the others. He was kneeling in the water. It rushed past him,
almost up to his neck. He was holding Dex’s head in his hands.

“Oh God, please… No,” Lacie said.

“There has to be something we can do,”
Warren said, more asking than telling. Nothing came to mind.

“God, please, don’t take him.”

Ralph thought of Kyle. He thought of his
friend dying in front of him, begging to be spared the monstrosity
that was swiftly approaching, and how utterly powerless he had been
to stop it. These were his friends, his family, his closest allies,
and another was dying in his arms.