The Big Bang (17 page)

When they closed the door on the last cell, death row was quiet. The smell made Taneisha's stomach twist, but later in her life she'd be accustomed to the smell of blood, burnt hair, and gunpowder.

“Now we're going to Protective Seg,” Mr. G said huskily, reloading his pistol with hands that trembled. Tom reloaded his shotgun, sweat trickling down by his ears.

Oh, God, the Warden looked old in the permanent daylight from the hall lamps. Taneisha thought she'd seen hard men before, men who dealt pain and laughed at their victim's injuries. Now she saw that they were just animals, lashing out with no more care for their targets than a wolf ripping the flesh off a still-flopping rabbit. Now she saw what was really before her eyes: a good man doing an incredibly hard thing, not for himself, but for people he didn't even know and would never meet. The difference was that the cost was being paid by the good man.

Four known snitches were in Protective Seg. Three of them had extensive records and had bartered information for life sentences. They wouldn't ever leave their cells again.

At the cell of the first child molester, Mr. G paused while the man-shaped thing within protested and demanded his rights. “Ms. Porter?” He was holding the pistol out to her, gripping it near the hammer, handle first.

She extended her hand, took the weapon. It was warm and sweaty from his grip, the strangely cross-hatched metal rubbing against her palm. It was an old .45 semi-automatic, but she didn't know that at the time. They'd been developed by the US Army in the early years of the twentieth century, to combat the Philippine Insurrection. The ordinary .38 pistol had been insufficient to knock down Moro warriors hopped up on hallucinogens and religious fervor. The .45's bigger slug and powder load proved adequate to the challenge.

“It's got a lot of kick,” Tom said. “I'd use both hands.”

She nodded, but was looking at Mr. G. How did he know? Then she remembered what he'd said back in the office. Ninety percent of the women in prison had been abused or molested. Some by strangers, others by family. Like she had been.

To Tom, she said, “I'm ready.” He threw open the door. The man (why were they always men?) was standing directly in front of the door. He shrank back at the sight of the shotgun. “What are you doing?” he demanded. “I want to see my lawyer. I want to see the Warden.”

Mr. G stepped around the side of the door, the prisoner's file in his hands. “James Nolan,” he said, reading from the F-47. “You worked at a home for profoundly autistic children. You raped at least three of those children. DNA proved you were the rapist.”

“That's a lie,” Nolan said, backing up.

“You took photographs,” the Warden said, snapping the file closed. “You posted those photographs on the Internet.”

“They were fakes.” Nolan's eyes darted around, then settled on Taneisha, as if expecting her, as a woman, to be at least sympathetic to his proclaimed innocence. “My ex-wife…” his voice trailed off, noticing the pistol in her hand for the first time.

“Do you have anything to say for yourself?” Taneisha asked him.

He stared at her, unwilling to comprehend her words. “My lawyer said not to say anything about my case.”

She raised the pistol, steadied it with both hands. “God have mercy on our souls.”

Her first shot was low. The impact doubled him up, slammed him against the back wall of the cell. The pain was too great for sound. Clutching his bleeding crotch, Nolan straightened, his mouth open, eyes wide.

Taneisha aimed carefully, squeezed the trigger, and sent Nolan straight to his reward.

The desert sky was beginning to lighten to the east when they emerged from Protective Seg. Taneisha's ears were ringing, her eyes were red from the gun smoke and the roiling emotions of rage and sorrow and more rage, while the hands and wrists of both hands ached from the recoil of the .45. Mr. G walked with difficulty, leaning on the now-empty cart as they pushed it toward the Admin wing. Tom strode alertly, still carrying the shotgun.

“Tom,” the Warden said slowly, “find out who's still here. Then I'm going to need your help. Please meet us in my office.”

As they rode the elevator up, Taneisha could see the Warden's face was gray with fatigue and the stress of the burden he'd taken on himself. She thought,
To hell with the rules
, and took him by the arm, supporting him as he walked to his desk. It seemed wrong to gaze on him in his weakened condition, so she turned away and gathered up the leftover files, tidying out of some reflexive desire for normalcy.

For long minutes, the Warden sat in the chair with his eyes closed, only opening them when he heard Tom enter the room.

“Sir, about half the morning shift showed up. There's trouble on the roads, I hear.”

“How many does that give us?”

Tom thought a moment. “No more than twelve, counting me.”

“I'm not counting you,” Mr. G replied. He opened a desk drawer, found a ring of keys. “Take my car. I want you to drive Ms. Porter wherever she wants to go. As far as you can, at least.”

Taneisha started. He was setting her free. He was sending her away. Which was it? “Mr. G—”

He held up a hand. “Taneisha…we have members of the Muslim Brotherhood here at the prison. We just removed one of them, along with several members of MS-13.” She knew them. They were a drug gang that went beyond sadistic or sane when it came to protecting their turf. “We're sure to be a target. You've made yourself a fine young woman…you don't deserve to die in a toilet like this.”

Tom's hand tightened on the shotgun. “I'll be back, sir.”

“No, you won't,” the Warden said sharply. It was an order. “You go find your family—”

“I don't have any family worth a damn.”

“Then go find your old friends, people you care about. Don't die for nothing, and don't die surrounded by strangers.”

The disagreement seemed to energize the old man. He stood, brisk. He unbuckled the holster, slung it through the air toward Taneisha. She caught it without thinking. “You'll need this.” The old Colt pistol was still lying atop the cart, where the files had been. The barrel had grown frighteningly warm, so she had laid it aside rather than risk burning herself on that hot metal. “Tom, make sure you're well stocked before you start.”

The Warden walked to his bookcase, peered at the volumes there. He pulled one loose and held it out to Taneisha. It was an old oversized paperback, battered and stained. She glanced at the title.
The Ranger Handbook
.

“I received this book before I went to Vietnam. It's been my Bible ever since. I think you're going to need it.”

The book was worn with use, heavy with more than just the weight of its pages. “Mr. G…”

“I was going to give it to my kids,” he said, his mind elsewhere. “But they're a long ways away…and I'm not going to be seeing them again, I imagine.” He focused back in on the present. “Tom, you've got your orders.”

“Yes, sir!” Tom saluted, and the Warden returned the salute crisply.

Taneisha was at a loss. “Sir. Sir, what are
my
orders?”

Mr. Gutierrez walked over to her, putting both his hands on her shoulders. His smile was warm and she felt as if she hadn't seen it in a century. “Your orders are to keep fighting. Never surrender to evil or expedience.” He leaned in, kissed her above the bridge of her nose. It felt like a blessing. “Now go.”

They got as far as Phoenix before they were ambushed by a local Hispanic gang that had blocked the interstate with burning tires. The 14
^th
Street Vatos had figured on easy pickings when they saw the older Cadillac. They hadn't counted on running into a heavily armed prison guard, who began blasting them out of their two-hundred-dollar basketball shoes.

“Can't get out of this one, lady,” Tom panted to her during a lull in the shooting as they crouched behind the Caddy. He shoved some ammunition and a backpack at her. “I'll hold 'em here. You snake on down that rain gutter, and keep going.”

“What about you?” Taneisha asked, shrugging on the backpack, making sure
The Ranger Handbook
was tucked low and secure inside.

“Ain't got nothin' better to do. Maybe I can clean this bunch out, make it better for the next folks who come by. I'll get their attention, and you can go.” With that, he grabbed the two assault rifles and charged the embankment where the Vatos were hidden.

Taneisha crouched, and as the gunfire followed Tom she scrambled away from the car. Her shoulder blades itched with the imagined impact of bullets, but she made it to the cement runoff culvert. Once inside, she spun and looked for Tom, but he was already down in a mist of blood.

There was nothing else she could do. She ran.

She never would hear about how Mr. G had released one block of the prison at a time. He showed the prisoners how to make slings from their bedding. He opened the stores, gave everyone bottled water and canned food. With a final warning not to harass the local populace (“Everybody within twenty miles of this prison is armed and ready to shoot you”), he sent them on their way. “Go to your families. Try to do right by them in the hard times that are coming.”

She would never know how most of the guards and more than a few of the prisoners, mostly ex-military, begged the Warden to let them stay and defend the prison.

She'd never know that the dhimmi who inhabited the area ever after began to call the ruins of the prison “The Alamo.”

She'd never know that when the prison was stormed by Islamic infiltrators and La Raza forces racing up from Mexico, Mr. G died with a smoking rifle in his hands, two former prisoners to his right, and a score of dead invaders at their feet.

But she could have guessed it.

The Big Picture, 2008

Karen woke hungry, hung-over, and dehydrated on August 22. She reeled into the bathroom, scooping water from the tap with her hand, only to vomit it all up when she was in the shower. At least it was easy to clean up, and she felt unexpectedly better after having yacked.

The last day of her old life gave no warning. There were no omens or portents. It was just a long day at work, drinking a lot of water, willing herself to keep clicking through her emails, making herself answer the phone.

In the afternoon, Tarik brought her a bottle of achingly cool Gatorade and dropped three aspirin on her desk calendar. His voice low, a tolerant smile on his face, he said, “You look rough.”

“Too much celebrating.”

“You have to learn to pace yourself.”

“I'll do that. Next time.”

He gave her a look that said, “Kids,” and he went to his meeting.

The next thing she could remember was finding herself on the floor in silent darkness. No lights, no computers, no phones ringing, no hum and hiss from the office printers. Something damp was over her eyes. That was why it was dark. When she brushed the damp thing out of her eyes, pain lanced through her skull, racing like a hostile wake-up call throughout her body. Distant lands reported in: one ankle was twisted; both her elbows ached from impact. She'd come to work hung-over, now she felt run over.

Every time the damp thing above her eyes moved, another purple bolt of pain shot up her. She whimpered, but she didn't cry out. She'd learned a long time ago to accept pain silently, embrace it even as she hated it. She walked her fingers up her face, over her nose, and traced out the shape of the damp thing. It was a piece of her scalp, flopped forward.

“Well, that's gross,” she said, her voice very loud in her ears. She hated the idea of how it must look. It became very important, for some reason. It was embarrassing to have a flap of her head out of place like that. She jammed the heel of her hand into her mouth, set her teeth, and flipped the piece of scalp back into position on top of her head. Squiggles of pain streaked in white flashes through her eyes and into her brain.

She lay there for a moment, a little blood oozing from the heel of one hand as she held her scalp in place with the other. When her heart had slowed a bit, she opened her eyes.

Now it wasn't dark, but the blood had adhered to her eyelashes, giving everything a reddish sparkle. Light was coming through the shattered windows. Her hearing seemed to be returning. At first she was aware of nothing except for a musical tinkling of broken glass. Then she began to hear other sounds. Weeping. Moaning. And one persistent, angry voice from the dimness of the shattered room. “What the hell happened?” the voice raged. “What the hell just happened?”

Tarik was the first on his feet, looking around the darkened office. There was some light from the shattered windows, but they were to the east, and it was feeble, the sun's rays bouncing off the nearby buildings. Voices were calling out in pain, and the one voice raged on. Staggering like a sailor coming off a three-day drunk, he reeled toward the emergency light set up high in one corner. He fumbled at the manual switch on the side, swatting it repeatedly. The lantern remained stubbornly unlit.

Muttering, Tarik turned and bumped into a desk. He spoke, but the sounds from his lips were garbled, unsyncopated noises that didn't translate as speech. He fumbled in the desk, yanking hard on drawers wrenched off their slides. Finally, a lower drawer opened with a shriek of metal. He pawed inside, then straightened. A muted click and a column of light emerged from the Maglite in his fist. The illumination was oddly diffuse, as the air was a floating soup of powdered ceiling tiles, dust motes, and even cement that had almost aerosolized.

Still lying amid the shattered glass, Karen saw the way the beam trembled. He was either hurt, or afraid. Or both. Like her. The cacophony of voices continued.
Cacophony is the name of the house band in Hell
, she thought groggily, lying in the dark, feeling the centimeter-square chunks of safety glass coating her.