23 Hours_ A Vengeful Vampire Tale Part 1

23 Hours.

A Vengeful Vampire Tale.

by David Wellington.

For Carrie

1.

The Marcy State Correctional Institution, in Tioga County, Pennsylvania, had been designed and built in the 1960s as a state-of-the-art facility for the rehabilitation and therapeutic treatment of adult female prisoners. The walls were painted bright but tasteful colors. The cells were spacious and airy and laid out on an open plan to improve social communication between the inmates. It had a psychiatric ward, a well-stocked library, three full-sized gymnasia, and 768 beds.Forty years later, with a population of over 1,300, it always hovered one incident away from a full-blown riot. On March 7, that incident came when no one expected it-except those who had planned it out meticulously in advance.Laura Caxton was at her usual spot in the cafeteria, over by the wall where she didn't have to watch her back every second. She was eating soup. Everyone was eating soup-you didn't order from a menu at Marcy, you sat down and waited for what they brought you, and then you ate it or you went hungry. She could look down the long length of her white Formica table and see women of every color and creed, but they all wore the same orange jumpsuit and they all were eating beef barley soup.Her first indication that anything was wrong was when she heard a loud plunking noise and then a cry that was half the scream of an inmate scalded by splashing soup and half a chorus of barely suppressed giggles and curses.Ten seats down, an overweight Latina woman was brushing soup off her face and her chest. A rock-hard dinner roll had been thrown into her soup bowl, hard enough to splatter the table and the inmates on both sides of her.The inmate who had thrown the roll, a slimmer and younger woman, white, blond, glasses (Caxton made mental notes of everything she saw-it was an old habit, one that served her as well inside as it had in her life before), leaned back on the bench and gave an exaggerated shrug. "Sorry, bitch," she said, laughing and turning away.It had nothing to do with Caxton. She put her head down over her own soup and kept eating. She knew what to do if there was a problem. All the inmates had been drilled on what to do-you got up, went to the wall, and raised your hands above your head. The correctional officers would take it from there. She looked around, trying to find where the COs were. Three of them, wearing their regulation navy blue stab-proof vests and carrying batons, were over on the far side of the cafeteria, chatting among themselves. They weren't paying enough attention, but Caxton knew better than to try to signal them.The offended woman, the overweight Latina, rose stiffly from the table. No one stopped her, even though it was strictly forbidden to get up during meals. She didn't look angry, particularly. She was breathing a little heavy, maybe. Without a word she grabbed the blond inmate and smashed her face against the table, shattering her glasses and breaking her nose with a sickening crunch. Then she pulled the blond's head back again and slammed it down a second time.That got the attention of the COs. The three of them split up and started working their way between the tables, moving carefully in case this was a setup. Before they'd covered half the distance someone had stabbed the big Latina with a sharpened toothbrush handle. Caxton saw it still sticking out of her side. She was pulling at it, trying to tear it free. Someone else had pulled the blond away from the table and had her down on the floor, either to protect her from further attack or just to kick her while she was down. Everywhere Caxton looked women were jumping up from the tables, grabbing their trays or reaching for concealed weapons, looking to defend themselves or to settle old scores while they had the chance.Time to get to the wall, Caxton decided. She put down her plastic spoon and placed her hands on the table so she could slide out of the bench.Before she was even halfway up, someone grabbed her ankles and yanked her downward, under the table. Caxton landed flat on her back with the breath knocked out of her lungs. The hands on her legs were like iron claws, digging into her skin. She was hauled down the length of the table past a double row of feet, all clad in the disposable slippers the inmates wore. Some of the feet kicked at her, maybe just on principle.Her head smacked against a leg of the table and then she was pulled free and she was looking up at the ceiling. Hands-many hands-grabbed her and hauled her upright, then shoved her forward before she had a chance to see where she was headed. All she could hear was screaming, roaring, bellowing, the clatter of women being hit with trays, the noise of bodies hitting the floor. She smelled blood, but not from anywhere close by. Her face hit a door that yielded and swung open and she spilled through into the kitchens, where inmates with white aprons over their jumpsuits were clustered around the doors she'd just come through, all of them having tried to see at once through the tiny plastic windows."Get out of here, all of you," someone said, kicking the doors open. One door slammed into Caxton's side, making her wince. "Move this piece of shit out of view."Hands reached down and grabbed Caxton, hauled her deeper into the kitchen. She was rolled over on her side and then someone kicked her in the stomach. She hadn't caught her breath yet and couldn't ask any of the questions that occurred to her, couldn't yell for help.A tall, thin Asian woman knelt down next to Caxton and grabbed her lower lip. She yanked on it as if she might tear it off, and Caxton was forced to raise her head. The Asian woman had black tears tattooed underneath her eyes, four on one side, five on the other. Her hair stuck out from either side of her head in a long pigtail. "You're Caxton, right? I'd hate to think we went to all this trouble and got the wrong cunt."Caxton didn't answer. She didn't see what good would come of doing so."That's her," someone else said. Someone standing behind the Asian woman. Caxton couldn't see who the new voice belonged to-she didn't dare break eye contact with her captor. "She's a cop. Are you sure the pigs won't-""Ex-cop now," the Asian woman said. She didn't smile. "The COs hate her more than we do, because she used to play for their team and then she fucked up."She turned back to Caxton. "I'm Guilty Jen. They call me that because there was another Jen on our dorm who used to tell the screws every night how innocent she was. If I'd tried that they would have laughed at me. I mean, just look at me. Guilty as fuck and it's written all over my face." She tapped the place below her left eye where there were only four tears. "Every time I finish a stint, I get a new one. Come next October, I get out and it'll be number ten. See what I mean?"Caxton tried to bring her knees up to protect her abdomen, but hands from behind grabbed her legs and pulled them back. Other hands grabbed her arms and her shoulders. Guilty Jen had a lot of friends."I don't know you, ex-cop," she said. She reached into the pocket of her coveralls and took out a cigarette lighter and a long iron nail. "I've got no history with you, and no beef. But as many times as I been inside, this is my first time at Marcy and in here, now, I'm nobody. I need to make a name for myself all over again. Sucks, but that's how we play. So I asked around and found out who's tough in here, who people are afraid of. I got a pretty short list. Most of the names I could eliminate because they had serious protection. They were ganged up. But you- everybody hates you. Dyke ex-cop. No friends in here. I fuck you up and I'm looking at zero consequences, other than a couple days in a special housing dorm for violence." She flicked on the lighter and held the point of the nail in the blue part of the flame."There are quicker ways to kill me," Caxton managed to say. "I figure you only have about thirty seconds before the COs realize we're in here.""Oh, I'm not going to go that far," Guilty Jen said. "I'm just going to mark you. Put a J on you so you're mine. You just lie there, stay quiet, this doesn't have to go bad for you. Just tell me one thing?""What's that?" Caxton asked, as Guilty Jen took the nail out of the flame. Its tip was scorched black by the flame."Left cheek, or right?"

2.

Caxton stared at the point of the hot nail. It was beginning to turn red. She knew if she didn't struggle, if she let this woman brand her, she would be marked in more ways than showed on the skin. She would be giving the prison population a signal that she was weak, and vulnerable, and could be preyed upon.There were a lot of women in SCI-Marcy who would be thrilled to get that sign from an ex-cop inmate. This would be only the first assault of many.She waited until Guilty Jen flicked off the lighter and scooted forward on her knees, ready to bend down and place the nail against her face. She waited for a second longer, until she could feel the heat of it near her skin.Then she twisted her wrists simultaneously, slipping them free of the hands that held her, and brought her hands around to smack Guilty Jen's hand sideways. The nail went into the calf muscle of one of the women standing over Caxton. That woman howled and jumped in the air.The hands on Caxton's ankles slackened their grip, just a little. Caxton had been expecting that-it's hard to pay attention when one of your friends is screaming in pain-and she capitalized on it by bringing her knees up to her chest as fast as she could and then kicking out, knocking Guilty Jen backward and away.In a second Caxton was up, feet spread on the floor, torso bent low with her arms up to protect her head. Someone tried to grab her back and she rolled into it, head-butting them in the stomach hard enough to make them let go.She still had no idea how many assailants she was facing or how long she had to hold them off before the COs bothered to check the kitchen. She could try to make a break for it, run out of the kitchen and back into the cafeteria, but she figured Guilty Jen had to be organized enough to have someone watching the door.Her other option was to fight her way out. She danced backward, trying to get a wall behind her, and let her eyes flick around the room, assessing. She counted six orange jumpsuits. Jen's girls were a mixed set, black, Latina, white, and Asian. That was weird: prison gangs normally formed up on racial lines. It looked like Jen had found something else to unite them.Caxton could think about that later, if she got the chance. Right now she had a fight on her hands. Six women she would have to fight, including Jen, including the one with the burnt leg. They were already regrouping, getting ready to mob her. If they all came at her at once she would be done for. They could just pile on top of her and hold her down and beat her into submission.She needed to thin the herd, right away. She looked for the opponent closest to her. To her left was a brown-haired white girl. Tattooed on her earlobes was a pair of tiny swastikas. She must have been a member of the Aryan Brotherhood once. Caxton felt no moral compunctions about grabbing a huge tureen full of boiling soup and sloshing it all over her.The Nazi girl went down in agony, out for the count. A black woman wearing a do-rag came at Caxton from the right, puffing with anger. Caxton laid her out with a haymaker punch that probably fractured her jaw.A third inmate tried to be sneaky and attack while her back was turned. Caxton threw her head back, hard, and felt her skull connect with the unseen woman's nose. She felt the bones there break. Hot blood went spurting down the back of her collar. That must have hurt, Caxton figured, but it wasn't necessarily enough to put her assailant down. Caxton spun in place and brought both fists toward each other, the knuckles digging hard into the woman's kidneys.She dropped to the floor, grabbing at Caxton's hips and legs, but her hands just didn't have the strength to grapple properly. Caxton looked down at her victim and thought about stomping on her head or her stomach. For a second she almost did, but she managed to pull back.It was going to be hard to end this fight without killing anyone. Caxton had gone through plenty of unarmed-fighting courses at the State Police Academy in Hershey, but she'd never really bothered learning how to incapacitate enemies. On the perps she'd been taking down outside, those kinds of moves were never enough. You had to fight to kill or be killed yourself.Caxton had spent years learning how to fight and kill vampires. Vampires were bigger than she was, much stronger, and much tougher. Any wounds she gave them healed over almost instantly. She had to remind herself constantly that Guilty Jen's set didn't have supernatural resistance to injuries.Killing the downed woman would be a big mistake here. It would get Caxton in all kinds of trouble and mean losing what few privileges she had, as well as draw the kind of attention she most wanted to avoid. So when she turned to face Guilty Jen and her remaining two gangbangers, she hesitated for just a second, to give them a chance to run away.They didn't."Impressive," Guilty Jen said. "But stupid. This counts as disrespect, you know that? And I can't allow that, or I look like a bitch. So now I do do have to kill you." have to kill you.""There are other ways to resolve-" Caxton began, but Jen's two underlings were on her before she could finish her thought. One of them, a Latina wearing lipstick and mascara, came at her low and fast, hands stretched out to grab.It was a feint, Caxton knew. The other one, a Korean woman, had a shank made from a metal spoon, flattened out and sharpened all around its edge. The leg of her coveralls was smoldering-it must have been she who caught the heated nail. The injury was slowing her down a little, but not enough.Caxton took a step toward the Latina and raised one arm as if to strike-then launched herself at the Korean and came down hard on her burnt leg. She felt the knee there give way, and the woman collapsed under Caxton's weight. She grabbed the shank out of the woman's flailing hand and threw it underhand at the Latina, who was still coming toward her.It went right into her eye.For a moment everyone was screaming and rolling around on the floor. Then the two people who weren't-Caxton and Guilty Jen-made eye contact, and everything else just fell away. Caxton's entire focus shifted to the gang leader. It was a showdown, an old-fashioned gunslinger standoff, but without the guns.Caxton didn't need them. If she was tough enough and fast enough to fight vampires, one human woman shouldn't pose a problem. She'd just proven she could handle a couple at a time.Guilty Jen, however, was a little more than just the average gangbanger. She spread her feet, getting a good stance. Then she did something Caxton would never have expected. She leaned forward slightly. She bowed.What that meant wasn't lost on Caxton. She just had time for a brief spike of fear to go running through her veins before a roundhouse kick came at her face so fast she couldn't avoid it.Jen had martial arts training. That made her dangerous, even to someone like Caxton. Caxton threw up one arm in time to fend off the kick, but it connected with her wrist and made every nerve in her hand fire at once. Her fingers rattled around in her skin and she wondered if her arm was broken.Caxton dropped to one knee and leaned over hard to the side as Jen followed up her kick with a sweeping arm attack that was aimed right at Caxton's neck. The arm went instead over Caxton's head, but Jen recovered and pulled back almost instantly, long before Caxton could bring her own hands down on the gangster's knee. Jen's leg flashed backward, out of Caxton's reach, and Caxton knew she'd made a bad mistake. She had avoided the worst of Jen's attacks, but only by putting herself in a vulnerable posture. The next attack was going to be a killing blow, and-Jen cried out at the same time as something exploded behind her. She staggered forward, her stomach colliding with Caxton's face, and they both went down in a heap. Caxton struggled to get free so she could see what was going on."You fucking shot me!" Jen howled. "That's unnecessary force!"A team of COs stormed into the kitchen. The one at the front had a guard sergeant's stripes. He also had a smoking shotgun in his hands. "Just a beanbag round, gal," he growled. "You'll have a nasty bruise for a week, but nothing permanent. Alright," he said to the guards behind him. "Forced extraction on all of them. Don't take any chances."Someone hit Caxton with a thick blanket-shoving it down over her face and body, pinning her to the ground. She knew better than to fight back. There was nothing to grab, no one to punch, just heavy fabric that stank of sweat and blood pushed down over her mouth and eyes. Plastic handcuffs wrapped around her wrists, and her arms were pulled painfully back behind her. Then her ankles were cuffed together, too, and she was hog-tied. She was lifted off the floor and carried out of the kitchen by a pair of COs wearing so much armor they looked like baseball umpires.She never got a chance to look back at Guilty Jen, to see what they were doing to her, but she knew one thing without a doubt. They would meet again.

3.Almost two hundred miles away, in Allentown, Clara Hsu was about to be sick. She was surrounded by bodies, corpses drained of their blood and then discarded like old ragged dolls.The women around her ranged in age from thirty-five to fifty, but with some it was hard to tell-their arms and throats had been torn at, savaged by vicious teeth, by a vampire who needed their blood and didn't care how much pain she had to cause to get it.Clara felt her gorge rising and knew she had to do something, quickly. The smell and the colors-oh, God, the colors- were too much to take in, too much to bear. Luckily, she had a way of dealing with it. Taking a digital camera from the case around her neck, she started snapping pictures, creating a permanent record of the crime scene.Clara had been just a police photographer once. Even a year ago that had been her whole job. She had worked for a rural county sheriff's office, documenting methamphetamine busts and car accidents. Then she'd done something stupid. She'd fallen in love with Laura Caxton. Caxton's life had been about vampires and nothing else. To stay a part of Caxton's life Clara had agreed to go back to school for forensic criminology, where she'd learned all about latent fingerprints and hair follicle matching and the legal ins and outs of DNA testing. It had gotten her a place on the SSU, the special subjects unit-the Vampire Squad-and exposed her to parts of the human anatomy she had never guessed existed. Or wanted to.She'd learned the trick of using her camera's viewfinder to shield herself from the gore back in the old days, and luckily it still worked. You focused in on a flap of skin hanging loose over a ravaged jugular vein and you thought about composition, and lighting, and getting the color values right, and suddenly it was just a picture. Something created, something not quite real.It was the only way she could handle this mess."They were having a Tupperware party," Special Deputy Glauer said, squatting down next to her. Even if he'd sat on the floor he would have been a head taller than Clara. Big and muscular and with the kind of stiff mustache Clara always thought of as police issue. He'd been just a local patrol cop in Gettysburg when he met Laura Caxton, a good, solid peace officer from a town that went most years without seeing a single homicide. Now he and Clara were partners, in charge of tracking down and killing the last known vampire in Pennsylvania.They were both in way over their heads."The hostess-she's over there, most of her," Glauer went on, pointing at a body he'd partially covered with a sheet, "-is one of the top advertising executives in town."Clara squinted through her camera. "That seems wrong." She'd noticed, of course, when she came in that this wasn't their typical crime scene. Usually the bodies turned up under bridges, in abandoned buildings. This apartment was in an old warehouse, but one that had been converted to expensive loft space. It was in one of the trendiest neighborhoods in Allentown. "It doesn't fit the profile."Glauer nodded. Together they'd been following the trail of Justinia Malvern, the last living vampire, through one murder scene after another. Vampires needed blood to fuel their unholy existence. The older the vampire got, the more blood it needed every night, or it weakened. Eventually it would lose the strength to crawl out of its own coffin at night and had to lie there rotting away in a body that couldn't die. Justinia Malvern was the oldest vampire on record, well into her fourth century. Most of that time she'd spent trapped in her own coffin, too weak even to rise to feed. That had changed in recent years. She had been feeding a lot recently. Bodies had been turning up all over Pennsylvania. Always before, though, they'd belonged to homeless women or illegal immigrants, migrant workers or housekeepers, the kinds of people who didn't get reported as missing when they failed to turn up for work one day. Malvern was smart. On bad days Clara was sure Malvern was smarter than she was. She'd known that the police would be after her, that she had to keep a low profile if she wanted to keep hunting.And now-this. "If she's taking this kind of risk," Clara said, "it must mean one of two things. Either she's desperate, she needed blood and she didn't have time to find a safe supply. Or-""Or," Glauer said, nodding, "she's not worried about us anymore. We've been following her around, cleaning up her messes. Not giving her any reason to worry. Not since Caxton was arrested. Yeah." He stood up slowly, the joints in his knees popping. "We don't scare her enough to make her hide anymore."They both froze in place at the same time. They'd both been trained by Laura Caxton, the world's last living vampire hunter, and they knew better than to jump, even when a shadow loomed over them from behind."Interesting theory," their boss said. Deputy Marshal Fetlock of the U.S. Marshals Service was a thin man with jet black hair that had turned dramatically white at his temples. Clara sometimes thought it looked dashing, and sometimes thought it made him look like a skunk. "Write it up and send it to my email."Clara gritted her teeth. "Yes, sir," she said.The deputy marshal had come in through the main door of the loft and walked right through the one splash of blood in the entire place. Malvern had been careful not to spill a drop from most of the victims, but when she forced her way in she had attacked whoever came to the door first and there had been a short struggle. Clara was 100 percent certain that the blood's type would only match one of the corpses in the room- Malvern had no blood of her own to spill, even if an unarmed human opponent could somehow injure her-and therefore the blood evidence was probably useless. There was no such thing as a forensic specialist, however, who could watch someone walking all over a clue and not wince."A change in her modus operandi," Fetlock said, putting his hands on his hips. He looked very pleased with himself. "That could be good. It could be the break we've been waiting for."Laura Caxton had fought vampires successfully by doing things most people considered suicidal. She had gone into their lairs at night. She had sprung their traps just to see what would happen. Somehow she had survived and the vampires hadn't, because she was a warrior, a throwback to the time when vampire hunters had tracked their prey with swords and crossbows. Fetlock, on the other hand, was a very modern bureaucrat. He believed in doing every last thing by the book-which included disciplining anyone who broke protocol.It also meant he made sure none of his people ever got in harm's way. Clara was one of his people, so she could appreciate that. Up to a point. It hadn't been lost on her, however, that in the time Fetlock had been tracking Malvern, a lot of innocent people had died. A lot more than Caxton would have felt comfortable with."I prefer your first theory about what we're seeing here. It's desperation. Malvern is running scared. She knows we're close," Fetlock said. He bent down next to one of the victims and closed her eyelids with two fingers. Clara winced again. Now he was touching bodies that hadn't even been documented properly. "All we need is one good clue. One mistake on her part. One lucky break.""All we need," Glauer said, folding his arms across his chest, "is Caxton back on the team."Fetlock didn't even look at the big cop. "Not going to happen. She's in prison. End of story."Clara tried not to say anything. She knew it was futile. Fetlock had been the one who'd arrested Laura in the first place.Worse than that. Laura had freely confessed to her crime and said nothing in her defense at her trial-she had pleaded guilty and let her lawyer go through the necessary motions. When it came time for the sentencing, the judge had asked if anyone had an opinion on what the sentence should be. Fetlock had actually stood up and asked for the maximum sentence allowed by law. After all, he claimed, Caxton had been a cop and should have known better than anyone the consequences of her actions. She had a duty not just to uphold the law, he had argued, but to epitomize it. Clara had started hating him that day, and yet... she had felt a certain grudging respect, as well. Because she knew if he was the one being sentenced, he'd still have asked for a maximum penalty. Fetlock was a by-the-book bureaucrat, but at least he had utter faith in his own convictions.If Clara had spoken up then, and made an impassioned plea to have Laura brought back onto the team, she knew Fetlock's first counterargument would be that Clara had been Laura's girlfriend. That meant she couldn't be objective about this. So there was no point in opening her mouth. And yet--Glauer was right. She knew it. She knew for a fact that the only person in the world who could catch Malvern at this point was Laura Caxton."She could consult, in a purely civilian capacity," Glauer went on, saying it so Clara didn't have to. "She could give us insights on this case that might crack it wide open, and-"Fetlock frowned. "There's no good way to set up that kind of relationship, not with her all the way up in SCI-Marcy."Clara couldn't take it anymore. "You could request the court to have her transferred to SCI-Cambridge Springs," she said. "That's a minimum-security facility. The prisoners there are allowed real phone privileges. We could set up some kind of arrangement where she could get in on conference calls with us, tell us what we're doing wrong.""She's a criminal," Fetlock growled. He made it sound like this conversation was about to end. "Do I have to remind you what she did? She kidnapped and tortured a federal prisoner."Clara sighed. "That guy was a sociopath-he'd killed his entire family just to impress a vampire. He knew where the vampire's lair was and it was the only way Laura could get the information.""And that makes it okay?" Fetlock demanded. He stepped closer to Clara, picking his way through the carnage on the floor. "We're law enforcement, Special Deputy. We swear to uphold the law. To put our faith in the law."Clara bit her lip. Laura had sworn that, sure. She'd also sworn to protect the innocent. How many lives had she saved that night? Lives the vampire would have taken, if she didn't get to him first? If she'd been forced to kill the bastard for the information, Clara knew she wouldn't have hesitated. Despite Fetlock's attempt to have the book thrown at Laura, the judge had taken all circumstances into account before sentencing her and had thrown out most of the charges against her. Laura had still been required to plead guilty to a charge of kidnapping, and accept a sentence of five years' imprisonment-the mandatory minimum sentence for that crime in Pennsylvania. Even with early release for good behavior it would be years before she was free.How many people would Malvern kill before that day came?"I know this is hard for you, Special Deputy," Fetlock said, his voice dropping into an almost gentle pitch, "considering the relationship you had with her. But you have to accept the facts. She's in jail because she broke the law.""It's not right," Clara said, knowing she'd already lost. "She deserves better. For all the people she saved-for all the good she did, she deserves better than to rot in a cell for so long. I mean, hell, without her there wouldn't be a special subjects unit."Fetlock gave her a warm smile. "And because of her, it was almost disbanded. We walk a very thin line, Hsu, and we can't afford to forget that. We have special powers to execute vampires on sight-the legality, the constitutionality of those powers has never been questioned, but if it ever was they would evaporate in a heartbeat. Then our job wouldn't just be hard, it would be impossible. The three of us have to be above suspicion, at all times. Even just associating with a known felon is putting the future of the unit at risk."He had a point, of course. The SSU had been created as an ad hoc working group within the Marshals Service, but no high official had ever written up a charter for it or done anything to give it legal standing. So far no one had come forward to complain about what they were doing-the vast majority of people preferred not to publicly acknowledge that vampires were a real threat. But if they ever really screwed up, say by shooting a living human being by mistake, the press, government watchdog groups, and Internal Affairs would descend like vultures and the SSU would be no more."Alright, alright," she said, holding up her hands in surrender. She walked away from Fetlock, not even wanting to look at him. He turned instead to Glauer, who gave him a good-natured shrug.Suddenly she didn't want to be around either of them. She went over to the far corner of the room and pretended to study some scuff marks on the wall. Far enough away that Fetlock must have believed she couldn't hear what he said next.The Fed leaned in close to speak to Glauer. Man to man- they would be elbowing each other in the ribs soon enough. "So she's in prison," Fetlock whispered, and she could tell from his tone of voice that he was about to try to make a joke. He did that, every once in a while, and every time it made Clara cringe. "It's not that bad, is it? I mean, come on. She's gay. For her, this has to be like going away to summer camp."Glauer earned a little credit in Clara's book then, because he didn't laugh.

4.They carried Caxton through the prison halls at a fast jog. She was wrapped up in a thick blanket that pressed against her nose and mouth and made it difficult to breathe. She couldn't see where she was, much less where they were going. Finally they brought her into a small echoing room and dumped her on the floor. COs in full riot gear stood around her with stun guns, ready for her to jump up and attack them on sight. When she didn't, they stepped out of the room and a pair of female COs in stab-proof vests replaced them."What's going on?" Caxton asked. She looked around and found herself in a room lined with dingy white tiles. There was a large steel bathtub on one side of the room and what looked like medical equipment hanging on the opposite wall."Strip," one of the COs said. A big woman wearing eye protection. She leaned against a plastic table and stared out the window. The other CO, who had a harelip, kept her eyes glued on Caxton. She didn't even blink.Caxton knew this routine. She'd been a cop in her previous life. There were times when you were handling a prisoner when you couldn't predict what they were going to do, so you made sure they didn't have any options. She understood that she wouldn't be allowed to ask any questions and that if she didn't do exactly what the guard told her, the men with the stun guns would come back in and do it for her. Looking down at the floor, she unfastened the Velcro strip that held her jumpsuit closed in the front."Everything. Off," the big CO said, while studying her own fingernails.Caxton kicked off her slippers, then peeled off her underwear and her bra. It was very cold in the little room and she started to wrap her arms around herself, but the CO with the harelip took a step forward and grabbed her arms and pulled them down at her sides."Don't touch anything. Keep your hands where we say," the big CO told Caxton. "Now, we're going to search you. Do not move. Do not swallow. Do not flinch."Harelip pulled on plastic gloves and then ran her fingers through Caxton's hair. She took a flashlight from her pocket and pointed it into her mouth and her ears. She lifted up Caxton's arms and checked her armpits, then told Caxton to lift up her breasts so she could check underneath."Turn around," the big CO said when that was done. "Lean over the table. Now spread your buttocks. Wider."Caxton gritted her teeth. Harelip squatted down to get a good look."Stand up. Turn around again. Spread your vagina."Caxton squeezed her eyes shut in shame. But she did it. She knew they had the legal right to handcuff her and do it to her if she refused. When she opened her eyes again she saw Harelip staring up at her from between her legs."You like this, lesbo? You having a good time?" Harelip whispered.Caxton said nothing."Clear," the big CO said. "Alright, prisoner. You can put your underwear back on." She picked up Caxton's jumpsuit and balled it up under her arm. "This gets searched separately." She left the room. Harelip went over to the door and stood next to it, her boots slightly spread, her hands clasped behind her.Caxton pulled her bra and panties back on. Then she just stood there, waiting for whatever came next. There was no place to sit down except on the edge of the bathtub, and it looked very cold. She made a point of staring at the floor, thinking the last thing she wanted to do was antagonize Harelip by looking at her.Eventually there was a knock on the door and another woman came in. She was older than most of the COs Caxton had seen, maybe fifty-five or even sixty. She was wearing a conservative jacket and mid-length skirt, with a stab-proof vest over the top. She was carrying a metal folding chair and a Black-Berry, which she worked with one thumb even as she set up her chair and took a seat.For a while longer nothing happened. The newcomer didn't speak, and Caxton didn't think she ought to try to start up a conversation. The older woman used her thumbs to type something on her BlackBerry, which held her whole attention.Finally, without looking up, she said, "I think we have a problem here."Caxton scratched her nose. Harelip leaned forward, her eyes very hard."I don't like it when you girls don't get along," the older woman said. "It makes it difficult for all of us. I need to find a way to restore the peace, you see. So we're moving you to Special Housing. Effective immediately."Caxton looked up. That was very bad news. "What? But I-""We have a zero-tolerance policy for stabbing in this institution." The older woman was still playing with her handheld device. She smiled at something on her screen."I only acted in self-defense," Caxton said. "It wasn't even my shank.""Hmm? I have three inmates in the infirmary right now. One has second-degree burns on her face and chest. One has a broken nose that's going to have to be rebroken if she wants it to set right. The third might lose an eye." She glanced up at Caxton. "You have a bruise on your wrist." She looked back down at her email. "You tell me who should be put in confinement, hmm? There are two kinds of women in this place. There are the ones who just want to get along, work off their time, and go home. Then there are the ones who will stab somebody because they got bored. It's my job to separate these two groups. Today you volunteered for group number two, and I don't care who started it. Beyond that, you're a high-risk prisoner, so you ought to be in protective custody anyway. It's all been decided. You'll be in administrative segregation for the rest of your sentence. Do you have a problem with that?"Caxton bit her lip and thought about how to respond.Prisoners who complained about the conditions in Marcy always regretted it. If you complained, that meant you weren't cooperating with the staff. That meant you weren't demonstrating "good behavior," and that meant you spent even longer inside, longer until you could go before the parole board, until you could walk free again. Inmates at Marcy did not, on the whole, complain.On the other hand-AdSeg was the worst part of the prison. It was where the truly violent women were housed, along with those so crazy they couldn't be allowed to roam free and those who were at such a risk of getting killed by their fellow inmates that they had to be watched around the clock. AdSeg was more than maximum security. It meant no privileges, no privacy, and not even the slightest illusion of freedom.If Caxton had to spend the next five years in an AdSeg cell she would probably go crazy. She had to say something, anything, to avoid that fate."I want to talk to a manager or supervisor about this," she said. "I want to appeal your decision."The older woman stopped pressing buttons with her thumbs. Then, slowly, she put her BlackBerry on the table next to her. Smiling, she reached out one hand. "Augie Bellows," she said. "I'm your warden."Crap, Caxton thought. She'd made a bad mistake. She had to try, though, anyway. "You should know I'm a model prisoner when I'm not being attacked. I have a background in law enforcement and I-""I know exactly who you are," the warden said. She smiled brightly. "And you should know not to expect any special treatment because you used to be a cop. Many of us here on the staff feel that cops gone bad are the worst kind of prisoner, honestly. You were entrusted to know the difference between right and wrong, and you did a bad thing anyway. How could we possibly take anything you say seriously, ever again?""If you look at my record, you'll see I've cooperated fully at all times. I've never started trouble and I've done everything that was asked of me," Caxton said.Bellows shrugged as if to say it didn't matter. That it couldn't possibly matter. "We'll move your things for you. No need to pack. Of course, there are severe restrictions on personal items in AdSeg, so most of your personal belongings will be confiscated. You won't need any makeup or hair care products in special housing, anyway. Now, if things go as I hope they will, you and I will never have to meet again until it's time to send you home. If I were you, I would do everything in my power to make sure we don't.""Are you doing this to me because I was a cop-or because I'm gay?" Caxton demanded.The warden gave her a prolonged, searching look. "It's because you're in my way. That's all. You're a minor obstacle in the road of my life."Then she rose and picked up her folding chair, then went to the door and knocked on it. The door opened and she went out without another word. And that was that. Caxton was doomed to spend the rest of her time in the prison in the worst hell they could create. There was nothing she could do about it. She felt invisible doors slamming shut all around her."Wait there," Harelip said. "Do not move. Someone will be along to escort you shortly."Caxton did what she was told.Except.Warden Bellows had left her BlackBerry sitting on the table.Caxton had been a cop. Cops were nosy. They couldn't help it-it was how they solved crimes, and how, sometimes, they stayed alive. She felt a compelling need to look at the handheld device. She could almost, but not quite, make out the screen from where she stood. She took a step sideways.Harelip leaned forward again like a dog on a chain.Caxton held up her hands in surrender. And took another step sideways. When no one burst into the room to restrain or beat her, she stopped in place and looked down. On the screen of the BlackBerry she could see a fragment of a chat transcript. Warden Bellows must have been chatting with someone the whole time she was sentencing Caxton to her new fate. Caxton had no reason to care about the warden's personal correspondence, really, but there was one thread that jumped out at her.ABell: It feels like forever. I can't wait to get started. It feels like forever. I can't wait to get started.DamaNoctis: It shalln't be long. Patience, I say to ye. 'Tis worth the wait. It shalln't be long. Patience, I say to ye. 'Tis worth the wait.ABell: I hope so. I'm risking a I hope so. I'm risking aThat was all she had a chance to read before Harelip stomped across the room and grabbed the thing off the table. "Get the hell back, bitch, or I will fuck you up," she screamed in Caxton's face, knocking Caxton backward until she fell to the floor.A few minutes later a detail of COs came to walk her to her new cell. They at least gave her a brand-new jumpsuit so she wouldn't have to show up in her underwear.

5.The special housing unit at SCI-Marcy was constructed in a circle around a central guard post two levels high. The cells all faced the glass post and were all identical-narrow rectangles, eight feet wide by sixteen deep, each with a toilet at the back and a solid steel door at the front. The doors were three inches thick and padded on the inside. Each had a small square window set in it at head height and underneath that a narrow sliding panel, a "bean slot," where the guards could hand in food at mealtimes. There was no separate cafeteria for the women in the SHU. They ate in their cells. They did most things in their cells: they stayed inside of them for twenty-three hours out of every day.Three types of prisoner were kept in the SHU. There were AdSeg cases, like Caxton-the most violent or the craziest inmates in the prison, who were deemed a danger to others. Secondly were the protective custody prisoners, who were a danger to themselves. Either they'd pissed off some particularly vengeful gang, or turned evidence against other prisoners, or had committed some crime so heinous that the general population hated them enough to want them dead. There were only two child molesters in SCI-Marcy, but they were both in protective custody. Two-thirds of the women in the prison were mothers, separated by the law and circumstance from the children they loved. Being so far from their kids made some of them crazy. Some of them liked to prove they were still good mothers by attacking baby-rapers on sight.The three women in the SHU who were not in AdSeg or protective custody were model prisoners who kept mostly to themselves, passing the time as best they could. These three women alone were given the privilege of a "Cadillac" cell, a private room with some small luxuries allowed. They had barred windows that looked out over the exercise yard and were even allowed to keep radios as long as the volume stayed low. No one in the SHU complained about their getting special treatment, however, because those three cells made up Pennsylvania's only all-female death row.When Caxton came into the SHU for the first time she was nearly blinded. The walls were scuffed and dinged, but they had been painted a brilliant white, and they caught all the light coming down from above from a ring of powerful klieg lights in the ceiling. The light was merciless and all-revealing. She was brought in through the only door leading into the SHU, where a row of COs in riot gear waited for her just in case she tried to make a run for it or, even stupider, tried to fight her way out.She could understand why some inmates would try. For a lucky few who had just pulled temporary AdSeg by stabbing someone or bringing drugs into the prison, a stay in the SHU could last only a few days or weeks. For the women on protective custody and death row, the SHU would be their home for years to come.Just like Caxton.The CO sitting in the guard post lifted one hand and the COs in riot gear took a step back, letting Caxton come forward.Her legs were shackled together and her hands were bound behind her with plastic handcuffs. One guard grabbed her wrists and guided her to the left. There was a red line painted on the floor, equally distant from the cell doors and the guard post, and she was made to walk along it with one foot on either side. She was marched up to a cell door marked with a seven. Two transparent plastic brackets were mounted on the door. One was empty, while the other contained a photograph of a woman with bad acne and the name STIMSON, GERTRUDE R. Below this was a list of known allergies (peanuts) and special restrictions (zero stimulants) and the legend PC, which Caxton assumed meant that the woman inside was in protective custody.Caxton looked up and saw the woman from the picture staring out at her through the window in the door. Her complexion was much clearer in person."Wall up," one of the guards shouted. Caxton didn't know what that meant, but apparently it wasn't directed at her. The woman in the cell-Gertrude Stimson-moved away from the window at once."Prisoner Caxton," the CO said, bending down to unshackle her legs. If she felt like kicking him for his trouble she only had to look to the side and see the stun gun another guard was pointing at her neck. "Welcome to the SHU. You will be confined to your cell at all times unless we come for you. When we do, we'll say 'wall up.' That means you move to the back of the cell with your back against the wall. If you don't wall up, we will perform a forcible extraction. You don't want that. Mealtimes are at six-thirty, noon, and four-thirty. Your exercise period will be from one in the afternoon until two. You'll be taken to the showers once per week, at six P.M. P.M. every Thursday. You just missed your slot, it looks like. We'll bring around a deodorant stick for you a little later on. If I remove your hand restraints now, will you behave?" every Thursday. You just missed your slot, it looks like. We'll bring around a deodorant stick for you a little later on. If I remove your hand restraints now, will you behave?""Yes," Caxton said, in the meekest voice she could manage.He unfastened the plastic handcuffs. Caxton flexed her fingers to try to get the circulation going again. "Here's a clean blanket and a clean washcloth." They were both made of the same scratchy nylon that looked like it couldn't be torn or burned. "Prisoner on the floor," he shouted, and COs all around the circular housing unit repeated the call. "Door opening!"An alarm sounded, a high-pitched clanging that went on for ten seconds, and then an electronic lock in the door thunked open. The CO pulled a lever that released a second mechanical lock and then hauled the door back.Inside, Gertrude Stimson was standing up against the wall, her hands above her head. She didn't move at all except to blink as Caxton stepped inside the cell.Before they could close the door on her Caxton turned around to say, "I'd like to make a phone call. An email would be fine as well. Is there a sign-up roster, or-""No outgoing calls. No computer time. If you want to write a letter, let us know and you can dictate it to us through the bean slot. Now wall the fuck up so I can close this door."Caxton hurried to the back of the cell and pressed her back against the wall.The CO poked his head in to peer into the corners of the cell, as if someone else might be hiding inside. "Enjoy your stay."The door alarm rang again for ten seconds and then it was shut with a double thunk of closing locks.For a long time Caxton just stood there with her back against the cold wall. She didn't move. Didn't say anything. Eventually she realized she was waiting to be told what to do next.It was getting to her already. They were turning her into an inmate, even inside her own head.Stepping away from the wall, she rubbed at her wrists and looked around. There wasn't much to see. The cell wasn't wide enough for two beds side by side, so much of the space was taken up by a tall bunk bed made of scratched aluminum. It had been designed in such a way that it had no sharp corners nor any pieces that could be broken off, even by a determined prisoner with a lot of time on her hands.The only other furniture in the cell was a combination sink and toilet made of the same rounded aluminum construction. There was no seat on the toilet, and its opening was narrower and long rather than round."It looks funny, I know, and it ain't comfortable. It's made that way so you can't shove my head in there," Gertrude Stimson said. "You know, if you had a mind to."Caxton turned and stared at the other woman. Her new roommate-her celly In the general-population dorm where she'd been before, Caxton had seven cellies in a cell about three times as large as this one. They had been morose women, relatively quiet unless one of them was moaning about how badly she wanted a cigarette or another was shaking and moaning with withdrawal symptoms. They had mostly been black, with two Latinas, and they had all spoken Spanish most of the time, a language Caxton barely understood.Gertrude Stimson was pasty white, with stringy red hair that she kept tied back in a stubby ponytail. Her fingernails, Caxton noted, were chewed down to round red stubs."You can call me Gert, or Gerty, it's one and the same," she said."Caxton." Caxton didn't offer her hand."Oh, I know you, for sure. You're famous. They made a movie about you, and those vampires you killed. And then at the town of Gettysburg-""I don't like to talk about that," Caxton growled."I never thought I'd have a famous lady in here, is all," Stimson said, with a little laugh.Caxton tried to ignore her and went to the bunk bed. The bottom bunk was clearly Stimson's. Photographs of babies had been taped up along the wall, but not snapshots-these were just pictures of babies torn from magazines. The bed was unmade, with the blanket shoved down at the bottom in a heap. The top bunk was empty, with nothing on it but a mattress that crinkled when she pushed on it and a pillow made of the same rip-stop nylon as her blanket and washcloth. A plastic bag containing her personal effects lay at the foot of the mattress."I want you to know, I'm a little famous myself," Gert chattered. "But you shouldn't believe everything you hear."Caxton did think the name was slightly familiar, though she couldn't place where she'd heard it before. No doubt she would get to hear about Gert's moment of fame in excruciating detail soon enough, so she didn't bother to ask.She made the bed carefully, knowing she had plenty of time to keep things neat. Then she opened the bag. The warden had said her things would be moved for her, but there was very little in the bag-her brush, her comb, and most of her books were all missing. She'd been left a couple of dog-eared paperbacks and one photograph. It was a picture of Clara that Caxton had taken one day at a sheriff's office picnic. It had been in a frame before, but the frame had been seized and the picture removed. One corner had been torn in the process."Who's that? Friend of yours? Or-girlfriend?" Stimson asked, her voice rising slyly at the end. "I heard you was a lesbo, too. So is she? Your girlfriend?""None of your business," Caxton said. She climbed up on the bunk and laid herself out flat. Breakfast was at six-thirty she thought. That was a long time away. She wondered what time lights-out might be. Stimson would know, but she might also take that as a desire on Caxton's part to start a conversation.Not that she needed much prompting."You been here long? How much longer you got?""If it's alright, I'd like some quiet time," Caxton said. "I have a lot on my mind.""Sure thing," Stimson said. She disappeared under the bunk and Caxton relaxed a little. She closed her eyes and tried to clear her mind. She could do this. She could stay strong, and do the time quietly and without losing her mind. She could.From beneath her she heard a high-pitched squeaking sound. Then a muffled grunt of pain. The squeaking sound came again a second later. And again. Eventually she realized that Stimson was chewing her nails.It was going to be a very long five years.

6.Lights-out never came.The light in the ceiling never went out. Caxton wasn't allowed to have a watch in her cell, and there was no clock, either, but as she lay on her bunk listening to Stimson snoring below her, she eventually realized that midnight must have come and gone, and nothing had changed.She stared at the light for a long time, waiting to feel sleepy. The light came from a single bulb set in a shatterproof fixture designed in such a way that Caxton could neither open it nor get any kind of grip on it. A single cockroach had found its way inside the fixture and died there. It had only five legs. One of them must have rotted away.Next to the fixture was a small black rectangle that Caxton knew must hide a camera. The light was left on so that the camera could watch her while she slept. She stared at the rectangle for a long time, too, because it was difficult to know she was being watched and not try to watch back.Then she rolled over and pressed her face into the scratchy pillow for a long time, trying to keep her eyes closed. They kept drifting open of their own accord.She tried pulling the pillow over her head to block out the light. That just made it difficult to breathe. She tried giving up, next, and sat up so she could read one of her paperbacks by the unblinking light. She was too tired to focus on the words, though, and eventually she gave up on that, too.Time passed. The night must have passed, somehow, though she couldn't see anything but the walls of the cell and so she had no way of measuring how long she'd been awake until, out of nowhere, a buzzer sounded in the ceiling and Stimson stopped snoring with an abrupt wet sound and rolled out of her bunk."Wall up." The sound came from the same place as the buzzer-a small speaker set into the ceiling, next to the light fixture and the camera's black eye. Caxton jumped down from the top bunk and went to stand next to Stimson against the wall.Together they waited for quite a while. Then the bean slot in the door slid back and a tray came through. Stimson stepped forward to grab it, then jumped back against the wall. A second tray came in and Caxton did the same thing. Then the bean slot slid back into place. It was designed so that the prisoners couldn't open it from the inside.Both trays were identical. They were wrapped in plastic. When Caxton pulled the plastic back on hers she found it contained three slices of toast, already slathered with butter, and two slices of melon that weren't quite ripe. A shallow paper cup held apple juice. "No coffee?" Caxton said, a little upset."That's my fault," Stimson said, scraping at a moldy spot on one of her melon slices. "Sorry. I have a little teensy problem with, um, speed. I can't have anything that's an upper. Not even caffeine.""You're a meth freak," Caxton said, because she wasn't feeling very charitable. "But I'm not."Stimson shrugged. Her mouth was full of toast. "I guess," she said, showering crumbs everywhere, "they're worried I might steal yours. So you don't get none, either." She washed down her mouthful with the juice. "Sorry."Caxton was hungry enough to eat everything on her tray quickly. That turned out to be a good thing-ten minutes after the trays had arrived, the order to wall up came again and the bean slot slid back so they could pass the trays out, whether they were finished or not.The slot closed once more. And that was it. Breakfast. Afterward nothing happened. Nothing was going to happen, Caxton realized, until lunchtime. She imagined that meals were going to become the high points of her day.Clearly conversation with Stimson wasn't going to provide much in the way of entertainment. All Stimson wanted to talk about was what she was going to do when she was released. "Babies," she said, and her eyes blazed with excitement. "I'm going to have some more babies. Babies are what life's all about. You know how they smell? Babies smell good. I love playing with babies. I love the noises they make. Even when they cry."Caxton had never wanted children. It had just never occurred to her to think that might be a good use of her life. She tried to steer the conversation into another arena. She considered asking what Stimson had done to get sent to Marcy, but she had an idea that it was impolite to ask. Instead, she tried, "How long are you in for?""A good jolt. Twenty years," Stimson said.Caxton frowned. "Won't you be too old to have babies then?"Stimson wasn't about to be brought down. "I'll be forty-two, that's not too old. And if it is, I can adopt. I know it's hard to adopt when you've got a record, but when they see how much I want a baby, and what a good mother I can be, they'll have to give me one. They'll have to give me a baby."Caxton nodded politely and climbed back onto her bunk. Stimson kept talking, even after Caxton stopped listening. It seemed she was happy enough chattering away to herself.Lunchtime came, eventually. A cold chicken sandwich and a cup of apple juice. They had ten minutes to eat it. Then nothing happened, again, for a while. Then the command to wall up came again and Caxton realized it was exercise time. The one chance she would have all day to get out of the cell.A smile actually crept onto her face. She ran her fingers through her hair and tried to smooth the wrinkles out of her jumpsuit. She knew she was overreacting, but it was something, something different. Something to look forward to.She waited for what felt like far too long and then finally, magically, the cell door was opened. A CO stood in the doorway and gestured for the two of them to step forward. Another CO was waiting with two pairs of shackles. Caxton's feet were bound together. Then the CO did the same for Stimson. The whole time a third CO was always hovering over them with a stun gun.They were made to shuffle forward until they were standing on the red line that ran around the circumference of the special housing unit. In his glass watch post, a CO eyed them carefully. He reached for a microphone and his voice was amplified until it squalled off the glaring white walls. "It's raining outside, so exercise is indoors today."Caxton heard an angry moan go up from somewhere on the far side of the guard post. She glanced around the side of the post and saw four inmates over there, all of them shackled as she was. If every cell was full to capacity, there would be forty-eight women in the SHU, Caxton figured. Apparently only six were allowed to take exercise at any given time, with three COs supervising. Nothing in the SHU was ever allowed to get out of control. Nothing was ever left to chance. As a law enforcement officer, or rather, an exlaw enforcement officer, she had to admire the efficiency of the system. As an inmate she felt like she was being ground down, all her humanity scraped out of her one indignity at a time.The COs got all six women in a line, then made them stand six feet apart from each other. Then the exercise began in earnest. They were told to walk around the SHU in a circle, keeping one foot on either side of the red line at all times. They were required to maintain the distance between them, to keep their hands in plain sight, and there was to be no talking. "Okay, walk," one CO ordered.Caxton walked. She watched the inmate ahead of her, a woman with frizzy brown hair, and did exactly as she was told. And liked it, despite herself. It felt good to use the muscles in her legs. It felt good to breathe air that she and Stimson hadn't already breathed and exhaled a thousand times. It even felt good to be silent for a while, and not have to listen to Stimson talk or chew her nails.She passed the time watching the cell doors go past on her left. She counted them and knew how many laps she'd made around the SHU, which kept some tiny part of her brain occupied. She wanted to see how many laps she made in an hour. Then she noticed that the woman ahead of her had a dark spot on the back of her jumpsuit. It grew steadily as she walked, never slowing down for a moment, and ran down the inside of her pantleg. Caxton watched in fascinated horror as a drop of yellow liquid fell from the orange cuff and splattered on the floor. Then another. Soon a narrow trickle was dribbling out behind the woman, and Caxton had to step carefully to avoid getting her slippers wet.One of the COs came rushing in and pushed Caxton back. He grabbed the woman from behind and pulled her into a painful-looking armlock, then frog-marched her over to the guard post."Keep walking," another CO ordered, and Caxton realized she'd stopped and that Stimson was right behind her, less than six feet away. Caxton got back to the line and started walking in circles again.Eventually exercise time was over, and she was taken back to her cell and had her shackles removed. She went in and walled up next to Stimson and waited for the door to be officially closed again before she spoke."She peed herself!" Caxton exclaimed. "Did you see that? She peed-on herself. I think she did it on purpose. Why on earth would anyone do that? Was she sick, or just crazy?"Stimson's face broke into a wry and knowing smile. "When you been in here awhile, you'll understand. She pissed herself," Stimson said, as if it were perfectly rational, "so that one of the COs would have to clean her up."

7.The guards had been busy while Caxton and Stimson were out. They had put a picture of her on the door, right next to Stimson's. Underneath, where the guards were advised not to give Stimson any stimulants of any kind, they had written in, "Caxton prone to violence. Use anti-stab and anti-bite precautions."It was official, then. She was a resident of the SHU for the duration.She quickly learned what that was going to mean. How it was going to change her whole philosophy of life.For instance: when you had nothing, you learned to appreciate the little things. When you had no freedom and no civil rights you learned to treasure any shred of dignity or hope you were permitted.Caxton finally got her first shower a week after she arrived in the SHU. She even got a shower stall all to herself. Of course, two female COs watched her the whole time and she had to wash around the shackles on her legs, but the hot water made her feel almost human for the first time since she'd been moved to her new cell. It was over all too soon. As she was dressing she was told she was in for another treat: a one-hour therapy session. She was allowed one every six weeks and her number had come up. "You're allowed to refuse therapy," a CO told her, but Caxton couldn't imagine why she would. Any human contact that wasn't with Stimson sounded like heaven.She quickly discovered that the therapy she was being offered wasn't what she had expected, though. She was led to a small room near the SHU. It had padded walls and it smelled of antiseptic. There was no one in the room except for Caxton and two COs, but there was a telephone mounted on the wall. She was told she could pick it up and speak directly with one of the prison's staff psychotherapists. When Caxton picked up the handset she saw there were no buttons on the phone. It was strictly for this purpose and there was no way to get it to call outside the prison."Um, hello?" she said, placing the handset to her ear."Yeah, hi. How are you feeling?" a bored male voice asked from the other end of the connection.Caxton licked her lips. "I, um, I've been better."The psychotherapist said nothing.Caxton let her head fall forward a little. "It's tough, you know? It's just tough adjusting to this routine. It's kind of. Um. It's nice talking to a friendly voice. Everybody else I talk to around here is either yelling at me or they're crazy."Caxton blushed. She couldn't believe she was opening up like this with a complete stranger, one she couldn't even see. But the chance to unload her problems, even in such a clinical way, was affecting her in a way she couldn't have foreseen."I miss my girlfriend," she said. God. It felt good to say that out loud. She'd been afraid to say it even to Stimson. "I get pretty scared in here. I can't sleep, and the food doesn't taste like anything, it tastes like cardboard. I think-I think maybe I'm having a harder time of it than I even let myself believe. I think I might be going-""Are you depressed?" the therapist asked.Caxton thought about it. "Um, I-""Depression doesn't just mean you're sad. Everybody's sad in here. What about voices? Are you hearing voices? Voices that tell you to do things you don't want to do?"Caxton's body tensed up again. "No," she said."Let me know if you start hearing voices or having hallucinations. I can give you Thorazine for that. If you think you're depressed I can send over some Prozac. You just have to be careful with this stuff. If you start feeling suicidal you need to alert a guard right away. Do you want the Prozac? We'll start with a low dose and adjust as necessary.""No. Thank you," Caxton said, and hung up the phone. Her therapy session was over.On days when it didn't rain, the SHU inmates were allowed outside for their exercise period. Sort of. They were let out of their cells in groups of six, and as before their feet were shackled and they were never allowed to be less than six feet away from each other. They were then taken out of the SHU through a short corridor to a door that led to sunlight, and open air, and a patch of blue sky.It was the most beautiful thing Caxton had ever seen. It was also carved up into sections by a mesh of wires so close together that Caxton couldn't have put her hand between them, even if she'd had the chance. The SHU exercise yard was a cage twenty feet wide by fifty feet long. Wire mesh formed a ceiling and four walls. The concrete floor of the cage had a red rectangle painted on it, and the inmates were never allowed outside of that rectangle, which kept them always six feet from the mesh.They were allowed to do as they pleased inside the rectangle, as long as they didn't approach one another or talk. A row of yoga mats had even been set up along one side of the cage, and a couple inmates made use of them to do sit-ups or stretching exercises. The rest just milled around, careful not to get too close to each other. One of them, a big woman with no left ear, only a lump of twisted scar tissue, made a nasty game of it. She would start walking toward one of her fellow inmates until they would be forced to step backward. The COs weren't timid about shouting for them to keep their space, and anyone who broke through the invisible limit was dragged off, forfeiting their exercise period for the next day. They made no attempt to stop the big woman from herding the others back and forth across the yard, however.Back in the cell Caxton asked Stimson why the big woman would do such a thing. She was only causing trouble for the others. "She's a convict," Stimson said, as if that explained everything."So am I. So are you. We don't pull that kind of bullshit."Stimson shook her head excitedly. This was another chance to initiate her celly into the ways of life inside. "No, see, I'm an inmate. There's a difference. Inmates try to get along. We want to be model prisoners so we can get days on our good-behavior jackets. Convicts are different. They know they're going to be in and out of prison all their lives, so they got no reason to try to be good. If they can be bad, though, like, real tough, they can get a rep for it, and that's a good thing, how they see it."Caxton thought of Guilty Jen, who had been obsessed with respect and reputation to the point she was willing to kill to get it. "I think I'd rather be an inmate.""Yeah?" Stimson asked. "I had you pegged different. A hard case."Caxton climbed up onto her bunk and lay back on her mattress. She had to think about what that meant.As usual, Stimson wouldn't just let her be. "I'm pretty useful to you, huh?" she asked, pulling herself up onto the side of Caxton's bunk and leaning her chin on the mattress. "I mean, I can tell you stuff you didn't know. I can help you out.""I guess," Caxton said."We're connecting, right? We're bonding. That's good. 'Cause if I'm useful to you, maybe you can be useful to me. You can protect me. If I get in trouble, you can vouch for me. That's how it works, right? We're getting together?""Whatever," Caxton told her."I am going to be so useful to you," Stimson said. "You wait and see. I'm gonna be your road bitch. That's what you call your best friend inside. See? Useful. I'm gonna be your best friend in the world. And then, and then, and then you can be my mama. If-if-if, you know. If you wanted to."Caxton couldn't look into those trusting eyes anymore. They reminded her too much of the eyes of the dogs she used to rescue. She turned her head away. It was impossible to spend twenty-three hours a day in the cell with Stimson and not talk to the woman. To not interact with her. But the last thing she wanted to do was lead Stimson on. They weren't friends.Caxton couldn't imagine ever being friends with someone like this baby-obsessed speed freak. The second she got out of SCI-Marcy she would never think about Stimson again. It wasn't fair to pretend otherwise. "I won't be in here that long," she said, trying not to put too much edge in her voice. "Maybe your next celly can be your mama.""I didn't mean nothing by it," Stimson said, dropping back down to the floor. "Shit. I didn't mean I was going to suck your pussy or nothing.""Okay," Caxton said. "Good to know."

8.Malvern struck again and the body count was even higher this time. She'd hit a roadhouse outside of Allentown, just after midnight. One patron had managed to escape to call the local police, but by the time they arrived Malvern had slaughtered two cocktail waitresses, a bartender, a bouncer, and six good old boys who'd just wanted to have a few beers after work. By dawn Clara and Glauer were there, checking for clues. Fetlock was busy in Harrisburg, catching up with his paperwork, so for once the two of them had the scene to themselves."She must have had help," Glauer said, pacing back and forth from the rear exit and the front door. "Look at the arrangement of the bodies. She got the bouncer here, and one of the waitresses-but the rest of them tried to flee out the back. They got-this far," he said, stopping next to a bad stain on the carpet by the restrooms. The bodies had already been removed by the local coroner-which Clara appreciated, because it meant she didn't have to see them, even if it also meant some evidence might have been destroyed. "The exit was blocked, so they couldn't get out.""We know she has to have some kind of accomplice," Clara agreed. "Someone has to drive her from victim to victim. She's too weak to walk from scene to scene." A vampire at full strength could outrun a speeding car, but Malvern hadn't been that strong in centuries. "It could be a human sympathizer. Or a half-dead." Vampires had the ability to raise their victims from the dead-for a short while. The resulting servants were called half-deads. They rotted away almost fast enough to watch, but as long as they could still stand under their own power they were forced to do the vampire's bidding."There's another possibility," Glauer said, meeting Clara's gaze. He held her eye for a second and then said, "The accomplice could be another vampire."Vampires could make more of their kind. In fact, Malvern was an expert at it. Every vampire Laura Caxton had ever destroyed had been one of Malvern's creations.Clara shook her head. "That's not in our profile for her. It saps her strength to create new vampires, and she's running on fumes as it is. It would put her back in her coffin for good if she tried that now." Deputy Marshal Fetlock had built his whole strategy around the idea that Malvern was indulging herself in one long orgy of blood and that she had no grand scheme in mind, no master plan. That she would start making mistakes any night now."You know what Caxton would have said about that profile," Glauer muttered."She would have said that he was underestimating Malvern. And that underestimating a vampire is the surest way to get killed by one." She stepped behind the bar and ran a hand behind the bins of lime and lemon wedges. Her fingers touched something metallic and she drew it out. A sawed-off shotgun. She knew she'd find something there-every bar had a gun, in case things got so far out of hand that the bouncer couldn't handle it. She cracked open the shotgun and found a pair of shells inside. She sniffed the barrel and decided it hadn't been fired in a long while."Something-something occurred to me, after that last scene," she said. "After the Tupperware party. Malvern has changed her MO.""Sure. She's stopped hiding her kills so carefully." Clara nodded. "Yeah. Fetlock thought it was because she was getting scared, and that made her sloppy. You and I had a different idea, if you recall-that it was just the opposite, that she's stopped thinking of us, of law enforcement, as a threat.""Yes," Glauer said. "I remember." He stopped pacing and looked at her. "You think you have a better explanation?" "Maybe. I think she might be building up to something." Glauer sighed. "I don't like the sound of that." "We know she's a smart one. Every time Laura had Malvern in her sights, Malvern managed to get away almost on a technicality, or at the last minute. And even when she was stuck in her coffin, too weak to move, she always found a way to cause trouble. I can't imagine she doesn't have a plan right now.""But what could it possibly be?" Glauer asked. "She needs blood, lots of blood. More blood every night. That's a zero-sum game. It means we'll never stop looking for her. And no matter how inept we may be, eventually we're going to find her. No matter how clever or how careful she is, she can't keep doing this forever, but she can't stop, either. What kind of plan would get her out of this mess?""I don't know. I'm not as smart as she is," Clara admitted. "I just have a feeling, that's all. She hasn't finished surprising us yet. Shit. Is that really the time?"Glauer looked up at the clock over the bar. "Almost. Places like this set the clock ahead about fifteen minutes, because they know when last call comes, it'll still take the patrons that long to finish their drinks and get out. They call it bar time."Clara smiled at the big cop. She probably knew a lot more about closing down bars than he did. "Listen, I know Fetlock doesn't want to bring Laura into this investigation. But I'm going to run her through it anyway and see what she says. I'm going up to Tioga County today to visit her.""Really? He's not going to like that," Glauer said. "For one thing, he's definitely going to want you on call, and if he can't reach you-""It's only a four-hour drive," Clara told him. It was almost noon and she really needed to get on the road. "You... heard, right? About where she is now?""That they segregated her?" He shrugged. "Yeah." Every cop knew a few corrections officers-they ran in the same social circles. And any time an ex-cop ended up inside it made for excellent gossip. Probably every state trooper and sheriff's deputy in Pennsylvania had heard about Caxton's descent to the hole. "Probably the safest place for her is in an SHU. She can't have a lot of friends in the general population.""Yeah, well, it's not all good. Prisoners in the SHU only get one hour of non-contact visitation a month. If I don't get up there by five o'clock today it'll be the end of April before I can get another appointment. It's four hours up there, an hour visit, and four hours back. I'll be back here by ten at the latest. So if Fetlock comes calling, stall him for me, will you? Just pretend you can't reach me, that I'm out of cell phone range or something. Please. It's really important that I talk to her now."Glauer smiled at her. "You know I will. It's got to mean a lot to her, to have someone come see her as regularly as you do.""Yeah," Clara said. "It must.""You're a good person," he told her. "A lot of people wouldn't have wanted to wait for her to get out. Maybe they would hold out for a while, you know, but eventually they wouldn't be able to handle it. They would have to break things off.""Um. Yeah," Clara said.His eyes went wide. "Oh," he said. "You're going to-""I'm going to be late," Clara said, "if I don't get going right now."Glauer turned his face away from her. "Tell her I said hi."

9.They checked Clara's ID at a guard post, then waved her through. She drove up a long gravel drive toward the prison complex, a group of low brick buildings connected by brick walkways. There were fences everywhere, and rolls of barbed wire, and signs telling her not to get out of her car, not to use cameras or cell phones on the grounds, and whatever she did, to never, ever pick up hitchhikers. She pulled into a small parking lot directly underneath a looming brick wall between two watchtowers. Men with assault rifles looked down at her from the towers, waiting for her to try something.Her stomach hurt. It was nerves, just nerves-nobody could really relax in a setting like this, and Clara had a lot to be nervous about anyway. She was going to tell Laura that it was over. She'd wrestled with the idea for a long time. She'd gone over and over in her head all the reasons why it had to be done. Why it was better to do it now than to wait. Why she had to say it in person. Her reasoning was sound. She didn't need to feel guilty.Their relationship had started at a bad time in Laura's life.Her previous girlfriend, Deanna, had been succumbing to a vampire's curse. She had ended up taking her own life. Laura had clung then to Clara like a drowning woman holding on to a floating tree branch, and for a while it had been so good- she'd been so attentive, so affectionate. Clara had never had a relationship like that before.But then the vampires hadn't gone away. They kept coming back, and suddenly every time she reached out for Laura, Laura wasn't there. She'd thought it was a temporary thing, maybe. That Laura would learn to balance her job and her love life. Instead the love life had been sacrificed for Laura's obsessive quest to wipe out vampires once and for all. And even that had been okay-for a while. Because when your lover isn't there, but it's only because she's out saving the world, well. You feel guilty if you start making demands. If you start drawing attention to your own needs. So Clara had done her best to support Laura, to always be there for her whenever she finally did come home.Now she wasn't coming home for years. It was too much to take. Clara was hardly of one mind about breaking up with Laura. But she knew she had to do it if she ever wanted to have any kind of life of her own. It was the smart thing to do. The mature, grown-up thing. To just make a clean break of it, so they could both get on with their lives.And yet, she still felt like a sixteen-year-old about to take her first driver's license test. Her stomach hurt, and she had a weird headache that wouldn't go away. She hadn't eaten anything all day because she hadn't been hungry, and now, perversely enough, she felt ravenous. She could get something to eat when it was done.Just do it, she told herself. Do it quickly, like pulling off a-A big black dog shoved its wet nose against her window. Clara screamed a little. The dog wasn't barking or snapping at her, but it had a suspicious look in its eye."Please step out of the car, ma'am," a corrections officer in a blue stab-proof vest said. Clara nodded and opened her door. The dog lunged inside the car, sniffing at her skirt and her shoes. Clara held her hands up where they could be seen. She stepped out of the car and let the dog smell her, let it do its job."You here for a visitation?" the CO asked. "ID, please."Clara nodded and reached for her purse. The dog sat back on its haunches and stared at her, daring her to try something.This wasn't her first time visiting Laura. Clara knew the drill. The silver star on her lapel should have been enough, but she handed over her driver's license and her U.S. Marshals Service ID card anyway. The CO shoved them in his pocket. "I'll make a copy of these and they'll be returned when you leave," he told her. "This way."He grabbed up the dog's leash and walked her toward a low, narrow gate in the wall. Inside she was led to a waiting room where a number of other visitors, mostly women, were sitting on plastic chairs watching a videotape about what they were allowed to bring inside the prison and what was expressly forbidden. COs with dogs circled the room, searching for contraband."Ms. Hsu? You're with me," another CO said. This one didn't have a dog. "I'll take you to the SHU visiting area now."Clara nodded gratefully. Behind her someone shouted, "Hey!"It was a visitor, a middle-aged woman with dry hair wearing a tie-dyed sweatshirt."How come she gets to go first? I been waiting an hour," she insisted."Watch the tape. We'll come for you when it's time," a CO said."Shit," the woman said, sitting back down. "And you can't even smoke in here!"Clara was taken through a series of gates, each of them designed to be opened electronically by a CO behind a bulletproof window. Finally she was brought into a little antechamber where her fingerprints were taken and a female CO brushed a long cotton swab across her shoulders and down the side of her skirt."Is this really necessary?" Clara asked. She hadn't gone through this the last time.The COs didn't answer her. The female one pushed her swab into the waiting maw of an Ionscan machine that could detect even minute traces of explosives or narcotics. Everybody waited for forty-five seconds until the screen lit up red. "Gunpowder residue," the female CO said.The male CO, Clara's guide, pulled a stun gun off his belt and held it down by his thigh. "Empty your pockets, now. Everything goes in the bucket." He kicked a plastic bin at her so it skidded across the floor. "Watch, belt, shoes, too. Wallets, keys, cell phone. You have a camera on you?"Clara frowned. She took her camera out of her purse and placed it carefully in the bin. Then, with exaggerated slowness, she opened her jacket and showed them her empty shoulder holster. "It's okay," she insisted. "I'm a federal agent. You're picking up gunpowder residue because I normally carry a sidearm. I didn't bring it in with me. I really don't see why you need my belt.""No exceptions. In the bin, now!" the male CO demanded.Clara did as she was told.With one hand on her skirt to keep it from falling down, and wincing with every step-the prison floors were ice cold on her stockinged feet-she was finally allowed into a visitation room. A row of carrels ran down the middle of the room, each booth facing an identical one but separated from it by a plate of inch-thick Lexan. There was a telephone handset in the booth and one just like it on the other side."You will not be allowed physical contact with the prisoner," the male CO told her. "Everything you say will be monitored, recorded, and analyzed. The recording may be used as evidence in a court of law. You may not use obscene language or any kind of code words, do you understand? And under no circumstances will you be allowed to remove your clothing during the visit. You will have one hour with the prisoner. If you do not wish to use the full hour, you may hang up your telephone handset at any time and the prisoner will be returned to her cell. Do you understand?""Yes, yes," Clara said. She sat down in a hard wooden chair and stared forward, through the Lexan. This is it This is it, she told herself. This is where you get your life back. This is where you get your life back.Then they brought Laura in.She looked terrible. Her face was pale and lined. Her hair was lifeless and fell forward across her forehead. Laura had never spent a lot of time on hair care-she'd always said that was one of the chief benefits of being gay-but she'd always used a little mousse, always kept her spiky hair brushed and neat. Now it was all floppy and dull. She looked like k.d. lang on a bad day.Laura rushed forward and grabbed her handset before she'd even sat down properly. "Clara," she said. "Clara. I-I'm so glad you came.""Of course I did," Clara told her. She should just clear her throat, she knew, and say it. Just say it in as few words as possible. It's over, Laura. It's over, Laura.Too cold.I've been giving this a lot of thought, and-No. Too wishy-washy. Laura would try to argue with her.I'll still come and visit, but when you get out-You know, you would do the same in my shoes-It's just so hard, being alone, and we were never that great together anyway-"I need to talk to you about something," Clara said. She could hear the blood rushing in her ears. "Something important.""Of course," Laura said."It's about." Clara stopped. Her tongue wouldn't work. She couldn't say the next word."It's okay, pumpkin," Laura said. Her eyes were full of tears. "You can say anything to me. You can always say anything to me. If there's something... something you need to discuss, something we have to talk through, you should just go ahead and get started. So we can work it out together."She knows. She knows why you came. So just say it."It's," Clara said, trying again. "It's about-it's about Malvern."You little chickenshit, she thought to herself. You coward. You coward.But Laura's face went hard and professional instantly. She wasn't Laura anymore, she was Caxton, the vampire killer. "Okay," she said. "Go ahead.""She's stepped up her attacks," Clara said. Relief flooded through her. This was ground she felt a lot more comfortable on. "She's started hitting high-profile targets. Groups of victims, all together. This last time she even let a witness get away. He couldn't tell us anything useful, but still-that isn't like her.""No," Caxton said.Clara shrugged. "Deputy Marshal Fetlock says she must be getting desperate. She knows she can't keep hunting forever, that we'll eventually find her. So she must be changing her pattern, because she's in some kind of death spiral. Ready to be caught. Glauer disagrees. He thinks it's because she doesn't think we're a threat to her anymore, with you in here.""What do you think?"Clara frowned. "I think she's working some kind of angle."Caxton nodded. "Good thinking. If we know one thing about Malvern, it's that she's always got a plan. She's always two steps ahead of you. Do not underestimate her. Don't let Fetlock underestimate her, either.""I'll do my best," Clara said, with a little laugh. "It's good to see you," she said."Yeah. It's good to talk about this stuff. I need to be back on the case," Caxton said, and Clara could see the wheels turning behind her eyes.When the hour was up, and the CO came to stand behind Caxton and put a hand on her shoulder, they'd managed not to talk about anything but vampires the whole time."I'll see you in a month," Clara said, with a sigh. "That's the next visiting appointment I can get."Caxton nodded as if that was satisfactory. Then she let them take her away.For a second Clara just slumped in her chair, unable to believe what had happened. Or what had failed to happen.Eventually she got up and looked around for the CO who had brought her into the room. She needed to get her things back and get out of there. She needed to get back to Allentown before Fetlock knew she was gone. A CO came to get her-she didn't think it was the same one, but it was hard to tell. They kind of all looked alike. This one had a bad scratch down the side of his cheek, though, which she didn't remember from before. It was bright red and looked infected."Are you alright?" Clara asked.He reached up and scratched vigorously at the wound. Clara thought about telling him he would just make it worse, but she doubted he wanted to hear that from her. "Come with me," he said. "I'll take you where you need to go."The CO didn't lead her back to the anteroom, though. Instead he directed her down a long hallway that led deeper into the prison."What's going on?" Clara asked. "I'm done here."The CO looked straight ahead. "The warden wants to see you for a second."Clara checked the name tag on his uniform. "What's going on, Franklin? I'm not in any trouble here, am I?"He straightened up a little. Making himself taller. "I'm sure you'll want to cooperate with us." There was something weird about his voice. It was a little too high-pitched for a man that size.Regardless-he was starting to scare her. He had his stun gun in his hand. Held low, against his thigh. She glanced at it, then at his face, which was completely expressionless."I'm sure I do," she said.

10.Caxton was barely aware of her surroundings as she was taken back to her cell. There was too much going on in her head. It had been alright when she and Clara had been talking about Malvern-Caxton could always switch everything else off when vampires were involved-but now that she was left alone with her own thoughts, it all came crashing in.Clara was going to break up with her.Caxton had watched her girlfriend trying to get up the nerve to say it. She'd been able to read Clara like an open book-they'd been together long enough to know each other's gestures, each other's private body language. Clara hadn't been able to get the words out, but Caxton knew that there would come a time when she could. Either next month, at her next visit, or maybe even just in a letter, it would come. I've been thinking about this a lot I've been thinking about this a lot, she would say, and the time has come. and the time has come.Caxton couldn't even get angry about it. She understood perfectly. She had never been a very good girlfriend. Always, as long as she'd known Clara, her life had been about other things. Well, one other thing-vampires. There had never been enough time for romance, for intimacy, for just sitting around talking about nothing, for casual glances, for lingering touches. There had never been a week when her job hadn't got in the way, and there had been far too many nights when she'd been out chasing bloodsuckers and Clara had been forced to sit home alone, worrying, waiting for her to come back, waiting to get a phone call saying she'd been killed.Now, with Caxton in prison, the relationship must seem utterly doomed.The honorable thing, Caxton knew, would be to make it easy on Clara. To just accept defeat and give her back her freedom. And yet that would destroy Caxton utterly. Without Clara, what would she have in the whole world? She was never going to be a cop again, even after she served her time and got her release. Fetlock would never let her hunt vampires. So without her work, and without the woman she loved, what remained?She had rescued dogs in the past. That had given her some sense of satisfaction. But the idea that dogs could replace both Clara and her calling was laughable.The cell door closed behind Caxton with a buzz and a double thunk of locks slamming shut. She looked up and realized she had walked inside and walled up without even thinking about it. She glanced sideways and saw Stimson standing next to her, but her celly might as well have been in a different city. She wasn't looking at Caxton. She wasn't acknowledging her in any way.The urge to talk to anyone, even Stimson, the need to unburden herself of her troubles, was compelling, even maddening. And yet she'd blown that chance, too, hadn't she? Because she could never reach out to another human being without screwing it up somehow. Stimson had offered her kindness, and companionship, even friendship of a warped kind. And she'd pushed it away.Caxton climbed up on her bunk and lay back. She closed her eyes and tried not to sob. It took some work.Dinner came and went. She ate, but without paying much attention to what was going in her mouth. When she was done she got back up on the bunk and stared at the light fixture again. Just as she had the day before. Just as she would, she imagined, for the nearly eighteen hundred days yet to come.When she heard the screaming start it barely registered.In the dorms used by the general population of the prison you heard screams at night, sometimes, and you quickly learned to block them out. Women in prison had nightmares. A lot of them were mentally ill, but not in dangerous ways, so they were just crammed in with the rest of the inmates and convicts. The screams didn't mean anything, and there was nothing you could do about them, anyway.The SHU was much quieter at night, because the COs responded quickly to any excessive noise by forcibly extracting the offenders from their cells and dragging them away to cool-down rooms-what the prison called its padded cells. Still, even after the third or fourth scream, Caxton didn't move, didn't even roll over to wonder what was going on.Stimson responded much more quickly She climbed out of her bunk and went to the small window in the cell door. She shielded her eyes with her hands as if she were studying what was going on out there.A scream came next that sounded much closer. It was different from the screams Caxton expected, as well. It was longer, more drawn-out. It was a scream of real pain, of someone being violently hurt. Of someone being killed."Stimson," Caxton whispered. "What's going on?"Caxton's celly didn't reply."Stimson!" Caxton hissed. "Come on. Tell me." She sighed. "Gert," she tried.The other woman turned and glanced up at her with hard eyes. "What, are we friends now?"Caxton tried to think of how to reply but she was forestalled by yet another scream. This one was cut off quickly. Abruptly. Caxton knew all too well what that meant. Someone had just been killed.The speaker in the ceiling crackled to life. "Get back from your doors, right now!" it commanded. "There's nothing to see."That was enough to make Caxton want to look out the window, too. She jumped down from the bunk and shoved her way in next to Stimson, their bodies touching as she tried to get a look.There wasn't much to see, after all. The SHU looked as it always had, blinding white paint, central guard post, single reinforced door at the far end. One thing was missing, though. Normally, even in the middle of the night, one guard sat inside the glass-walled guard post, while two COs walked circuits around the unit, keeping their eyes open, listening for trouble. Now the patrollers were gone and only one CO was visible inside the post."Where'd the others go?" Caxton asked."They hightailed it a couple of minutes ago," Stimson told her. "Grabbed up their shotguns and booked out the door. That's all I saw."Caxton looked at the CO in the guard post, and recognized her at once. It was Harelip, the female CO who had performed her body cavity search. The one who had knocked her down to the floor when she tried to read the warden's BlackBerry."Alright, bitches, wall up for me now or there's going to be some ass-whooping," Harelip said over the intercom. Her voice echoed off the walls of Caxton's cell.Stimson ran back to the wall, but Caxton stayed where she was.The screaming was far away again, when it came next. But there was a lot more of it."Laura!" Stimson called. "Get back! They'll beat us both if you don't.""Hold on," Caxton said. "Someone's coming." And there was. A shadowy figure was coming down the hallway toward the big reinforced door of the SHU. As it stepped out into the light she saw it was a male CO in a stab-proof vest. His baseball cap had been pulled down low over his eyes, leaving his face mostly obscured. She could just make out his chin. It was red, but not with blood. The skin there had been scratched and torn at until it came away in long strips. She could see muscle tissue underneath, pinkish-gray and rubbery and bloodless."Oh, no," Caxton moaned. "Not here. Not now.""Which one is Laura?" the half-dead CO asked. A moment later every door in the SHU unlocked itself with a heavy thunk.

11.Caxton shoved against the cell door with her shoulder, but it wouldn't move. The electronic lock had been released, but the mechanical lock was still in place. Someone was going to have to pull the lever on the outside of the door before she could get out.There were two people on the floor of the SHU, two candidates who might let her out, but neither of them seemed like much of a bet."Murphy?" Harelip said, speaking into her microphone. She hadn't turned off the intercom system, so her voice came down from the ceiling of Caxton's cell. The female CO sounded worried but not panicked. Probably because she didn't yet realize that the male CO stalking around the SHU wasn't Murphy anymore. "What's going on?""Where is she? I'll find her on my own if I have to," the thing said, approaching a cell door and peering in through the window. Its voice was all wrong. Male COs cultivated a gruff, deep voice that commanded respect. The voice this thing used was high-pitched and sounded like it came from just the far side of sanity."I called down to central, but there's no reply. I've got chatter all over the open bands. People are freaking out! Is it a riot? It sounds like somebody broke in," Harelip said. She was getting more scared, which Caxton thought was probably a good thing. Eventually she might notice the big difference between Murphy the CO and the thing that had invaded her SHU.It didn't have a face.Oh, it had eyes, and a mouth, and maybe part of a nose left. But its face would be hanging down in ragged strips of skin, peeled away from its cheeks and forehead by its own fingernails. Murphy was dead. He had been dead, anyway, until a vampire called him back and gave him a second chance.The vampire hadn't done him any favors. The second chance only lasted about a week-reanimated bodies rotted away with incredible speed, and after a day or two they were already falling to pieces. They were also required to obey any vampire who commanded them, without fail, without question.Perhaps the worst of it was that they came back without a soul. They knew constant pain, and they knew that what they had become was wrong. One look in a mirror and they understood they were not meant to exist. They tore off their own faces. They hurt themselves, and they took a joy in hurting others (especially with knives-they loved knives). They were vicious, and crazy and had no moral compunctions whatsoever.Caxton, following a long tradition among American vampire hunters, called them half-deads. When you went looking for vampires, you found half-deads, usually lots of them. And when you found half-deads they were already trying to kill you."Murphy! The call came through for EIP stations," Harelip went on. Caxton knew the acronym stood for "escape in progress," the prison guard's equivalent of a red alert or all hands on deck. "My two boys ran to comply.""Yes, I know," the thing that had been Murphy said. "I caught them coming the other way. They're not coming back." It tittered as if it had just made a little joke. It grabbed the lever on the front of a cell door and yanked it back. It took two tries. Half-deads weren't well coordinated, or particularly strong. Eventually it got the door open, however. Then it pulled a long hunting knife out of its belt.Knives. Always with the knives. Half-deads loved knives, hatchets, cleavers, anything sharp. This was a hunting knife, six inches long and painted green-so the white-tailed deer wouldn't see it glint when you pulled it out in the woods-and had a nasty serrated edge and a wicked curved point. The half-dead brandished it with obvious pleasure and stepped inside the cell."Stimson," Caxton said. "I mean, Gert, please. Do you know the name of the CO in the guard post?"Gert frowned. "Worth, maybe? Or it could be Wendt."Caxton shook her head. "Hey," she shouted, pounding on the cell door. "Hey, CO! Hey, Screw! You've got to stop him!"Harelip glanced in Caxton's direction. "Wall up, fucker," she said, and the speaker in the ceiling popped and whistled.There was a scream from inside the open cell. A prisoner in an orange jumpsuit came staggering out, blood slicking down one side of her leg."Murphy!" Harelip shouted. "Murphy, what are you doing?"Another scream. Then the half-dead came back out of the cell. There was blood on its knife and all over its stab-proof vest. "That wasn't Laura. Laura? Where are you, Laura?" it sang. "I'm going to find you if I have to cut my way through every last one of these cells. Miss Malvern wants to see you."Harelip finally got what was happening, or at least some of it. She stood up inside the guard post and grabbed a shotgun. Then she hit a button on her control board. A beeping alarm went off and the door of the guard post started to slide open.Then the alarm stopped, and it started to slide shut again.Harelip looked as if she hadn't been expecting that.The half-dead went to the next cell in line and pulled back on its lever, using both hands this time. The door slid open on its rails. Both of the women inside came rushing out at once, but the half-dead tripped one of them up and knocked her to the floor. It grabbed her hair and pulled her face back. She was a black woman with long cornrows. "You're not Laura, either," it said, and then it slit her throat.In the guard post Harelip hammered at the shatterproof door of what had become just another prison cell. Clearly that door could be opened and closed by remote control--just like the door locks on the SHU cells. Someone in a central command center was intent on keeping Harelip locked up tight. She beat at the door with the butt of her shotgun, but it was inch-thick Lexan and it would probably stand up to the blast of a hand grenade.The half-dead went to the door of the next cell.Two inmates in orange jumpsuits had managed to avoid its rampage. One prisoner was screaming as she ran toward the exit of the SHU. Another, the one who'd been carved up inside her cell but managed to get away, was leaning up hard against the wall, only a few cells down from where Caxton watched in terror. She was breathing heavily and her eyes were closed. She must have lost a lot of blood."Hey," Caxton shouted, and beat on the inside of her cell door. "Hey you. Convict! Let me out of here. I know what to do! I can save everybody."The wounded woman's eyes flickered open. She looked right at Caxton. Then she slumped to the floor in a puddle of her own blood.Everyone was shouting by then. The women in the cells were shouting to know what was going on, shouting for help, bellowing in panic and fear. Caxton could still hear the screams that came from the third cell that the half-dead had opened. The screams were cut off quickly. After a moment the half-dead emerged again, covered now in blood and gore. One of its victims had torn the baseball cap off his head and Caxton could see its ravaged face clearly now. Its eyelids were completely gone, as were its lips. It looked both surprised and very happy, simultaneously.It was really enjoying itself, and it was just getting started, that expression said. It was five doors down from Caxton's cell."Gert," Caxton said, "when that thing comes in here, you just dive under the bunks, okay? Get as far in as you can. If this goes badly, I'll just tell it who I am, and hopefully, it'll just kill me, or drag me off, or whatever it is it's going to do. If you're quiet and you don't move, I think it'll ignore you. Okay?"Gert nodded. Her eyes were as wide as the half-dead's."Okay," Caxton said, steeling herself. Half-deads weren't very strong. It was possible she could overpower it when it came into the cell. Of course, there was the knife to think about.There was nothing in the cell Caxton could use as a weapon. Nothing she could use to defend herself. It was a maximum-security prison cell, and very smart people had spent a lot of time and money making sure she was harmless when she was locked inside.She would have to crouch by the door, and wait for it to come in, and then-Her thought was interrupted by a thunking noise from inside the door. With a gentle creak, it slid open just a crack. Lying on the floor just outside, Caxton saw the wounded prisoner, the one Caxton had thought was dead. She must have crawled over and used the last of her strength to pull back the lever.

12.Inside the guard post Harelip was trying to pry the door open with a wooden baton. It was an act of desperation-she had completely lost control of the SHU.In a cell just a few doors down, the half-dead was cutting up more inmates, looking for Caxton. It was up to her to stop him from killing anyone else.There were other problems to think about-the prison was clearly under attack by vampires, for instance-but they were going to have to wait. Caxton eased open the door of her cell and stepped outside.It felt weird, being outside of the cell without shackles on. Even as bad and scary as things had gotten, it still felt weird. Caxton tried to ignore the part of her brain that kept telling her she was in serious trouble, that the COs wouldn't like this. The only CO who wasn't dead in the SHU was locked inside her own guard post. Caxton considered trying to free Harelip. It would be nice to have some backup, for one thing, and there were weapons in there. But she doubted she could break into the post any better than Harelip could break out of it.She stooped down to touch the throat of the woman who had opened her cell door. There was a pulse in her neck, but it was faint. The half-dead had really done a number on her, cutting her open from the armpit down to the hip and probably opening arteries and veins all the way down. The woman needed a lot more than first aid, and Caxton wasn't sure she could be saved even by a team of paramedics. As much as she owed the woman, whose name she didn't even know, there were other people she could help more. People she could save.From inside a cell a few doors down Caxton heard a woman screaming and begging for her life. A trickle of blood rolled out through the open door and glistened on the concrete floor of the SHU. Caxton kicked off her slippers-they made a slip-slap noise when she walked-and padded barefoot over to the open door. It would be suicide to barge in and try to save the women inside. Half-deads weren't very smart, or strong, or fast. But with its hunting knife and Caxton's limited training in unarmed self-defense, this half-dead wouldn't have to be any of those things to hurt her, and badly, if she rushed it. So she leaned up against the wall next to the door, flattening herself against it as tightly as possible, and cleared her throat noisily.The whimpering moans inside the cell didn't stop, but she heard the scrape of a boot heel against the floor. The half-dead had heard her and was turning around to see what the noise meant.It could choose to be stupid, or to be smart. If it was stupid it would come running out with its knife held up high. It would trip over her outstretched ankle and fall face forward onto the floor, losing its grip on the knife in the process. Then she could grab the knife and kill it before it could even start getting back up.If it was smart, it would stay exactly where it was, and wait for her to come to it.Caxton could hear her heart beating in her ears. She counted thirty heartbeats before she decided it had done the smart thing. Then she cursed to herself.It heard that as well. "Is that you, Laura? Are you playing a little game with me? Why don't you come in and say hi? I'm not supposed to kill you, you must know that. Miss Malvern just wants to talk."Caxton bit her lower lip. The half-dead might be lying, but she knew that was just wishful thinking. Malvern was behind the attack on the prison, of course. Justinia Malvern, the last living vampire in Pennsylvania. She and Caxton had a long history. Malvern had been making plans to pillage and destroy the good people of the Commonwealth for nearly a century and a half. In that time she'd created a legion of new vampires, whole armies of them, to aid her. For the last few of those years Caxton had been the one who foiled all her plans and slaughtered all her vampiric descendants. She'd never quite managed to track down Malvern herself, and now it sounded like she was going to pay for that failure.Maybe Malvern wanted to torture her to death. Caxton knew the vampire wouldn't let her die quickly, not if she could help it. Not if she could watch. There were other possibilities, too. Malvern had always wanted to turn Caxton into a vampire. It would be a great coup, and it would turn her greatest enemy into a valuable ally. More than once Malvern had made the offer, and every time Caxton had turned her down. Maybe the whole prison was suffering just so Caxton could have another chance to say no. Or maybe Malvern had something else in mind entirely, some brilliant but twisted scheme that involved Caxton in some diabolical way she couldn't imagine.Regardless, the last thing she wanted was to see Malvern just then. Not until she had some serious firepower to back her up."I don't have a lot to say to her at the moment," Caxton told the half-dead. "But if you come out of there right now, I'll talk to you."The half-dead cackled."I'll take it that's a no," Caxton said.It might have planned on replying, but before it could speak again she was inside the cell. She kept low but moved fast, rushing forward to try to knock it down, her eyes darting from side to side, looking for where the knife might be.Instead she just saw the cell's two inmates. They weren't begging for mercy anymore, because both of them were dead, locked in a final embrace and covered in each other's blood.The half-dead was crouching up on the top bunk, waiting for her.This one was proving way too smart. It leapt down on top of her, one arm back, holding the knife high, pointed downward toward her. Its orders might be to bring her in alive, but clearly it was willing to wound her if that's what it took.One of its boots clipped Caxton's ear as she tried to roll out of the way. Her head rang and her ear instantly felt hot. She brought her knees up to protect her body and felt them dig into the half-dead's groin, a blow that would have left a living man gasping in agony. The half-dead didn't gasp. It didn't even need to breathe, and what it had between its legs wasn't that sensitive anymore.Still, the impact left the half-dead off its balance and rolling off of her to one side. Caxton grabbed at the toilet/sink unit and started dragging herself upright, fighting the fuzziness that was spreading through her head. The half-dead jumped on her back and its knife came around to swing at her face.Caxton couldn't stop the blow-she was moving too slowly. But she was still stronger than the half-dead. She bucked wildly, like a horse, and it flew backward and off of her, the knife sliding through the shoulder of her jumpsuit but not even connecting with her skin. She spun around to find it standing in the doorway, the knife low, holding it out toward her, ready to lunge.She kicked it in the wrist as hard as she could.Had she been wearing shoes, or been just a hair faster, that would have disarmed the half-dead and left her with the advantage. Instead the half-dead managed to yank its arm back just as her kick connected. Her toes curled back painfully as they collided with the half-dead's arm. All she accomplished with the kick was to make her opponent step backward, out of the cell. That left her trapped inside the small cell. The half-dead could simply slam the door shut behind her and engage its latch, locking her inside. Then it could call for reinforcements and just wait until they arrived. That's what she would have done, and this one had proven to be no fool so far.She screamed in rage as it smiled at her and reached for the edge of the door.It didn't get a chance to push the door closed, however. Harelip appeared behind it and leveled her shotgun at the back of its head. Somehow she must have gotten out of the guard post."Freeze, asshole," the female CO said.The half-dead started to turn around. It didn't drop the knife.Caxton dropped to the floor and covered her head as Harelip pulled the trigger. The shotgun roared and fire burst from its muzzle. It didn't contain any buckshot, Caxton knew, or any weight of slug-the shotguns the COs used fired beanbag rounds, soft nylon bags full of ceramic balls that expanded in flight to spread the energy of the impact. For a normal human being, getting hit by a beanbag round was incredibly painful, even incapacitating, but it rarely resulted in permanent damage.Normal human skulls, however, had a lot more structural integrity than a half-dead's. The head of the thing that had once been named Murphy exploded like an overripe pumpkin hit by a sledgehammer, spattering the interior of the cell-and Caxton-with pulpy brains and shards of bone and plenty of unidentifiable goo. The beanbag itself, which looked like a sweat sock full of marbles, bounced off her back and landed with a squelch on the floor."Shit," Harelip said.Caxton started breathing again."That wasn't Murphy," the CO told her. She was crouched next to the body."You're right. It might be Murphy's body, but-""Murphy had a tattoo on the back of his hand. This asshole doesn't."Caxton glanced at the hand and saw this was correct."So what the hell is this thing doing, wearing Murphy's uniform?"

13.An hour earlier Clara Hsu had just been taken prisoner. They walked for quite a while through narrow corridors, passing through a number of doors that had to be opened electronically, and a few gates where COs in glassed-in booths buzzed them through. The prison was a big place, and Clara doubted she could find her way back alone if she had to, much less figure out a way through all those locked gates. Eventually they emerged from an underground tunnel into a building that felt more like office space than jail cells. The ceiling was made of acoustic tile that supported fluorescent light tubes, and the walls were normal plaster instead of cinder block or brick. Clara decided this had to be the administrative center of the prison, a place prisoners would rarely ever see. It made her feel a little more comfortable, anyway, to be away from the echoing cell blocks and the brutal architecture of restraint and control. Not that she thought that she was free, or that she would be unsupervised for even a second.At the end of a long corridor lined with normal hollow-core doors they came to a reception lobby and then an oak door labeled WARDEN WARDEN in chipped gold lettering. The CO with the stun gun indicated that Clara should open the door herself. She stared at the scratch on his cheek. The skin was starting to peel away at the edges. She was very afraid she knew what that meant. in chipped gold lettering. The CO with the stun gun indicated that Clara should open the door herself. She stared at the scratch on his cheek. The skin was starting to peel away at the edges. She was very afraid she knew what that meant.She knocked gently on the door-her arms had gone weak-and then turned the knob. Inside the office her eyes were dazzled by orange and pink light. There was a massive picture window at the far end of the room, and the sun was just setting beyond it, a bar of red light on the horizon. The window looked out over a courtyard ringed with watchtowers and a twenty-five-foot-high curtain wall."Miss Hsu," someone said.Clara shielded her eyes to try to see who was talking to her. "It's Special Deputy Hsu, please," she said. There were at least three people in the room, not counting the CO who had come in behind her and had his stun gun leveled at her back. She blinked rapidly as her eyes adjusted to the gloom. There was a desk there, and a long rectangular coffee table running through the middle of the room, and two people in orange sitting on a sofa along one wall-"I suppose there's no need to pretend this is a routine interview," said a woman standing next to the window. She was wearing a stab-proof vest over a conservative business suit. She had something in her hand that Clara thought at first must be another stun gun, but a moment later she saw it was a Black-Berry handheld.Outside the window the sun winked out, done with the day.In a few seconds it would be night. The timing wasn't lost on Clara. "Maybe so, but I should point out that detaining a federal agent without an arrest warrant is a pretty serious crime," Clara said. "If you let me go now, we can both save a lot of really annoying paperwork.""I would advise you not to move, or flinch," the woman said. She had to be the warden of the prison, Clara decided, though she hadn't bothered to introduce herself.The coffee table stirred, and Clara nearly did jump back. She hadn't been expecting that. She stared at the piece of furniture and saw that her sun-dazzled eyes had mistaken it for something it was not. It was a wooden box, six feet long, with a long, tapered, hexagonal shape."Oh, Christ," Clara sighed, as its lid started to slide back.Someone whimpered to her left. Clara looked over and saw the two people sitting on the sofa there. Now that the sun's glare was less dazzling, she could see that they were both prisoners dressed in identical orange jumpsuits. Their hands were tied behind their backs and they were gagged. One of them, a blond girl who looked like she couldn't be more than nineteen, stared at Clara with imploring eyes.Laura Caxton wouldn't just wait and watch this happen, Clara thought, because she was pretty sure what was going to come next. Laura would fight.But she wasn't Laura. She had never been as brave as her girlfriend, could never be as tough as the famous vampire hunter. She was a glorified police photographer, and there was a big man-or something worse-at her back, ready to beat her into submission if she made the slightest move. So she stood there, still as a statue, and watched.The lid of the coffin slid a little further, then overbalanced and fell to the floor with a crash. Clara felt as if a puff of cold air blew out of the coffin, but she knew it wasn't that. Vampires were unnatural creatures. Their very existence felt wrong-it made the hair on the back of your arms stand up. It made your skin prickle.Taking her time, moving stiffly Justinia Malvern sat up and looked around the room.She'd been born in 1695 in England, and had lived through every year of American history there was. Vampires lived forever if no one managed to kill them, but they didn't age gracefully. Malvern's skin was pale, paper-thin leather stretched tight over protruding bones. In some places it had worn away where it had rubbed night after night against the stained silk lining of her coffin. A patch on her forehead had eroded down to dull yellow bone. She wore nothing but a thin, almost transparent mauve nightdress that was nearly as tattered as her skin, but modesty hardly applied to something that had spent more time in a coffin than it had standing upright.Her head was completely hairless. She didn't even have eyelashes. She had long triangular ears, one of which looked like it had been chewed on by animals. She had one eye that was yellow and cloudy with cataracts. The other eye socket was empty except for a wisp of cobweb, a dark hole in her head surrounded by rotten skin.Her mouth was full of broken fangs. Not just two sharp canines-Clara had been raised on that image of vampires, of suave counts with a pair of protruding but tiny fangs. Vampires in reality had teeth like sharks, their mouths packed full of row on row of wicked translucent blades. There were gaps in Malvern's smile, a lot of them, but she still had plenty of teeth to chew with.Her bony arms were folded across her chest. She opened them slowly, carefully, and placed a skeletal hand on either side of the coffin. With obvious pain but just as obvious determination, she levered herself up until she was standing on her own two feet. She swayed slightly, but she didn't fall.Clara gasped a little. She didn't mean to. She'd read Laura's notes, though. The first time Laura Caxton had seen Malvern, she'd been confined to a wheelchair, barely able to lift her arms to hold a beaker full of donated blood. Later on, when Malvern had assisted Caxton with her investigations at Gettysburg, the vampire had been too feeble to even raise her head. She'd been trapped in her own coffin, barely able to lick at blood dripped across her mouth. Clearly the blood she'd drunk at the Tupper-ware party, and at the roadhouse, had gone some way toward reviving her.She had never spoken more than a few words, as long as Clara had been alive."I trust," she said now, in a voice that was creaky and thick, but clear enough to be understood, "that my dinner is prepared."It was all Clara could do to be still as the warden went to the sofa and grabbed the blond prisoner. She was dragged up to her feet and pushed forward. The warden tripped the girl until she was kneeling next to the coffin, her head bowed. Her hair fell forward, exposing the nape of her neck from the hairline down to the loose collar of her jumpsuit.Malvern struck like a snake. She might be slow and stiff, but where there was blood involved, there was always a way. Her broken fangs sank effortlessly through the flesh at the back of the prisoner's neck, grating on the thick bones of her spinal column. The prisoner screamed and shook, tried to break free, tried to buck the vampire off her back, but Malvern's fangs had a death grip on her, like a wolf's jaws squeezing shut around the throat of a caribou. Malvern wrapped one spindly arm around the prisoner's waist and pulled her close. That arm should have snapped like a twig, but instead it seemed to possess the strength of an iron bar. It stopped the prisoner's convulsions and stilled her screaming as Malvern crushed her lungs and squeezed all the air out of her.In a minute it was done. Malvern dropped the corpse to the floor, having no more use for it. Then she climbed out of the coffin and walked over to the warden. "'Tis a treat, to meet ye at last, my dear," she said, and leaned in to kiss the warden on the cheek. The warden closed her eyes and sighed as if she were being greeted by a lover after a long separation. "And for you, Miss Hsu, my feelings are none but the warmest." She came gliding over toward Clara as if she would kiss her as well. Her face loomed toward Clara out of the gloom of the office like a scarred moon. There was a narrow stripe of blood on her chin.Clara did flinch then. The CO behind her grabbed her into a choke hold, then pinned her hands behind her back with his free hand, immobilizing her."Ah, I understand. Ye'll not find this face a pretty sight, not yet. Well, we'll change that anon. For now," Malvern said, standing up a little straighter, "there is my second course to consider."The second prisoner on the sofa started to scream, even through her gag.

14.Thank God," Caxton said, stepping forward, out of the cell. "I thought he was going to kill me. You saved my life."Harelip prodded the half-dead's headless body with the end of her shotgun. She knelt down next to the corpse and touched its back. "That wasn't supposed to happen," she said. She sounded like she was a long way away. "I thought it was Murphy I was shooting. I wouldn't have used lethal force on Murphy, no matter what. I've worked with him for seven years.""That thing was a vampire's servant," Caxton said, trying to explain. "When a vampire kills someone, they can-""Murphy was no fucking vampire!" Harelip shouted."That's not what I was trying to say," Caxton tried, in as soothing a voice as she could.Harelip turned and looked at the dead bodies on the floor of the SHU, and at the bodies in the cell behind Caxton. Her eyes stopped focusing for a second. Caxton had seen this before: most people, even hardened law-enforcement types, lost their reason for a moment the first time they saw the kind of violence that vampires or even just half-deads could create. Maybe Harelip had seen murder victims before. Maybe she'd seen people stabbed with shanks more times than she could count. But the kind of chaos the half-dead had created was still new for her, and it would take her a while to process it. Caxton just didn't have the time to let her work through it on her own."There will be more of them. They'll send ten of those things next time. Or the vampire will come herself. You can't stop a vampire with a beanbag round. We need to get the door closed. We need to lock down this unit. Right now.""You giving me orders now?" Harelip demanded."No. No, of course not. This is your show."Harelip spun around and focused on Caxton. "You lie down on the floor, hands behind your head. We're going to do this by the book.""Listen," Caxton said. "Your name is Worth, right?""My name is fuck you, bitch," Harelip said, breaking open her shotgun and taking a fresh beanbag round from a pouch at her belt. "I said get down on the floor, on your goddamned belly."Caxton raised both hands to where the female CO could see them and dropped to one knee. "There are vampires in the prison. All that screaming-I know that sound. You must know who I am. I'm Laura Caxton. I'm the vampire hunter. I know all about vampires. I know how to keep us all alive, but you have to listen to me.""And I damned well know you know who I am. I am your boss!" Harelip screamed, jabbing her shotgun at Caxton like a spear. "I don't know shit about vampires, maybe, but I know exactly what to do when I got a prisoner out of her cell and acting violent. You're going back in your cell, and you ain't coming out until this emergency is over. We've got a protocol for this."Caxton knew that if Harelip put her back in her cell, she would be a sitting duck for the next vampire-or half-dead-to come into the SHU. She was absolutely certain that someone would come looking for her again. She had to do something, anything, to keep that from happening. "Your protocol must include calling for backup, right? You're not supposed to do this on your own.""I already tried calling central. Nobody's responding. It sounds like there's riots breaking out all over the facility." Harelip shook her head. "You going to do what you're told, or are we going to have a problem?"Caxton knelt down in front of the CO, her hands still up and visible. "We just need to think about this, okay? What's the next step of your protocol? It's got to be to lock down the unit. To close that door."She looked over at the heavy reinforced door that was the only way in or out of the SHU. Harelip followed her gaze."Shit," the female CO said. She was breathing heavily. "Down. Now."Caxton nodded and dropped to her belly, weaving the fingers of her hands together behind her head. She could just crane her head far enough up to watch Harelip run back inside her guard post and slam the palm of her hand against a big red button on her control panel. A buzzer sounded and the reinforced door started to slide along its tracks.Beyond the door something moved. Caxton heard rubber boots squeaking on a cement floor, running right toward her. There had to be more half-deads out there, she realized. They'd been waiting, maybe waiting for Harelip to get Caxton into her cell. Now that the door was closing they were in a real hurry to get inside.The door kept sliding closed. But it was taking its time."Faster," Caxton breathed. "Faster!"It did no good. The door was designed to close slowly so that anyone standing in the doorway would have plenty of time to get out of the way.Outside, the footsteps were coming closer. It was dark out there, but Caxton thought she could see something moving, moving toward her."Come on," she said. "Come on!"The door was still open by a foot when the first half-dead thudded against it from the far side. They hammered and beat on it, making a rattling, clattering noise. Then one of them had the bright idea to try to slip through the door as it closed. A hand speckled with blood came through the gap, followed by a shoulder wearing the brown patch of a Pennsylvania corrections officer.The door kept closing. Caxton watched as the half-dead's arm came farther inside the SHU-and then as the door crushed it. The half-dead squealed in terror and tried to pull its arm back, but the door was still closing.It clanged shut when it reached the end of its rails. There was no blood, but the half-dead's severed forearm, still inside the SHU, dropped with a wet sound on the cement floor.Then it started dragging itself across the floor. Using its fingers as legs, it pulled along the severed stump behind it. It was crawling toward Caxton where she lay on her belly, intent, she was sure, on no good."Holy fuck," Harelip shouted, and came running out of her guard post. "What the hell is that thing?""I tried to tell you," Caxton said, losing some of her patience. She jumped up and ran over to stamp on the crawling hand until she broke the finger bones and stopped it from moving. "This is not just a riot. This is not just an escape attempt. The prison is under attack by unnatural, evil creatures."Harelip stared hard at her. Her nostrils were flaring."It doesn't matter," she said. "There are no exceptions. During emergencies prisoners must remain in their cells. The warden will send special teams to remove us when it's safe, and get us to a secure place.""Special teams. You mean teams of COs?" Caxton asked."Yes, stupid," Harelip said, scowling."You mean-like Murphy? Maybe like the one who gave us this?" she demanded, stamping again on the hand, which was still trying to wriggle around her bare foot. "He was wearing a CO's uniform, too."Harelip might have responded with a curse, or by hitting Caxton with her baton. She didn't get a chance, however. The buzzer sounded again, and the reinforced door started to slide back open on its rails.

15.What's happening?" Caxton asked, as the main door of the SHU inched open. She could hear the half-deads on the other side beating on it and laughing. At any moment it would be wide enough for them to squeeze through. She had no doubt there were a lot of them, and they would all be armed.Harelip ran back inside the guard post and slammed the red button with her palm again. The door didn't stop in its tracks. She hit it again, still with no result. Caxton could see her cursing inside the guard post. She came running back out with her baton drawn."They'll have knives," Caxton said, staring at the CO's truncheon. "They'll outnumber us. We have to get the door closed again-what's going on?"Harelip scowled. "Every door in the facility can be opened or closed remotely. In case of a riot a unit or dorm can be locked down from central command. Somebody-one of those things-must have gotten to the control board and sent down the emergency evacuation signal. That opens all the doors in this wing.""You can't override the signal from here?" Caxton asked."If prisoners took control of the SHU, central would still be able to lock down the unit, or pop it open if they needed to. So no, I can't override it from here."Caxton stared at the slowly opening door as she thought about it. "Before-when the half-dead came in here-they unlocked all the cell doors remotely."Harelip nodded. "That's right. And locked me inside the post. That's why I couldn't save the prisoners he killed.""But-but you got out, somehow," Caxton said.Harelip nodded again. "I yanked the wire that links that door control to central, then I hit my control again and, lucky me, it worked." She stared at Caxton as if she was just piecing it together. "I could pull the wire for the main door control, too. Cut off the link to central, and then close the door from here.""It's worth trying," Caxton said, her heart racing."It'll take a minute. Those cables are all run through a piece of PVC pipe under the control board. I'll have to break it open to get to them. By the time I'm done the door will be open.""I can fight off the half-deads while you're doing that. If you give me a weapon," Caxton said.Harelip glared at her. "You're kidding.""No! Look, we have to do something, or they're going to send every one of those things they have down here. Haven't you figured it out yet? They're coming for me. We're wasting time--just give me a gun!""Wait," Harelip said, as if the door wasn't rumbling open while they spoke. Already a half-dead had shoved one foot and part of its hip through the door. It was getting caught on its stab-proof vest, but at any second it would come lurching through, into the SHU where Caxton waited all but defenseless. "You're saying that if I give you to them, they'll leave the rest of us alone?"Caxton's heart skipped a beat."You're a prison guard," she said, finally."Yeah," Harelip replied."That means you're supposed to guard people. Not let them come to harm.""Uh-huh," Harelip said.Caxton shook her head. There was no time for this. "You fight them off-I'll yank the cable," she said, and ran toward the guard post.At least this time Harelip didn't argue. She moved to the door and slammed her baton against the head of the half-dead coming through the door. An arm holding a knife scythed down toward her, and she jumped back.Inside the post Caxton dove under the control board and saw the PVC pipe Harelip had mentioned. It ran from the underside of the board down to the floor. It rattled slightly when she pulled at it, but didn't come free. She could try to kick it free, but without any shoes on she'd probably just break her foot. She needed something to pry it loose with.She spared a tenth of a second to glance over at the door. It was open nearly a foot wide now, more than enough for a half-dead to slip through. Harelip swung her baton and danced around knives, desperately trying to hold them back. Caxton needed to get the door closed immediately.The chair that sat inside the guard post was made of wood. She picked it up and bashed it against the Lexan wall of the post and it shattered. Grabbing one chair leg, she ducked under the control board again and got the leg behind the pipe. With enough leverage, and the right angle-The pipe snapped in half. A dozen thick cables in white plastic insulation were revealed inside. They were all the same, as far as she could tell. There was no way to know which one to yank. If she pulled the wrong one, she might cut power to the guard post, and then she would never get the door closed.There was no other option. By the door Harelip was striking faster and faster, but she already had a bad cut on one ear and the side of her stab-proof vest was sliced open. It could protect her from a direct thrust, but slicing blows would eventually take it to pieces and then she'd have no protection at all. Caxton grabbed a cable at random and pulled. It came loose easily enough, but she couldn't tell what effect it might have had. With one palm she slammed the red emergency lockdown button on the console.Nothing happened."Okay," Caxton breathed, and pulled another cable, then hit the button again.Nothing."Come on!" she squealed, and pulled three of them at once. Then she slammed the button.The buzzer sounded, and the door stopped opening. Then, slowly, far too slowly, it started to close again.Caxton ran over to the door and nearly got brained by Harelip's whirling baton. A half-dead was reaching in, trying to grab Harelip by the strap of her vest. Caxton grabbed the dead bastard's arm and pulled it hard in the wrong direction. It snapped. The half-dead screamed.Another one tried to get its foot inside the door, a big foot in a thick, steel-toed boot. Caxton grabbed the leg behind the ankle and pulled, hard, knocking the half-dead off its balance.Harelip brought the end of her baton down hard on a half-dead's head. The skull split open like a rotten melon. And then--the half-deads pulled back, away from the door. They had seen what happened when it closed before, and one of them had lost an arm. They were smart enough not to let any of their number get crushed this time.When the door was finally, fully closed, Caxton leaned up hard against it and just tried to breathe for a while. She closed her eyes and didn't think about anything. In a second she was going to have to deal with all of this. She was going to have to think about why vampires were attacking the prison, and what she was going to do about it. But for a second, at least, she could just lean there and be safe.That was when she felt Harelip's stun gun touch the small of her back.

16.Franklin took off his sunglasses. The skin around his eyes was mostly gone, torn away by his own nails. If she'd had any doubts before, she was certain now-he was a half-dead. Malvern must have ordered him not to scratch his own face off, so that he could fit in better with the living people in the prison. He'd done the best he could, but he couldn't resist gouging himself a little.He gagged Clara and bound her hands behind her back with a strip of plastic that dug into her wrists. Then he left her alone. No one beat her, or stabbed her, or shoved her down a flight of stairs.No one drank her blood.Malvern made short work of the second prisoner, and the blood worked its magic on her.Already the skin was starting to grow back over the hole in her forehead. Her hands didn't look so much like bundles of twigs anymore-they were still mostly made of swollen knuckles and broken nails, but the balls of her thumbs looked positively fleshy. Her complexion was lightening, transforming from the brownish-yellow look of old, untanned leather toward more of the classic unhealthy pallor of an active vampire.Her missing eye would never grow back, of course. Any wounds a vampire suffered before its first death were never healed, no matter how much blood they consumed. But the one working eye she possessed was growing clearer, and a dull red ember seemed to burn far back in its depths.How many victims would it take before she was back to full strength? Until she was as powerful as the bloodthirsty killing machines Laura had been fighting for so long? Even then, of course, it wouldn't last. For a vampire as old as Malvern, it would take a constant influx of new blood to maintain this level of vigor. Probably after the interrupted Tupperware party, or after the bar she'd attacked, there had been this same transformation, and then she had just rotted away again almost instantly afterward. But here, now-there was the promise of more blood to come. These few victims, Clara understood, were just the first of many. Malvern would be able to support her habit for a very, very long time now that she controlled the place. There would be no shortage of bodies for her to drain, not in this prison.Clara stared at the warden. The older woman stared back calmly, without a trace of guilt on her features."If you want me to feel bad for these two, you can save your energy," the warden said, reading Clara's expression. "This one," she said, kicking the corpse of the young blond, "was in for IDSI."Clara winced. IDSI was "indecent deviant sexual intercourse." It was what the courts were calling the crime that had once been known as sodomy, and it could cover a wide range of offenses, none of them pretty."She raped her little sister with a hairbrush, if you want to know. The other one has been in and out of my prison since she was eighteen. Every time we let her out she would go right to her crack dealer and whore herself for a piece of rock. Before she knew it she would be right back in here. A total waste of human potential, and the kind of recidivist who has no desire to be rehabilitated. I'm not going to lose any sleep over either of them."Malvern rose slowly from where she'd been kneeling over the second victim. "Enough moralizing, girl. What shall ye tell me of the men ye cannot trust?"The warden looked at Malvern with an expression of pure reverence. "Your half-deads have been here all day, killing the COs I knew I couldn't trust and replacing them. The rest might take things the wrong way, so they're being herded even now into cells. We'll lock them up and give them the same choice we give the prisoners.""Very good. And of the authorities outside these walls?"The warden held up her BlackBerry. "I've been in touch with the local police department and the regional bureau of the state police. I've told them we had a small riot but that it was contained and we didn't need any help. That'll make sure nobody comes within ten miles of the prison until I give them the word that everything's clear. We should have at least twenty-four hours before anyone starts asking questions, and even then they won't know what's really going on. During an emergency all the phone lines out of the prison are shut down except for my private line. We're in total lockdown, and therefore in total control of the facility.""Very good," Malvern said.Clara tried to pay attention to what they were saying. She knew it was important-she had to understand the situation she'd stumbled into. But her eyes kept refusing to look at the vampire or the warden. They kept straying to look again at the bloodless corpses lying on the carpet between them.Malvern followed her gaze. "Are ye thinking, Clara, that ye're next?" she asked.Clara could say nothing with the gag in her mouth. She knew her eyes had to be very wide. She'd been forced to watch as Malvern gorged herself, again and again. Now she could feel sweat rolling down her forehead and toward her eyes. Fear sweat."Ah, but ye're different from this pile of corpses," Malvern told her. There was the ghost of a chuckle in her voice. "Or at least-ye have somewhat that makes ye different. Special. Do ye know what it is?"She waited patiently, as if expecting Clara to answer.Clara turned her head slowly from side to side.Malvern leaned close, close enough to kiss. Her skin was so cold and-and wrong-that Clara felt her own gooseflesh pulling back away from the contact. Malvern whispered in her ear. "Ye're loved."Clara whined in fear. She knew exactly what Malvern meant. Her throat tried to form a word, even if her mouth couldn't finish it. Laura. Laura.Malvern nodded as if she had heard Clara perfectly. "She'll come for ye, across any measure of space or peril. Right now she's hiding behind a locked door where I just can't reach. Yet when she knows ye're in danger, how long do ye suppose it shall take her to come a-running?"Malvern smiled. It is not a pretty thing when any vampire smiles. The teeth seem to spread outward, to grow even larger, to grow even in number. Malvern's grin could draw blood all on its own.She spun away, and almost danced across the room. It couldn't last, but for the moment her skin looked almost pink. Almost flushed with blood. "Someone remove that rag from her mouth. I'd speak with her now."A half-dead reached up behind Clara's head and untied her gag."She's too smart for that," Clara said, all at once. "She won't fall for your trap. Anyway, I broke up with her today. Most likely she hates me right now and wants me to die."Malvern glanced briefly at the warden, who shook her head in negation."I was listening to their conversation the whole time. They spent most of it talking about you, Miss Malvern. They never talked about breaking up at all."Malvern smiled again, but it wasn't such a maniacal grin this time. It was more of a shrewd, knowing leer. "You're very brave. But I must insist-I've planned this ever so well. Timed it to a nicety. I found the one hour, in all the month, when you two were in one place. Have faith, girl. I'm cleverer than you by half."Clara bit her tongue before she could say anything more.She didn't want to accidentally tell Malvern something she might find useful. Instead, she thought, she needed to steer the conversation around to where she was learning things she didn't know before. "That's the whole point of this? Of taking over the prison? Just to get Laura?"Malvern shrugged happily. "How I wish life could be that simple. No, child. This dungeon vile can offer me so much more. Look, already, how I bloom like a flower in a hothouse." She held up her arms, which were clearly plumping out."But it can't last. You killed all those guards, and took their blood, but what about tomorrow night? You're going to get hungry again. And just by being here you'll draw attention to yourself. The police will be all over this prison by morning. They'll surround it, set up kill zones around every exit. You may have gotten one good meal, but it'll be your last."Malvern's head drooped forward as if she were considering everything Clara had said. Then she lifted it again and stared out the window at the stars she could see over the curtain wall. "When I was a child of mortality, like yourself, I had taken a profession up, namely, I ran a gaming house. A pleasant enough suite of rooms in Manchester where gentlemen could come together and play pitch and faro-card games. I always forget no one plays faro anymore. They played whist, as well, following the rules that Hoyle wrote. Do men still play whist when they feel lucky?""Really, really, old men," Clara said.Malvern chuckled. "'Twas all the rage, whist, in the year of our Lord seventeen-and-twelve. It is a game played without speaking, where only the eyes may make strategy. It was considered thus a poor game for women, as we were believed unable to go so long without gossiping." Malvern shot a sly glance at Clara. "But oh, how the discriminating gentlemen favored it- for hours they would sit and be still and the only true thing in the universe seemed the fall of the lead, and the dance that followed, as each played looking to take book, and then the odd tricks-""Excuse me," Clara interrupted, "but I beg your fucking pardon. What has this got to do with anything?"Malvern had been standing next to the window. A heartbeat later she was leaning over Clara's shoulder, resting her bony chin on Clara's clavicle. Clara had never seen a human move that fast. She'd never seen a vampire move that fast. "My point is only this, dear. The odds may shift and flow. The wagers may be steep or thin. Yet a result may never be called until the last card is turned o'er. Do not discount me yet, nor until you see my heart torn out and burnt by your lover's hand. Like all good ladies who play at a game, I may just have a high trump down my sleeve."

17.The stun gun pressed hard against Caxton's back. It was a flat plastic weapon, almost all grip, with just a pair of metal stubs sticking out from the business end. When they both connected with conductive material, like human flesh, they formed a circuit and an electric current passed between them.The current wasn't particularly strong. It had a high voltage, upward of fifty thousand volts, but extremely low amperage- it wasn't designed to electrocute the victim, simply to send a pulsed charge through their nervous system that mimicked the body's own neural signals, essentially sending a message to every muscle in the victim's body telling it to activate at full strength and not release.The amount of power that required was easily delivered by a standard nine-volt battery. To the victim, however, it felt like being hit by a truck.Electricity surged through Caxton's body. Her muscles spasmed, some contracting, some expanding, all of them fighting each other. Her eyeballs quivered in their sockets and she felt a pure white bolt of pain run up her spine to explode inside her head.Darkness grabbed her up in its velvety arms and held her like a child.But just for a second.When she came to, she felt like she'd been flash-fried. She was lying on the floor. Staring up at the glare of the klieg lights in the ceiling. She blinked her eyes. It was about all she could manage. Eventually she was able to lick her lips.A boot prodded her in the rib cage. She tried to roll over and get away from it, but that just took too much energy.Harelip squatted down next to her. "Don't try to get up," she said."Okay," Caxton squeaked.The CO rubbed at her face. "Listen. I guess I owe you for your help. I guess we saved the unit, together. And I'm not going to forget that. But there are rules, and they're good rules, and they're there for a reason.""Ah," Caxton said."It ain't easy, being a CO. I know you cons think we're all sadistic assholes. That's only, see, it's just because you can't see our side of it, you know? You used to be a cop. You know what it's like when you're looking at somebody who would kill you if they could. Who would take any chance to fuck with you, just because of who you are."Caxton had to admit that was true. Every vampire she'd ever dealt with had felt that way, as well as a few human criminals she'd encountered."Imagine you were surrounded by that kind of aggro every single day of your life. Imagine if the second you came on the floor of a unit, a hundred eyeballs was watching your every move, looking for you to make one little mistake. To forget one little thing, so they could take advantage. It's possible--just possible-in that kind of a situation, to keep your head above the shit. But you got to be a serious hard case to make it work."Caxton lifted her left hand a fraction of an inch. Her muscles felt sore and rubbery and they didn't want to obey her commands, but they were starting to listen on a provisional basis."Don't," Harelip said, and pressed her hand back against the cement floor with the tip of her baton. "Just chill.""You got it," Caxton said."We get plenty of training before they set us loose in here. They make us take all kinds of courses. One of the things they teach is what's called CTS. Contain the Situation. That means no matter what happens, when you're a CO, you're in charge. No matter how bad things get you have to be on top of it. And if you gotta be a little mean, you do it. If you gotta call people names that aren't so nice, or even if you gotta stun somebody when their back is turned, you have no damned choice but to do just that. There are no exceptions to CTS. There is no way I can let you walk around outside your cell, ever. So I'm going to have to put you back in. I'm going to have to lock you in. I will protect you, I promise. I will get you out of this situation. I'll evacuate you and all the other prisoners once the warden sends an all-clear signal. Okay?"Caxton swiveled her head from side to side. "No. Please. Just give me a chance to explain. They're not going to stop trying to get through that door. They'll bring down cutting equipment and they'll get through. On your own you might stop the first wave, but they'll send more of those things. And if that doesn't work, Malvern will come herself. She's weak, for a vampire, but that doesn't mean much. She'll have fed-a lot-and regained enough strength that you won't stand a chance against her. I know how to kill her, but it's not something I can teach you in the time we have. We-"She stopped speaking, because suddenly the floor was moving underneath her. Or-no. That wasn't it. She was moving along the floor. She was being dragged by her heels across the rough cement. Her head bounced painfully and she tried to hold it up. She could just see Harelip pulling her along. Then the female CO bent down and picked Caxton up and slung her over one shoulder. Harelip grunted with the effort, but she managed to get Caxton inside her cell. She dumped Caxton on Gert's bunk-Caxton saw the pictures of Gert's babies directly across from her face.She struggled to get back full control of her body, but it was still fighting her. She managed to flop off of the bunk and get up on one knee--just in time to see the cell door close in front of her, and hear the metallic thunk as the mechanical lock was engaged.No, she screamed, inside her head. No! No!She grabbed at the padding on the door and pulled and tugged at it, but it was designed to resist tearing and she could barely get a handhold. She slammed herself against the door, over and over again, knowing full well she would never manage to get through it.Eventually she calmed down. There had to be something she could do. There had to be a way to communicate with Harelip. She stared out through the window in the door, but there was nothing to see out there except for the bodies of the dead prisoners and the crushed arm of the half-dead. Harelip was nowhere in sight.She could hear something, though.It sounded like someone was having trouble swallowing.Like they were gagging on a piece of gristly food. Caxton couldn't quite figure it out. She pressed her face up against the glass, trying to get a better view, but she couldn't see anything. Eventually she gave up and started pacing back and forth in the cell. The sound went away. It had never been very loud-maybe it wasn't even something happening in the SHU, she decided. Maybe it was just water flowing through pipes in the walls.She was still pacing, clutching herself for comfort, when the door opened again.Caxton whirled around in shock. She hadn't had a chance to prepare herself. What if someone was coming to kill her?The figure that appeared in the doorway was covered in blood. It was clutching the serrated hunting knife, and it was wearing a blue stab-proof vest. But the vest had been strapped on over the orange jumpsuit of a prisoner.The face was wracked by a grimace of pure madness. It took Caxton a long time to realize that she recognized it. First she had to consider a fact that hadn't yet gripped her: Gert wasn't in the cell. She hadn't been inside when Harelip dragged Caxton in.Gert had been busy, apparently. She must have sneaked out of the cell while Caxton and Harelip were wrestling with the SHU's main door. She must have found her way to the cell where Caxton had fought the half-dead, and found the knife there.Now-she had found a use for it."Where's the CO?" Caxton demanded, even though she knew perfectly well."I told you I could be useful," Gert said, and stepped inside.

18.Oh God, no," Caxton said, and put a hand over her mouth. Gert had-had killed Harelip. She stepped outside of the cell and saw the CO's body shoved up against one wall. A pool of blood glistened around her, staining her blue uniform and slicking across her throat and lower face."You shouldn't have done this," she moaned. "This was the last thing you should have done!"Gert came up behind Caxton and grabbed her shoulders. She started to knead them until Caxton jumped away from her."She was jamming you up," Gert said. "Even after you saved her ass. Don't tell me you ain't grateful. I could have let you rot in that cell, girl! I could have kept my head down, played nice. Instead I gave you a chance to survive, right?"It was true, in its way. Like most crazy people, Gert operated on a logical basis. It was just a basis built on a very shaky foundation.Caxton breathed through her mouth and tried to think. Harelip could have been a valuable ally. Caxton's plan up until that point had been to find a group of COs somewhere else in the prison and explain to them what was going on, then get them to help her fight her way out. If she'd been able to convince even one of their number, it would have gone a long way toward enlisting their aid. Now she was going to have to approach them as an escaping prisoner, a situation in which they would be likely to shoot first and ask questions later. Furthermore, Harelip had done well against the half-deads. She had kept her cool and thought things through. She would have made a good partner for the fighting to come.Now Caxton was all alone. She was trapped inside the walls of a maximum-security prison where no one, neither CO nor fellow prisoner, would be likely to offer her any help.At least, no one except Gert."Who are you?" Caxton snapped. "I mean-what did you do to get put in a place like this? You're no gangbanger."Gert sucked on her lower lip. "I killed some... people."Caxton shook her head."It wasn't my fault! When you're high, you don't always know what you're doing. You can't be held accountable, you know?"Caxton had never used drugs in her life. She had met lots of people who had, and rarely had she found one of them trustworthy. Never had she found one whom she would want watching her back.She was going to have to go it alone. Which meant she needed to start planning.Whether she was locked in the cell or free to move around the SHU, she was still trapped in a prison that was overrun by a vampire and full of half-deads. Malvern wanted her alive, but she really didn't want to find out why. She was going to have to protect herself.Calling for backup was her first instinct. She'd been trained, as a cop, to never be out of touch if she could help it. She headed inside the guard post and studied the control board. There was a telephone handset mounted on one side to allow the CO manning the post to communicate with the rest of the prison. There was no keypad-instead individual telephones around the prison could be selected from a series of buttons that dialed directly. She picked it up and then started punching buttons at random, calling the infirmary, the commissary, the staff lounge, the main gate. Anywhere but central command, which she knew had been compromised.She was not surprised when she didn't even get a dial tone. Malvern might be hundreds of years old, but she was conversant with modern communications. Cutting the phone lines had probably been one of her first moves.Well, if Caxton couldn't call for help, she would have to help herself. That meant finding some weapons.She only had to look around herself to find a miniature armory. A row of stun guns sat in chargers on one side of the control board. They would be useless against half-deads, who experienced pain in a far different way than human beings did, but she grabbed one anyway, in case she had to deal with any more COs who thought it was more important to contain the situation than it was to save lives. Underneath the board was a twelve-gauge shotgun, held in a pair of metal clips. She noticed for the first time that the stock was marked with a band of yellow paint, which meant it was to be loaded only with nonstandard ammunition. She pulled it free and broke it open, checking to make sure there was no round loaded already. In a bin beneath the board she found plenty of beanbag rounds but ignored those in favor of a box of rubber bullets. The name was doubly misleading: they were neither rubber nor, strictly, bullets. Instead they were shotgun slugs about four inches long made of polyvinyl chloride. They were designed not to penetrate the skin but to hurt someone enough to make them want to vacate an area. Against half-deads they would be even more effective than the beanbag round Harelip had used.There were other weapons to be had, but they were all what used to be called less-lethal weaponry (the most recent term was "compliance weapons")-useful for controlling prisoners you didn't want to actually kill. There was a can of pepper spray, a hollow aluminum baton, and a squishy bag of some compound Caxton couldn't readily identify. She took all of it except the bag, though two concerns limited her arming herself.For one thing, none of it-nothing in the SHU-would be of any use against a vampire, even one as decrepit and weak as Malvern. The hunting knife could carve out her heart, assuming she would stand still long enough, but Caxton knew better than to fight a vampire without proper firearms. It was just asking for a quick and painful death.The other big concern was that she had no way to carry it all. There was no belt on her jumpsuit, nor were there any belt loops. The jumpsuit had been designed to be bright enough to see in the dark and easy to wash. Fashion hadn't been much of a concern, and it was baggy and shapeless. It didn't even have any pockets.At least there was something she could do about that, though it was a grisly task to contemplate. Caxton went over to Harelip's body and removed her belt. It fit over Caxton's shoulder like a very thin bandolier, and she was able to clip the stun gun to it and slide the shotgun and the baton underneath it if she pulled it tight. The pepper spray she slipped inside her bra. That left just the knife."Gert, you have to give that to me," she said, and held out her hand.Caxton's celly looked her up and down. "You got the utility belt. I'm keeping the knife."Caxton sighed. "I need it more than you do. In fact, you're not going to need it at all.""What do you mean?" Gert asked.Caxton stood up straight. "You're going back in the cell now."Gert laughed. "You shitting me? I saw what happened to those fools in the cells when that thing came through. I ain't getting locked up again!"Caxton was about to reply when a loud bang startled her. She whirled around and saw a woman staring at her through the glass window in her cell door. "I'm with her," the woman shouted, her voice just audible through the door. "Let me out! I don't want to die in here!"Over across the SHU there came a rapid hammering on another door. "What about me, bitch?" another prisoner demanded.Soon half the cell doors were rattling in their jambs. Caxton whirled around, looking at the cells, wondering what she was supposed to do about the women inside. Then she ran back to the guard post and turned on the intercom that would broadcast to the speakers inside the cells."Listen," she said, speaking into a microphone on the control board. "We are in a very bad situation here, but I'm in charge now and I have things under control, at least for the moment. I need all of you to stay calm."The cells erupted with shouts and obscenities and manic pounding on doors and windows.Caxton gritted her teeth and looked around at the cell doors. Almost every window had a face plastered against it. An angry, demanding face."There are more of those things outside the SHU," Caxton announced. "They've come for me. Just for me-I plan on leaving here soon, and when I do, I think they'll leave you alone. For now, though, you have to trust me! The safest place for you is inside your cells."She stared at Gert as she finished.Gert stared back with a look of utter scorn on her face. "If you was one of us," she asked, raising her voice over the chorus of shouts and catcalls, "would you buy any of that shit?"They don't have a choice, Caxton thought. They were murderers and gangbangers and women who were a danger to them-selves. Three of them were on death row. She couldn't trust them. She might have all the weapons, but they could easily mob her and overpower her and take away even that advantage.It was just like Harelip had said. You had to contain the situation. You couldn't leave your back unguarded for a second. And yet Gert had a point. Who was Caxton to deny these women a chance to defend themselves? Maybe they could even help her. If they would just pipe down, that would help a lot. It would let her think-A booming, echoing thud came from the main door of the SHU, and suddenly there was silence. The shouting stopped, though the women stayed glued to the windows, every eye looking toward the door.The thump came again. Then a high, cackling voice said, "Keep it down in there, ladies! We're trying to sleep!"The prisoners started in again with the noise instantly, but this time it was different. Before it had been howls of outrage and anger. Now they were screaming in fear.

19.Take off your jacket," the warden said, pointing a pistol atClara's stomach. Clara didn't protest. She removed her jacket and folded it over the back of a wooden chair. The warden gestured and Franklin came forward to fit a nylon cuff around Clara's biceps. A strap held it in place around her arm. He pulled the strap tight enough to hurt, but Clara refused to give him the satisfaction of crying out. The cinch on the strap locked with a special key that he tossed over to the warden. She caught it with her free hand. Clara studied the cuff and saw that it had a small black box attached to it. Metal prongs from the box poked through her shirt sleeve and felt cold on her skin."This is the latest thing in compliance measures," the warden told her. "We're still trying it out. There were, admittedly, some side effects we didn't like." She stepped closer and brought her gun around in a wide sweep that missed smashing it into Clara's nose by a fraction of an inch. Reflexively Clara threw her arm up to ward off the blow.The pouch at her back gave off a deafening shriek. Clara howled in pain."There's a motion sensor built into the cuff. If you try to make any sudden movements-say, if you try to run away, or if you attack someone, or just try to take the thing off-it'll give you that warning tone. That lasts for one second. If you don't immediately stop moving, it'll hit you with a pulse of enough electricity to disable every muscle in your body."Clara frowned. "What are the side effects?"The warden shrugged. "For one, when it goes off, you shit your pants. We're not going to let that happen, though, are we? You're going to be nice and quiet and obey the cuff. You can walk, slowly, but I wouldn't try scratching your nose too vigorously. With this thing we can keep you close and not have to worry about watching you every single second." The warden smiled. "It's better than being hog-tied and gagged and thrown in a locked room, right?"Clara wanted to spit in the woman's face. "Why are you doing this?" she demanded.The warden surprised her by giving her a straight answer. "I have colon cancer."Clara sputtered in surprise. "I'm-I'm so sorry."The warden ignored her sympathy. "I let it go too long before I got checked out, and now the doctors say it's inoperable. There are all kinds of treatments they can try, but none of them are an actual cure. I've got this evil little blob inside of me that gets bigger every day and eventually it's going to kill me. Maybe ten years from now. Maybe tomorrow." She shrugged. "I don't want to die. That's not so hard to understand, is it? So when Malvern started contacting various staff members here at the prison, looking for someone she could manipulate, I shot up to number one on her list. Luckily for me.""Luckily?" Clara said, surprised."If I hadn't been so receptive to her advances, she would have attempted to seduce someone else. Any of the administrative staff or even some of the more senior COs would have served her purpose. If it hadn't been me that she chose, I would have been killed first when she took over the prison. This cancer inside of me, which I have been afraid of for so long, turned out to be my ticket to eternal life.""She offered to make you a vampire? And you want want that? It's not a medical treatment option. It's a that? It's not a medical treatment option. It's a curse. curse. You'll live forever, alright--just like her." You'll live forever, alright--just like her."Together they looked at Malvern, who was deep in conversation with a half-dead standing just outside the door of the warden's office. Her shoulders stuck out like knife blades and her skin looked like cheap paper."In a few hours she'll look a whole lot better," the warden said. "Besides. It took her three hundred years to look like that. For the first century, she tells me, she was beautiful. Powerful beyond anything a human body can hope for. I'll have my time like that as well, for however long it lasts. Even if I only get another fifty years of health and strength, it'll be worth it. I'll be stronger than I am now. I'll have sharper senses. I don't see a lot of downsides."Clara scowled. "You just have to give up your humanity."The warden laughed. "You cops. You always amaze me when you think you're making a difference. The streets are full of drugs and guns, and the people on drugs have the most guns- when everything goes bad, which it always does, the results end up here with me. I get to babysit the human messes you couldn't prevent. I've seen women come through this office who choked their grandmothers to death for enough money to buy just one more rock. I've met pretty little girls whose teeth are rotted out of their heads because they can't stop smoking meth. Teenagers who killed their own babies because they wouldn't stop crying. You want humanity? You can keep it."Clara was shocked. "How did you ever end up in this job? If you feel that way, then why would you even want it? I would think if you devoted your life to caring for prisoners, you would at least try to believe in them."Bellows rolled her eyes. "I was young once, like you. I thought big, grand thoughts like that. Then I saw the reality. It's been years since I thought of myself as a caretaker. And that's not even the job anymore. We used to talk about rehabilitating prisoners. That was the term we used, the justification for why we lock them up in such brutal conditions. Now-the term we use is warehousing. This prison, all the prisons like this all over the world, they aren't places of healing. They're places where you store people, like you would store toxic waste.""That's horrible. I can't accept that," Clara said.The warden shrugged. "Accept it or don't, I'm just stating fact. I don't care-society doesn't care-if Malvern eats every single piece of human wreckage in Marcy The women in here don't care about each other, even. They fight constantly. They kill each other over the most pathetic of slights. They certainly don't care about me. I can't walk around this place without wearing a stab-proof vest. So why should I care about them? What I do care about is myself. My continued existence. I wasted my life, I see that now. I just want a second chance to get it right, and if I have to drink blood to get it-if I have to rot away slowly, fine. It's better than the alternative, which is death. Life is always worth more than death.""And you think Malvern's doing this out of the goodness of her heart? Did it ever occur to you that she's just using you?" Clara fumed. "Did you think it's a coincidence that she approached you only after Laura Caxton was sentenced to this prison? This particular prison? She doesn't care about your second chance. She cares about getting to Caxton, and that's it."Bellows laughed bitterly. "Of course! I'm not an idiot, and you should make a point of remembering that. Of course she's using me. And in return, I'm using her right back. That's how it works. That's how it always works." She glanced up. Malvern was beckoning to her. "Come on. If you walk too fast, you'll know it."Clara shuffled forward, glaring over her shoulder at the warden as she followed Malvern out of the office. Franklin, the CO who had brought Clara in, brought up the rear. He seemed to be the warden's personal bodyguard or maybe her chief of staff.A receiving line of half-deads stood outside, lined up against the walls of the corridor. Most of them were wearing the uniforms of COs, COs who had to be dead by now. It looked like the half-deads were running the prison now, on Malvern's behalf.Clara thought about the crime scenes she'd investigated with Glauer, the audacious murders Malvern had committed in the days just before she took over the prison. She realized why things had gotten so explosive now. They'd thought it must be because Malvern needed so much blood. Clearly she'd also wanted as many victims as possible-she needed her own private army of half-deads to run the prison. Each and every one of these creatures had been a living human being once with a family, with friends. Now they were just slaves.Clara found it hard to sympathize, though, when they sniggered and leered at her as she walked past.The four of them, Malvern, Clara, Franklin, and the warden, made their way through the maze of locked doors deep into the prison. There was no waiting at control gates this time or any checking of IDs. The doors were mostly unlocked, and those that weren't opened before Malvern even reached them. Clara glanced up at the ceiling and saw there were cameras watching every hallway, every small room they passed through. There must be half-deads in a central command center somewhere, watching.She was starting to worry that everything was not going to be okay. That even Laura couldn't save her from this situation. The idea had never occurred to her before that moment, but once it arrived she couldn't get it out of her head.She could die there, in that prison. Worse, she could be used as bait to lure Laura into a trap. And then both of them would be killed. Or worse. She was pretty sure that Malvern intended to make Laura a vampire. Malvern had done that to other vampire killers, in the past. She seemed to find it deliciously ironic.As for herself, Clara doubted she'd be given the same option.The four of them passed through one last door, a massive sheet of reinforced iron. Malvern smiled and stepped aside. "Best if they don't see me as of yet," she said. "You go first, child." She gestured for Clara to step forward, through the door. Clara shuffled forward and was instantly engulfed in noise. They had reached one of the dormitories-what a previous generation might have called a cell block-and the women housed inside were going crazy. The noise was intense and oceanic. Though it had to be made up of individual shouts and questions and profanities, the stone walls and steel bars of the prison reverberated with the noise and made it just one clamorous roar.Clara looked up and saw three levels of cells, rising up to the ceiling far above her head. As she watched, a flaming roll of toilet paper came sailing out of one of the upper-level cells, unwrapping as it flew. She was very careful not to flinch. Elsewhere in the top two rows women were squirting bottles of water through their bars or throwing down bits of broken wood or crumpled paper. On the bottom level prisoners were beating on the bars of their cells with cups or cafeteria trays or just hitting and kicking at them with their bare feet and hands. Everywhere she looked she saw hard faces staring back at her, hard eyes watching her every move. Women flipped her the finger or waggled their tongues at her or showed her their naked buttocks. Others tried spitting at her, though few of them got any range.The warden stepped into the dorm and raised her hands high. When that didn't change the volume of the shouting, she reached behind her and Franklin handed her a megaphone. She switched it on and shouted over the din, "You want to know what's going on? Then shut the fuck up right now! Or you can all just sit here with no dinner. I've got four more dorms to talk to. You lot can be last in that line, if you want."The shouts and calls never really died out, but they definitely lessened in volume. It took a while. Clara looked around at the cells on either side of her. The women inside were pressed up against the bars, most of them watching the warden now. There seemed to be eight of them in every cell-cells that might comfortably have held four. There was only one toilet in every cell, and no room for the women to move around much. The stink of unwashed bodies and shit wafted back and forth across the way and Clara wondered if it was always like this. If people were actually forced to live in these conditions, for years at a time. She remembered Fetlock's nasty little joke, when he suggested that going to prison was like being sent away to summer camp for Laura. Well, everyone did sleep in bunk beds, Clara saw. Otherwise...The warden finally decided that the noise had dropped to an acceptable level. "There's been some changes, ladies, and they're going to affect all of us. This facility is no longer under the control of the Bureau of Prisons. That means, whatever rights and privileges you thought you were entitled to before, you've got jack shit now. You want to eat tonight, you're going to have to play ball with me. Lucky for you I don't expect good behavior, or a reforming attitude. All I want is your blood."The shouting started up again, but the warden just waited for it to pass. Then she gestured back at Franklin and he, in turn, gestured at someone out in the hall. Four half-deads came running into the dorm, each of them pushing a rolling cart loaded down with medical supplies: rubber tubing, packs of sterilized needles, IV stands, and bags to hold collected blood."Dinner is ready to be served. You'll be eating in your cells from now on. I hope that's alright," the warden said, in a tone that made it clear she didn't care what they thought. "To get dinner, you have to give me a couple ounces of blood, that's all. Not enough that you'll ever notice it's gone. If you want to donate, you just stick your left arm through the bars and make a fist. These guys with no faces will be taking it from you. You can choose to cooperate with them, you can smile and say nice things to them, as ugly as they may be, and make it easy for them to take the blood. Or you can fight them. You can refuse to give them your arm. That's just fine. In that case, she goes into your cell and rips your throat out.""She who, cuntlips?" someone shouted from the second level.Malvern stepped into the dorm then. She turned her ravaged face up to look at the three tiers of cells. Then she smiled, showing all of her broken, vicious teeth.A hush, a real hush, something very close to silence, ran through the dorm.The warden let the vampire's appearance sink in for a while. Then she raised the megaphone again. "Now. Let me tell you about option three."

20.The half-deads didn't waste much time. They didn't bother beating on the door or shouting threats through it at the women inside. Instead they decided to cut their way through.The door of the SHU was a plate of steel a quarter-inch thick. It was designed to resist any attempt the inmates made to tear it down or pull it off its rails, but the prison's architect had assumed they would never have access to an oxyacetylene torch. There was a loud hissing and a couple of high-pitched screams from behind the door, and then a spot near the middle of the door started to glow cherry red."Get back," Caxton said, and she and Gert moved away from the door just as sparks erupted from its surface and molten slag began running down its face. A jet of yellow sparks emerged from the hole the half-deads had made and began traveling down the height of the door. It looked like they intended to cut the door in half. The jet didn't move very quickly-it was going to take a while, so Caxton had time to get ready. She spent that time mostly sitting, watching the door, trying to make plans in her head.Gert didn't make it easy."So what are we going to do?" she kept asking. As if she wanted to know whether they should go to the mall or just get their nails done. "What's the big plan, vampire killer?" It seemed she had total confidence in Caxton's ability to outwit their enemies. "When they come through, where do you want me?" Gert asked. There was a nasty gleam in her eyes.Caxton tried to ignore her. She could have forced Gert back into the cell at any time. Gert had that knife, but Caxton had a shotgun loaded with a plastic bullet. It would be easy enough to shoot Gert and then get the knife away from her in her resulting pain and confusion. Once Caxton had the knife, Gert wouldn't be able to fight back in any kind of meaningful way. Caxton could force her into the cell, lock it, and have one less thing to worry about.She kept telling herself she didn't know why she was hesitating. Why she didn't do it right that second. In truth she knew exactly why she hadn't shot Gert-and why she wasn't going to. If she did she would be alone. Alone in a housing unit full of women who hated her, looking at a door behind which was a bunch of monsters waiting to kill her, and beyond them a vampire who would try to destroy her soul.There are times when nobody wants to be alone. Even if your only choice for company is a multiple murderer."I mean, you do have a plan, right? We're not just waiting here to get our asses kicked.""It would help," Caxton admitted, "if I knew how many of them there were. Or how they were armed." Half-deads never used guns. Their rotting bodies lacked the coordination to aim properly. Beyond that it was anyone's guess. They would try to take her alive, she knew, but they wouldn't be afraid to hurt her. Gert they would kill just to get her out of the way.Caxton had one round in her shotgun. She was certain she could take down one half-dead with it. After that she would need to reload. She doubted they would give her the time to do that.The jet of sparks reached the bottom of the door and fire licked along the cement. It stopped for a moment, then it reappeared at the top of the cut and started working upward. Caxton estimated she had about two minutes left to think of something.The door was nearly cut in half when inspiration struck. She realized what was in that squishy bag she'd found in the guard post. She ran back and got it, then dropped it about six feet from the door. Then she checked her shotgun again. Made sure it was loaded. Made sure it was ready to fire."Caxton?" Gert asked. The sparks were coming from very close to the top of the door. "Um, is that all you have?""Wait for it," Caxton said. "When they burst in, don't run at them. Make them come to you. If you can take them on one at a time, that'll help. And whatever you do, don't hold back. They aren't human, so don't worry about hurting them. They're already dead. Just hit them as hard and as fast as you can.""Okey-dokey," Gert said. She turned to face the door.The jet reached the top of the door. Bright silver slag had run down the painted metal like dripping candle wax, all the way from the top to the bottom. The jet of sparks sputtered and then went out.One half of the door slipped out of its tracks and fell inward. It hit the floor with a deafening clang. Revealed beyond it was nothing but darkness.Gert started moving forward, knife out in front of her."No!" Caxton shouted. "Wait."The half-deads came at them all at once. A crowd of them, most dressed like COs, a few in orange jumpsuits. Their faces were torn to shreds and their eyes were alight as they swung knives and shanks and shock batons through the air. They jumped over the fallen section of the door and came roaring toward Caxton like a wave of pain.She lifted her shotgun. Waited for the perfect moment. Then fired her plastic bullet right into the bag at their feet.Its contents erupted upward like a silent fireworks display, ropy streamers of wet orange goo shooting upward with incredible speed. It splattered across the oncoming half-deads, splashing across their legs and chests and faces and then hardening instantaneously, snarling around them in a mass of slimy tendrils that dried in the air as Caxton watched.The half-deads weren't even aware of the sticky foam exploding around them at first. They kept coming, legs lifting for the next stride, arms swinging to menace the waiting prisoners- and then froze in place. The hardening foam held them fast, barely able to move, their limbs trapped, their ravaged faces covered in the ropy mess. What little range of motion they had was spent trying to pull the sticky tendrils off their bodies, with little or no success.Caxton had been surprised to see the foam pack in the guard post. She knew that the air-activated aqueous foam had been designed originally for use in prisons, as a way to immobilize rioting inmates and keep them from attacking the guards. She also knew that after a few live tests it had been all but banned from prison use, because it had a bad habit of covering its victims' noses and mouths in solid gunk, making it impossible for them to breathe. The potential lawsuits had convinced the Bureau of Prisons to look elsewhere in its constant search for the next great compliance weapon.Half-deads didn't need to breathe. Even if they did, Caxton couldn't care less. They couldn't hurt her anymore, or take her captive, and that was what mattered."Oh my God," Gert said, snorting with laughter. "Did you see the look on that guy's face when-"Caxton grabbed her celly's arm. "Move," she said. "There might be more on the way, and I only had one of those."Together the two women ran around the side of the stuck mass of half-deads. The creatures cried out in misery and a few, whose arms hadn't been completely pinned by the foam, tried to reach for them or stab at them, but they couldn't follow as Caxton and Gert made their escape from the SHU.Now Caxton just had to figure out what she was going to do next.

21.Just after midnight they brought the first batch of blood to Malvern in plastic bags, the kind hospitals used to store whole blood for transfusions. The prison had a full medical ward, and the necessary supplies were all in stores. A half-dead in a CO uniform pushed a wheeled cart into the warden's office and unloaded the blood onto what had become Malvern's desk. Six bags of it, each of them swollen to capacity. Clara knew this would be the first batch of many.Malvern grabbed one up at random and pressed it to her mouth. She was able to shred the bag and suck the blood out without spilling a drop on her tattered nightdress. When it was gone she sighed, a strangely human sound. She closed her one eye. There were holes in the eyelid through which Clara could see that Malvern's eye had rolled back into her head. As she watched, the holes shrank, the skin there healing visibly.It wouldn't be long, she knew, until Malvern was whole and healthy again, at full strength and more than a match even for Laura. Of course, that strength wouldn't last-Malvern would start rotting away again almost immediately. But there was more blood where this came from, so much more.And meanwhile the outside world had no idea she was here. No idea that the prison had been turned into one enormous blood drive. No idea that every prisoner in the facility was at enormous risk.Clara had watched the first few donations. Hungry women had shoved their arms through the bars of their cells, more than willing to make a small sacrifice if it meant they didn't have to go to sleep on an empty stomach. There had been far more volunteers than there were half-deads to take the blood. Nobody had refused-they knew what would happen if they did. The half-deads had moved down the dorm one cell after the other, moving quickly, stabbing needles into arms almost at random. The work clearly delighted them. They had not bothered to replace their needles between donations, or even to clean them off. Clara had protested-she knew little about phlebotomy, but she knew you could get any number of things from a dirty needle. How many of the prisoners had been IV drug users on the outside? How many of them had hepatitis? Or HIV, for that matter? Or who knew what else?Her pleas had fallen, of course, on deaf ears. Neither the warden nor Malvern seemed to think that the spread of blood-borne illness was a significant problem. Which told Clara something. It told her they didn't expect the prisoners to live long enough to get sick.There had been few volunteers for option three. Maybe Malvern and the warden expected that to change. Or maybe they just knew that the prison was a short-term solution to Malvern's long-term need for blood. Maybe they understood they couldn't get away with this forever, and that meant they must have a contingency plan for what happened when SWAT teams stormed the prison, as they eventually must.Clara wondered if she, herself, would live long enough to find out what the contingency plan was.While she was considering that particular dark thought, a half-dead came into the office and rushed over to Malvern. He whispered in her ear and she smiled.The warden looked up from her BlackBerry and raised one eyebrow."There's been an escape," Malvern said, her eye twinkling. She reached for another blood bag."Care to share with me?" the warden asked. "It is still, technically, my prison. It sounds like the kind of thing I ought to be aware of.""It is a small thing, I assure ye. I sent a company of my slaves to your Special Housing Unit, there to recover the famous killer, Laura Caxton. They failed at this, and she has escaped.""What?" the warden asked, jumping up.Clara's heart lifted in her chest. Only to fall back again when she heard what Malvern said next."It was no more than I expected of her. She has at her advantage resources and craft others cannot match. No lock nor prison gate could hold her long. No half-dead is fair sport for her. I knew she would escape. I planned for her to escape, all this time. 'Tis why we needed her," she said, and jabbed one bony finger in Clara's direction. "Be not afraid."The warden looked largely unconvinced. "I've heard of Caxton. I've read about what she's capable of. You're sure this is under control?"Malvern reached for another bag of blood. Her shoulders looked remarkably less bony than they had before. They were almost round. "Lady Fortuna makes sport of any who would claim such," Malvern said."Sometimes," the warden said, "I wish you would just answer 'yes' or 'no.'Malvern smiled. And drank down more blood.A little later the candidates for option three were brought in, one at a time. Clara was gagged so she couldn't warn them what they were getting themselves into. There were four of them, and they were allowed to sit down on the sofa and given a drink of water. They were tough-looking women, all of them. Two were black, one was a Latina, and one was white, but they all had the same cold eyes that kept moving around the room, taking everything in. They didn't smile, or thank the half-deads who brought their drinks. They didn't talk among themselves."Forbin," the warden said, and one of the black women looked up. The warden consulted her BlackBerry and said, "You're in for murder, is that right?""You know it is," Forbin said. She glanced over at Malvern and licked her lips. "I killed my husband because he was beating me."The warden frowned. "It says here that your defense attorney couldn't present any evidence to back up that claim. The prosecution said you had an argument with him over some money. You wanted to buy some drugs and he wouldn't give you the money, so you stabbed him. Seventy-one times." The warden shrugged. "I don't honestly care. You're in for twenty-five to life and so far you've been a less-than-model prisoner. You've stabbed two other inmates since you were inside.""Always in self-defense," Forbin protested."Let's see. You have some family back in the world. An uncle. We're looking for people without a lot of ties or relationships.""He used to rape me, when I was a kid. Then I got too old for him." Clara's eyes went wide. Forbin couldn't be much more than twenty-five. "I ain't expecting much from him now. There's nothing out there for me. I'll be old like you if I ever get out. I can't get a job with a felony on my jacket, and as soon as I hit the streets I'm gonna start thinking about getting high again. You got something better to offer, I'll take it."Malvern leaned forward across the desk. "You can't imagine the dark secrets I offer, child. Will ye swear fealty to me tonight?""You want my bond? You want respect, yeah? I can give you that.""Then come closer. Do not speak. What passes between us is called the Silent Rite, and words would only sully it." Malvern rose from her seat and bid Forbin to kneel before her. She took Forbin's face in her thin hands and stared deeply into her eyes. For a moment there was no sound at all in the warden's office. It felt like the air had congealed and gone bad.Malvern was passing on her curse. This was option three. If the prisoners chose it, they didn't have to donate blood. Instead they could take their own lives-and tomorrow night, they could rise again, as vampires. As part of Malvern's new brood.When the rite was finished Forbin was weeping. Malvern opened a drawer of the desk and took out a small glass bottle with a rubber dropper. It was full of straw-colored liquid Clara couldn't identify, but she was pretty sure she knew what it was.Behind Forbin the office door opened quietly and a pair of half-deads came in carrying a simple pine box. A coffin. Forbin didn't even look at it. She just opened her mouth and stuck out her tongue.The curse itself wasn't enough to make someone a vampire. They also had to die by their own hand. The curse helped with that-it got inside your soul, made you want to die, to be reborn. You could fight it off if your will was strong enough, or if you had enough to live for. Forbin didn't even try.The liquid in the bottle must have been some kind of very strong, very fast-acting poison. Malvern leaned forward and handed the dropper to Forbin. The prisoner put the drops on her tongue, put the dropper back on the desk, then sat back on her heels and closed her eyes.After a minute or two, she started to twitch. Her arm jumped at her side. Her head rocked on her neck. The twitching got worse and graduated to full-blown convulsions-but only for a few seconds. Then Forbin's face turned purple with congested blood and she fell backward. The two half-deads caught her easily and laid her out in the coffin. Then they pushed the lid onto the coffin and carried it away again, with Forbin inside.It could be that easy.The other three women sitting on the couch watched it all without a word. Their eyes took it all in, measuring, evaluating. They were clearly working out in their heads whether it was worth it or not to follow the same path.The warden cleared her throat. "Hauser," she said, and the white woman stood up and came to kneel before Malvern. She had a tattoo running down the side of her neck that read 100% PURE. PURE. Clara had worked in law enforcement long enough to know what that meant. Hauser was a member of the Aryan Brotherhood, most likely the girlfriend or sister of one of the white supremacist gang. Clara had worked in law enforcement long enough to know what that meant. Hauser was a member of the Aryan Brotherhood, most likely the girlfriend or sister of one of the white supremacist gang."I'm not afraid," she said, looking straight at Malvern. "Let's get on with it."The warden looked at her handheld. "Two different counts of vehicular homicide-that's pretty suspicious. You ran down an eight-year-old black boy with your van, and got a light sentence because you claimed you merely lost control of the vehicle. Then when you did it again, less than a year later, the judge decided that you either desperately needed to tune up your brakes, or that maybe there was something more to the case than met the eye.""I'm not sorry, if that's what you're asking."Malvern grinned wickedly."Currently serving life without the possibility of parole, because your offense was judged a hate crime.""That's right. I confessed everything already. I don't feel the need to do it again," Hauser said. She turned and stared at the warden. "You want me for this detail or what? I was planning on offing myself anyway looking for a chance. This sounds even better than hanging myself in my cell while seven colored bitches look on and cheer. Let's get it fucking on."Malvern reached down and grabbed the woman's cheekbones. "You'll do as I say in all things?""Absolutely.""Then hush, child, and receive the gift," Malvern said.Clara could only stand and watch in horror as the grotesque vignette was repeated again-poison, convulsions, Hauser taken away in a coffin. The other two volunteers went down without any more hesitation than Forbin or Hauser.In a prison as big as SCI-Marcy how many women would be suicidal? How many were looking at futures without hope, without prospects? These four had volunteered even after seeing Malvern, after seeing what an old and decrepit vampire looked like. They were willing, like the warden, to take the curse even if it meant rotting away forever. It was still better than what they had now. Tomorrow night, Clara knew, there would be more volunteers for option three. When the prisoners saw what brand-new, freshly made vampires looked like-there might be a lot more.When it was done the warden reached across the desk to pick up the bottle of poison. Malvern snatched it out of her grasp."You're still useful as a mortal," Malvern explained. "As a human face, should any curious fellows come to the door asking what has happened here."The warden nodded, though she didn't look happy. "Soon," she said. "You promised me it could happen soon.""When faced with eternity in a more perfect form, is not a little time of waiting acceptable? Yes, Augusta. It will come soon enough."

22.Laura Caxton was completely lost.It didn't surprise her. She'd never seen a map of the prison-prisoners weren't typically allowed that kind of information. Every time she'd moved around the facility the COs had been there to guide her. She knew in a general way that she was on the western side of the prison. She knew that the main gate was on the eastern side.There had to be other gates, though. Other ways out.Her big plan, so far, was to escape. To get out of the prison and find someone in authority and tell them what was going on. If they wanted her to go back and hunt down Malvern, with proper weapons and backup, then fine. If they wanted to return her to custody and take care of the problem themselves, she wouldn't put up a fight.The trick, of course, would be breaking out of a maximum-security prison. With no good tools, no guards she could bribe. And in the dark. Malvern had shut off most of the prison's lights. Maybe she just wanted to conserve electricity-or maybe she knew that Caxton was loose, and wanted to make things difficult for her. Here and there an emergency lighting unit was still blazing away, but Caxton knew those would only last an hour or so before their batteries died. And then she would be trapped in complete darkness, without so much as a window to let in starlight."I knew I could count on you, Caxton. I just knew when I saw you, we were going to be buds. I'm your road bitch now, right? The one you get together with even when we're out of here," Gert said. "I mean, I guess I have to be, because we're going to break out together, right? You're going to need me out there. And I'm going to be so useful to you. This is my big chance. If I can get out now, I'll still be young enough to have more babies of my own. I knew I could count on you."Caxton nodded but didn't say anything. She wasn't sure who was listening. She knew exactly who was watching. There were video cameras everywhere in the prison, watching every corner, every hallway, every reinforced door. She had no doubt they had night-vision capability. She knew she had to move quickly, that if she lingered too long in one place it would be easy for Malvern to get a squad of half-deads together and send them her way.So far she'd been lucky. Beyond the door of the SHU had been a long, featureless corridor that led to a hub area, a place where three hallways crossed each other. It was the perfect place to put a guard detail, and in fact the prison's designers had built a defensive post in the middle of the hub, a guard post with narrow windows and gun ports and thick cinder-block walls. It had been empty when Caxton arrived. Maybe, she thought, Malvern just didn't have enough half-deads to cover the entire prison.She'd learned a long time ago that hoping for anything like that, anything that would make her life easier, was a trap. You had to expect the absolute worst, and capitalize on what little bits of luck you found, but never depend on them.Of the three hallways she could explore, two had been sealed off with barred gates. The gates could be opened remotely or with an actual key. Harelip hadn't possessed such a key, she knew-she'd searched the dead CO's body-and the remote controls were, she was certain, heavily guarded. She'd tried the third hallway. There was a big fire door at the end of that one, but it opened easily when she pushed on it."This feels bad," Caxton said, out loud, when she looked at the empty corridor that lay beyond. It was lined with doors, normal doors with doorknobs and everything. No one was guarding that hallway. There weren't any guard posts watching the place where the hall turned a corner. "There is one door that's open, and it's completely unguarded. It feels like a trap.""Don't be such a pussy," Gert said, pushing past Caxton to head down the darkened hallway. "I thought you were the big tough vampire killer, who never waited for backup, who went into vampire lairs with guns blazing-""That's when I had decent guns," Caxton explained. "You know, assault rifles with cross-point bullets. One stupid move right now and both of us are dead. And you might have just made a stupid move."Gert looked down at her feet as if expecting to find the floor littered with bear traps. "Nope, don't look like it." She marched over to the nearest door and, before Caxton could stop her, turned the knob and stepped through."Wait, just-" Caxton called."This one's clear," Gert said. "Just a bunch of boxes and shit."Caxton stepped over to the door and brought up her shotgun. She stepped inside and swung the weapon from side to side, daring any half-dead to come jumping out of its hiding place. When that didn't happen she went over to the pile of boxes and tore one open. It was full of cans of peaches in heavy syrup."This must be a storage area," Caxton said. She went to the next door down the hall and repeated her drill of sweeping the room with her shotgun before approaching the boxes inside. She broke open several of them and studied the contents. Powdered milk. Sliced beets. Sweet peas. The next room down was full of plastic-wrapped pallets of the plastic trays the cafeteria used."We must be close to the kitchens-you store food near where you're going to prepare it," Caxton announced.Gert used her hunting knife to cut open a can of pineapple. She slurped a couple slices into her mouth and chewed noisily. "This is good stuff. How do they take good stuff like this and turn it into that shit they serve us at mealtimes?" Gert asked."Maybe-maybe this is a positive thing," Caxton went on, ignoring her celly "If this is a storage area, then there has to be a way for people to bring boxes in and out. They must off-load delivery trucks close to here-there might be a loading dock right here. Maybe that's a way out."Gert shrugged. "Kinda. The trucks come in through the main gate, then drive around the side of E Dorm. They gotta go through two gates on the way, and there's a place where the hogs can blow out their tires if there's a problem."Caxton stared at her cell mate."What?" Gert asked. "I been here a couple years. You think me and my old celly never talked about how we would break out? People see things, yeah, and they talk about them. Everybody wants to know how this place works. And how to get out."Caxton laughed. She hadn't considered that at all. "Okay," she said. "So how would you do it?"Gert shrugged. "Well, first you have to fuck a guard. Some of 'em will do that, you know. They'll come in the cell saying they're gonna do a shank search, and then you just take your clothes off if you want to do it. You do that often enough, they start bringing you little things."Caxton's eyebrows went up. "Like what? Chocolate? Lipsticks?"Gert rolled her eyes. She threw her can of pineapples into a corner, then headed for the next door down the hall and threw it open. "No, dummy," she called, stepping inside. "Like rock. Crystal. You know, drugs. That's how a lot of girls in here get high. But if they really like you, you can ask them for things. It can't be anything too obvious. But there's one kind of toothbrush you can snap off the head and it makes a real nasty shank. Or a good hairbrush, the kind that's metal inside, you can do a lot with a piece of metal if you've got time to work it. Make lock picks, say. So either you take a screw hostage, which shouldn't be too hard if his pants are around his ankles and his dick is hanging out-or you pick a couple locks outside the infirmary and that gets you as far as the wall. Then you just have to get over the wall. We never did figure that part out."Caxton frowned and followed Gert into a room full of chairs. Hundreds of them had been stacked up inside, and in the dark the stacks made weird, spiky shadows. "I can see a couple of problems with us implementing that plan. For one thing, half-deads aren't interested in sex.""Yeah, well-hey. You know, it's seriously dark back here," Gert said. "Like, deep end of a coal mine dark.""Not quite that dark," Caxton said. She'd been in a few coal mines in her time.Gert tripped on something and caught herself against a stack of chairs. They rattled and squeaked loud enough to wake the dead. Caxton tensed herself, just by reflex, and grabbed the stun gun off her belt.When she felt a knife pass through the air inches from her face, she knew there was a reason she had grown so paranoid. She could just see the blade glittering in the low light. She estimated where the blow had come from and jabbed at it with the stun gun, then squeezed the trigger.There was a loud snapping sound of arcing electricity, and a high-pitched scream. Then the half-dead hit her hard with a fist to the stomach and knocked her down going past. She saw it silhouetted briefly against the doorway, and then it was gone."Shit," Caxton said. "I was hoping the stun gun would work on them like it does on living people, but no dice. Now we're screwed."Gert clucked her tongue. "No we're not. It ran away away, girl." Caxton sighed in frustration. "You don't know about these things. They're weak, and cowardly, and they can't shoot the side of a barn. But the problem is, they never work alone. That one wasn't running away. It was running for help."

23.Caxton sped out of the storeroom and slid to a stop in the hall. If she could catch the half-dead before it reached others of its kind she could save herself a lot of trouble. She wasted a half-second peering through the gloom back the way she'd come before she heard running footfalls and realized that the half-dead was running farther down the corridor, past the storerooms and into the deep shadows at the far end. Cursing, she chased after the retreating sound-knowing that what she was doing was stupid. She couldn't see a thing. She could trip over something on the floor and break an ankle. She could miss a turn in the corridor and run smack into a wall and break her nose or worse.She didn't have much choice. She'd been very lucky back in the SHU. The package of sticky foam had provided her with a few extra hours of life, but there'd only been one of them, and she didn't have any more tricks to play.Gasping for breath, she tore down the hallway anyway, spurred on by the same reckless instincts that had kept her alive for the last few years, kept her alive when so many vampires couldn't say the same. She held her hands out in front of her, which would give her a split second's warning if she was about to run into anything. Not enough time to stop herself, but maybe enough to prevent giving herself a concussion. She almost cried out in triumph as her fingertips brushed cloth and she realized that she was about to catch the half-dead. It collided hard with something in front of it, something softer than a brick wall anyway, and she threw herself onto it, grabbing for anything she could get a handle on, an article of clothing, a stray limb, hair.The half-dead had run into a door. It turned the knob just as she hit it from behind, and together they went sprawling through, into light so bright it dazzled Caxton's eyes and momentarily blinded her.The half-dead went down, its face hitting a cement floor with an ugly crunch. Caxton's fall was softened by its body, but still she felt the impact like a punch in the gut. She sucked air into her lungs and looked up, blinking away the glare in her eyes.She was in the kitchen, the same kitchen where she'd met Guilty Jen and her set. Back then it had been staffed by human prisoners cooking up meals for the other inmates for a few pennies an hour.Now it was full of half-deads.They were standing at counters chopping up vegetables or stirring huge pots on industrial stoves or carrying trays of food. One of them, who stood in the middle of the room with its hands on its hips, was wearing a white chef's toque.Every single one of them was staring at her. They were as surprised to see her as she was to see them, and they had frozen in place, unsure of what to do next.That wouldn't last.Caxton had no idea what Malvern had ordered her slaves to do if they found her lying facedown on the floor, all but defenseless. She could guess, however, that it involved a lot of knives and a very brief but furious attempt to hurt her as much as possible without actually killing her.She didn't have to think very hard about what she needed to do. She grabbed the shotgun from under her shoulder and fired her plastic bullet into the neck of the one in the chef's hat. The first rule of fighting dirty was that your first target was whoever appeared to be in charge.Fighting dirty was her only option. She watched as the chef's head flopped backward on a nearly severed neck and then rolled to the side, behind a stainless-steel table covered in chopped carrots. She could hear the half-deads screaming in their obscene falsetto voices, asking each other what to do, shouting that they needed to call for backup, or just howling for her blood.Caxton broke open the shotgun and started loading another slug. Before she could even get it out of her makeshift bandolier, carrot peelings showered down on her head and she looked up to see a half-dead diving over the table to get at her. It had a steel mortar in its hand, the kind used to crush herbs in a pestle, and it was holding it like a club, ready to dash in her brains.She yanked the pepper spray out of her bra and squirted the thing in its bloodshot eyes. It screamed and rolled to the side, tearing and gouging at its own eyeballs. Half-deads might not feel pain the same way living humans did, but nobody enjoyed getting a full load of capsaicin right in the mucous membranes.She finished loading the shotgun just as a pair of half-deads came around the side of the table toward her. They were both armed with kitchen knives, wicked and sharp and glowing in the brilliant light of the kitchen. She had time to notice that one of the knives was still flecked with bits of chopped parsley.She fired a plastic bullet into the chest of one half-dead, then flipped the shotgun around and caved in the other one's face with the weapon's stock.The two of them went down. Whether they were fully dead or just wounded enough not to bother her didn't matter. The point was that they had to stay down. She was much more concerned, anyway, with the six half-deads right behind them, who were all coming straight for her.She grabbed her baton. It wasn't much of a weapon, just a hollow length of aluminum weighted at one end and with a rubberized grip at the other. Back when she'd been a cop, though, she had trained in how to use it.The course she'd taken had focused on how to avoid breaking bones with the baton, and how to make sure you never, ever killed anyone with it. Like everyone else in the class, she had made a note of all the things she wasn't supposed to do in case she needed to do them one day.A half-dead armed with nothing but a steel ladle reached her first. It tried to duck under her arm, probably intending on grabbing her around the waist and knocking her over. She brought the baton around, grip end first, and jammed it in the soft spot just behind where its jaw attached to its skull. The half-dead screamed and dropped to the floor, where she stomped on it with both bare feet.She really needed to find some heavy boots. Preferably with steel-reinforced toes.The next half-dead had a cleaver that it brought whistling around to nearly cut open her throat. Maybe it hadn't gotten the message that she was supposed to be brought in alive. Caxton grabbed its arm at the elbow and pulled it into its own swing, overbalancing it and sending it sprawling.A third one came at her from the side while she was recovering from that move. It hit her hard in the side with a tenderizing mallet. If it had connected with her kidney, that might have been enough to drop her, but it only grazed the bottom of her rib cage. The pain was still intense and it almost kept her from focusing clearly enough to bring the baton down on the back of her assailant's neck. It curled away from the blow, which wasn't quite hard enough to paralyze it."Caxton, over here!" Gert shouted at that particular moment.Caxton had all but forgotten her celly's existence until then-hadn't, in fact, given her a thought since she'd started running down the dark hallway. She looked around wildly and saw Gert standing next to an open door on one side of the kitchen. It wasn't the door Caxton had intended to use when exiting the area. She had planned, or half-planned, to escape into the cafeteria, a wide-open space that would be easy to brawl in. The door Gert had chosen had two things to recommend it, however. It wasn't locked, and there were no half-deads near it.A kitchen knife flashed in the air and it was all Caxton could do to swivel away from where it was coming down. Instead of puncturing her chest, it flashed in front of her and sank deep into the back of another half-dead.Caxton took the opportunity to get away from her enemies, rolling under a prep table and then launching herself out the other side, knocking over a pile of dirty pots and pans as she hurried through the door where Gert was waiting, dancing in anticipation. Beyond the door was a darkened area full of wooden crates, stacked high in towers reaching toward a ceiling lost in the gloom. Caxton saw a forklift ahead of her, its bright yellow paint just visible in the darkness. Beyond that were- trucks. Big eighteen-wheelers, white and ghostly and huge."This is the loading dock you were looking for," Gert said. "Remember?"Behind Caxton the door started rattling in its jamb. Gert must have had the presence of mind to close and lock it after Caxton came rushing through."Who's got your fucking back, huh?" Gert asked.Caxton didn't bother to answer. The door wouldn't hold long. Half-deads were weak individually, but in groups they could bust down any barrier you put in their way. She needed a way to slow them down."Help me over here," Caxton said, and hurried toward one of the tall stacks of crates. Together they kicked and pushed at the crate at the bottom of the stack. The ones above their heads started to totter."You're supposed to say thank you now," Gert insisted.Caxton gave the bottom box a last kick. One side of it collapsed, spilling thousands of white plastic sporks in individualized wrappers all over her feet. The boxes above it fell with a great dusty crash, collapsing and shattering against the door, burying it in shattered wood and dented cans of baked beans and fingerling potatoes. That might hold the half-deads a minute or two longer.Caxton sighed and looked around herself, trying to anticipate the next threat. When she saw Gert's crazy eyes glowing in the dark, she remembered herself and managed to say, "Thank you."

24.Caxton had bought a little time. She needed more. She jumped on the forklift and started moving crates up against the door, a painfully slow process but the best way to make a strong barricade. The half-deads in the kitchen kept pushing and beating at the door, but they were making little headway. With half a ton of canned goods behind the door, there wasn't much they could do. After a little while they stopped trying.Caxton frowned. "They gave up," she said.Gert laughed. "That's a good thing! What's with you, huh? Every good thing that happens to us, you look like someone put cayenne pepper in your tampon.""That's because I'm a realist," Caxton said. "Half-deads don't just stop trying to kill you. It's possible they're just going around another way. Check these doors," she said, pointing at a pair of large rolling doors leading into the kitchen. They were big enough to drive the forklift through. Gert checked them both, bending low to look at their locks, then shook her head."Both locked up tight."Caxton rubbed her cheek absentmindedly It was possible the half-deads were going the long way around, and were going to come at them through the wide-open loading bay doors. Maybe there was something she could do about that.The loading dock had its own guard post. The door was locked, but Caxton was still riding out the adrenaline rush she'd gotten from fighting the half-deads in the kitchen. She slammed into the door with her shoulder, careful to hit it just above the lock. It held, but she heard something small and metallic fly out of the door and bounce away. She got a running start and kicked the door just below the lock, careful to keep her foot flat against the wood. The lock disintegrated and the door swung open, vibrating wildly on its hinges.Inside was a rolling chair sitting in front of a control panel. A pair of monitor televisions hung from the ceiling, angled downward so whoever was sitting in the chair could easily keep an eye on them. She studied the control panel, expecting to find a big red button, and was not disappointed. When designing the prison's control systems the architects had at least known that there might come a time when someone needed to secure the loading dock without wasting time looking for the right controls. She slapped the red button with her hand and an alarm sounded as a chain-link gate rolled sideways across the open mouth of the loading bay. Weird shadows flickered across Gert's face as the gate carved up the light. Caxton bent under the control board and found the cable that would let central command override the door controls. She pulled it, half expecting the door to roll open again because she'd pulled the wrong wire.It didn't."Now we're safe, right?" Gert asked."There's not a lot of difference between being safe and being trapped, at the moment. But we have time to think. That's the main thing I was after."She found a few useful things. There was a stab-proof vest hanging on a hook, the standard vest every guard in the prison was supposed to wear whenever in the presence of an inmate. It was made of ultratightly woven para-aramid fabric that would stop an ice pick, but not a bullet, and definitely not a vampire's teeth. She slid it over her jumpsuit and strapped it on tight. There were no boots in the guard post, but there was another box of plastic bullets, sitting under a row of metal clips. "There should be a couple of shotguns right here," Caxton said, touching the clips."Maybe when the half-deads took over the prison, the guards in here took the shotguns and tried to defend themselves.""Possibly-except there were two shotguns. There's only one chair in here." She shrugged. "Maybe the guard took both of them, who knows? And then he locked the door behind him when he went off to fight off the half-deads. Leaving a perfectly defensible position to go alone, on foot, into the middle of a dangerous situation." Caxton shook her head. "No, I think one of Malvern's people took those shotguns. I think this place was prepared for us.""What? Like, they knew we were coming?"Caxton tilted her head from side to side. "The doors we need are always open, or easily kicked in. We keep running across groups of half-deads, but they aren't armed properly. Malvern must know exactly where we are," Caxton said, pointing upward at a camera mounted in the ceiling, "but she hasn't sent a whole pack of them with good knives after us. It's like she's letting us move around the prison-part of the prison, anyway. The part she wants us in." She narrowed her eyes. "I'm starting to think we're being led through a maze like a couple of rats. That Malvern wanted us to end up right here.""Sometimes," Gert said, very slowly, "when I was high? I would start thinking that God was trying to tell me something. Just--just listen for a sec, okay? I would have like a really crappy day. The kids wouldn't stop crying. The bitch at the grocery store wouldn't let me buy cigarettes with my WIC coupons. There would be all kinds of bills in the mail for shit I didn't even remember buying, and then when I would run in my room and slam the door, it would turn out that my mom had cleaned my room while I was out and got rid of my stash. She would never say anything, never even give me a nasty look. But she would find my crystal and flush it down the toilet, like it was just some trash I left lying around. Days like that, sometimes I felt like a voice was talking just to me. A voice telling me to do something bad. Like cut myself, or maybe burn some old letters and pictures, you know, stuff I'd been keeping for years.""Okay," Caxton said."I need you to think real hard," Gert said. "I want to know if this suspicion of yours is anything at all like that voice I used to hear."Caxton held her peace."Because," Gert went on, "I found in general, doing the things that voice told me to do wasn't always such a shit hot idea."Caxton took her celly's point. There was no use worrying about the deeper game unless she could win on the surface. There was a diagram above the control panel that showed the whole of the prison's yard, all the structures and features of the grounds between the wall and the building itself. It showed in special detail the layered defenses between the loading dock and the main gate. Gert had done a pretty good job describing the gates and tire shredders a truck had to pass through to get back to the kitchens, but she'd missed a few things. The trucks had to make three tight corners before they could reach the main gate, and each corner was watched by a machine-gun position. Then there was the main gate itself. Caxton had seen it on her way into the prison, a big slab of metal thick enough to resist a direct attack by a tank. If that gate was closed, there was no truck in the world that could just smash through it.Still. The gate, the exit, was right there-no more than two hundred yards away. There were three trucks sitting in the loading bay, abandoned in place when the prison was taken over by half-deads. It was the best chance she was going to get to break out, to reach safety and help and sanity-She was still considering her escape plan when the security monitors over her head switched themselves on. In the dark guard post the white light they blasted over her was difficult to look at, and at first she had no idea what the image on the monitor was supposed to be. It was in color, though there wasn't much color to see, just a tinge of red in one corner of each screen on an otherwise unbroken field of white.Then the view moved backward and showed that the red was the dully glowing pupil of a vampire's eye. The view pulled back farther to display all of Malvern's face, horribly ravaged by time. But just as horrible was the fact that it didn't look as bad as it should. The skin was intact and snowy white. If it was heavily lined, if there were dark pouches under the vampire's eye and eye sockets, if the ears weren't quite able to hold themselves up under their own weight, it was still a face of something vibrantly and dangerously alive.Caxton had only once in her life seen Malvern look that good, and it had been in one of the vampire's own memories, transmitted to her via a psychic link they no longer possessed. In the real world Malvern's flesh had never looked so healthy, so vital, so whole.The camera kept moving backward. Soon Caxton could see all of Malvern's upper body, and what looked like the arm and hip of someone standing next to her. Malvern was quite gently holding the other person by the elbow. Caxton knew that it would take only the slightest muscular pressure on Malvern's part to turn that soft touch into a bone-snapping vise grip.There was no sound to go with the picture, and nothing moved within the frame. Every once in a while Malvern blinked. Then she said something that Caxton couldn't make out-it was hard to read a vampire's lips since all those teeth got in the way-and the camera jerked sideways, the entire picture swaying. When it stopped moving, two figures were visible on the screens. Malvern and Clara.Someone off camera handed Clara a piece of paper. Written on it in large block letters was23 HOURS.

25.They walked Clara, very slowly, to the central command center of the prison, a round room located on the top level of the facility's main building. Broad windows let in a little light, but far more came from dozens of flickering security monitors, most of them displaying empty hallways and locked doors. Every few seconds the view on each screen would change, or pan back and forth to show another section of the prison. On one screen Clara saw a view of B Dorm. It looked like the prisoners had mostly turned in for the night, though a few were still pacing their cells, obviously concerned about what the next day would bring.Around the central command center a skeleton crew of half-deads were bent over control panels and computer terminals, monitoring the prison's security systems. The largest number of them were gathered around a monitor at the far end of the room, where they pointed at the screen and giggled among themselves.On the screen, Laura was standing next to a woman Clara didn't recognize. They were both staring at something intensely, something just above their heads.Clara's heart sank when she saw her lover there. She had known Laura was at large in the prison, but she'd been able to imagine her crawling through ventilation ducts or hiding in some out-of-the-way spot-she could imagine Laura somewhere safe. From the grainy low-resolution image on the screen, however, she could tell that Laura had been putting herself in danger. As always. Her face was stained with blood or something darker and her clothes were spotted with gore.Clara turned away from the screen. She couldn't look at Laura anymore, or her heart would start breaking all over again.In the center of the room a video camera had been mounted on a tripod. Malvern led Clara in front of the camera while the warden stepped over to operate its controls. For a while they just stood there, while the camera's lens zoomed in and out. The warden cursed and adjusted a lever on the side of the camera."Dawn approaches," Malvern said. "Make haste.""This isn't my specialty," the warden explained, and pressed a button near the front of the camera. Then she cursed and tried another. A red light lit up on the front of the camera, which meant it was recording.Clara looked out the windows and saw that a smudge of dark blue was fighting with the black night sky. The sun would rise any minute, and when it did she knew that Malvern would have to be back in her coffin. Vampires weren't burned by the light of the sun, but at the moment of dawn each day they died once again, inevitably, no matter how strong or old or clever they might be. Their bodies liquefied inside their coffins, their tissues breaking down so they could repair any damage taken during the night."Give her the placard," Malvern insisted.The warden leaned around the camera to hand Clara a piece of paper that read 23 HOURS 23 HOURS. Clara held it in front of her. Malvern was holding her arm, and Clara knew if she didn't do as she was bid it would take no effort at all for the vampire to snap her bones like matchsticks."Very well, now end it," Malvern directed."Yeah, yeah," the warden said, and flipped a switch. The red light blinked off. "You know, you don't have to be so cryptic. Twenty-three hours, fine, that's an hour before dawn tomorrow, but what happens then? You didn't explain at all. And what use is making a threat if you don't even tell her what you want? There are loudspeakers in every room of the prison. We can broadcast your terms over and over, make sure Caxton gets the message.""Don't question me, woman," Malvern said, her usual convivial tone audibly cooling down. "Laura will know what I expect of her. Some games are best played in silence. Such as-""Fine, I've got it," the warden said. "Whist must be a hell of a game, I'm sure. Listen, there's still time before dawn, if you wanted to pass the curse on to me. That way I could be by your side tomorrow night, when Caxton comes gunning for you.""Play this message on the screen Laura is watching," Malvern ordered, ignoring the warden's plea. The half-deads around the security monitors jumped to attention and started tapping commands onto computer keyboards. "Play it again and again until we're sure she's seen it. You lot," she said, "ready my coffin. The time has come. While I slumber, see ye mind her as you would me." She gathered herself up and prepared to leave."Wait," the warden said.Malvern turned, a cold, imperious look in her eye."Please," the warden said. "You made me a promise. I've carried out your plan well, haven't I? I've done everything you asked.""And ye shall be rewarded. In due time. When Caxton is mine, ye shall-""Fuck Caxton!" the warden shrieked. "She's never going to do what you want. She'll never be what you want her to be. Focusing on her is a ridiculous mistake!"What happened next was impossible for the human eye to follow.Clara felt as if someone had hit her elbow with a baseball bat. Malvern had run across the room without letting go of Clara's arm first. The pain was intense. Even worse, as her arm flew up in response, the alarm on her electroshock restraint went off. It blared out a warning tone so loud it made her vision go dim. She froze in place, knowing that if she remained motionless for a second the stun package wouldn't fire and she wouldn't be sent into convulsions.The camera on its tripod went flying across the room, clanging against a chair and knocking a half-dead to the floor. And then Malvern was standing right next to the warden, holding her by the throat."Ye come to me as a supplicant, begging the greatest gift any of your kind may receive," Malvern said, very softly. "Ye call me your mistress, and beg to offer me your fealty. And then ye question my decisions."The warden tried to say something, but all that emerged from her throat was a choking gasp."Are ye really so impatient," Malvern asked, "to come to my favor? To take on my form? Let us see."The vampire needed only one hand to hold the warden in place. She brought up her other hand and laid the ball of her thumb against the warden's eye. "I am not your friend," Malvern said, "nor your partner yet. I am your liege." Then she shoved her thumb into the warden's eye socket.The human woman managed to scream as blood and vitreous fluid ran down her cheek. Malvern kept pressing until the warden's face turned purple and her remaining eye rolled up in her head. Then she dropped the warden to the floor.Clara could only watch, and slowly bring her arm down, careful not to activate the alarm on her restraint. She didn't want to do anything to draw attention to herself."There will be no rebellion in my lair," Malvern said. "Cleanse her wound, and pack it with linen." A half-dead rushed to the door of the command center, where a first-aid kit was clipped to the wall. It brought bandages and antiseptic to treat the warden's ruined face."You... why?" the warden moaned, clutching her cheek. Her fingers moved up to probe where her eye had been. When she found nothing there she screamed again. "You didn't have to do that! Now I'll spend eternity looking like a freak!"Malvern glared down at her. "Looking as I do, ye mean. I think it well. But perhaps ye'd like more hurts to remember me by? I could pluck out your tongue, ye who think it best to blare my intentions to every corner of this place. I could tear the ears from your head, or pull your nose into a new shape. Would ye like that?"The warden shook her head violently. She fought away the hands of the half-dead who was trying to staunch her bleeding and grabbed the bandages away from it. "No, of course not. No. That is to say... I. I'm sorry. I forgot myself. For a second." She paused to shriek as she dabbed at her eye with the antiseptic cream. "I won't make that mistake again.""Not if ye wish to survive 'til morning comes." Malvern glanced up at the windows. "Now. I really must away. Ye'll keep our hostage at her ease, I trust.""Of course," the warden said, slowly rising to her feet.[image]

26.It means," Caxton said, trying to explain to Gert what the vampire wanted, "that in twenty-three hours she's going to kill my girlfriend. Unless I go and surrender myself to her. Agree to become a vampire and serve her forever.""That's your girlfriend?" Gert asked. She looked up at the security monitor where the same piece of video was looping endlessly. "Huh. She's cute."The video monitors flicked off and Caxton dropped heavily into the guard post's sole chair. She put her face in her hands and closed her eyes. Let her shoulders fall. This... was bad. Up to that point her main concern had been for her own safety. Her big plan was just to escape, and let someone else deal with the hell that had descended on the prison. Caxton had been prepared well enough for that job. It was easy to keep herself alive-it just took desperation.Now things had changed. She had a new duty to fulfill. One that would take brains.She looked up, and over at the door they'd used to get into the loading dock. It wasn't jumping in its frame anymore. The half-deads were making no attempt to get at them. It looked like Caxton was going to be given some time to think over Malvern's ultimatum. "Okay," she said, and Gert looked over at her. Gert's eyes were wide and expectant. Like a kid waiting for her mommy to tell her what to do. "It's dawn. That's why she gave me twenty-three hours. Twenty-three hours from now will be one hour before dawn tomorrow-just enough time to pass on her curse to me before she has to go back in her coffin."Gert glanced over at the sky, visible through the gated outer bays of the loading dock. The sky was turning a weak yellow color and a few purple clouds were sailing by overhead. Gert nodded, as if to confirm what Caxton had said. "Okay, that's not much time. But for right now-it's daylight! So we're safe now, right? Vampires can't do shit during the day. I saw it on the Discovery Channel once."Caxton squinted at her celly "I didn't take you as the type to watch the Discovery Channel much.""What, 'cause you think my family couldn't afford cable?""No," Caxton said, holding up one weary hand in apology, "I just-""And not just basic. We got six channels of HBO, 'cause Mom liked the Sarah Jessica Parker show."Caxton rubbed her face. "Okay. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to imply anything.""Discovery has that show about the crab fishermen, I like that one."Caxton went on, hoping that Gert had finally run down. "It is true, as you say, that vampires are harmless during daylight hours," she said. "But half-deads aren't affected by the sun at all. So we're still in trouble. I need to think about what we're going to do next. I have to have a little while to myself to think about that. Why don't you find someplace comfortable to curl up and catch some sleep?""Sure," Gert said. As easy as that. Her mommy was going to take care of everything-she didn't need to worry. She picked a corner of the guard post and curled up there in a ball and was snoring a few minutes later.This left Caxton alone with her thoughts. Which was problematic in itself, because she couldn't seem to focus on out-thinking Malvern. Her brain was too busy punishing itself.She shouldn't be here, Caxton thought. Clara shouldn't have been at the prison. Caxton should have broken things off with her long ago, back when it still would have been easy. When a phone call would have been enough. Instead she'd forced Clara to come to visit her. To explain things in person, face-to-face. And then she hadn't even been able to do that. If Caxton had been a better girlfriend, if she'd recognized that Clara needed to move on-It did not strike her as any kind of terrible coincidence that Malvern had taken over the prison at the exact moment that Clara was finishing up her monthly visit. Caxton knew enough about how Malvern's brain worked. For years now Caxton had outsmarted every vampire she met-except for one. Malvern always planned ahead. Caxton tended to improvise. As a result Malvern had won every single time, or at least, she'd gotten away. Survived. And that was what drove Malvern, her primary goal in all things-to live just one more night.Malvern was more than capable of killing Clara when the deadline came. Any vampire would be. They didn't see human beings as rational creatures with thoughts and feelings. They saw humans as livestock. Malvern wouldn't bat an eyelash she didn't have. In fact, Caxton knew, there was no guarantee that Malvern would even keep Clara alive for another minute, now that she'd served her purpose. She hadn't claimed in her message that Clara would be around for another twenty-three hours. She hadn't said anything of the sort.But thinking like that was going to get Caxton exactly no where. She had to believe that Clara would be alive for almost a full day longer. That Caxton would have a chance to rescue her.And kill Malvern, as soon as she was sure Clara was safe.That was essential. She'd been fighting Malvern for years, and while she'd always saved the day, and kept people from being killed-most people, anyway-Malvern had always gotten away at the last second. She couldn't let that happen again.Malvern was clearly planning something big this time. She must be drinking gallons of blood to look so healthy and strong. Caxton could guess where it was coming from. She must be draining the prison population, using them as a captive food source. The administrators of the prison must be dead or collaborating to allow that to happen. Someone in the administration-the warden, she remembered-had been IMing with someone who used the same convoluted, archaic English that Malvern was famous for. She hadn't quite put it together at the time, but it was obvious now. So this had been an inside job.But turning the prison into her own private blood bank seemed to lack Malvern's usual elegance. Malvern always thought several moves ahead, and she must know that her time at the prison was limited. Eventually someone on the outside was going to wonder why none of the COs had come off duty and gone home to their wives or husbands. Or maybe some prison bus would show up at the front gate, loaded with new inmates, and there would be nobody to let it in. One way or another the authorities would come in force, and then Malvern would be forced to fight her way out of the prison. No matter how tough vampires were, they could still be taken down by enough cops with assault rifles. She couldn't be looking forward to that confrontation.Malvern was on borrowed time. And yet she seemed in no rush. She was giving Caxton almost a full day to think over her offer. A nearly full day, half of which she would spend inside her coffin, unable to direct her minions, unable to fight for herself.Of course, she hadn't made it too easy for Caxton. The prison was still full of half-deads, and presumably at least one living human, who would keep Caxton from getting into too much trouble. Especially since they could watch her every move, keep track of everywhere she went, through the hundreds of video cameras that monitored every corner of the prison.Caxton jumped up and grabbed at the camera mounted to the ceiling of the guard post. It held firm, even when she put all her weight on it. Grunting in frustration, finally she grabbed the pepper spray canister out of her bra and gave the lens a good coating. It would at least ruin the camera's focus, even if it made the close air in the guard post stink of spicy food, and that made Caxton's stomach rumble.Those cameras. She couldn't spray every single one of them.But maybe there was something something she could do about them. she could do about them.

27.After Malvern left the command center the half-deads went back to their tasks, some watching monitors, some trying to make the warden more comfortable. Her breathing was heavy and her face went very pale. She sat down heavily in a chair and put her head between her knees. For a very long time she just sat like that, not moving or speaking, while the half-deads tried to adjust her clothing or mop her forehead with wet towels. Clara stood by, watching it all, unable to do a thing to help anyone.Then the warden sat up very suddenly and stared around the room with a wild eye. "I'm fucking fine! Don't you dare touch me," she shouted, one hand lashing out to smack the face of the approaching half-dead. The creature squeaked in pain and spat teeth onto the ground. It had only been trying to change the bandage on her eye. "It's not going to have time to get infected," the warden insisted, "and that antibacterial shit stings like hell."She started to get up out of the chair, but clearly losing an eye had taken its toll on her. She nearly collapsed and had to let a half-dead ease her back down to her seat. She looked up at Clara and just breathed for a while, which seemed to be about all she was capable of. Then, with an effort of will that made sweat pop out in beads on her skin, she pushed herself up out of the chair and headed for the door. "Hsu, you stick with me," she said, grabbing the door frame and holding herself up with both hands. "I don't trust these bastards. One of them might try something when I'm not looking." Clara walked over to the door and tried to take the warden's arm, but the older woman pushed her away. "You've got no reason to be nice to me," she said."You're a living, breathing human being. The only one in this room other than me," Clara suggested.The warden snorted in derision. "Living," she spat out. "It's not all it's cracked up to be. Not when it makes you feel like this. Come on."The warden was wobbling a little on her feet, but her voice hadn't lost any of its steel. She stumbled through the corridors of the prison, Clara hobbling along behind her, careful not to take too long a stride. The warden stopped at several doorways to bark orders in at groups of half-deads who were gathered around radiators or television sets. "Get breakfast going! I've got more than a thousand assholes to feed. And you-I want a detail to check every dorm, every hour. Half these women hate the other half. We've got members of the Aryan Brotherhood crammed in the same cells as Latin Kings. If you don't watch them at all times they cut each other to ribbons, because it's what they think their boyfriends would want them to do. You see a shank, you take it away. You see them fist-fighting, you separate them. It isn't rocket science. What? No, I don't give a shit if they fuck each other. That's what women in prison do, to pass the time. It's not like they're real dykes, they're just bored."Clara's shoulders tensed in anger, but then she saw the glazed look in the warden's remaining eye, and the way her hands trembled. The older woman stopped suddenly in midstride and pressed one hand against her forehead. She looked like hell. It was hard not to feel a little sympathy for her-whether she deserved it or not."Are you feeling alright?" Clara asked. "Maybe a little feverish?"Bellows snarled at Clara's concern. Then, slowly she recovered her demeanor and answered the question. "Cold, actually," the warden admitted. "I'm shivering. And there's a ringing in my ears. I think I might be going into shock." She set her jaw and shook off Clara's hands. "But shock is something you can gut through, if you're tough enough. I'll be fine. I have work to do. For one thing, I have to kill your girlfriend."Clara's heart shriveled in her chest. "What? No-no, that's not how it's supposed to happen. Malvern gave her twenty-three hours. Malvern wanted her to join her, to become-""Malvern's not in charge right now. I don't know why she's wasting time on Caxton, honestly. I mean, I get the joke. It's really funny, make the deadly vampire hunter into a vampire herself, ha ha. But that's like asking a dog if he wants to guard your Thanksgiving dinner. He's still a dog. He still wants to jump up there and get his snout in the gravy. No," she said, "turning Caxton is a lousy idea. So I'm going to knock her off before sunset, so we don't have to worry about her ever again." She squinted at Clara. "You think Malvern will really be that upset? Caxton's been a thorn in her side for so long, she's not going to cry if she wakes up and finds her dead.""You can't do that. You can't!" Clara said.The warden grinned through her pain. "Watch me," she said.At the next door they came to, the warden reached in and physically pulled a half-dead away from the television set it had been watching. Clara glanced at the screen and saw that it showed one of the prison's shower rooms, currently empty. She was too frightened for Laura to worry much about what the half-dead had seen there."You. Get as many others together as you can and go down to the loading dock behind the cafeteria," the warden ordered. "Kill Caxton.""No! You can't do this!" Clara howled, but no one was listening.The half-dead's ruined face scrunched up in thought. "But, um, Miss Malvern wanted-" it managed to stammer out.The warden grabbed the half-dead by its shoulders. "Miss Malvern is currently a puddle of goo in a coffin. Whereas I am very much awake and ready to pull your arms out of their sockets. Do this quietly, do it quickly, and don't give her a chance to fight back. Do we understand?""Yes, ma'am," the half-dead murmured, and then headed off down the hallway at a run.

28.Gert," Caxton said, softly.Her celly woke up instantly, her eyelids snapping open and her hand reaching for the knife she'd kept tucked under her arm while she slept. "Everything cool?" she asked.Caxton nodded. "For the moment. I've been busy, and-""What time is it?"Caxton shrugged. "I don't have a watch. If I had to guess I'd say it's around nine." It had felt like about three hours since Malvern had made her dawn ultimatum. Twenty more to go."You think there's any coffee?" Gert asked. "Maybe in one of these crates?""We wouldn't have any way to brew it," Caxton suggested."Oh, I'll find a way. You know how long it's been since I had caffeine? Way too fucking long, that's how long. If I have to snort lines of freeze-dried instant, I will do it. You got me operating on three hours' sleep, I'll mainline the shit. What the fuck are those?"She was looking at Caxton's big project. The things that had taken her three hours to construct. The things she wasn't sure would work, even so.As she'd said, she'd been busy. She'd had to improvise and put them together from items she could find in the loading dock. She'd started with tin cans. She had as many of those as she could possibly want. In her search for supplies she'd found a small toolkit in one of the trucks. It had included a flathead screwdriver she'd used as a can opener. Very carefully she had emptied out five big cans that had contained creamed corn. She'd scraped them out and then let them dry. Then she had broken open a couple dozen crates and pried all the nails out of their boards. She had driven nails through the walls of the cans, all around, as many as she could without buckling the cans entirely. She'd made that mistake more than once.The final step had left her gagging and sick, but it was necessary. There had been a garden hose on the dock, presumably used to wash the trucks. With a pair of bolt-cutters she had clipped off a four foot section of hose, which she had used to siphon gasoline out of the tanks of the three trucks. There had been a lot of spillage-the loading dock still reeked of gas-but she had managed to fill all five cans to the brim and seal them back up.Sealing the cans took some work. There'd been a big economy-size pack of chewing gum in the glove compartment of one of the trucks. She chewed and chewed until her jaw was sore and used the wet gum to hold the lids on the cans and make seals around the nails to make the cans more or less watertight."Homemade fragmentation grenades," Caxton explained."You light one of these on fire and it'll blow up, throwing burning gas all over the place. Even better, when they go off the nails will shoot out in every direction as shrapnel. They should make a pretty good mess.""Well, shit," Gert said, laughing. "I never took you for a pyro. You're gonna blow down the main gate, huh? And then we just waltz right out of here. Or no-we can drive out, in one of the trucks. Jeez, Caxton, you're pretty smart, huh?""I hope so. I hope I can make them work without killing both of us in the process." She chose not to share what she really had in mind for her big unwieldy grenades. Gert might not understand what she truly hoped to achieve.Caxton started loading the cans inside the cab of one of the big trucks. She was careful not to slosh them around too much- not because they might explode (it would take more than rough handling for that), but because she didn't want to disturb the chewing-gum seals. They were the weak spot in her design. She thought there was a good chance that when the cans were set on fire, the burning gasoline would erupt upward and pop the lids right off the cans, rather than exploding outward and launching the nails. She would just have to hope for the best."Have you ever driven a truck?" Caxton asked Gert."Sure, no problem. Half my family had trucks," her celly told her."That's good. That's a very good thing." Caxton nodded and rubbed her hands on her jumpsuit. "Here's what I want to do. You get in this one and get it ready to go. I'll run up to the guard post and hit the control for the outer gate, then come and join you. We're going to have to move fast. Once they figure out what we're doing the half-deads will be all over us, regardless of what Malvern might want from me. You ready?"Gert pulled herself up into the truck's driver's seat and cranked the engine until it was rumbling along well. Caxton threw her shotgun and her stun gun in through the passenger's-side window, then jogged back to the guard post. She glanced up and saw that Malvern's ultimatum was still running over and over on the monitor. She slapped the red button on the control panel and checked through the post's window to make sure the gate was opening smoothly. When she saw it was, she reached for the post's door.Before her hand even found the knob the door burst inward. A half-dead barreled through it, its knife high and swinging downward to cut into her heart. Caxton shouted for Gert and half-jumped, half-fell backwards, colliding with the guard post's chair. She stumbled and fell hard on her hip, one arm tucked uselessly beneath her.It was a lousy defensive position. It was a great way to get killed, falling over herself like that.The half-dead took a step closer to her, the knife held straight out in front of its body. Its torn face split in a wicked grin so wide that the muscles around its mouth bunched and split.Caxton grabbed for the can of pepper spray in her bra. It felt suspiciously light in her hand and she realized she'd used it too many times. She couldn't be guaranteed there'd be even one good spray left inside.She rolled to her left as the knife came down at her, and sprayed anyway. The can sputtered out a thin mist of capsicum and then died on her. The half-dead didn't even look annoyed.Crap, she thought-she had put her best weapons in the truck, thinking she was safe from attack inside the loading bay. This half-dead must have been waiting just outside the outer gate, waiting for its big chance. She should have been smart enough to check outside the gate before she'd hit the red button. She should have done a lot of things smarter, she thought, as she rolled away from another blow.She still had her baton. She yanked it free of the belt she was using as a bandolier and brought it up fast, just fast enough to parry the half-dead's next strike. The blade dug a bright furrow through the black paint on the baton. Caxton grabbed it in both hands and pushed, struggling to get back up to her feet as the half-dead tried to keep her down on the ground by pushing down with its knife.Caxton was stronger than any half-dead-their muscles and bones were rotten and got weaker with every second their unnatural existence continued. She got one foot under her and shoved the half-dead back, sending it sprawling backward out the door of the guard post. She followed through and came down hard on it, smashing the pommel of her baton into its forehead with a grotesque crunch.Breathing hard, adrenaline making her skin feel prickly and tight, she jumped back up to her feet and started running toward the truck.Five more half-deads were climbing up onto its cab.

29.Gert," Caxton yelled, "get it moving! Put it in gear!" The truck didn't move.Caxton ran forward and grabbed at the half-dead nearest to her. It was wearing a stab-proof vest, so she grabbed the straps and hauled it bodily off of the truck. Spinning it around, she slammed her baton across the back of its head and reached for another. One of them was crawling up onto the truck's hood, using the top of the tire as a foothold. Caxton grabbed it around the neck and twisted, hard. She heard a series of pops from inside its collar as its cervical vertebrae snapped, one after the other. She knocked it to the ground and then grabbed the top of the passenger's-side window. She brought her bare feet up and slid inside the truck, landing with a bounce in the passenger's seat.Gert was staring at her as if she'd just won the gold medal for gymnastics."Don't look at me! Look at them. And get this thing moving-we can shake them off," Caxton said. A half-dead was climbing up on top of the cab while another was reaching toward Gert's window.Gert nodded, grabbed the truck's gearshift, and pushed it forward.The truck's engine roared for a second, then sputtered and stalled. The smell of burning gears filled the cab."I thought you said you could drive this thing," Caxton insisted."I said I could drive a truck. Like a pickup truck. I never even sat in one of these before," Gert told her.Gert's window exploded inward, showering them both with tiny cubes of safety glass. The half-dead there had a hammer that he swung into the cab. Gert managed to pull back far enough that it hit the steering wheel instead of her jawbone.Caxton cursed, then lunged across Gert's lap to grab at the hammer and the hand that gripped it. She pulled hard and the half-dead came screaming into the cab with them. Caxton punched its face and twisted the hammer out of its hand, then smashed its head forward against the dashboard. It stopped struggling then, so she pushed it out the window and moved on to the next task."Switch places," Caxton said, and Gert slid toward her across the seats. Caxton grabbed her shotgun and climbed over Gert to get into the driver's seat.Something hit the top of the cab hard enough to make a dent in the ceiling. Caxton pointed her shotgun at the dent and started to depress the trigger-then realized the mistake in that and stopped herself. The plastic bullet in the shotgun was designed not to penetrate human flesh. It certainly wouldn't pass through sheet metal. If she fired at the ceiling the bullet would bounce off, at dangerously high speed, and probably hit her or Gert.The half-dead up there hit the roof again, and the dent got wider.At the same time another half-dead climbed up over the truck's grille and grabbed the hood ornament. In its other hand it held a can-shaped grenade with no pin."They have grenades?" Gert asked, her voice high enough to count as hysterical."CS grenades. They don't kill you; they're just full of tear gas," Caxton said. She couldn't imagine the prison having any other kind of grenade in its arsenal. Not that it mattered. "If it gets that thing in here it might as well be high-explosive. It'll pump out a hundred cubic feet of gas in a second, and we'll suffocate even with the windows open.""So shoot it," Gert suggested."Just a-"The half-dead on the roof of the cab struck a third time and the metal roof tore open. The sharp point of a pickax came through the ceiling between the two women. Gert screamed, but Caxton just readied her shotgun. The pick drew back the way it had come and Caxton looked out through the hole it had made. She could see the half-dead on the cab's roof. It was looking back down at her.She shoved the barrel of her shotgun through the hole and fired. There was a scream and then a rattling series of thumps as the half-dead fell off of the cab."What about this motherfucker?" Gert asked, pointing through the windshield.Caxton hit the truck's ignition, then threw it into reverse.She'd been in the highway patrol once. She knew the importance of double-clutching. The truck lurched backward, out of the loading bay, and the half-dead on the hood went flying backward. Its grenade went off instantly in a spray of yellow smoke that rolled across the windshield. Caxton caught a whiff of the tear gas before they were clear of the yellow plume, and her eyes clamped tightly shut as her throat spasmed with a nasty dry cough."Grab the wheel," she said. She knew better than to rub at her eyes-that would only smear the tear gas deeper into her mucous membranes. It hurt to talk, but she had no choice. "Watch the mirrors. What's behind us?""The wall!"Caxton forced her eyes to open up. They immediately clamped shut again. They stung like they were on fire, even when they were closed, but when she tried to open them the pain was ten times worse. "Turn the wheel left. Toward me," she said, as calmly as she could. "How far is the wall?""I don't know. Too close," Gert said, sounding panicked."We'll be okay. There might be more of them coming, so we need to move, alright?" She kept her foot on the gas a second longer, then braked to keep the truck from jackknifing, then threw the stick into forward gear. "What are we pointed at?" she asked."Nothing," Gert told her. "But you're facing the wrong way! The main gate is behind us.""That's okay," Caxton said. "We're not going to the main gate.""We're not?""It's too heavily defended. We wouldn't make it halfway there. Trust me. I know what I'm doing." And I'm not about to share, she thought, so don't ask any questions. She hadn't figured out yet how to explain to Gert that their mission had changed. That they weren't going to try to escape from the prison anymore. She doubted Gert would want to hear that. "What do you see ahead of us? Open grass?""There's no grass. Just--just a basketball court.""That's fine," Caxton said."But it's surrounded by a fence. With barbed wire and everything," Gert told her."That's what I needed to know." Caxton upshifted and poured on the gas. "Now, just as we're about to hit the fence- get down," she said.She felt Gert duck below the dashboard almost at once. Caxton leaned over to her right, covering Gert's body with her own. The truck hit the fence hard, traveling at almost twenty miles an hour.The truck went through the fence like a knife through paper, tearing through posts and chain link and barbed wire without even losing much speed. The truck had enough mass to shear off the posts at ground level without any trouble. The fence didn't just part in the middle to let them through, however. It wrapped around the front of the truck and stretched-for a few milliseconds. Then it snapped in a dozen places at once and hundreds of pounds of metal wire and three-inch pipe came scrabbling and sparking up the hood to collide with the windshield. It shattered instantly and covered both of them in glass, while one piece of metal post shot through the cab and impaled the seat cushion where Caxton had been sitting up a second earlier.Gert started to sit up."Not yet," Caxton shouted, as the truck shot across the basketball court-and then through another fence on the far side. A coil of barbed wire dragged across Caxton's back, tearing through her stab-proof vest but missing her skin.After that it was smooth driving all the way to the powerhouse.

30.Caxton blinked away the last of the tear gas and blew her nose hard into her sleeve. She could see the low brick shape of the powerhouse ahead of her through the shattered windshield. There was a signpost fifteen yards away and she downshifted and braked carefully to miss hitting it, but she'd never driven a big rig before and she could just make out half of what it said before the truck plowed right into the sign and bent it over backward.It had read WARNING: THIS AREA PROTECTED BY WARNING: THIS AREA PROTECTED BY and then something else, something she hadn't caught before it was too late. Protected by what? Guard dogs? Land mines? and then something else, something she hadn't caught before it was too late. Protected by what? Guard dogs? Land mines?Cursing, she put the truck in reverse and gave it a little gas. What resulted was one of the ugliest noises she'd ever heard- metal grinding on metal, and wheels spinning without getting anywhere. "Oh, Jesus," she said. "Can't anything ever be easy around here?" The sign must have gotten stuck in the truck's front axle. She tried gunning the engine, tried driving forward, tried hauling the wheel all the way over to one side, then back the other way, but nothing worked.She switched off the engine and rested her head on the steering wheel.The truck settled around her, its vibrations and its rumbles shutting down one by one. Eventually all she could hear was the engine pinging as it cooled down."I guess we walk from here," she said.Gert looked over at her with wide eyes. She was hugging herself and shivering."You alright?" Caxton asked."Uh-huh," Gert said, and licked her lips. "Just a little scared, I guess.""That was kind of a wild ride," Caxton admitted. "And I suppose you didn't see those half-deads until they were all over us?""Yeah, except, um, no," Gert said. "That stuff doesn't scare me. I've seen shit like that in the movies. It's you I'm scared of right now.""Me? I thought I was your road bitch.""Me too. Except, we had a great chance to escape back there and you didn't take it. That's not how a road bitch is supposed to act.""I told you, Gert, it was too well defended, and the main gate-"Gert shook her head. "Nope."Caxton frowned. "Nope what?""Nope, I ain't buying that bullshit. You think I'm stupid? After all we've been through, you still think I'm some kind of down-home trailer-trash fool? I know what's going on. I know what you're doing.""Oh," Caxton said. She'd hoped to put off this confrontation for a while."You're going to try to rescue your girlfriend. Which, you know, hoo-fucking-ray for you, big hero butch dyke, but it's not what I signed on for. She's cute and all, but she's not my type. Mostly because she's got tits and no dick."Caxton closed her eyes. She didn't have time for this. According to the clock on the dashboard it was nearly ten- which meant she had only nineteen hours left. For what she had planned that wasn't a lot of time. "You want to split up, then? You go your way, I'll go mine?" Caxton asked. "The only thing between you and the outside world is the wall over there." Which was twenty-five feet high, topped by barbed wire, and in full sight of the machine-gun nests on two different guard towers, of course. If Gert wanted to try it, Caxton wouldn't stop her.Or-maybe she would, she reconsidered. Gert was a killer. She was in the prison for a very real reason. Caxton might not be a cop anymore, but it was her duty as a citizen if nothing else to keep Gert from escaping.It was her duty as a celly to keep the girl alive.Gert stared out her window, rubbing her arms as if to keep warm."I think, though, it's still in your best interest to stick with me," Caxton said. "I think that's your best chance of getting through this without dying.""Yeah. Even a NASCAR-watching, sweatpants-wearing coupon queen's white-trash daughter like me can figure that one out. Let's just fucking go," Gert said, and popped open her door. A flood of broken safety glass and pieces of chain-link fence sloughed out and spilled across the ground.Gert put one foot down, careful not to slip in the mess, and started to climb down from the cab. Then Caxton heard a noise like a six-pack of soda cans being opened one after another, pff-pff-pff-pff-pff-pff. An instant later Gert started screaming. Caxton grabbed for her celly's hands and pulled her roughly back into the cab."Oh my God, oh my God," Gert howled, "it stings-it stings so much-I think I got shot, oh motherfucker!"Caxton pulled Gert closer and grabbed the leg of her jumpsuit. Something had indeed hit her very hard and left a white powdery residue that flaked away when Caxton scratched at it. She lifted her finger to her nose and nearly screamed herself.Her eyes had barely recovered from the tear gas. Tears burst out from under her eyelids at the same time as she started sneezing and coughing uncontrollably. There was a distinct smell to the powder as well, one she knew all too well.It was PAVA, sometimes also called Capsaicin II. It was made of superrefined capsaicin, the chemical in chili peppers that made them burn your mouth and made you want to die, except this chemical was two thousand times hotter than the same weight of jalapeno peppers. It was the same chemical used in pepper spray, but much more concentrated. A direct hit from that stuff on the face or chest would be enough to incapacitate anyone for hours.Caxton squinted through the windshield and saw what was defending the powerhouse. There was a camera mounted on the front of the building, just above its door, a camera in a complicated housing that allowed it to swivel and point in any direction. Mounted just beneath the camera was a long, thin pipe painted black. It looked exactly like a rifle barrel, because that was exactly what it was.Caxton had heard about such devices before. They'd been developed for use in understaffed prisons to deny access to sensitive areas. There was no one on the other side of that camera. The rifle was under the control of a robotic system that simply watched its surroundings twenty-four hours a day, looking for signs of intrusion on its programmed territory-and then attacked anything that moved.It looked like the truck's cab was just inside that territory. To get to the powerhouse, Caxton was going to have to find a way around that gun."Gert, Gert, calm down," Caxton said, when she realized her celly was hyperventilating. "Just calm down. You aren't really hurt.""It hurts like fucking hell!" Gert assured her."It didn't puncture the skin. That thing's firing pepperballs. They look like gum balls but they're just pepper spray in a casing that's designed to break open on impact. It's like it's shooting water balloons at you.""Yeah, water balloons full of fucking pain!"Caxton shrugged. "That's what it feels like to get hit with a paintball. It stings, yeah, but you'll be okay. And I need you to be okay right now.""What? Why? What do you want me to do now, flash my tits at the next half-dead that runs by to distract it? Maybe cut off my head so you can throw it at somebody.""Um, no," Caxton said, explaining as carefully as she could. "I need you to run out there, as fast as you can, waving your arms. To get that thing's attention and make it shoot at you. For about thirty seconds."

31.You're out of your mind."Caxton shook her head. "Listen, it's just a robot. It has lousy depth perception and it can never really lead a target, especially if you run in a zigzag pattern. If you keep moving fast enough, it won't be able to hit you at all.""Oh, boy," Gert said. "And I'm going to do this... why? To entertain you?"Caxton picked up one of her homemade grenades. "It can only track one target at a time-most likely the fastest-moving target it sees. I'll come out a second after you do, and make my way inside there with these. Once I'm inside you can run around the side of the building and you'll be safe. Okay?"Gert said nothing."I need you for this," Caxton said. "I know I haven't been straight with you. I know you don't care about Clara, and whether she lives or dies. But I really need you. I need you to be useful to me, right now. I need to count on you. Because we're cellies. And cellies watch each other's backs."Gert stared at her for a long time, her nostrils flaring. Her lips compressed as if she was trying to keep herself from saying something. Then, without a word, she pushed her door open and jumped out.Immediately the robot started shooting at her, pff-pff-pff. Gert screamed and spun and ran with her arms up in the air. Caxton wasn't sure if she'd been hit or if she was just following instructions.It didn't much matter, as long as Gert kept moving. Caxton pushed her door open and jumped down to the ground, the five cans sloshing in her arms as she bent over and duckwalked toward the powerhouse. The robot's gun started to swing toward her, but she just stopped in her tracks and it went back to shooting at Gert.Moving as fast as she dared, Caxton made her way to the door of the powerhouse. It was locked, of course, but she hit it a couple of times with her shoulder and it gave way. She stepped into a dimly lit room full of machinery that gave off a crackling hum.The prison was attached to the local power grid, but it consumed so much electricity every day that it needed its own substation, as well as backup generators in case of a power outage. The powerhouse supplied the entire facility. If she could take it down she would shut off every piece of electrical equipment inside. There would be backups on the backup systems, she knew, and eventually the half-deads would restore some kind of power, but it would give her some time to enact the next stage of her plan, time she desperately needed.The big turbine generators and the step-down power conditioners were all locked away in cages with thick bars, and anyway she didn't think her grenades would do them much harm. Instead she found a main power coupling, where all that electricity was shunted through one thick bundle of cables that ran down into the floor. The cables would spread out underground and form a network of wires throughout the facility as tangled and complex as the roots of an ancient oak tree, but inside the powerhouse every line was gathered up in one single bundle of insulated cabling. She placed her grenades carefully around the bundle, where they could do the most damage.The hard part about the plan was setting them off. She didn't have the equipment or the expertise to build any kind of timed detonator. Instead she had to rely on a very crude, very simple source of ignition: a Molotov cocktail.She had found an old soda bottle in the trash can on the loading dock. She had filled it with six ounces of gasoline, then shoved an oil-stained rag into the neck of the bottle to seal it.A Molotov cocktail on its own would do very little damage to anything in the powerhouse. The concept behind the weapon was simple: you lit the rag and threw the bottle at your target. The bottle was supposed to smash on impact, and the gasoline inside would be dispersed as a fine mist which would then catch fire from the still-burning rag. This would create a cloud of burning fuel that would last for only a few seconds before it died out. Effective, perhaps, against riot-control cops or anyone who could be psychologically damaged by the threat of being set on fire. However, a little flame inside the powerhouse would do nothing more dramatic than-maybe-melt some of the insulation on the cables.It would, however, raise the temperature of her makeshift grenades by several hundred degrees for a split second. Which would be enough to make the gasoline inside them expand and hopefully ignite, bursting open the cans and sending the nails flying in every direction at very high speeds. That might just be enough to destroy the cable bundle and cut power to the prison.It was an awful lot of mights and maybes and hopefullys she was looking at, but Caxton needed to take out the powerhouse if she had any hope of getting Clara out of the prison alive. She was just going to have to trust her luck.She moved to the doorway of the powerhouse. The robot above her head was still spitting out pepperballs at high speed. There was nothing she could do about that-it was designed in such a way that it couldn't be disabled without special tools. She sent Gert all the positive thoughts she could muster; it was all she could afford. She adjusted her stance so that as much of her body as possible was outside of the door, then gripped the Molotov cocktail in one hand and her stun gun in the other.Please let this work, she thought. Please. Please. It wasn't a prayer, really, so much as a voice of desperation. She was asking herself not to make any mistakes. It wasn't a prayer, really, so much as a voice of desperation. She was asking herself not to make any mistakes.She pressed the stun gun to the dangling end of the rag and triggered its test mode. A bright arc of electricity jumped across the shiny terminals at the business end of the gun. She wished, and not for the first time, that the prison didn't have a strict no-smoking policy. A butane lighter or even just a pack of matches would have made this much easier.The rag refused to light the first time she hit it with the stun gun, and the second time. The third time a tiny ember of orange appeared on the end of the rag. It curled and bent and refused to grow, refused to start consuming the oily rag. Caxton shoved the stun gun into her jumpsuit and blew on the ember, fanned it with her free hand, willed it to enlarge, to expand.A thin flame leapt up and then the rag caught all at once. Fire dripped from it and evaporated before it could touch the ground. Caxton threw the bottle at her grenades, at the exact same time as she threw herself sideways, out of the powerhouse doorway.There was a noise like a barbecue grill starting up, then a second where all she heard was metal expanding under heat with tiny noises like pins dropping. Then a wall of noise and pressure hit the side of her head and rolled her over on her side. Black smoke boiled out of the powerhouse door and the orange light of flames lit up its windows.Above her the robotic gun drooped suddenly, its camera lowering to point at the ground. Caxton got up slowly, unsure if she'd managed to cut the power. When the gun didn't follow her movements, she allowed herself a small yelp of triumph.Then she looked over at Gert, who was lying on the ground five yards away. She wasn't moving. White powder covered most of her orange jumpsuit and all of her face. It had turned into a thick paste where it had mixed with tears and snot around her nose and her eyes.

32.Why can't I see anything?" the warden demanded, smacking the side of a security monitor. "Is this the right view?"The half-dead wearing the uniform of a CO named Franklin was standing next to her. It winced as she turned to glare at it with her good eye. "That's the view from the loading dock, yes," it told her. It reached up and scratched tentatively at what remained of the skin around its left ear. When Clara had first seen it, the half-dead had looked completely human except for a red scratch down one cheek. Now it had gouged all the skin away from its face until nothing remained but gray and pink muscle tissue, with here and there a pocket of yellow subcutaneous fat. It was one of the most disgusting things she'd ever seen."Well, make it focus or something," the warden commanded. The view on the screen was no more than a blurred smear of brown and reddish yellow. Nothing at all could be made out of that view.The half-dead winced again. "The cameras focus automatically. They can't be adjusted from here. It's possible that...""That what? Don't keep me waiting, just spit it out."The half-dead nodded. "It's possible she smeared something on the lens. Like Vaseline. Or lipstick. Just about anything viscous would do.""Pepper spray," the warden said. "I'll bet it was pepper spray. There's enough of it in this place to paint the curtain wall." She smacked the monitor again. "I need to know what's going on in that loading bay. I sent a detail down there to kill Caxton and I would very much like to know if they succeeded or not. I imagine you would like to know that as well, hmm? Because it looks like she's killing every half-dead she runs across, and if I don't find out what I need to know, I'm going to send you personally down there to check and see what condition she's in."Clara laughed. "You're wasting your time."The warden turned and glared at her. "You have something to share?"Clara started to shrug, then thought better of it. The band around her arm might interpret that as a sudden move and hit her with a near-lethal electric shock. "You can't threaten them with death. They've been there once already, and believe me, they aren't afraid to die again. It would be a mercy. You're in pain, aren't you?" she said, addressing Franklin.The half-dead sneered at her. "None of your business, cunt.""They like to talk tough. But look at its face. You think that doesn't hurt? But it can't stop itself from scratching. Its whole existence is a scab, a temporary scab over a fatal wound. They only last for about a week before they fall apart, did you know that? All that's left then is a pile of goo with maybe some eyes and fingers sticking out. And twitching. Still twitching."The half-dead's eyes were bright and huge as it stared at her.At its sides its hands were clutching at nothing and then relaxing, over and over again.The warden coughed into her hand. "She's taunting you," she said. "Ignore it. I don't know if she thinks that making you attack her will get her anywhere, or maybe she's just bored. Either way, ignore everything she says.""Yes, ma'am," Franklin said, and seemed to relax a little.It had been worth a shot.Clara had come to an inescapable conclusion. Her value to the warden was very small to begin with, and it was about to evaporate. Malvern had ordered her capture for use as an insurance policy. A way to control Laura. If the half-deads did manage to kill Laura-Please God, no, she thought, but if they did-then Clara would be completely useless to the warden. In fact, she would be a liability. She'd seen far too much. Knew too many secrets. The warden would have a very good reason to kill her.If the half-deads failed to kill Laura, which Clara thought was more likely, she might gain a few extra hours of life. More time to sit around watching the warden's plans unfold, more time to fret and worry and wonder just how she was going to die.She had to do something. The risk was very high that by angering Franklin or the warden she would get herself hurt. But there were no other options. With the band on her arm she was unable to run away and unable to attack them herself. If Franklin attacked her, though, she might be able to get its weapon away from it. Then she could kill it and threaten the warden into removing the band on her arm, and then she could-she could-The main problem with any of these theoretical plans was that she wasn't Laura. She wasn't fast, or tough. She didn't instinctively know how to fight, or when to duck, or how to escape from a bad situation. She had been a police photographer. She was learning how to do crime lab science. Nothing in her law enforcement career had prepared her for violence. She didn't even know how to shoot straight.A half-dead ran into the room then, its mouth hanging open in shock. "They're out of the loading bay," it said, cowering as the warden came over to look down into its ravaged face."I beg your pardon?" the warden asked."I--just-I saw them on another camera. There's a truck. It's driving around the yard. It has to be Caxton and her partner. But they're being stupid. They're driving the wrong way. Away from the main gate."The warden whirled around to stare at Clara. Clara shrugged, very, very slowly."Do you think Caxton is that stupid?" the warden demanded."No?" Clara offered."Neither do I. She must be up to something. Or maybe she just knows I have a team at the gate, ready to kill anyone who gets close. You," she said to the half-dead who'd brought the news, "get back to your post. You," she said to Franklin, "let me see this truck."Franklin tapped away at a keyboard and the view on the security monitor changed. Clara moved in close to watch- nobody stopped her. On the screen was the view from a camera mounted on one of the prison's watchtowers. It showed a white tractor trailer careening across a concrete apron, with half-deads clinging to its hood. One by one they fell off and were either crushed by the truck's wheels or simply left behind, unmoving and battered.You go, girl, Clara thought.The truck stormed right through a basketball court, dragging two lengths of fencing along for the ride. Then it slowed to a stop outside a small brick building.The warden, Franklin, and Clara watched silently what came next. A prisoner in an orange jumpsuit and a blue vest-it wasn't Laura-ran toward the building and was quickly subdued by an automatic gun, her body pelted by dozens of red balls that exploded into white powder when they hit.The camera couldn't really show what Laura was doing at the same time. The truck blocked most of the view."What is that building?" Franklin asked."It's the powerhouse. She's going to knock out our power. But how can she? She would need some kind of-"The screen went black without warning. The lights in the room flickered off, leaving them with just the murky gray light coming in through the room's high windows. The prison was suddenly very, very quiet.And then the shouting began. The nearest dorm was down a long corridor and through several closed doors, but still Clara could hear the faint echo of women screaming and bellowing to know what was going on. By the sound of it, more than a few of them were laughing.The warden turned to Franklin. "How did she do that?" she asked. She turned to face Clara again. "How?""Search me," Clara said."Fuck! Fuck fuck fuck! This is going to make things much harder." Bellows grabbed Franklin by the shoulder and squeezed. "There are flashlights down the hall in the equipment locker. Go get some. And then find somebody who knows about electrical engineering. I'll take anyone who knows how to fix a toaster. There are thirteen hundred women in the dorms; at least one of them must know how to change a goddamned light-bulb."Franklin ran out of the room. Perhaps annoyed by the shouts echoing down the hall, the warden closed the door behind him. "We had to go and kill the custodial staff. Malvern said they couldn't be trusted. She was right, of course, but we could have kept at least one person who knew how this place worked. What are you-"She didn't get to finish her thought. Her words were interrupted by an incredibly loud high-pitched alarm. It was coming from Clara's armband.She was moving fast, and she knew exactly what was going to happen next. She had one second to stop moving, but she didn't. Instead she rushed at the warden and grabbed her up in a very close bear hug.Clara had time to see the warden's lips curl up in a nasty sneer before every nerve in her body fired at once, jolted to life by a fifty-thousand-volt shock. The pain was beyond anything she'd felt in her life. She felt her teeth burning, felt her eyeballs dancing in her head and then-

33.Spring came early to central Pennsylvania that year. At the university extension the students in forensic criminology were having trouble focusing during their morning physics class. Physics was probably the dullest of the subjects covered by the school-chemistry and genetics were a lot more exciting, because they had more practical applications for the work the students would eventually be doing. Too many of the students had been caught staring out the window. The trees around the quad were in bloom and more than one class was being conducted out on the grass, so the professor had relented and taken them all outside as well. They sat in a circle under a massive oak tree and held their notebooks at the ready. There had been a stiff breeze, but Clara just hugged her knees to her chest and watched as the professor took what looked like a normal metallic flashlight out of his bag and placed it in the middle of the circle."This one is worthy of James Bond," he said, and got a few laughs. He was about fifty years old and handsome. The majority of the students in his class were female and he certainly didn't lack for attention, though of course Clara didn't swing that way. He handed the flashlight to Clara with a smile. "Turn it on," he said.She flipped its switch and a beam of light, barely visible under the shade of the tree, lit up the side of the classroom building. She waved it around for a second to show all the students it was on."Notice anything about it? Anything different from a normal flashlight?"Clara studied it carefully. "This part is kind of strange," she said, not sure what you called the front end of a flashlight. There was a thick ring of metal around the lens, which was divided into two pieces separated by a strip of rubber.The professor nodded. "Very good. Now, touch it against my arm, here." He rolled up his sleeve.Clara raised one eyebrow, not sure where this was going, but she did as she was told, leaning over to tap it against his bare skin."Goddamn it!" the professor swore, jerking his arm away from the flashlight.Some of the students laughed. Some gasped. Clara jerked the flashlight away from him and then dropped it on the grass."My apologies for startling you, Miss Hsu," the professor said, smiling again. He looked a little pale. He picked the flashlight up from where it had fallen. "What we have here is a stun gun built into a police-grade flashlight. Pretty cool, huh? We're going to talk today about electroshock weapons. It's important you know about them because they're being used more and more in police work and you need to understand how they work and what effect they have on the bad guys. We're also going to take turns shocking each other so you all know what it feels like."There were a few unhappy murmurs. Then the professor insisted that the student next to Clara take the flashlight and shock his neighbor. That student jumped up to his feet and staggered backward a few steps before laughing and sitting back down. Then he got to shock the girl next to him in the circle. It looked like Clara would be the last in line and that the professor would be the one to shock her. She pulled her knees in tighter in anticipation."This is actually a very weak shock, as they go," the professor said, raising his voice to compete with the giggles and stifled screams. "A real stun gun doesn't just sting. It causes involuntary contraction of every muscle in your body. You fall down. You bend over at the waist. You get muscle spasms in your arms that make you drop any weapon you're holding. You can see why the police like this. If someone is resisting arrest or threatening a civilian, one good solid shock can just... remove the problem."One of the students raised her hand and the professor nodded at her. "I've heard there are problems with them, though. That there have been some deaths," she said.The professor nodded agreement. "Yes, there have. The manufacturers of these weapons claim they're perfectly nonlethal as long as they're used according to strict instructions. But police officers in the field can never guarantee perfect conditions when they're using a new weapon they've had only a few hours' training in. The main thing you need to know about this is that every human body is different. A football linebacker in perfect physical shape is going to have a very different reaction to a stun weapon than an elderly woman suffering from a heart condition. The electric shock is low in amperes but extremely high in voltage: some electroshock weapons can deliver over a hundred thousand volts over a multisecond pulse. Most people will experience some muscle paralysis, a great deal of pain, and a desperate need to lie down. But the duration of those effects varies widely from individual to individual. The general rule of thumb is that a young, healthy, well-rested person will be incapacitated for a few seconds, while an older, sick or physically unfit, tired person can be out of action for several minutes. Now, Miss Hsu. Would you mind taking off your jacket?"Clara looked up. She hadn't noticed that the flashlight had come all the way around the circle. She took off her wind-breaker, then pushed up the sleeve of her sweater. "Does it hurt a lot?" she asked. The professor leaned toward her.She opened her eyes. Her mouth was full of hair, and it wasn't her own.Coughing it out, she forced herself to sit up, though it hurt like hell. Every muscle down her side was sore as if she'd been working out for hours but only exercising her left arm and left leg.There was a smell of scorched fabric in the air, and her tongue was stuck to the roof of her mouth. Carefully she pulled it free with one finger.No, she wasn't at school. She was having trouble focusing her thoughts, but she knew-she knew she was at the prison. The prison where they had Laura locked up. And there had been... vampires... and-"Shit," she breathed. She looked down and saw she was still lying half on top of the prison's warden. The warden's face was twitching wildly and one arm was beating against the floor as if she was keeping time.Clara didn't have much time. She yawned hugely-she couldn't help herself. She needed to get up, needed to get something before-she needed to get the warden's phone. And a key. The key to-the key to the band around her arm. The electroshock band around her arm.Confusion. Disorientation. Not knowing where you were or how you got there. That was one of the side effects of electroshock. So was crapping your pants. Clara gave the air an exploratory sniff and smelled urine but not feces."Oh, no," she said, and reached one hand down between her legs. It came back dry. She'd managed to control her bodily functions, but it looked as if the warden hadn't been so lucky.She had to move quicklyIt was coming back. Her focus was coming back. She had waited until she and the warden were alone in the room, then she had grabbed the warden, knowing the electroshock band on her arm would go off. Also knowing that whoever she was touching when that happened would get shocked as well. She'd been pretty sure that the warden, who was older than she and badly wounded, would get worse effects than she would. That she would recover more quickly than the warden, giving her some time to escape.She also knew the warden was a tough bitch and that it would be a close thing.She couldn't just run away, though. The band was still on her arm and she was pretty sure it had enough juice for more than one shock. If she ran now she would just get zapped again. She bent down over the warden-slowly-and went through her pockets. She found the special key that locked the band onto her biceps and removed it easily. She dropped it on the floor and then hurriedly went back to the warden's pockets and took out the woman's BlackBerry-and her pistol, a SIG Sauer P228.Clara stared at the pistol for a while. She even pointed it at the warden's face. Surely if anyone deserved to be shot while they were down it was this woman. She had betrayed her trust and put over a thousand women at risk. She had fed some of her prisoners to Malvern. She had ordered half-deads to kill Laura.Clara couldn't do it. She put the pistol in her pocket.It wasn't that she didn't think the warden deserved to die, though. It was because Laura wouldn't have done it. Laura had no compunctions about killing monsters, but she'd never kill a human being, no matter how much they deserved it. Clara couldn't imagine doing such a thing, either.So instead, she wrapped the electroshock band around the warden's arm and locked it tight. There was a heating vent in one wall of the room. She slipped the key through the vents and listened to it clunk and ding its way down into the bowels of the prison's ventilation system.Then she went to the room's door, checked to see no one was looking, and slipped out into the hall, a free woman.

34.The hallway was almost pitch dark. There were no windows anywhere along its length, and the only light came from an open door down at the far end. A fan of murky light spread outward from the doorway, striped or occluded now and then as a half-dead passed in front of it. Clara could hear them talking down there in their grotesque high-pitched voices. They sounded confused and frightened.Clara was glad she wasn't the only one. She headed in the other direction, feeling her way along the wall. She wanted to run. Her body wanted to move, to get out of there as fast as it possibly could. She couldn't afford to make any noise, though. If she were discovered now the warden would probably have her killed just for revenge.Her fingertips brushed the molding around a door. She stopped and leaned close to the door and listened, held her breath and waited to hear anything from the other side. When she was sure that no one was behind the door, she searched for its knob and then turned it slowly. The door's hinges didn't creak as it opened. That was a small blessing, and she was thankful for it.The room behind the door was almost as dark as the hallway. There was a single narrow window high in one wall that illuminated some uninteresting furniture-a desk, a few chairs. A computer sat on top of the desk, as well as a multiline telephone, but she knew they wouldn't work, so she didn't bother with them. Laura had cut all power to the prison, it seemed. Clara wondered how the prisoners in the dorms would be reacting. They must be going crazy wondering what was going on.She couldn't help them. Or rather, she could. She was going to help everybody, but not directly. Clara climbed under the desk and took the warden's BlackBerry out of her pocket. It was a high-end model with a full keyboard and a built-in camera. The screen lit up when she touched the space bar and it displayed a list of email subjects. Clara didn't have time for those. They would be important evidence later, when the warden was brought to trial, but for now all she needed was a cell phone. It took her a while to figure out how to just dial a phone number, but eventually she got Glauer's cell number typed in and hit send. send.The phone on the other end rang once, twice, three times. Clara bit her lip and nearly switched off the phone when she heard footsteps passing outside the room. This was too important, though. Even if she got caught in midcall, she needed to get the word out to Glauer and Fetlock. On the fifth ring the call went to voice mail."This is Glauer. You've reached my official phone. If this is personal, call me back on my other number. If you don't know that number, it can't be too personal."Clara cursed silently and waited for the beep. She had practiced what she was going to say and didn't have to think about it. "Glauer, it's Hsu," she whispered. "I'm at SCI-Marcy Malvern is here and she's taken over, with the assistance of the warden, um, Augusta Bellows. The whole facility is under their control and they're recruiting prisoners to become new vampires. Caxton is here, alive, and at large inside the prison walls, but she's alone and unarmed. I'm currently at large but very much alone and definitely outgunned. Get Fetlock. Get the state police. Get anybody and get up here."She hit end end and pressed her forehead against the plastic screen. How long would it be before he thought to check his messages? It was a workday and she'd called his work phone. Why hadn't he answered it? It must be sitting in his car or, worse, maybe he'd forgotten it when he went in to work that morning. and pressed her forehead against the plastic screen. How long would it be before he thought to check his messages? It was a workday and she'd called his work phone. Why hadn't he answered it? It must be sitting in his car or, worse, maybe he'd forgotten it when he went in to work that morning.She heard someone out in the hall and froze in panic. Just footsteps, and they kept going past. She wondered how long it would take Franklin or one of the other half-deads to find the warden. When she recovered from her shock, would she scream for help? Clara couldn't have much more than five minutes.She couldn't stay where she was. They would search every door on this hallway for her, and this room would be the first place they looked. She needed to get to a different part of the prison without being detected. She supposed there must be heating ducts in the ceiling. People in the movies crawled through heating ducts all the time.Then she realized that if people did it in the movies all the time, the person who had designed the prison might have seen it done and therefore known not to make the heating ducts big enough even for a petite woman like Clara to get into. She remembered the heating vent she'd thrown the key into: it had been no more than eleven inches across. So that idea was out. She looked up at the window above her, but it was reinforced with chicken wire and had bars on the outside.She was going to have to chance the hallway. There was no other way.Clara went to the door and went through the same routine she'd used when she entered the room. She held her breath and listened, and only when she was sure there was no one outside did she open the door and step outside. She closed the door silently behind her and pressed her back up against a wall.She couldn't go down the hall toward the open doorway. She was certain there would be half-deads down there. So she had only one direction she could head. It saved her from having to make a difficult choice. She pressed on, deeper into the darkness, until she couldn't even see shadows, just uninterrupted blackness.She very nearly walked right into a wall at the end of the corridor. Her outstretched hand knocked into it and she had to force herself not to keep walking, to stop in midstep so she didn't collide with the wall face first. When she'd stopped completely she let out a long sighing breath."Dupree," someone said. "Is that you?" The voice was high and hysterical.Slowly Clara reached toward her pocket where she'd put the warden's pistol. It would be suicide to try to shoot now, of course-there was no way she could hit anything in the darkness, and the noise of the shot would draw all kinds of unwanted attention."Dupree?" the voice asked again. From closer by.She could try to slip past the half-dead. Clearly it couldn't see her-it had only heard the sound of her hand hitting the wall, or maybe her exhalation. If she knew where it was she could just step around it and-"Gah!" she said, a noise of pure revulsion. A hand had come out of the darkness and touched her left breast.There was no thought process for what she did then. Clara's hands moved of their own volition, obeying a reflex as old as time. One hand grabbed at the half-dead's clothes and pulled it close to her. The other hand went over its mouth. Then she brought up her knee, right into its crotch.It struggled and tried to bite her hand. Its own hands grabbed at her lapels, at her hair. In pure animal fear Clara grabbed its head in both hands and twisted, trying to break the thing's neck. She felt bones grinding against each other inside the rotten envelope of its flesh and felt its hands grab ever more desperately at her, but she had the element of surprise and she kept twisting, clamped her hands tighter around the half-dead's head and twisted and twisted-And then the head came off in her hands. It felt like she was holding a squishy bowling ball. She heard the half-dead's body slump against the wall, but she couldn't see anything.The head kept trying to bite her fingers where they covered its mouth. Clara threw the head away from herself and heard it smack the floor and go rolling down the hall.Time to run, she thought. She'd been as quiet as she could, but surely someone had heard her outburst or the half-dead calling for Dupree. Clara pushed forward again and found another doorway. She pulled it open and ran through. The hallway beyond was better lit, though not much-an emergency light box was shedding a fading yellow glow from somewhere far down its length. She couldn't see any half-deads moving through the murky light, so she ran forward, her sensible shoes clopping loudly on the floor. Up ahead she saw a sign and as she got closer she could just read it in the gloom:INFIRMARY Stab-Protective Vests Must Be Worn Beyond This Point!There was a massive barred gate beyond the sign. She was just going to have to find a way to get it open. She couldn't go back, couldn't-She heard two things then, and both of them made ice cubes chatter in her blood. One was a cough, from somewhere in the shadows. The other was the BlackBerry which chose that moment to start ringing in her pocket.

35.Get the fuck off of me," Gert moaned, but her heart wasn't in it. Caxton opened another bottle of dish detergent and squirted it into her celly's eyes."This is going to feel pretty good in a couple of seconds," Caxton explained as she rubbed the detergent into Gert's eyelids and then used a scrunched-up paper towel to scrape at the girl's cheeks and mouth. Gert kept trying to push her away, but Caxton held on tight. The pepperballs had left a thick pasty residue all over Gert's face that was burning her skin. It had to come off, one way or another.When she'd scrubbed her celly's face enough she let Gert lie back on the cot and sat down herself in a folding chair. She was exhausted. She used to be able to go without sleep for days at a time, but in the SHU her body had gone flabby and her muscles had started to atrophy. Just fifteen hours to go, she thought. At the end of Malvern's deadline, either she or the vampire would be dead. Either way, she could rest then. In the meantime she had plenty of work to do."What the fuck," Gert said, rolling over on the cot. It had taken Caxton far too long to revive the girl and get the PAVA residue off her face, but it had to be done. "What happened? What did you just do to me? My mouth tastes like ass." She smacked her lips. "Soapy ass.""You were hit in the face with a couple pepperballs from that robot gun," Caxton explained. "I got you out of there, but you were suffering from respiratory distress. You weren't breathing very well. So I found the prison's infirmary and brought you inside. I had a hell of a time getting the door open. Then I had to clean you up to get the pepper out of your system. The soap you're tasting is dishwashing detergent. You can't just wash capsaicin off with water-that makes it worse. You need to scrub it off with soap. Milk works, too, but I couldn't find any. They keep a ton of detergent on hand here, probably because there's so much pepper spray in the prison that accidents happen all the time. I tried to be gentle.""Yeah, thanks," Gert said. She tried to open her eyes and grunted in pain. She brought her hands up to rub at her eyes, and Caxton grabbed them and pushed them back down to her sides."You'll just grind it in. Trust me-it's nasty stuff, but I've worked with it before.""Back when you were a cop."Caxton nodded. Then she realized Gert couldn't see her, so she said, "Yeah. I've used pepper spray on people, a couple of times, when I needed to stop them from running away. It's supposed to be more humane than shooting them in the legs.""I think next time I'll try my luck with a bullet." Gert managed to open one eye and stare up at the dark ceiling.Caxton handed her an ice pack. The infirmary's refrigerator had gone down when the power was cut, of course, but it was well enough insulated that things in the freezer were still frozen when she opened it. "This'll help, too. It'll take some of the swelling down."Gert's face was a mess, puffy and bruised. There was no permanent damage, though. That was the point of pepperballs, of course. They belonged in the middle of what police called the continuum of lethality-a rainbow of options for controlling subjects that went from demanding in a firm voice that they stop all the way up to gunning them down with automatic weapons. Pepperballs were closer to the latter, but you could live through a direct hit and eventually be fine. Well, most of the time. Caxton had read about Victoria Snelgrove, a journalism student who had been caught in the middle of a riot in Boston where the cops had used pepperballs to control the crowd. The cop who shot Snelgrove hadn't even been aiming for her, but he managed to put one through her eye. It had broken through the bone behind her eye socket and caused massive bleeding in her brain. Ambulances couldn't reach the scene fast enough because the panicked crowd wouldn't let them through. The cop who fired that pepperball had received a forty-five-day suspension without pay.Gert had been lucky. One of the pepperballs had hit the ridge of her eyebrow. An inch lower and it could have killed her."You didn't just leave me there," Gert said, sounding surprised. "You went out of your way to help me out."Caxton shrugged. "You were helping me when you got hit. It seems fair."Gert shook her head. "No, sure. But you have somebody else to save, somebody you care about a lot more than me. Wasting time on me maybe makes it harder to save your girlfriend, right?""I don't see it that way," Caxton said. It was just a small lie, she told herself. "What are you getting at, Gert? Anybody would have done the same.""You ain't been inside long, you think that," Gert snorted. "There's girls in here wouldn't piss on you if you were on fire. And there's some people who... maybe you shouldn't help."Caxton shrugged. "Who, like Adolph Hitler?"Gert laughed, but she looked like she had something on her mind. "Yes, and maybe some people who aren't as bad as that but who did real bad things. Things that can't be forgiven."Caxton shook her head. "I don't know who I am to judge who's worth saving or not. Lie down and rest for a while. We'll move again soon, but you need to take it easy." She went over to a desk on the far side of the room. She found paper and a pen and started making a map of the prison, sketching out its layout based on what she'd seen of the place from outside and what she knew about prison design, which wasn't much. SCI-Marcy was surrounded by a squarish wall with watchtowers every hundred feet around its perimeter. The prison itself was made up of eight long buildings: the five dorms, the infirmary wing, an administrative wing, and the cafeteria and kitchens, which also incorporated the SHU. Each building radiated outward from where they were connected at one end to a central tower, like rays coming out of a central sun. At the top of the main tower was the central command center. Outbuildings and covered walkways connected the buildings here and there, making the prison look from above like a half-finished spiderweb.It was designed to be easy to get around, if you were a guard. If you were a prisoner it quickly became a maze of locked doors and heavily armed checkpoints.She couldn't see any way around it. If she could rescue Clara and save Malvern before nightfall, that was fine. Malvern couldn't put up a fight during the daylight hours. She would be trapped in her coffin, unable to move, unaware of what was going on, and Caxton could just reach in, pluck out the vampire's heart, and destroy it as she saw fit. Malvern would never even wake up. But if, as was becoming more and more likely, she needed to fight Malvern during the hours of darkness, she was going to need guns-real guns, loaded with real bullets.There were machine guns up in the watchtowers, but there was no way for Caxton to get through all that barbed wire without a pair of wire cutters and a lot of free time. There had to be an armory full of rifles and handguns inside the prison as well. She had no concrete proof of where it might be located-it wasn't the kind of thing the guards were likely to tell a prisoner-but looking at her crude map, she saw that it could only be in one place. A riot could break out in any dorm, at any time. The COs didn't ordinarily carry lethal firearms on their persons, because it would be too easy for a prisoner to take a gun from an unsuspecting CO and kill him with it. The real guns only came out in emergencies-but that meant they needed to be available at any time. If the warden decided that the less-lethal elements of the continuum of lethality had been tried and found wanting, that deadly force was a reasonable response to prisoner violence, then the guards would need to arm themselves in a hurry and from a central location. The armory had to be on the ground floor of the central tower.Which was where all the half-deads were, of course. It would be the most heavily defended spot in the prison, she was sure.It was going to be her next stop.She put down her pen and got up. Now she just had to figure out how to get there. The central tower was just on the other side of the infirmary, she knew. It was no more than a couple hundred yards away. But Caxton had already made a quick check of the prison's medical wing. There was the pharmacy, where she and Gert were holed up, and beyond that a single long room full of beds. Empty beds. There must have been patients in some of those beds when the prison was overrun, but they were gone now, probably shoved in cells in one dorm or another where they could be more easily watched. Beyond the room of beds was a barred gate that she would never be able to get through, not without heavy-duty cutting equipment she didn't have.She stretched and rubbed at the bridge of her nose, trying to wake herself up. Maybe she could go around to one of the dorms, and make her way through to-Suddenly she stopped in place."What's going on?" Gert asked, grabbing her hunting knife from where Caxton had placed it under the cot."Shh," Caxton hissed. She'd heard something. Someone screaming. It sounded like it came from the far side of the barred gate. It hadn't sounded like a half-dead. It sounded like a human being, in real trouble.Whoever they were, there was nothing she could do for them, she told herself. But she kept listening all the same.