23 Hours: A Vengeful Vampire Tale(73)

She looked up at the skylight closest to her. There was a thick pipe running alongside it, as well as a cluster of light fixtures. Caxton paid out a little line, got a good swing going, and cast for the pipe.

The bedpan sailed up between the lights and clanged off the side of the pipe. Gert ran madly to avoid getting hit as it came back down.

Caxton hadn’t really expected to get the range right the first time. She took a step back, gathered her line, and tried again.

The bedpan went over the pipe this time—and got stuck. It was wedged between the pipe and the ceiling.

Gert started to cheer, but Caxton shook her head and pulled hard on the rope. The bedpan came loose and fell down to hit one of the beds. It bounced off and clanged on the floor. “Third time’s the charm,” Caxton promised. She reeled in her line, swung, and cast. This time the bedpan went right through the gap between the pipe and the ceiling and came down the far side, dropping like a stone. Caxton let the line play out between her hands, then grabbed it before it could get away from her.

“Tie that end to one of the beds. That should be heavy enough to act as a counterweight,” Caxton told Gert. When her celly had done as she asked, Caxton grabbed hold of the other end of the rope and started climbing.

The buckles creaked. The nylon straps groaned. It held. It was even better than a real rope, because it had hand-and footholds every few feet along its length. She was feeling pretty good about herself when she reached the pipe and got an arm around it. Getting what leverage she could, she swung and kicked at the skylight. It was made of dirty, sun-damaged transparent plastic and it cracked when she hit it, even with her bare feet. One more swing and she knocked it right out of its frame. The way to the roof was clear.

“Gert, your turn,” she called. “It’s an easy climb. You know how to climb a rope, right?”

There was no answer. Caxton looked down and couldn’t see Gert anywhere in the ward.

“Gert!” she shouted. “Gert! You get out here right now, or I’ll leave you behind!”

Gert came running out of the dispensary when she heard that. She looked up at Caxton with the eyes of an innocent fawn, who had definitely not been doing anything bad.

There was nothing Caxton could do about it. She told Gert how to climb the rope, and waited for her celly to join her up by the pipe.





39.

Maricón winced a little as the needle dipped in and out of the skin on the back of her hand, but she didn’t make any noise. Queenie kept glancing up at her face as if worried she were hurting Maricón. Then she would dip the needle into Maricón’s hand again and leave another dot of ink.

The needle, a normal mundane sewing needle, was held in the barrel of a ballpoint pen, and wrapped around and around with a piece of thread that had been soaked in the ink. The ink cartridge from the pen had been cut open to get the blue ink inside, which was mixed with cigarette ash for color and saliva to keep it from drying up as the thread was dragged through it again and again until it was dripping.

The only concession toward hygiene the women made was to hold the needle under a lighter flame until it was black with soot—which darkened the ink, as well. Clara had cringed more than Maricón the first time the needle pierced the Latina’s skin.

This was going to be a cover-up tattoo. Maricón had several tattoos already, some of them done professionally but a lot of them done in this same makeshift fashion. Her prison tattoos tended to be simple, usually just a string of letters—coded gang marks that you had to know how to interpret. “ALKN” meant Almighty Latin King Nation, Maricón had told Clara, while “PV” stood for Por Vida, for life, meaning Maricón would die before leaving her gang. The one Queenie was covering up read “BO,” for Brown Only, and that was unacceptable in Guilty Jen’s mixed-race set. So Queenie had drawn a new logo over the faded letters. The new tattoo read “GJ,” for Guilty Jen, with a crude teardrop dangling from the hook of the J.

“You’re up next, Featherwood,” Maricón said, squinting a little as the needle scratched on her hand. “That Nazi bullshit on your ears.”

“Don’t remind me,” Featherwood said. She was standing guard by the door, listening for the sound of anyone moving out in the hallway. “Anyway, maybe it should be Marty who gets the next one.”

The former CO, who was crouching in one corner as if he was afraid he was about to be beaten, didn’t even look up. Clara had tried to talk to him briefly before she realized he wanted to be left alone. When she asked him if he was okay, if the set had hurt him too much, Guilty Jen’s eyes had lit up. She was just waiting for a new sign of weakness from him, something she could use to twist him deeper into her clutches.