Monster Nation(11)

The climber got one knee under himself and thrust out one arm for support. He was taking his time about getting up. Dick grabbed the axe and yanked. It came free of its quick release buckle. The rubberized grip felt great in his hand. Dick swung.

The pick end of the axe went right through the climber's jacket and into a hollow space that must have been his lung. Dick expected to get sprayed with arterial blood but only a little dry powder billowed from the wound. Dick yanked the axe back out but by the time he was ready to swing again the climber had regained his stance.

The next blow hit the climber in the shoulder, hard enough to make Dick's own arm vibrate with the impact. The climber didn't appear to even feel any pain. With his free arm he reached for Dick's throat. He would have gotten it, too, if Mrs. Skye hadn't chosen that moment to cave in the back of the climber's head with a ball peen hammer. The skull collapsed like cracked pottery and the climber slid to the floor, limp, seemingly boneless. Dick brandished the ice axe, ready to strike again but the climber didn't so much as twitch.

'Huh's dead, Wultuhs,' Mrs. Sky said, clutching her lip. She took her hand away and spat blood at the corpse at her feet.

'Call me Dick.' He felt no guilt, no remorse, just a high singing lightness in his stomach and a tension in his shoulders. He couldn't let go of the axe.

'Alrutt. Call muh Bleu. Layk thuh chis.'





Monster Nation





Chapter Seven


PRESIDENT CANCELS SKI WEEKEND: No Reason Given [USAToday, 3/19/05]

'Can we get some lights on? Surely there's emergency lighting in there. Let's get it on.' Bannerman Clark stood rigid before the polycarbonate window, not sure what he would see once the lights were on in the Special Housing Unit. The Special Horror Unit, more like. Whatever could possess a man and drive him to cannibalism'possess a rational man with a good job and a family, no less, as it had the prison guards'wasn't going to look pretty.

The Assistant Warden shrugged when his underlings looked to him for confirmation ofClark 's order. 'I've been relieved of command. Do what he says.'

It had taken six phone calls to have Bannerman Clark assigned as the Local Incident Commander for what had yet to officially become an Incident. After September Eleventh the system had been considerably streamlined.Clark 's Captain's bars hardly warranted the kind of power and influence he was then authorized to wield but this was an OOTW (Operation Other Than War) and a civilian could have been drafted for the job if it was considered necessary.

Having somebody in charge was about to become very, very necessary.

'We thought it had to be drugs,' Glynne said. 'That's what we're trained to look for. I sent in men who don't even take aspirin when they have a headache. They didn't make it back out.'

It did not surpriseClark at all that Glynne would look no further than the end of his nose. In 1997 an inmate had been murdered at ADX-Florence and the body wasn't found for four days. The prison was so tightly circumscribed and controlled that any deviation from the standard timetable'even a dangerous one'just didn't register. He flipped open his phone and thumbed a quick text message to a First Lieutenant at the Buckley Air Force Base with the 8th Civil Support Team, the Guard's WMD task force. It was quite clear toClark that the men in that holding area were not under the influence of drugs. Only some kind of virulent disease could cause this cannibalistic behavior. Perhaps a mutated strain of meningitis. Or rabies.

'We had men go in there in full riot gear with electric prods. We filled that room with CS gas. We turned high-pressure hoses on them and everything. Whenever I sent a man in there they just ripped off his armor and tore out his throat. I personally fired six rounds from a .357 into the chest of one of those *s. He spun around like a top but then he just kept coming. He's still down there, walking around. Eating my guards.'

An emergency lamp near the ceiling of the Black Hole turned orange in the darkness as it started to warm up. It was designed to do that'if the inhabitants of the SHU were exposed to bright light without warning they could be temporarily blinded.Clark took the image enhancement optics off of his head and laid them neatly on his desk as the lamp ramped up to full power.

In the new illuminationClark saw one of the afflicted stumbling across a mound of trash'unspooled rolls of toilet paper, torn newsprint, pieces of ripped riot armor. He moved like a frog in a terrarium, his legs extending slowly to find purchase, his upper body motionless. The rest of them wriggled in their pile, naked and unashamed as they fed. They looked up at the light but they didn't blink.Clark grunted despite himself. The victims were in bad shape. One man had lost his ears and lips. Another had most of his midriff torn away, everything between his rib cage and his pelvis. How could anyone get up and move around after sustaining such an injury? How could anyone survive it?Clark shuddered and recovered himself. He had a job to do.