IT WAS MIDDAY when the guard came to my cell and banged his metal baton against the bars. The noise rattled my senses and jerked me awake in such a jarring fashion my body seemed to levitate above the ground for half a second.
A bellowing laugh burst from the guard’s mouth, and he leaned against the cell door and shook his head. “It’s strange to see someone in cell number 255,” he said. “Been empty for some time.” He paused as if waiting for me to ask him why. When I didn’t satisfy his need for my inquiry, he scowled and continued even though I didn’t ask.
“They call him Rusty. He’s the other prisoner assigned to this cell. He’s been in solitary for a month. Warden was going to have him executed, but has decided against it. It’s actually been a lot worse around the camp without Rusty’s presence.”
I desired to know more, but this was what the guard wanted. He wanted the satisfaction of knowing something I didn’t. He wanted that feeling of power over me.
A simple beating would have sufficed, but that had probably gotten old with this guard. I imagined you could only beat people so much before it too became dull and boring.
I refused to show any interest in what the guard said. Still, he continued.
“He doesn’t look like much, but he’s a killer. You might think some people in the camp don’t deserve to be in here, but he ain’t one of them. Rusty is as bad as they get. Scheming. Vile. Loves violence. Even some of the guards are scared of him.” He let out another wheezing laugh. “And he’s your cellmate.”
I dared not look at the guard. I knew if I did, I would betray the growing fear within me.
“In fact, they’re letting him out of solitary tomorrow,” he said.
Despite my determination to stare away, my eyes met the guard’s, and my fear was on full display. This gave him another laugh that shot spit halfway across the cell.
An hour later, all the new arrivals were released from their cells and guards herded us through a hallway and into a large, empty common room.
The room is cold and mostly dark but for a few windows in the corners. There are chairs in the middle, but no one sits. The guards encircle us with their rifles resting comfortably in their hands. The guard who had stopped by my cell earlier stands in the corner of the room separate from many of the others, looking out the window. I can’t help but wonder if he wants out just as bad as the rest of us. With his assignment to Vulture Hill, is he as much a prisoner here as I am?
Near the entrance of the room, a large man marches toward the group. His weapons are holstered and his black uniform is slightly different than the other guards. His boots are shinier, his shirt nicely pressed. His presentation seems flawless. The muscles in his neck and shoulders look like slabs of rocks neatly placed one on top of the other.
Compared to the rest of us, many of whom seem frail and hungry, all of us with shaved heads and no weapons, this man is a giant.
“My name is Davis,” he says, his voice deep and booming. I get the feeling that if he yelled the whole prison might come tumbling down. “I’m your cell block leader. Each of you answers to me and no one else. If I give you an order, you obey it. If any of my guards give you an order that is contradictory to my order, you obey my order. If Warden Black gives you an order that is contradictory to my order, you obey my order. Do you understand that?”
The room is silent, but for the sound of Davis grinding his teeth.
“In here, I am your Warden. Your life is in my hands, and I can do what I want with it, understand?”
I wonder if there is a female version of Davis in Skylar’s cell block. I’m sure there is. I want to imagine that it’s much worse being on the men’s side of the prison camp, but something tells me it’s terrible no matter where you are. Perhaps her cell block leader isn’t a totalitarian troll, but there are worse difficulties in other areas, I’m sure. The fact that she is a child is the scariest part of all. It makes her stand out. The last thing you want to do in a place like this is stand out.
“I’ve got a list with your numbers, and with the numbers are the corresponding jobs within the camp, ” Davis says. “Does everyone remember his number?”
Silence is the reply, and it’s enough for Davis. He calls out from the list and one-by-one each man steps forward to receive a paper which explains his new job.
3,325 — mining.
3,326 — mining.
3,327 — septic.
I didn’t realize there was a mine here. In fact, I never thought to consider what my job here might be. I suppose I never thought I would really have a job, yet it makes sense. Why wouldn’t the reigning government get some use out of its prisoners? It’s mostly free labor but for the cost of feeding us and the cost of guards to watch over us.
When Davis gets to me, 3,333, it feels like time freezes. I can’t imagine working in septic, though it may produce a way to get out of the prison. Or the mines for that matter.
3,333 — sorting.
When I step forward to receive my paper, I try to understand the words typed out in front of me.
3,333
Sorting
Description: See cell block leader.
Location: See cell block leader.
I look up at Davis, but he is already calling out numbers for other prisoners.
Sorting…sorting… I try to guess what that may mean in the context of a prison camp. A death camp. Perhaps it will be part of my job to carry the dead to the top of Vulture Hill. In a way, I hope it is, and in a way, I hope it isn’t. Any job that gets me outside the gates of the prison presents a better chance of escape.
Still, I am bound to this place so long as my daughter is here. They could open the gates and tell me I’m free, but if Skylar isn’t walking out with me, I’m not going anywhere. Yet, even having the opportunity to step outside the prison camp will present me with a new perspective and help me plot an escape.
That’s what I have to do, isn’t it? Warden Black essentially told us the only way out is our death. What he didn’t say was: or escape.
I have no grand illusion that I will be able to do what many people before me were unable to do. I don’t necessarily think I can defy the odds and make it out of here with my daughter alive and well.
But I’ve defied the odds before. No one to my knowledge ever figured out a cure for the greyskin virus—not for the forty years it has been leeching off the people of the world. So, if anyone is going to escape this hell, why wouldn’t it be Skylar and me? I just have to keep trying until I finally succeed. Escape is like a science experiment. There can be a thousand failures, but if I succeed once, that is all I need.
But even science experiments aren’t entirely safe. This, I know all too well. It was experimenting that made me lose nearly everything. Because of my desire to create a cure, because of my ego, because of my arrogance, I lost my wife. I nearly lost Skylar. I almost died, too.
Escape isn’t like other experiments. It has to be studied carefully, meticulously. Then, when it’s time to see the experiment through, you have to execute it flawlessly, or everything crumbles. I die. Skylar dies. That will be the end.
The guards make sure we are all in line standing straight. None of us know what to do with the paper in our hands. Drop it on the ground? Fold it and put it in our pocket? Hand it back to Davis?
Davis marches back and forth in front of the line of inmates spouting off rules about life in the cell block.
Breakfast at six. Work. Lunch at one. Work. Rest. Dinner at six. Work. Lights out at ten. Don’t touch each other. Don’t wander from your assigned duties. No talking after lights out. Don’t ask too many questions. Work. Work. Work.
The punishment of death is implied several times throughout Davis’ rant. Though his message was just as harsh, Warden Black didn’t seem as hard and vicious as this man.
Davis has a fire in his eyes that unnerves me when he walks by. He seems the type who enjoys these speeches, and like the guard who warned me about my future cellmate, enjoys displaying his power over the prisoners. It is a common theme among the guards, and it’s an effective way to drive fear in the prisoners. A guard who wants to display his power might walk up to a man and shoot him in the back of the head. What inmate would cross that guard ever again? By the way they talk, I’m surprised they haven’t tried to make an example of one of us for merely breathing the wrong way.
Just as I think it, Davis centers in on an unsuspecting victim. Davis is in the middle of the sentence, “And if you see another prisoner wal—,” when he stops and stares at a small man two heads down from me.
“What is your number?” Davis asks.
The man starts to look at the paper in his hands, but Davis slaps it to the floor. The cell block leader had been looking for his first victim to show the rest of us he’s boss. He chose a small man who had been picked up by soldiers and thrown onto my bus about an hour after I’d been caught. I never asked him his name. I never found out why he’d been caught. At the time I had simply been happy to know that Skylar hadn’t been captured—a joy that dissipated when she made her entrance onto the bus.
The man had small limbs fitted onto a tiny body. If not for the chest hair poking out of the front of his shirt and the black line which showed a receding hairline before his head had been shaven completely, I would have suspected he was just a boy.
“I asked what your number was,” Davis says.
“Three, three…” he hesitates.
“You don’t remember your number,” Davis says, his jawline pulsing.
“I think…”
“Why are you thinking?” Davis shouts. “What gives you the right to think? Did I say you could think?”
“No,” the man says, his lips quivering.
“You shouldn’t have to think. It’s a four-digit number. What exactly do you have to think about?”
The man looks from side to side, but Davis grabs him by the back of the neck and pulls the small man toward him. His knuckles are white under the pressure of his grip, and the prisoner’s face turns red, then purple.
“Don’t look at them,” he says through his teeth. “What is your number?”
A single tear falls down the side of the man’s face, and the revulsion in Davis’ expression is unquestionable.
Like a lightning flash, Davis strikes his knee upward into the man’s gut, doubling him over. He then raises his elbow and cracks it down into the man’s back, sending him to the floor face down.
I try not to wince as Davis kicks the man in the ribs repeatedly. The thud of steel toe boots slapping against skin and cracking bones is enough to make me want to vomit. The prisoner lets out a wail with each kick, and with each wail, Davis kicks harder until the man makes no more noise.
Is he dead? There’s blood bubbling from his mouth and perhaps the slightest hint of movement in his back from the shallow pumping of his lungs.
The man hadn’t done anything, but Davis needed someone to be the example. I don’t doubt there is one unfortunate sap in every new group of prisoners that walks through the gates of Vulture Hill Prison Camp. I half-expect Davis to pull out his pistol and let off a round in the back of the man’s head. Instead, he nods at one of the guards, and a pair of them pick the prisoner up off the ground and carry him out of the room.
Davis paces back and forth, a flame within him growing as though the prisoner had committed such an offense that Davis was ready to beat down the rest of us by association. Feeling the paper between my fingers, I can’t imagine doing what it says: See cell block leader. I have no intention of asking Davis any questions unless I absolutely must.
It’s not the pain I’m afraid of. The prisoner he just beat up might not even die, but I can’t imagine Davis would mind if he did. I don’t need to be the next target for any reason. Perhaps there is another prisoner here with the same job description. If not here then there are others. Better to get my information from someone else if I can.
Davis goes through the rest of the rules. I don’t hear most of them. It all boils down to: don’t try to escape. Don’t do anything that will make you a target. If you make yourself a target, then you’re doing something you shouldn’t be doing.
I decide there is only one way to survive for very long in a place like Vulture Hill. You have to conform. At least, you have to look like you have conformed. You don’t want the guards to know your name. You don’t want them to know your number. You don’t want them to see you slouching, standing too straight, fidgeting, looking around, talking when you shouldn’t be, making any noise, doing anything that could be construed as suspicious. All it will take is suspicion, and you’ll become a bloody mess on the floor.