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fiction: serial fiction
faraway: chapter thirteen
The morning sunrise crept carefully over the eastern Arizona horizon on the morning of Sunday, August 14th, 2037 to find the outside of Faraway bustling with activity for the first time since its christening as the crown jewel of the then-newly unified Department of Corrections. Ellis was on the ground, outside the motor pool gates, with about thirty troops, waiting for the sun.
Spaulding had asked why, and Ellis reminded the old man that nobody knew how much of the prison was now out of control, given the secret passages that riddled the structure. If the motor pool was jam packed with hostiles, Ellis wanted every possible advantage including natural illumination.
The inner perimeter of the surface defenses was several yards behind Ellis' line of troops, so he'd set up all the surviving non-combatants, who had been carefully ferried down the sheer sides of Faraway in the dead of a freezing desert night, in that hopefully safe zone between the guns pointed at the world and the guns tasked to protect them. Ellis noticed that he'd stopped thinking of any of them as guards anymore since this was not a police action, but a free-fire zone.
With Davis gone on the Apache (and Ellis had, for a moment, wished they were back as backup, but realized that the possibility for collateral damage on noncoms would have been too high), Ellis had started to turn to an eager young corporal named Hutchinson as his new sidekick and man Friday. "Hutch," Ellis said quietly. "What kind of illumination can we muster?"
"Candles, maybe," Hutchinson said, sweat beading on his dark, clean-shaven pate. "We're down to almost pre-industrial levels here."
Ellis gritted his teeth, the spikes of his sandy brown hair glistening in the early morning sunlight. He strapped on his uniform's riot gear helmet and said nothing in reply.
A few hours passed, with the considerably demoralized non-com populace growing increasingly twitchy. Ellis looked over at Faireborn and Idelson, standing ready to throw open the gate as soon as it was bright enough. Ellis had already keyed in all but the last key of the combinations Spaulding had given him, and Faireborn stood ready to punch the last "7" which would allow access to the motor pool. Beads of sweat dripped from Ellis dune-colored hair, as he waited patiently.
Finally the rays of sunlight shone unfettered over the jagged horizon, and Ellis reluctantly put the visor down on his helmet (instantly making the air he breathed a lot more cloying). He signaled over to Faireborn and Idelson, and heard men behind him put up riot shields to try and protect the civilians. Ellis raised his rifle to his shoulder and waited.
With considerable groans from disuse, the massive gate started slowly to slide open, run not by traditional power but by old fashioned pulleys and hydraulics. For thirty seconds it rumbled slowly open, until finally the motor pool could be seen in its entirety. Ellis let his gun fall as he stared, stunned, inside.
The motor pool, like every other aspect of the prison, was an exercise in overkill. The original specifications called for ten unarmed half-track troop carriers and five heavily armored pursuit vehicles, armed with gatling guns and surface-to-surface missiles. Through Simpson's continual desire to have backups for backups, both of those numbers had doubled, not counting numerous armed hoverquads and a platoon's worth of jet packs.
The motor pool, however, were at the absolute lowest point of the prison's infrastructure, near the women's quarters and sealed off by fire damage and smoke since Damu's gambit forever took control away from the facility's original masters. Ellis walked calmly towards the open gate and sighed.
The good news was that the troop transports looked pretty much intact, and would be able to get all the non-combatants clear in the two trips Spaulding theorized. The bad news ... the quads and armored vehicles had been stripped to the bone, their heavy weaponry carted off and their wheel assemblies and armor sabotaged beyond repair. Several of them were still smoking, clearly set aflame and kept apart from the troop carriers.
Hutchinson walked up and scratched his head. "I don't get it. Why leave anything?"
Ellis smiled ruefully. "It's a gesture of mercy," he said tiredly. "They're giving us a chance to run, and taking every possible means we could use to fight. Look there -- the way back to the prison has been blown shut." Ellis rubbed the bridge of his nose, considering everything.
Ellis turned and yelled "Load up the civvies. Fast -- pile people on top of one another, just get 'em going." He then turned to Hutchinson and said, "We gotta go turn off the ground defenses."
Hutchinson's jaw dropped. "Completely off?" the man asked, flabbergasted. "But ..."
"You're still thinking like somebody who has something to come back to," Ellis said grimly, putting a hand on Hutchinson's shoulder. "Faraway isn't home anymore, it's not safe. We'll never come back here again." He put his helmet back on and slung his rifle over his shoulder. "Come on, we've got a lot of work to do."
• • •
Spaulding looked down from the edge at the trucks pulling out, overloaded with people hanging on to every surface possible. He nodded at the accomplishment, seeing none of the military vehicles and knowing they had been rendered useless. He glanced around before calling out to Hathaway, who looked like he'd been beaten even though he'd seen no combat.
"I want to tell you that I appreciate you volunteering to stay with me," Spaulding said absently, still looking down at the trucks.
The young man swallowed loudly and asked, "Permission to speak freely, sir?"
Spaulding turned to regard Hathaway -- soot clinging to his face, sunken eyes red with exhaustion, hair askew and lanky frame looking especially haggard in what was left of his uniform. "Go ahead," Spaulding nodded.
"Lots of people are saying that there's nowhere to go," Hathaway started nervously, wringing his hands. "That those mountain camps are probably not safe either. If I'm going to die, sir ... no offense, but I think I'll last longer with you than out there on my own."
Spaudling grinned grimly. "Damned by faint praise, but thank you for your confidence. Have we got enough blankets for the men to sleep?"
Hathaway nodded. "We've drawn up sleep schedules, and I took the liberty of signing you up for the first one, in about thirty minutes."
Spaulding started to protest, but Hathaway said, "Sir, it's kind of in my best interests for you to be at your best."
Spaulding had to laugh at that, clapped Hathaway on the shoulder, and nodded. "All right, but you stay close to me, all right?"
Hathaway nodded. "Yessir, I'm on for the second sleep cycle." Hathaway handed Spaulding half a ration bar, and the older man graciously accepted it.
"Most of them will live through this, Hathaway," Spaudling said simply, looking down on the trucks loading.
"Yessir," Hathaway consented, without much enthusiasm.
"Assuming that any of us can," Spaudling said, admitting the variables. "If I'm going to sleep in a half hour, let me make one last perimeter check. Walk with me?"
Hathaway nodded, and fell into step behind the old man.
• • •
Despite arguments from virtually everybody, Damu was the first one out of the walls when the noise died down. He looked around to see loads of black uniformed men, leaned up against walls, some smoking cigarettes (How long had they been keeping those? Damu asked himself) and he waved pleasantly to them. Tapping the wall, the other men behind him started to file out, with Harata practically gasping for air.
Damu walked up to the nearest clump of prisoners, relaxing near the body of one of the ill-fated Tyr 7 troops, and asked, "Hey, we miss anything?" After he spoke, he recognized one as Junior Toleafoa, the guy who wanted to kill Harata all those months before.
Toleafoa, a huge Samoan man with his head shaved and a long braided beard, chuckled. "A few of these super guards might have got away, but they're mostly done. It's kinda quiet in here now. No guards at all."
"Well, that's good news all around," Damu smiled, "because that means it's Christmas freakin' day. You do know the guards' quarters are all around here, and they have, like, stuff."
The Samoan stood up and cocked his head to one side. "Stuff ..."
"Special foods, clothes, you name it," Damu smiled. "And nobody can stop you from getting at it. Just please spread the word to everybody to be careful of any straggler COs."
The two men Toleafoa had been standing with had already run off to find something to loot, but he nodded, and said "I'll tell 'em ..." before running off.
Damu chuckled and turned around to the men he'd been working with. "Could somebody go downstairs and get Jonesy for me?" he asked. "He'l be near Khari probably. Tell him to head to the Prison Situation Room, I'm headed there now. Overlooks the yard, he'll know."
Two men in back darted down the hallway and around a corner, and Damu once again regretted how few he really got to know. Attachment to other people will make you weak, his father's voice echoed in his head, and he remembered the whys that brought him to this point. "Somebody go around and get all the gear off these dead guards?" he called out to some stragglers, still standing around. "We shouldn't leave this stuff lying around, thanks."
With the layout in his mind and his head hanging in thought, he walked towards the Situation Room as everyone scattered.
"Ish, wait up," Harata called, falling into step. "You okay, man?"
His eyes a bit watery, Damu smiled. "We're almost done, man," he said carefully, holding emotion from his voice. "I'm so tired, but we're almost done, and I haven't screwed anything up. It's ... it's just a lot, you know?"
Harata considered that as they walked along, almost getting knocked down by two men running by, shooting one another with foam dart guns they clearly found in some guard's apartment. "I don't really know a lot about ..." Harata began, "well, I guess I don't know why Faraway is so important, why you'd give up your life to come here and take it ... but you've saved my life more times than I wanna remember, and you've given the people here something they never thought they could have. If that's part of this big master plan or not, that's all thanks to you, so no matter what, just remember that. We're with you, here."
Damu nodded. "I'm good, thanks man. Could you make sure we don't have any more surprises? I'm just gonna ..."
"I got you," Harata nodded, grabbing his rifle. "I'll get some guys and go take care of that."
Harata walked off, and Damu laughed to himself, thinking, I hope I'll get to see you soon, Dad, Damu thought to himself as he picked up his pace. I hope, more than ever, that you really are right.
• • •
Happy to have something technical to do, Jonesy had brought Nosalira along under the pretext that two technical minds were better than one. Damu's instructions -- "see what works, and keep the goons from breaking anything important" -- were vague, but even a chance to poke at un-powered stuff was more fun than watching wounded get dragged in by the dozens.
In the same room where Spaulding fought back tears in his pajamas more than a year before, Jonesy and Nosalira checking out advances in circuitry since they'd been locked away.
"Baby, do you have a Devil's head screwdriver over there?" Nosalira asked, lying underneath the main display table.
"Uh ... yeah, I got one," he replied. "Lemme ..."
Just then, an insistent beeping came from one corner of the room surprised them both, so much that Nosalira bumped her head jumping up at it.
"I thought this joint was outta juice," she said, spinning her flashlight around.
"It is," Jonesy said dreamily, following the noise across the darkened room. "but let's see what's happening ... oh, my ..."
Nosalira walked up behind him to see what the fuss was. "Huh, that's a new one on me ... there used to be a sattelite network capable of remotely providing power for the prison systems," Jonesy said, looking at the now-active display. "It's been off line for months, without any explanation ... but it's apparently back. As of ... well, about ten minutes ago."
Nosalira frowned, thinking. "So you're saying ..."
Jonesy tapped at the screen a time or two, and the lights came on around them. He and Nosalira looked at one another and held each other, laughing enthusiastically. "We can turn on air conditioning!" she shrieked joyfully. "Everybody won't stink so bad!"
The beeping was replaced by a strident chime, and Jonesy sat her down to look at it. "Wow," he said. "Uh ... go get Ishmael, he should see this."
Moments later, Damu walked in, marvelling at the bright lights. "Uh, what up, PJ?" he asked.
"Well, I dunno if she told you, but we have satellite power back," Jonesy said excitedly, "there's a satellite network in orbit beaming power down to us, so we can turn stuff back on."
Damu nodded, an expression of pleasant surprise on his face, and said, "Cool."
"... and there's somebody trying to communicate with us through that network," Jonesy continued.
Damu furrowed his brow with thought. "If they don't like us ..."
"... they could cut the power off!" Nosalira cried. "Before I get a nice, long, warm bath in some guard's tub!"
Damu chuckled. "Well, stalling won't work either, and we'll be relieved sooner or later. No more power than in this room right now, and let's see who we're talking to."
Jonesy nodded, already tapping away. In a few seconds, a huge viewscreen slid slowly up from the table in the center of the room, and static started to resolve into a clear image.
The backdrop of the Secretary of Correction's office was apparent, even with the askew logo shield hanging from the wall and the bullet holes in the wood paneling. What was somewhat out of place was the pixie cute Black woman staring into the camera, a frayed afro puff poised atop her head, and a torn black tank top hanging over her lean frame.
"... repeat, this is Chisisi Damu looking for her little brother, anedge hirak Duamutef Inpu -- is anyone hearing me?"
Damu laughed aloud, a single tear rolling down his right cheek, and said, "How can I talk to her?"
Jonesy tapped a button near the screen and simply said, "Go."
"Hey big sister," Damu said, his voice cracking a bit. "I got you the doll house you always wanted."
Tears started flowing from Chisisi's eyes as if a dam burst. "I never thought I'd hear your voice again, Biscuit Head," she sobbed. "It's all coming together, at last."
Damu wiped his eye with his forearm and re-assumed his normal stoicism. "We have control of everything but the roof. Near as I can tell, they've been shipping survivors out on troop carriers for a while, and should only have DOC staff by the time you get here, less than a hundred. There's more than twenty thousand hard cases here, waiting."
"Well, get ready for more good news then, my wonderful, amazing little brother," Chisisi smiled. "First, as you can see, we got their sattelite network back online. I can confirm they've been truckin' folks outta there for a while, we have that on our cameras. But the really good news is that your cousin Little Morgan is on the way. He'll be there with an advance unit of probably two hundred guys -- and some surprises you won't believe -- in about a week, and we'll have a thousand more a week after that."
Nosalira's hands flew to her mouth, and Jonesy took her in his arms to quiet her. Damu just smiled and nodded. "That's ... that's fantastic. That's ... wow."
"Just like Dad promised," Chisisi grinned happily.
"How is he?" Damu asked quietly. "Is ..."
"He's fine," she said dismissively. "Better than fine, now our Rwandan friends have proved so helpful. Tell you more about that later. He also came up with the idea that'll get us out there faster. We grabbed some planes and just went around through Mexico, which is friendly airspace for us. No need to fight our way through the militias in the Rockies."
"'Never assume your enemy will be deterred by a mere geographical obstacle,'" Damu quoted, chuckling. "He must be as smug as heck right now."
"I'm glad I don't have to hang around -- Hatshepsut told me he's up to more than ten 'I told you so' rants a day," she smirked.
"Urgh ..." Damu groaned. "Well, it'll be worth hearing one of his speeches to see him again. I miss you, big sister."
"I miss you too, little brother," she smiled back across the miles. "Like I said, hang tight, we'll be able to have a bean pie together in less than a month."
Damu grabbed his stomach. "Spirit, I haven't thought about bean pie in more than ten years. Wow."
Something off screen got Chisisi's attention, and she said, "I'm gonna guess you have a technical type there, since I suspect you couldn't figure out a sattelite power relay, right?"
"I melt down one server farm and you'll never let me live it down," Damu frowned. "But yeah, I got a guy here, Paul Jones Jr. in fact."
"They let him live?" Chisisi asked, incredulous. "They may as well surrender now, all the guys out here talk about that guy like he's some kind of divinity. I gotta data Little Morgan, so he can hurry up. Those two in a room together will be great."
"Oh, and tell Little Morgan his dad's here, and he's fine," Damu added. "But why are you asking about my tech guy?"
Chisisi smiled, "Because my tech guy is here, nagging me about limits on power usage and blah blah blah. We should let 'em talk. Now you have geosynchronous time, let's catch up in ... say, twenty hours?"
Damu glanced at the display's chronometer and nodded. "That's cool. Okay, I turn you over to the tender mercies of Paul Jones Jr. and Nosalira Sampson, so have fun. I'm gonna go downstairs and get Uncle Mo."
Jonesy watched Damu leaving, more bounce in his step than she'd ever seen, and turned his attention back to the screen and this Derek Hayes on the other end.
• • •
Simpson drew heavy breaths, one after another, as he sat curled up inside the walls of Faraway. He tried to maintain noise discipline as he couldn't help but remember the summer of 2024.
Bartholomew Arthur Simpson was seventeen years old that year, and his parents had been killed just before the spring semester ended, and his aunt and uncle Katherine and Stevie Burns agreed to take him in for a few months, to get away from the media attention and the bad memories. Burns' suburban corner of Cockeysville, Maryland shared a great deal with Fircrest, Washington in terms of demographics and atmosphere, where a summer rain was no big surprise and even summer temperatures rarely approached ninety degrees. Burns figured that a few months down by the water, maybe even some parties in Baltimore, and being comforted by willing teenaged vixens would soothe the boy's troubled mind.
Simpson didn't want to go down to the waterfront, though. The very few kids he bothered to meet never got the chance to invite him for runs to Baltimore, Every day, he woke up and retreated to the makeshift gym in the basement, only pausing to eat or check out books from the library. As Simpson slept, Burns looked over the titles, strewn across couches or the weight bench, and wondered. The Anatomy of Motive by Douglas and Olshaker. Will Aitchson's The Rights of Law Enforcement Officers. He suspected the boy wasn't properly processing his grief.
It all came to a head one stormy August night. Simpson hadn't made it back from the library by supper time, so Katherine sent her husband out into the windy evening to find their nephew.
The breath caught in Burns' throat as he saw Simpson, silhouetted in the distance, when passing by what used to be a thatch of woods, but by that time bulldozed flat to make way for a new Wal-Mart. Without thinking, Burns drove his tan Ford Dreamcatcher right over the broken gravel and spots of crabgrass to pull up next to the young man, hair wildly blowing in the rough breeze, staring at the spot Burns hated more than any other in the world.
"Bart!" Burns had shouted into the gale. "What the hell are you doing out here? Come home now!"
"Before we were getting ready to come out, when you got married," Simpson said back, his calm voice still audible in the wind even though his gaze never left the gaping hole in the ground, his face never even turning, "my mom talked about what happened here. How long you were in the well, how your brothers thought they'd get killed when your folks found out, the oxygen hose, everything."
Burns swallowed hard, his throat growing dry just thinking about that awful day swallowed up by the earth, that horrible helicopter ride to the hospital. "That was a long time ago," Burns barked testily. "Forget about all that, come get in the damned car!"
Simpson's voice was almost dreamy. "I had nightmares for a month before your wedding. I kept wondering if that sort of thing changes a person." Slowly, Simpson turned and looked at Burns, his face cold and empty. "Now I know that it does."
Frustrated, Burns just walked over and grabbed Simpson by the shoulders, dragging him back to the SUV, but Simpson kept looking into that black hole. As he cringed inside the steel of Faraway, he felt like he was the one who was trapped, finally living the nightmare that haunted his childhood.
Simpson listened intently and heard nothing outside the walls. Meticulously, so as to avoid making any sound, he scrunched around and repositioned himself so his ear was against the false wall panel that could let him back out into the hallways. Silence. He closed his eyes and mouthed a silent prayer, wishing he had any idea about the booby traps planted throughout these hidden chambers. Exhaling slowly, he opened the wall, saw nothing, and stepped out.
Bloody footprints spotted the floor like a leopard, and down the hall a ways, Simpson could see the corpse of one of his Tyr 7 troops lying stripped of body armor and weapons ... Currie, from the look of it. He sighed and let his shoulders fall, the butt of his assault rifle lightly brushing the floor.
"Damn, why'd you put on a whole guard uniform?" a voice behind Simpson asked, approaching. "Nobody left to fool now, since ..."
Simpson spun and jumped at the voice, catching a gaunt Black man in a blue uniform by the throat. The man -- inmate number SD012742, judging from the jumpsuit, next to the name "Payne." Simpson slammed the man against the wall before grabbing an arm and tossing Payne face first to the floor. Holding the arm and pressing a boot in between Payne's shoulder blades, Simpson hissed, "Stay quiet or I'll rip off your goddamned arm! Tell me how to get past the traps in the walls."
"What ... agh, traps?" the man gasped. "There's nothing -- ooh, come on man! There's nothing in there, that's just something they said to scare guards! Let me go, already!"
Simpson smiled cruelly. "Smart," he whispered. "We don't have tech to check, or personnel to waste. Thanks, Payne!"
Simpson dropped the arm and leaned forward quickly, jerking Payne's head more than 180 degrees and producing a loud crack. Breath rattled out of Payne's body and he lie still, a small puddle forming where his bladder had given up its control.
Footfalls clattered around the corner and Simpson cursed under his breath. Pushing the thought of a fifty foot hole in Maryland out of his head, he quickly tossed a fragmentation grenade towards the footfalls and dove back into the walls, quickly pulled the panel shut and shimmied upwards into the innards of Faraway as the explosion created screams to inspire him along.
• • •
As the last glows of sunlight started to fade behind the horizon, Ellis keyed in the code and watched as the last few surviving guards manually drag and shove the motor pool doors closed. He sighed as he looked into the distance, as the other troop carriers pulled away. It had been a long day, ferrying load after load of civilians away from this hell hole, but it was almost over.
Hutchinson walked up and said, "That's about it, sir, we're the last."
Ellis nodded, putting his shooting gloves on thoughtfully.
"If it helps," Hutchinson offered, "I'd like to go back up and help the old man too. But we have our orders, and there's really no way he could make it out of this."
"I always thought he was lazy," Ellis admitted, looking up at Hutchinson. "Took forever to approve things, barely spoke to anybody. Now I see why. Spaulding wasn't made to be a warden. This is what he's made for. Poor bastard."
Hutchinson could offer nothing in response, as Ellis put his helmet on.
"At least we made contact with the other groups," Ellis grunted, "so we're actually going somewhere, not just wandering in the dark."
Without another word, Ellis climbed into the cab of the huge troop carrier and patted the roof, signaling for departure. Cocking his rifle and gazing out over the deactivated defenses, Ellis wondered what would happen next, and how he'd fit into it.
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