Chapter Fifteen

They stuck Tanya, Frank, and me in three adjacent cells, near the end of the block farthest from the entrance. Across from us were Popcorn and the last two guards they hadn't worked or raped to death. They were a man and a woman, and from what I could see, they both looked pretty listless. They probably welcomed our arrival, as we would now absorb some of the physical abuse, but they looked too worn out to register anything.

The doors to the cells couldn't be closed, I assume because the power was off. Actually, I don't know if they really were stuck open, or if the inmates were just too lazy to bother closing them manually. Regardless, it meant there was a rather sizeable number of men—what Copperhead had somewhat predictably referred to as the "Pit crew"—to guard us constantly. They were armed with pieces of rebar, knives, and clubs, but I saw that no bows were allowed below the second tier, and no one had firearms outside of Copperhead's cell. I assumed they were imitating the rules that had been in force when the place was a regular prison—guards were not allowed guns when among the prisoners, lest one of the prisoners get a hold of a gun.

I also suspected that the Pit crew were of low social standing, for they seemed slightly more depraved even than the rest of the inmates—scrawny, cowering little creatures, more interested in the financial gain that could be gotten from physical cruelty, rather than the actual inflicting of it. Pimps and panderers, in the old-fashioned meanings of those words. They were probably next in line for rape and abuse, should the bottommost rung of their society ever run out.

Still, there were probably more than enough of them to beat us to death, should we ever try to fight back.

I sat in my cell with such thoughts, sullen and glowering. I thought of improvising a weapon, but didn't have the right kind of imagination for such handiwork. They had left us with nothing but our clothes, and the cell was utterly bare, beyond a filthy mattress and a non-functioning metal toilet and sink built into the wall. I also had no idea how to come up with any kind of plan for escape.

I thought that it might be possible that Jack might have made it back to the museum. But even if he had, it would take him some time to drive a stick shift back with his left leg hurt. And I also couldn't estimate how long it would take him to coordinate an attack on the prison, or how they would even be able to go about it. The people at the museum were set up for defense, not for mounting massive assaults on fixed positions. And they were used to fighting zombies, not this band of crazed sadists, armed with bows and guns.

And how much would Jack risk to save the four of us, who, for all he knew, were already dead? I knew him well, and we were good friends, I thought, but I also knew how logical he was, and how much he valued the community over any individual.

After a few hours, the odor of roasting flesh filled the prison. I have to admit, it was the one aspect of the prisoners' communal life that I found far preferable to that of our people.

We were taken outside by the basketball court, where the two deer were suspended on spits over a fire pit. Their heads were obscenely displayed on stakes stuck in the ground nearby—wide-eyed and tongues lolling out.

Copperhead emerged from the building and moved through the crowd to great acclimation for his magnanimity—not that any of them would've known to call it that. Two of his flunkies walked behind him, carrying a huge pot of the hideous fruit liquor, Copperhead's generous offering to his faithful subjects.

He cut the tongue out of one deer head and roasted it himself on the end of a knife, making a big show out of suspending it lewdly above his mouth and licking it before devouring it, bloody grease dripping down his chin. A cheer went up, and he raised his hands to speak.

"That's how I'm gonna do this fine sister tomorrow night!"

A bigger cheer went up.

"But don't you worry—every man who can afford it will have his turn, once I break that fine ass in! It ain't like the old days—race don't make no difference here!"

There was another big cheer.

"But tonight, boys, enjoy this feast! It's the Fourth of July! God bless America!" He gave a mocking salute to the barely recognizable, tattered flag that still flew on the flagpole outside. The biggest cheer of all rose up, from a bunch of goons who I felt sure had never celebrated the Fourth in any normal way since childhood, and who were now free to indulge their own sadistic, hedonistic version of freedom to their sick hearts' content. The whole scene made The Lord of the Flies look like Little Women.

After Copperhead kicked off the festivities, we were treated to the spectacle of men devouring as much bloody flesh as they could, like animals in the wild, they ate in descending rank. Copperhead ate first, like the leading male lion of the pride—even though, exactly like the chief male lion, he had done none of the work of procuring the feast.

Then it was the turn of the other lions of the pride: Copperhead's immediate henchmen and those from the hunting party, who lived on the prison's topmost tier, called "Park Avenue." Those others who lived on the second and third tiers—which I learned were called "Uptown" and "Downtown," respectively—came next, like the hyenas that descend on the lions' kill. Then the Pit crew was allowed to eat, like jackals, not wanting to offend or anger the more dangerous carnivores.

Finally, when there was no danger and all had torn off their share, the six of us who were the prisoners of the Pit were allowed to feed, like vultures, from the most unsavory scraps.

Starved as I was, in the presence of the first cooked meat I'd smelled in nearly a year, the barbaric feast tasted like the best thing I'd ever eaten, as I'm sure it did to the others as well. Gnawing on a bone as I looked at the inmates lolling about in a blood- and meat-gorged stupor, I again thought of how frighteningly little separated us from the other carnivores, staggering about outside the prison, with stupefied looks on their still-human faces.

* * * * *

Sitting on the ground in the twilight, once our hunger was sated, all we could feel was complete dread and helplessness at what was to come. And what could we say, especially to Popcorn? "I'm sorry," was far too meager and vague, while, "It'll be okay," was a lie. "Don't worry—it'll be our turn tomorrow night," was probably the most grimly honest, but wouldn't offer much consolation to him or us. Assuring him that we would fight would be true, up to a point. But we all knew eventually we'd have to stop and let it happen, or we'd be beaten to death, and then it would happen anyway.

Oddly, it was Frank who spoke up; he'd been silent almost since we left the museum that morning, which seemed a lifetime ago. "I think you guys are going to make it," he said. "And when you do, take care of Zoey for me. Tell her how much her mom and I loved her."

I think right then, we might have thought it was a little callous of him—making the situation about him, when it was obviously Popcorn who was going to suffer the most, at least that night. But Frank rubbed Popcorn's shoulder, and we just took his words to be an awkward expression of hopefulness for us. And for one of the few times I'd ever seen, Popcorn let someone other than Tanya express tenderness for him, so perhaps he knew what Frank meant, even if those of us who were older and supposedly wiser did not.

They rounded us up at that point and took us back inside. The men who lived in the tiers above ascended their ladders, and the Pit crew was now more vigilant in guarding us in our separate cells. Torches were burning, and the light from a nearly-full moon shined through the skylights, making it possible to see a little in the gloom of the Pit.

They tried to conduct things as quietly as possible, maybe out of some slight fear of unnecessarily provoking us to violence, maybe out of some tiny shred of vestigial humanity and shame at what they were about to do to an innocent child. I suppose they would've said they were being civilized or merciful about it, but words lose all meaning when stretched to such grotesque extremes.

A man came down the rope ladder to be Popcorn's first visitor. He went in the cell, with two guards watching from outside. One guard was standing right outside the door of each of our cells, with more in reserve. I stood up, and I'm sure Frank and Tanya did the same.

The guard at my cell door half raised a piece of rebar and growled. "Sit down before I bust you all up. I don't want to ruin that pretty face before I make you my bitch."

There were any number of witty repartees I could make at that point, but now was not the time. The only one I allowed myself was to think that, after a year of no shampoo, razor, deodorant, or toothpaste, I most definitely was not pretty, no matter in what direction one's tastes ran.

If the three of us rushed our guards at the same time, we could probably get past them. And if we got a weapon away from each of them, we could maybe take out a couple more. Then the rest would beat us to death. Popcorn's inhuman degradation would be postponed maybe ten minutes.

Still, you had to make sacrifices for the payoff that was offered. We all can't die on Omaha beach, winning back freedom for millions of people. Some of us die on a filthy prison floor to defend a little boy, even though it won't make the slightest difference to what happens to him.

As I clenched my fists at my side and took a step forward, I knew how lucky I was. Some people died for nothing at all. I was going to die, smashing this ugly bastard's head into the floor and taking that piece of rebar from him, so I could smash a couple more ugly bastards' heads into pulp. That counted for a lot, in my book; and unless God was a much bigger asshole than I thought, part of me felt sure it counted for something with Him.