“This is from a buddy of mine who heard about it from a guy he knows, a meth head that was in there, who bragged about it apparently, sick fuck. Way the meth head says, everyone still walking around with a badge got sent down there to Creekbed State Penitentiary. I guess the guards had took off, left the bars locked, you know, and the inmates were getting cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs down there. Started basically thinking everyone’d forgotten about ’em, and they were gonna die in there.”
Right. Which they would have—like caged rats—like Cortez’s mom’s boyfriend Kevin, the ex-marine. All the people who’ll be caught somewhere when Wednesday comes: all the prisoners, all the elderly or incapacitated on life support, those morbidly obese people who can’t leave the house without a piano mover. Everybody, really, all of us, trapped in place, like the damsel in distress in the old movie, tied to the tracks with the train barreling down.
“So they set the damn place on fire,” says Billy.
“The cops?”
“No, man, the bad guys. My buddy’s buddy and his pals. There were like a couple hundred or more in there.” Billy’s beer is empty again; he presses the spigot to refill it. “They set their own joint on fire, just to call some attention, and whatever cops was left around here, the cops and the fire folks, the what do you call ’em—ambulance guys. All went down there. And then I guess things—uh, things got real nasty.” He looks over his shoulder at Sandy, and then leans in to continue the conversation sotto voce, as if to protect her from such conversations, from wasting a moment’s thought on this stuff. “Real nasty. As soon as a couple of ’em were rescued they were taking guns off the cops, shooting at the cops, the firemen and all. Locking folks in the fire, you know, just for …” He shrugs. “Just ’cuz.”
He looks down into his bottle. “I mean, I don’t like cops”—he laughs a little—“no offense, like I said. But this …”
He trails off, clears his throat, tries to pull the glimmer back into his smile.
“Anyway, so that was about it around here, as far as police. Since then it’s every man for himself, you know?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Sure. I know.”
“That about the story where you came from?”
“Yeah,” I say, and I can see it, Concord on fire, the statehouse dome gleaming red with flame. “Just about.”
Red towns, blue towns, black. It’s almost over. It’s almost here.
I record the conversation about Creekbed in my little blue notebook: the date, the sequence of events. I am considering as I write whether there might be some crossover here, some connection to Nico and Jordan’s group and their presence in Rotary, Ohio. What I know is that Nico was summoned out here as of mid-July, after this scientist with the clandestine plan was located in Gary, Indiana. Even if that much of it is true, which it probably is not, it is hard to imagine Jordan and his allies mustering the resources and strategic thinking to arrange a prison riot, a terrible fire, just to clear the few cops remaining from the Rotary, Ohio, police station.
Still, though, I write it down. The thin pages of my notebook are smudged with new question marks.
My grieving for Detective Irma Russel I condense into five seconds. Ten seconds. Not my story. Not my case. Still, though, you can picture it, the fiery prison, rescuers rushing in, gunshots, flames, people pounding on cell walls, screaming and burning behind thick glass doors.
“Oh, and Billy, what I wanted to ask: Do you know anything about the station itself?”
“Nah.”
“When it was built? Whether there’s a basement?”
“Man, I just said I don’t know anything about it.” Billy’s big tailgate-party smile wavers. Sandy wanders over to the home-brew setup, smiling vacantly. Billy is asking himself, how long am I supposed to give this guy? How many minutes out of however many minutes remain for the stranger with the notebook and the questions, who can offer nothing in return?
“Thank you, Billy,” I say, and close my notebook. “You’ve been very helpful.”
“No sweat, brother,” he says, walking away. “I gotta go and kill Augustus.”
*
Now it’s time to leave, it really is. The moon is up.
But I stand inside the RV with Sandy, watching Billy select and slaughter the final chicken of this twenty-four-hour period. Houdini remains outside, at the edge of the coop, his chin lowered in his paws, staring warily at Billy as he stalks among the waddling birds. Now there’s nothing left. Billy has got long yellow gloves on, pulled up almost to his elbows, and a heavy butcher’s apron over his bare upper body, tufts of black chest hair sprouting up over the top of the apron. The coop looks new; the crossbeams, connecting from post to post to post and strung with chicken wire, are of pine wood, smooth and regular two-by-fours, newly cut and precisely measured. The posts themselves are concrete. At the base of one of the posts of the coop is stamped a small three-letter logo, the single word JOY in all caps.
“Hey. Hey,” I say suddenly. “Hey, Sandy. That chicken coop.”
“Nice, huh?” She’s transfixed, watching Billy in his yellow gloves lift doomed Augustus out of the crowd.
“Sandy, who built that coop for you all?”
“The chicken coop?”
“Yes, right. Who built it?”
“This guy,” she says through a yawn. “This Amish guy.”