Omega Days (Volume 1)

FIVE



Marin County



San Quentin was California’s oldest prison, and had the state’s only death row for male inmates, the females being shipped off to Chowchilla. The “Q” had used the gas chamber all the way up until 1996, when the little room had been shut down in favor of lethal injection. Squatting on a stretch of land that jutted out into the bay, its imposing concrete walls and miles of high double fencing topped with razor wire housed fifty-two-hundred inmates, well over capacity.

Now it was on fire.

Bill “Carney” Carnes and his cellmate T.C. Cochoran sat next to each other inside the transport van, both wearing bright orange coveralls, both in leg and waist shackles. Carney was forty-four and rock-hard, with a severe, gray crew-cut. His coveralls did little to conceal his broad build, but served to hide the colorful mosaic of tattoos across his back, chest, and down both arms. He had seventeen years in on a twenty-five-to-life bit for double murder.

TC had just turned thirty-one, a former meth head who had used his time away from the destructive effects of the pipe to transform his body into something even bigger and stronger than his friend. He was also covered in ink, and was proud of his thick mane of blond hair. A lifetime of drugs, theft and violence had seen him inside state walls more often than outside, and he was eight years into a life sentence for robbery-homicide after shooting a Korean convenience store clerk in the face without provocation.

Six other inmates shared the van with them. They had all been roused early and given a chance to quickly clean up before being herded into the van for the drive to San Francisco. All had appearances in court this morning, Carney for yet another hearing in his pointless appeal process, TC to face arraignment for allegedly slashing another inmate’s face with a piece of sharpened plastic over a cigarette debt. Truthfully, there was no allegedly about it, and TC had been aiming for the man’s throat, not his face. The van had just reached the Richmond-San Raphael Bridge when it was stopped at a CHiP roadblock still being hastily set up. The CO riding shotgun had spoken with a helmeted motorcycle cop for a few minutes, and then they were turning around, heading back to the Q.

The gates were in view when the prison siren went off, and the van pulled quickly onto the gravel shoulder. Now they sat and watched pillars of black smoke rising behind the high walls, listening to the corrections officers up front behind their steel mesh divider talking on the radio and listening to frantic chatter.

“What’s happening, Carney?”

“Like I know.”

“Is it a riot?” His younger cellmate craned his muscled neck to get a better look out the windshield, over the heads of the COs. “Man, that’s my luck to miss it. The perfect chance to shank that motherf*cker LeBron.” Freddy LeBron was an inmate who had twice disrespected TC in front of others, and TC owed him a death. Carney elbowed the younger man hard and whispered for him to keep his voice down, but the COs hadn’t seemed to hear the comment. TC looked at his cellmate with a hurt expression. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“Shut the f*ck up,” said Carney, “I’m trying to listen.”

Cochoran, physically more powerful and infinitely more violent than the older man, looked out the side window and pouted.

“Hey, CO,” called another inmate. “What’s going on?”

“We’ll let you know when you need to know,” said the driver, not looking back. The inmate flipped him off below the seat, where the officer couldn’t see it.

As the flat, single tone siren blared through the morning air, Carney expected to see California Highway Patrol and Marin County Sheriff’s cars go racing past them towards the prison. The road was empty. Ahead, he saw thick columns of smoke blowing out into the bay, and then came the far off crack of a rifle. Everyone in the van stiffened.

There was fast, panicked chatter on the radio now, and although most of it was unintelligible, the word breach came through clearly. The driver immediately put the van into a U-turn and headed away from the prison.

“C’mon, CO, what the f*ck?” yelled the same inmate. The others were demanding answers too, all except Carney, who sat quietly and watched the two officers. They were tense, anxious, and something bad was happening. Frightened, armed men in charge of chained, helpless men was not a good combination.

The van drove for a mile and then turned onto a side road, traveling through hilly country of short pines and August-brown grasses. Carney read a blue road sign as they passed it; California D.O.C. Tactical Training Facility ½ mile. The COs stayed quiet.

Within a minute the van arrived at a turn-off, and a gate set in a high chain link fence running off in both directions into the pines, topped with razor wire. One of the COs spoke into the radio, and the gate rattled open, allowing them to drive into a small parking lot occupied by one, dirty Ford Taurus. The gate rattled closed. At the edge of the lot stood three single-story cinderblock buildings with dark green shingled roofs. On the other side of them, a gun tower – identical to those at the Q – rose into the blue sky.

When the van stopped, the COs turned in their seats and looked at the inmates, who had fallen silent. The radio still crackled non-stop in the background, but they had turned it down. It was the driver who spoke, the senior man.

“Listen up. The Q is in lockdown. You’re all going to be held at this facility until the situation is resolved. It is not designed to hold inmates, so we’re making accommodations. However, that does not mean you get the opportunity to f*ck around. F*cking around will have severe consequences.”

Technically, the COs were not supposed to curse at them, although it happened. The driver’s tone, and more the look in his eyes, told the inmates that the rules had changed, and he was not f*cking around.

“We’re going to exit you from the van in a minute,” he continued, “where you will line up in close single file. Don’t get out of line. Then we’re going to all take nice little shuffle steps to the middle building, to that green metal door.” He pointed out the windshield so every inmate could make no mistake of where he meant. “Another officer will open the door and you will file inside. You will cross the room and sit down on a long bench against the far wall. It’s the only one in there, so you can’t miss it. Once you are seated, you will each be handcuffed to a bar.”

A few of the inmates began to grumble. The CO in the passenger seat lifted a shotgun and racked it.

“Understand this. If you deviate from my orders in any way, it will be considered an escape attempt and you will be shot. Are there any questions?”

There were none. Several minutes later the line of men in orange was shuffling across the lot, the two officers walking slowly on each side watching them, shotguns ready. No one got out of line. The green metal door opened as promised, and an overweight CO in his fifties and wearing khaki, also armed with a shotgun, motioned them in. Soon all eight inmates were seated on a bench in the main room, a classroom of some kind, each with his right wrist handcuffed to a bar bolted into the wall. Their waist and ankle chains had not been removed, and the position was both awkward and uncomfortable.

With the men secured, all three COs moved to a corner of the room and started speaking quickly and quietly. At the far end of the bench, Carney strained to hear, but was unsuccessful due to the constant complaining of the other seven men seated beside him. He looked around the classroom instead. There were bulletin boards covered with official-looking documents, notices of upcoming athletic and shooting competitions, colored fliers announcing picnics and family outings, and a few photographs. Some flip charts leaned against walls, and posters with silhouettes of weaponry and statistical data were mounted to others. On the wall near the officers someone with at least a little artistic talent had painted a cartoon of a ridiculously-muscled guy in a corrections uniform, with the words NO PAIN, NO GAIN! stenciled over it. The rest of the wall was covered in a detailed diagram of San Quentin and the surrounding area.

“Man, I just know someone is gonna get to LeBron before I do,” whispered TC. Carney ignored him, watching the officers closely. The two COs from the van looked pissed, and the fat guy just looked scared. He was some kind of put-to-pasture caretaker, certainly not one of the buff, aggressive tactical officers who trained here. Carney had a good idea they were all busy up at the Q. There was some sort of brief disagreement, which the van driver seemed to win. All three approached the inmates then, who quieted down again.

“Officer Zimmerman is going to watch over you for a while,” said the senior man, indicating the fat caretaker. “We’ll be back when things settle down. In the meantime you will remain on the bench, without exception.”

The inmates started moaning. “What if we gotta go to the john?”

“Yeah, I got to go right now,” said another.

“Then you’ll have to piss yourself,” said the driver, “but you’ll stay on the bench. Officer Zimmerman will use deadly force on anyone who gets out of line.” The driver and his partner left the building to cries of “F*ck You!” Zimmerman went into another room, where Carney could hear another official-sounding radio talking.

He was almost certain he heard gunfire in the background of the transmissions.