There were certain things you just couldn't do to people. Having THE KEY only took you so far and no farther. They had left him here to die a horrible death when they could have let him out. He wasn't a mad dog killer who was going to waste the first person he saw, in spite of what the papers had said. Small shit was the worst he had ever gotten into before meeting Poke.
So he hated, and the hate commanded him to live... or at least to try. For a while it seemed to him that the hate and the determination to go on living were useless things, because all of those who had THE KEY had succumbed to the flu. They were beyond the reach of his vengeance. Then, little by little, as he grew hungrier, he realized that the flu wouldn't kill them. It would kill the losers like him; it would kill Mathers but not that scumbag screw who had hired Mathers because the screw had THE KEY. It wasn't going to kill the governor or the warden - the guard who said the warden was sick had obviously been a f**king liar. It wasn't going to kill the parole officers, the county sheriffs, or the FBI agents. The flu would not touch those who had THE KEY. It wouldn't dare. But Lloyd would touch them. If he lived long enough to get out of here, he would touch them plenty.
The cotleg snagged in Trask's cuff again.
"Come on," Lloyd whispered. "Come on. Come on over here... camptown ladies sing dis song... all doo-dah day."
Trask's body slid slowly, stiffly, along the floor of his cell. No fisherman ever played a bonita more carefully or with greater wile than Lloyd played Trask. Once Trask's trousers ripped and Lloyd had to hook on in a new place. But at last his foot was close enough so that Lloyd could reach through the bars and grab it... if he wanted to.
"Nothing personal," he whispered to Trask. He touched Trask's leg. He caressed it. "Nothing personal, I ain't going to eat you, old buddy. Not less I have to."
He was not even aware that he was salivating.
Lloyd heard someone in the ashy afterglow of dusk, and at first the sound was so far away and so strange - the clash of metal on metal - that he thought he must be dreaming it. The waking and sleeping states had become very similar to him now; he crossed back and forth across that boundary almost without knowing it.
But then the voice came and he snapped upright on his cot, his eyes flaring wide, huge and lambent in his starved face. The voice came floating down the corridors from God knew how far up in the Administration Wing and then down the stairwell to the hallways which connected the visiting areas to the central cellblock, where Lloyd was. It bobbed serenely through the twice-barred doors and finally reached Lloyd's ears:
"Hooooo-hoooo! Anybody home? "
And strangely, Lloyd's first thought was: Don't answer. Maybe he'll go away.
"Anybody home? Going once, going twice?... Okay, I'm on my way, just about to shake the dust of Phoenix from my boots - "
At that, Lloyd's paralysis broke. He catapulted off the cot, snatched up the cotleg, and began to beat it frantically on the bars; the vibrations raced up the metal and shivered in the bones of his clenched fist.
"No! " he screamed. "No! Don't go! Please don't go! "
The voice, closer now, coming from the stairway between the Administration and this floor: "We'll eat you up, we love you so... and oh, someone sounds so... hungry." This was followed by a lazy chuckle.
Lloyd dropped the cotleg on the floor and wrapped both hands around the bars of the cell door. Now he could hear the footfalls somewhere up in the shadows, clocking steadily down the hall that led to the holding cellblock. Lloyd wanted to burst into tears of relief... after all, he was saved... yet it was not joy but fear he felt in his heart, a growing dread that made him wish he had stayed silent. Stayed silent? My God! What could be worse than starvation?
Starvation made him think of Trask. Trask lay sprawled on his back in the ashy afterglow of dusk, one leg stretched stiffly into Lloyd's cell, and an essential subtraction had occurred in the region of that leg's calf. The fleshy part of that leg's calf. There were teeth-marks there. Lloyd knew whose teeth had made those marks, but he had only the vaguest memory of lunching on filet of Trask. All the same, powerful feelings of revulsion, guilt, and horror filled him. He rushed across to the bars and pushed Trask's leg back into his own cell. Then, looking over his shoulder to make sure the owner of the voice was not yet in sight, he reached through, and with the dividing bars pressed against his face, he pulled Trask's pantsleg down, hiding what he had done.
Of course there was no great hurry, because the barred gates at the head of the cellblock were shut, and with the power off, the pushbutton wouldn't work. His rescuer would have to go back and find THE KEY. He would have to -
Lloyd grunted as the electric motor which operated the barred gates, whined into life. The silence of the cellblock magnified the sound, which ceased with the familiar click-slam! of the gates locking open.
Then the steps were clocking steadily up the cellblock walkway.