Clarkpicked up a set of optics from a desk and strapped it onto his head and chin. He switched on the unit and looked down into the SHU. It took his brain a moment to make sense of the false-color images the goggles created but quickly enough he saw what was happening. In the cells prisoners lay motionless on their beds or paced endlessly around their tiny rooms. Some stood at their doors patiently as if waiting for them to open while others smashed at their walls with arms and heads and shoulders. He looked straight down at the center of the unit and had to gasp in disgust. Two dozen inmates were milling about in a central open area, many of them naked and clearly injured. He saw arms and legs that hung limp, faces contorted by lacerations, fingers and eyes missing. Another ten or so inmates lay in a pile in one corner, their bodies wriggling like fat worms. 'What are they doing?'Clark demanded.
'They're eating each other,' Glynne said, his voice flat. 'Some of them' some of them eat, and some get eaten.' The energy had gone right out of the CO.
'Good God! Where is your staff? Where are your guards? You need to get them in there and stop this at once!'Clark demanded.
'You don't understand, Captain. The inmates are never allowed out of their cells in this unit. The men in that open area you're looking at? Those are my guards.'
Monster Nation
Chapter Six
'The chickens are coming home to roost, everybody. Coming home to roost. You see all this violence'what? No, the chickens is what I said. This violence in the western states, just out of control, which is what happens when your prison system is like, it's like, it's a country club, you know, it's the cotillion ball for felons. They've got cable, they've got porn. Porn! I want to go to prison! Somebody arrest me! They have swimming'no, no, no! I said Chickens! The chickens are coming home to roost!' [Ted Thiokol, 'Ted and Andy's Morning Zoo' radio show, WNCI 97.9 (Columbus,OH), 3/18/05]
One whole wall of the mountain house had been converted into a mural painted in bright almost psychedelic colors. It showed a girl, perhaps thirteen years old with blonde hair exploding outward from her head. She had a pair of butterfly wings and she was hovering over a swirling galaxy of bursting stars. The colors had faded over a period of decades but someone had tried to touch it up periodically.
Mrs. Skye banged a half-full bucket of water down on an old, scarred table and started washing her face and her gnarled hands. The water came away dark with grit and dirt and dried flecks of blood. She shook as she rubbed at her eyes and her ears. 'You're too fucking late, Walters, but I won't hold that against you. You help me slaughter them and we'll call it even, yeah?'
Dick sat down in a hand-made chair and tried not to look at her. 'Mrs. Skye, I'm sorry we took so long to get back to you after your call. You have to admit though that you're kind of secluded here. It took me six hours to drive here from my office and then I had to climb over a hill to find you. How many sheep are we talking about?'
'Sheep,' the old woman said. She peeled off her jacket and threw it on the floor. She had a bad cut on her arm that looked infected. With a dishrag she started cleaning out the injury. 'You're here about the sheep. Ain't that a shit sandwich.' She took a bottle from a dusty shelf and poured clear liquid down her arm. She winced visibly'it must have been rubbing alcohol or something. 'The sheep are all dead. I just slaughtered them myself so that they wouldn't... so they wouldn't... Next you're going to tell me you came up here unarmed.' The look on his face must have convinced her that this was, in fact, the case. 'I called this morning, I called your office and then came right back here. You didn't get my message? Fuck!'
'Maybe,' Dick said, holding his hands up for calm, 'we should just start over. You reported a case of scrapie a couple of weeks ago''
'Yes, I did. Goddamnit! I make two phone calls in three years and you don't even bother to listen to the important one!' She stomped to a window and stared out at the trees. 'Well that's as it is,' she said, running her nails across her scalp. 'I can't do this alone, I'm tired'I haven't slept in two days, I haven't eaten today. We're just going to have to'' She stiffened visibly. 'What's that? Come here and look at this, Walters.'
Dick rose from his chair and started over to the window. Before he got there he jumped back at the sound of broken glass and screaming. A human hand covered in blisters had come in through the shattered window and grabbed Mrs. Skye by the bottom lip, broken finger nails sinking deep into her skin, tearing her flesh.