They brought her another meal'pork chops'a little later. She ate them, of course, but they didn't really taste of anything. She was still sucking little bits of the grayish-pinkish meat out from between her teeth when the lights went out.
Oh God, she thought. They didn't know that she didn't sleep. Or maybe they did know and they just wanted to torment her, to force her to abide by a normal human day/night schedule. But then the room's emergency lights came on, a pair of wan halogen bulbs tucked away in a corner of the ceiling.
Nilla stood up and tried to reach the door, intending to signal to her captors that something was wrong. The chain wouldn't let her reach, though.
Hello, lass,Mael said, startling her. She looked to her left. He was reclining on top of one of the cafeteria tables. Naked, hairy, tattooed. He looked out of place in the Olde English Pub, to put it mildly.
'You'what did you,' Nilla sputtered. She looked up at the emergency lights and then back at her benefactor.
He winked in reply.
Monster Nation
Chapter Nine
It's growing' the mass is growing, on its own' so like a cancer but' coherent, self-organizing' so beautiful' Happy Valentine's Day, love. Maybe' maybe this won't be the last. [Lab Notes, 2/14/04]
Clark clipped the NODs over his face and switched them on. Peering out through a four-inch-wide window he could make out a little of what was happening. Out by the main gate of the prison a crowd of survivors had gathered. They were beating on the gate with their fists, their mouths wide with shouts and pleas that he couldn't hear. Someone was screaming'a real, in extremis scream'but it was far away and it didn't trigger his fear reactions. It sounded like someone was watching a slasher film on a television in another room. 'We let them in, of course,' he said, because Horrocks had asked him what the soldiers at the gates should do. 'They don't have a chance out there on their own.'
Horrocks hurried away, taking his troops with him, leaving Clark alone in the observation balcony above the interrogation rooms. He could still hear the screaming.
Calm. He had to stay cool, calm, collected. The prison's emergency generators were up and running. Lighting in the corridors and pods was at a reduced level but it was holding up.
The first thing to do was to establish a secure perimeter.
Easy. The supermax prison was one of the most hardened facilities on the continent. He remembered assistant warden Glynne's introduction to the place. There were ten thousand doors in Florence-ADX, he'd been informed, and all of them could be remotely controlled.
There was a master shutdown switch in the operations room. Simple. Get everyone inside that he could, save as many of the people from the shantytown as possible, then hit the switch. Seal the prison off. Then he could worry about why the power had gone out. Then he could worry about what happened next.
Get to the operations room, and hit the master shutdown switch.
Easy.
He forced himself to start walking.
He flipped open his phone and dialed for Vikram. Told his old friend to meet him in the Ops Room. He had a feeling they should stick together at this point. He called the Civilian as well but got no response. Made another call, to the MP station, told them to secure the girl. He had a sneaking feeling she had something to do with the power outage. Why? Why did he think that? She was chained to a wall'she could hardly have sabotaged the prison's main generators from inside the Pub. Then again, why had he thought she would be able to tell him anything about the Epicenter? He'd been so sure of her key role in the Epidemic, but for the life of him, he couldn't have explained why. Just a feeling, a gut feeling.
He'd made a lot of mistakes and gotten a lot of people killed for his gut feeling. It was time to get rational again. To think like an engineer again.