the gallows are swinging Who: Hellhound Officers, NPC Inmates, Corrections Officers & Warden Reason Where: The basement, La Quinta Correctional Facility What: The residents of the seg unit are pitted against each other as punishment for protesting their solitary confinement. When: Past midnight, December 10, 2018
i've killed many men with the greatest of ease, forgive me, forgive me, i'm down on my knees. i don't believe that there's a heaven to go, but i must get this evil out of my bones and my soul. wash the blood from my hands, but my mind can't get clean. i must flush away what i've done, what i've seen.
Rodeo has been shouting for hours.
The entire unit is in a state of chaos, a riot barely contained behind the steel doors of the solitary cells. The Hellhounds have spent the past two days goading the other inmates to be on their worst behavior, to cover their doors with their bedrolls, stuff the toilets and flood the unit, scream and shout and pound on their doors until the pigs let them out. Rodeo knows that the Warden won't be able to ignore a situation like this forever, and at this point he's ready for action. He can't sit in this cell any longer, itching under his skin for a shot of poison, stomach snarling, throat dry, body aching and broken. Whether they beat him or move him or shoot him when they finally open that door, he doesn't care anymore. As long as they keep him in this cage, he'll keep giving them hell.
So there's a foot of water on the ground and Rodeo can barely hear his own hoarse yells over the cacophony of animal, guttural screams coming from the cells all around him. His bedroll is jammed up against the door, covering the shatterproof window and the hatch the COs use to cuff him. There's no way to see into his cell, which back in Huntsville used to mean the COs would have to open it. The SOPs in La Quinta are not as stringently followed, however, which is a fact that doesn't surprise Rodeo much considering the Vaders' obvious indifference to the continued survival of the inmates. In Huntsville they had to open the cell to make sure the inmate was still alive inside. Here they really couldn't give a fuck.
The bedrolls over the doors might have pissed the Vaders off, but it didn't get them to open the doors. Rodeo has no doubt, however, that the flooding will. The prison's water is carefully rationed-- he knows because they damn well tell 'em when they're denying them a second cup of water at meal times. The flood means the Warden will have a water use overage that will hardly escape the Mayor's notice. As the water in the unit continues to rise, Rodeo feels the furious energy of the other inmates building too. His shouts spur them on, and he grips the frame over the door to help hold himself up as he repeatedly kicks his slip-on sneaker against the steel.
"C'mon! C'mon, ya yella-bellied helmet head sunsabitches! Let me out. Let me out. Let me out!"
Down the hall, Rodeo suddenly hears the buzz-click that means a door has been opened. He bites his yells, and as he listens he hears it-- one by one, doors unlocking, boots pounding ground, barked orders and pained shouts. The COs are coming in.
It's working.
He backs away from the door and waits. He knows they're gonna come in swinging, and he'll be goddamned if they catch him on the ground again. They get closer and closer, and when Rodeo hears them at his door he curls his fists in anticipation. Pain bites in his broken hand but adrenaline and the wash lingering in his blood mask the agony. When the door slams open and the Vaders rush through, Rodeo manages to pound his fists into a few visor-covered faces before they wrestle his wrists into zip ties and pound a baton against the back of his head enough times to calm him down. He stumbles through the shin-deep water as they drag him out into the hall, where he sees his brothers and the other inmates all zip tied and being marched towards the stairs. The COs prod them with rifles and beat them with batons to keep them moving, leading them down and down a darkened back staircase into a black basement.
Rodeo's stomach starts to wring itself into knots when his feet hit the bottom of the stairs.
There's a cage built in the center of the room, the bars thick and tightly spaced, the top lined with barbed wire. The inmates from seg are all being led inside and told to line up, backs to the walls, shoulder to shoulder with their hands restrained behind them. Rodeo looks around at them all as he's shoved inside just the same, making eye contact with each of his brothers. Sarge, Sonny, Bishop, Trapper, Vic, and Tesla-- all of them are there, not a single one of them looking any better than he does. Some of the other inmates are in far better shape, especially the ones Rodeo recognizes as Los Nahuales, who are all well fed, well rested, and undoubtedly well armed too.
Which means they'll have to be dealt with first.
They all know what is happening here. The COs are gathering around the bars, laughing and making bets, passing around bottles and sucking on cigars. Their faces are shadowed beyond the floodlight mounted above the cage, but Rodeo knows they are here to watch them die. It takes no leaps of logic, no psychic visions to know what is about to come. And though the odds are against them, though he his broken and burned up on wash and starved half to death, Rodeo isn't afraid. He would rather die fighting than trapped in a cell. He lifts his chin and watches the door, waiting for the last prisoner to be filed inside. He takes count-- twenty-eight in all, including him and his six men. When the last man goes in, Rodeo presses his shoulders back against the bars and gets ready. Two COs stalk inside to set down a pair of black garbage bags, and once they exit the door is shut.
"You goddamn maggots have been a real pain in the ass," one of the COs shouts from outside the bars. "You want out. We get it. Well, here's your chance. Whoever is left standing goes back to gen pop. Are you ready, you mangy motherfuckers? In three, two--"
The inmates don't wait for one.
They rush for the bags in the center of the cage. Hands are still bound behind backs, so the prisoners shove against each other, slam heads, bite, kick. One of the bags spills open and Rodeo steps on an axe, dragging it back from the crowd warring for weapons over the bags. Rodeo uses his foot to tip the axe up onto its poll, nodding towards the brother nearest to him-- who happens to be Sonny.
"Cut yourself loose," he commands, and Sonny kneels down to obey, sliding his wrists along the blade of the axe to slice through the zip tie. He picks up the axe and Rodeo turns to let Sonny cut his binds, and when he turns back he takes the axe from his brother and starts to look for the rest to cut them loose. Others are starting to unbind their hands, too. In the far corner, violence begins-- someone swings a set of hedge clippers, smashing them against another man's head, beating him to the ground.
"Stay close," Rodeo snarls to Sarge when he finds him in the crowd, grabbing his arm to turn him around, using the axe to cut the zip ties at his wrists.