Tim Washburn - Cyber Attack

No response or not one she can hear.

Her body trembling, she crosses over the threshold and enters the store. Ranjeet’s once carefully arranged merchandise litters the floor and the shelving is overturned. Peyton picks her way through the clutter, searching for her friend. There’s no semblance of where an aisle began or ended, just one jumbled mess, like something you’d see in an earthquake aftereffects video. Nudging items aside with her makeshift shoes, she ventures deeper into the dark store. The sun has pushed to the west and the street is now in shadow, making it that much darker inside. She picks up the metallic scent again and it’s stronger. With the blood pulsing through her veins and her hands trembling, Peyton slips the bag off her shoulder and digs through it looking for the flashlight. Finding it, she clicks it on and gasps. Dark, rust-colored splatters are everywhere. It looks as if someone walked inside with a bucket of barn-red paint and sloshed it around.

Then it hits her. The metallic scent and the splatters can mean only one thing—blood. And lots of it. “Ranjeet,” she says a little louder.

No response.

Waving the flashlight back and forth and scanning the floor, Peyton moves toward the remnants of the front counter. She sees more blood, but no sign of her friend. The store is not large and it doesn’t take long for Peyton to finish her search. She steps over to the glassless window frame and scans the sidewalk, looking for a trail of blood and hoping Ranjeet had somehow escaped.

No blood.

Peyton exhales a long, shaky breath. The only places left to search are the storeroom, the small office, and the restrooms, all located at the back of the store. Peyton picks her way through the mess and enters the hallway leading to the rear of the store. The women’s restroom is first up. She eases the door open and waves the flashlight around, crying out when the cone of light bounces off the mirror and hits her in the eyes.

No blood and no Ranjeet.

Finding the men’s restroom empty, Peyton approaches the door to the office, fear and dread racing up and down the length of her spine. She places her hand on the doorknob and twists, pushing the door open. She aims the flashlight into the room and screams.

The one quick glimpse is enough because the image will be seared in her memory for eternity—Ranjeet’s severed head is resting on the desk, his dead eyes still open and staring back at her.

Attica

Corrections Officer Lydia Darnell hears the sirens start up. Then the lights flicker and flash on.

Thank God the generators finally kicked on.

Darnell shuffles over to the gate and inserts the key, hesitant to open it. Could some of the guards still be alive? Darnell weighs the odds in her mind. How long before help arrives? None of the questions can be answered from here, she reasons. But if there’s even one guard left alive, Darnell aims to save them.

Darnell grabs a handgun and tucks it into her waistband, then reaches for the shotgun and fills her pockets with shells. After grabbing a radio and several extra clips for the pistol, she turns the key and slips into the Times Square guard booth. She desperately wants to use the radio to call for help, but she knows the inmates probably have a few radios now, and the last thing she wants to do is announce that a guard remains alive. From there she quietly eases the outer door open and takes a peek down the hall. What she sees makes her blood run cold. Bodies litter the corridor and the uneven concrete floor is puddled with blood. With her hands trembling and the bile surging in the back of her throat, she tucks the shotgun to her shoulder and moves out into the hall.

The ponds of blood and the haphazardly scattered bodies make the footing treacherous and the going is slow. Darnell approaches the first guard and kneels down to roll him over. It’s Bud Curtis, one of the nicest guards at the prison. His torso is riddled with stab wounds, but she checks for a pulse anyway. As she feared, Bud Curtis is long gone. She rises and places the shotgun to her shoulder as she continues down the corridor. She finds four more guards, all dead, before arriving at the door to cellblock A. Inside, bodies litter the concrete, one or two moaning in pain. She treads carefully, stopping to check on two people still alive. Both are inmates, but their faces are so badly beaten she can’t identify them. She bends down to whisper that help is on the way before moving on.

Her head is on a swivel, trying to clear the cells as she passes. Other bodies are inside some of the cells and all appear to be dead. She exits A-Block and turns left at the next corridor. Her heart leaps into her throat when she finds one of her best friends on the force. Sueann is lying in a pool of her own blood, her uniform trousers down around her ankles and her top ripped open. Bite marks are visible on her breasts and they left a broken mop handle sticking out of her vagina. Like a lightning bolt, anger floods Darnell’s system, washing away the residual fear and igniting an ember in her gut. “Fucking animals,” she mumbles.

She quickens her pace, stepping around bodies, now searching for live targets. As she enters cellblock B an inmate rushes her from a cell. She swivels around, pulling the trigger as she turns. The buckshot hits the inmate in the chest, sending him back into the cell. Darnell racks another shell and continues on. At the exit to cellblock D she finds another female guard in the same condition as Sueann. She has bite marks, but instead of a broom handle, they used her baton. Bile surges into Darnell’s mouth, and she bends over and vomits. When the spasm subsides, she wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and continues on, the shotgun up and braced against her shoulder.

Darnell finds fifteen more guards, all of them dead. The sadistic bastards had mutilated both male and female corrections officers, including two women who had their breasts sliced off and their genital areas mutilated. Darnell dry heaves and forces herself to turn away.

The slow burn in her gut is now a raging fire. Two inmates appear around a far corner, their shirts covered with blood. Darnell takes aim and drops the one on the left before jacking another shell and blowing a hole in the other’s chest. There will be no surrender as far as she’s concerned. At a door to the yard, she pauses to peek through the security glass. More bodies litter the yard, a mixture of guards and inmates. Are guards still in the watchtowers? She slips the radio from her belt and looks at it for a moment. It’s not worth the risk.

She reattaches the radio to her belt and glances out the window again. If she goes out there the likelihood of being overpowered and killed is a near certainty. With a very low probability of finding any guards still alive, she decides to return to the armory and the safety of a locked door. Darnell makes it to the end of the corridor before she hears the squeal of the outside door opening. Then voices echo down the hall. She glances over her shoulder to see a large group of inmates turning the corner.

Darnell’s first thought is that she didn’t bring near enough shotgun shells. Yes, she does have the pistol and extra ammo, but trying to hit anything much beyond twenty feet is dicey and Darnell has no plans for them getting that close. She hugs the wall of cells and quickens her pace. She makes it to the end of the cellblock, sucks in a lungful of air, and hurries toward the center gate.

“Hey, bitch,” one of the inmates shouts.

She turns and fires the shotgun, jacks another shell, and fires again. The inmates break for cover and she turns and hurries on, stepping over and around bodies as she feeds more shells into the shotgun. Another glance back reveals that the inmates have regrouped and are in pursuit. Darnell rips the handgun from her waist and squeezes off fifteen quick shots, scattering the inmates again. She hadn’t been aiming at separate targets, just firing at the group. If she’s lucky she wounded a few, but she’s not hanging around to find out.