Eric Flint - Time spike

Especially if he pumped iron, which Morelli did religiously. And just his height was intimidating by itself. So they got there more quickly than James would have believed possible, and easily enough that he had time for a wry thought along the way. Leave it to Boomer. Morelli's insistence that he was really a Puerto Rican with an Argentine great-grandfather, not a goddam Eye-talian which wasn't much different from a white man, was as transparent as you could ask for. Privately, the Boom made jokes about himself. But James knew that when Morelli had approached him, a few days back, asking for a place in the gang, Boomer hadn't blinked an eye. James would miss Boomer, he surely would. He'd been a giant in more ways than one. Once they were through the door and into the admin building, the cool calm of the dark empty rooms seemed to hit the men like a hammer blow. Most of them sank to their knees gasping for air. James leaned against the wall, his heart pounding in his chest. They needed to rest, but he knew they couldn't.

It wouldn't be long before Luff's killers started searching this building along with all the others. He moved a few feet to peek out of one of the windows that opened to the outside and overlooked the front gate. But there was still no solution there. The area between the prison and the woods was a kill zone. The small group of men Luff had positioned at the gate must have finally been overwhelmed, because there were prisoners pouring through. But other goons on the walls were firing at them. Some of them would make it to the woods, sure, but most of them wouldn't. Bodies lay everywhere. "Where to, boss?"

James turned away from the window and studied his new lieutenant for a moment. John Boyne was a middle-aged man who was very thick-bodied and strong-looking but was so short the top of his head barely reached Cook's chin. Despite the man's name, he looked Hispanic rather than Anglo. James had never asked about his ancestry and the Boom had never told him anything. Not that he cared. James didn't share the Boomer's animosity toward white people, as such. As far as he was concerned, Boyne could be every bit as Irish as his name sounded. He was dependable and solid as a rock. Where to, boss? James thought fast.

After his transfer to the clinic he had spent a lot of hours in this building. This is where he'd come for cleaning supplies. He knew it very well-and he could only hope that one of the keys he'd paid bribes for would open the critical door. He pointed down the hall. "Move everyone that way. We'll see if we can get into the basement. Almost nobody ever goes there. I think we can hide until things settle down.

Then we'll try our break after the sun goes down." No one needed coaxing. They were on their feet and moving as soon as James finished speaking. The guns were still going off in the exercise yard and men were still shouting and screaming as they got butchered. The one critical piece of luck they needed came through. The fifth key James tried unlocked the maintenance door leading down to the basement. He almost thought it wouldn't, since the lock was stiff from lack of use.

But a little jiggling had done the trick. The basement was cool, dark and damp, and smelled of mold and rats. James hated rats. He'd grown up in a roach- and rat-infested housing project. It had been hell, but it was better than a reservation. At least that's what he'd been told.

He didn't know for sure. He had never set foot on a reservation. A con-he didn't see which one-opened the drain valve on a water tank and another one was passing out water in a curved piece of scrap metal someone found. James gulped the liquid and then handed back the makeshift cup so someone else could get a drink. The water tasted of iron and rust, but it was water. It was the first drink they'd taken since early this morning. The tank looked plenty big, too. They'd need to take water with them when they make their break into the woods.

"Look around and see if you can find anything that'll hold water," he told Boyne. "Anything one man can carry by himself will do." While Boyne set about that task, James pondered the problem of food. They had nothing with them, and there was no chance at all of finding food in the basement. Whatever scraps a maintenance man might have left down here would be long gone by now, eaten by rats. There'd be food upstairs in one of the rooms in the admin building. There was a refrigerator in a small lunch room on the second floor, and even if the refrigerator didn't work something would be up there. Luff and his top goons had used the building as their own headquarters, after they took over. Luff was not a man to go without his lunch handy. But he didn't dare send anyone to look. The search could start any minute. It was better to go hungry than run the risk of being spotted. James was fairly certain none of the goons would do more than rattle the door leading down to the basement to make sure it was locked-and he'd been careful to lock it behind them. The goons wouldn't have a key to open it anyway. Luff would, of course. But James was even more certain that none of his underlings would risk triggering off his temper right now by pestering him for a key, just to open a locked door that no fleeing con could have gotten through anyway. Not an underling low enough on the totem pole to be sent searching a building, anyway. Luff wasn't hot-tempered in the usual sense of the term, but the man could go quietly crazy when one of his plans didn't work. And this one hadn't worked, big time. James leaned against the wall, finally allowing a bit of his grief to wash through him. He knew perfectly well what Luff had been doing. So did the Boomer, because they'd talked about it. The killings had started the day after the uprising. Just ten men, that first day. All of them complete crazies that nobody would miss. That was the same day the execution stand had gone up. Luff had given a little speech, as he would do every day thereafter. The only difference was that in the days that followed he'd give the speeches after the killings. The charges Luff had leveled against the ten condemned men were completely ludicrous. None of them were competent enough to do what they were accused of, even if they'd wanted to.

Three of them had been in the psych ward, practically catatonic. One of them had been hauled to the noose in a straight-jacket. The next day he'd hung fifteen, also crazies. The charges had been every bit ludicrous, but they'd gotten vaguer. "Plotting with the guards" had become "treason against the people." The third day there'd been twenty-five men hung. And, for the first time, some of them hadn't been waterheads. Just… old. The fourth day there'd been thirty.

Half of them… just old. And by then the standard charge had become "uncooperative with the new order." Which was about as good as it got, in the could-mean-anything department. By then, too, the timber-cutting details were well underway. And it hadn't taken more than two days for every con in the prison to figure out that being chosen for the details was tantamount to a death sentence. The men hung weren't the only dead bodies that James and his people had had to dispose of. He grinned a little, thinking about that. There was even a trace of humor in the grin. The ovens had been Boomer's idea. "Tell 'em you need ovens to burn the bodies, boy." "Why ovens? Be easier to just burn them on piles of wood." "You not thinkin' straight. Wood be wood. Ovens gotten be built. To work right, they need doors. Doors need latches and you can't make no latches wid'out steel." The big grin had appeared. "You follow me now, boy?" How could a man that smart have just blown up? James wondered. Heknew the Boom understood what Luff was doing, because he and James and John Boyne had spent hours talking about it-and just as many hours talking about how to handle the situation. The executions, the life-draining work details, the sporadic food and grotesque water rituals, the lack of exercise, it was all part of an age-old practice of divide and conquer. Start with the outcasts and the weak, whom nobody would stand up for, just to get everyone accustomed to the killing. Then, broaden the scope, but always give people the hope that they might be spared. Give them shit jobs to do, and make believe if they did what they were told they would live. Let them know if they didn't they woulddie. Rub their noses in it. Set up a kangaroo court and let those on the jury know the only acceptable verdict was guilty. Hold court daily. Have only one penalty. Make the executions public. In fact, require everyone to attend. Make it plain that the people were being killed for a reason.