Eric Flint - Time spike

Will this stuff do?" Danny went over. It was a big closet. Not quite a full walk-in, but almost. And every shelf was piled high with sheets and pillowcases and thin blankets. "Perfect. We'll take a dozen of the sheets. And… one blanket." "Just one?" "Yeah, one's enough to let 'em breathe." In a perfect world, he'd have made it all blankets. In the long run, blankets would be far more useful. But sheets would do better for the short run. They could be wrapped tightly, where blankets couldn't. He spotted a roll of masking tape on the top shelf.

A full roll, and it was the big tape, three inches across. That'd be perfect. Icing on the cake. He grinned again as he reached up and took it down. Cook would absolutely hate it. But he couldn't possibly object. Once they had the stuff piled up on the floor, Danny studied it for a moment. It'd be a load, but he could handle it all himself.

This was the best place he could think of, given that he saw no reason to postpone the matter. He pointed at some of the pillowcases on a far shelf in the closet. "Better get a half dozen of those, too. We might need something smaller." Williams started into the closet. Behind him, now, Danny drew the gun from his waistband. It was one of the prison's double action pistols. He didn't need to work the slide like he would with an old-style automatic. As soon as Williams was all the way into the closet, Danny shot him in the back. A quick double-tap, extending the gun so it was inside the closet too. That made a lot of noise, where he was standing, but he didn't think anyone outside the building would hear the shots. Even if they did, he didn't think it'd be a problem. There were still plenty of guns being fired in the prison.

Not the fusillade that had been happening earlier. These were the sounds of executioners at work, coming once every two minutes or so.

Just to be sure, he waited in the corridor, listening. Nothing. He was sure the building was still empty, except for the people in the basement. And whenever someone finally did come in, he'd be long gone by the time they got here. He looked back into the closet. Williams hadn't died yet. But was he was unconscious and would remain that way until he did. Which wouldn't be all that long. Danny had been careful not to shoot him in the head or heart, because he didn't want to risk a big blood spill. Instead, he'd shot Williams in the spine, low down.

Either one of the shots would have been fatal. And he wasn't bleeding that much. Quickly, Danny stooped, set the gun on the floor, grabbed a blanket from a lower shelf and pushed it around Williams' legs and feet, after shoving the one foot sticking out back into the closet.

That should sop up whatever blood did come. He stood up and closed the closet door. There was no sign at all that a body was inside. He touched the pistol with the flat of his hand. The muzzle wasn't too hot to shove down into his waistband. It would have been a pain in the ass having to perch the pistol on top of a big pile of blankets and sheets and carry them all the way down two flights of stairs to the basement. As it was, the stack was awkward to handle. But a little labor-you couldn't even call it hard labor-was worth getting rid of a problem immediately and neatly. "Where's Williams?" asked Fritz, after Danny dumped the pile of bedding next to Brown. "It turns out he won't be coming with us after all." He had no expression on his face when he said that. He might have been talking about a slight delay in traffic. There was a moment's silence in the basement. Then Fritz smiled, very thinly, and gave the other two men in Danny's group a quick, meaningful look. Those three and Danny himself were the inner circle. Fritz had never wanted Williams in on it at all. "Too bad," he said. "And after all the talking he did about getting some pussy." He gave Brown a glance. The girl's eyes, big at any time, looked like saucers. Apparently she wasn't as naive as she looked. Danny's eyes were on Cook. "Is there a problem, officer?" The Indian gave him that creepy smile he had. The one that would scare a crocodile. "Not at all. I'm glad to see everything's working out for you." Danny nodded.

"Fine." He pointed at the girl on the pallet. "Time, then. Make like Hansel and Gretel." *** "Get the fuck away from it!" Danny shouted at the ten men standing guard at the gate. There were three sets of gates, actually, but since the uprising Luff only kept the inner one closed. Joey Enders was in charge of the detail. He frowned, looking at the weird big bundle that was coming toward him and his men, perched on top of a makeshift litter being carried by eight men shuffling forward. A dozen other men came behind them. Two of them were carrying shovels. "What's going on, Danny?" Nervously, he hefted the rifle in his hands. But he wasn't pointing it at anything. Danny came forward, skirting widely around the litter. "I'm telling you, Joey, you guysdon't want to get close to this." He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, indicating the litter. "It's Koppler. Him and his bitch Inglewood." "You shoot 'em?

What for?" "Fuck no, we didn't shoot 'em. We found 'em in Koppler's cell. Deader'n last year's garbage and looking a lot worse. They both got these big purple spots all over 'em. They're oozing something, too. Pus, blood, who knows? Luff thinks it might be plague or something. He wants these bodies buried deep, at least a mile into the woods." Enders sidled back from the oncoming litter. Since Danny had spoken plenty loud enough for all the guards to hear, all of them started sidling away. Within a few seconds, the gate was clear. It was still locked, of course. "Open it up," Bostic commanded. Enders was nervous, obviously, but some shred of being in command held him a little steadier than the others. After taking that first two-step backward sidle, he hadn't moved any farther. His eyes came away from the litter and went to the men carrying it, and the ones coming behind them. "What you got? The whole damn burial detail? Why?" Bostic was right next to him, now. "Why d'you think?" he growled softly. "Doyou want let these guys back in, after they've handled bodies full of plague?" Enders eyes widened. "You gonna shoot 'em all?" "Jesus! Where were you when they passed out the brains, Enders? Taking a dump? Of course we're not going to shoot 'em. They know how to get rid of bodies and there's likely to be more. Figure it out, fer Chrissake. It didn't take me and Luff more'n two seconds." Enders really wasn't too bright. So Danny went ahead and spelled it out for him. "It's simple.

First, we shot Cook." "You shot Cook?" "Jesusand Mary. Of course we shot Cook. We would've shot him anyway. Luff wants Boomer's boys broken, finally. Cook had to go, especially with this plague shit coming up." He nodded backward. By now, the litter was only twenty feet from the entrance. "We let Boyne live. He's enough to keep them under control, and he won't get ideas. But that's also why he's one of the ones carrying the litter." Joey Enders looked. Sure enough, John Boyne was one of the two men in front, on the left, holding up one end of the two poles. Except they weren't poles, they were just ten-foot-long two by fours. Strips of linen tying the two boards together formed the rest of the litter's framework. Boyne was looking distinctly unhappy. So were all of his men, especially the ones carrying the litter. Enders looked back up at the litter. Up close, he could see the forms of two human bodies in the big bundle on top. The bodies themselves were invisible, all wrapped up in sheets the way they were. The sheets had been tied down tightly by long strips of masking tape, too. But those were bodies; they couldn't be anything else. The shapes weren't very distinct, as many sheets as they had wrapped around them, but they were distinct enough. One of them looked awfully small, but that made sense too. Inglewood had been a little guy. He couldn't see the faces at all. The area where the heads would be was wrapped around with a blanket. Enders started to wonder why.