Prison of the Dead Read online

  Prison of the Dead

  by Brian Berg

  Copyright © Brian Berg 2012-2018

  All Rights Reserved

  Dedicated to:

  The Dragon Queen

  and

  My mother, Mary Lou, who showed me that the dead could walk

  Author’s Note

  In 2012, I published the original version of this story on Amazon Kindle. Not much has changed since the original draft, just a few things I’ve decided to tinker with here and there. Like much of my early work, I had to republish this story and I hope that people enjoy it just as much this time around. After a lengthy wait, and some back and forth advice from friends, I’ve decided to republish this to honor the 50th Anniversary of George A. Romero’s zombie masterpiece Night of the Living Dead. Obviously, that movie not only influenced myself, as you will see in the story, but it influenced millions of others in the horror genre. My zombie fiction is, I believe, a love letter to Romero’s grand legacy and I hope it shows.

  Chapter 1

  Any of you ever been to prison?

  It's not a good place to be, I can vouch for that. Of course, I have my own reasons for hating prison. Sure, you have your beatings, you have your rapings, riots, all that stuff, but my problems with prison is unique. But before I tell you about that, let me tell you about myself and the prison where I'm currently holed up in.

  I'm incarcerated at Falling Rock Correctional Facility, about ten or so miles away from the small town of Falling Rock, Colorado. I was sent here about six months ago and I left a wife and two little kids. Last I heard about them, they moved into her parent's home in River City. Guess I can't really blame them, since our own home has some rough memories.

  God, I can just imagine her bitchy mother talk about me over their meals.

  “You shouldn't have married that man!” she'd be saying. “His kind are always the kind to bring trouble and cause grief to good girls like yourself! You really should just think about getting another man and give these children a proper father! One who can actually be there for them and not behind bars.”

  Shut the hell up, you old crone.

  Truth is, I hate that woman. I really, really do. Just because I wasn't brought up in the best of homes, or that I had a great life (at least, great by her standards), and because I had a bit of a streak for getting angry and fighting, she's always deemed me unworthy to be her son-in-law. Still, out of respect for my wife, I put up with her shit.

  I don't suppose all of that matters right now. I'm going to die at Falling Rock tonight anyway. At this moment, I'm sitting in a custodial closet, with a riot shotgun propped up against my chest. It isn't loaded, and I had a pistol with me earlier, but I lost that somewhere in the fight.

  They're coming for me. Oh yes, they're coming for me. They know exactly where I am. I can hear them on the other side of the door, banging on it. They want in. They want me.

  Are any of you wondering how I got myself into this situation? Well, I suppose I have some time to tell you my story. I'm certainly not going anywhere and I think it'll be some time, if any at all, before they manage to break in here.

  It all started this morning at breakfast...

  Chapter Two

  “They're coming to get you, buddy.”

  I looked up from my tray at the sound of Eddie's voice. I had just picked up a forkful of scrambled eggs when he gave me that greeting. He was sitting down across from me at the table, carrying his own tray. Eddie was a big guy, a little over six feet tall and could be called beefy, with short, graying hair and stubble on his face.

  “What the hell are you talking about, Eddie?” I asked, nervous. I hadn't been in prison long, but I was in there long enough to be very careful. “Who is coming to get me?”

  He looked over his shoulder. “The Hangman and Hound.”

  I looked past him, to a table a short distance away. I saw them easily. It was their table, always was, always had been and always will be, I suppose. Hound was currently digging through his meal and Hangman was talking with a couple of other inmates. Every now and then, I saw him look towards me.

  “Why are they coming after me?” I asked quietly, eyes glued on the pair. “What did I do to them?”

  Eddie shrugged. “I don't know why, but I heard through the grapevine that they got their eyes set on you. Must be because they know you're new meat.”

  “I've been here half a year, why are they just starting now?”

  “Maybe they were busy?” Eddie cut a piece of a pancake and stuck it into his mouth. “Prison life is a lot more than what people think it is.”

  “I guess.” I looked at his tray. “You gonna eat that bacon?”

  “Yes.” He moved the tray closer to him. He knew that I had a fondness for bacon and knew well enough not to let me mooch off of him. “You hear any news?”

  I shook my head. “Nothing from my lawyer yet. I should be hearing something any day now, but I get this feeling it's gonna be bad.”

  “That sucks.” The rest of the pancake disappeared into his stubbled maw. “What about your old lady? Any conjugal visits yet?”

  “Eddie!”

  “I'm just asking, man.”

  “No, you're just wanting to hear some dirty details because you haven't had any action in awhile.”

  “I can't help it if I'm horny.”

  “That's what Hound says and we know better about him, now don't we?”

  I couldn't really blame Eddie for wanting to know about my sex life. He had been in Falling Rock for at least five years now. Back in 2006, he got arrested for something and the last time he had a good time with a chick was a couple hours before he got arrested. Nowadays, and I feel so wrong for just knowing this, he gets his action from his right hand who he has found it necessary to call “Miss Feelgood”. He wasn't as bad as Hound, but then again, he wasn't like Hound to begin with.

  Hound was a serial rapist. He wasn't even halfway through his twenties and I heard that he had a rap sheet that listed him humping at least two dozen women before getting cuffed. He said that he had a mental disease or something, one that gave him uncontrollable urges to hump anything he wanted to, whether it was willing or not. Yeah, I call total bullshit on that.

  “So, what else did you hear about the Hangman coming after me?”

  Hangman was a serial killer in his sixties. He had quite a reputation of killing women by either strangling them with rope and hanging their bodies or just killing them with a noose. He had enough kills under his belt, I thought for sure he'd be in Canon City, sitting on death row, but somehow, he managed to beat that and is serving life here at Falling Rock. He was older than Eddie, smaller too, but I had seen for myself that he knew how to handle himself.

  “Nothing, but I'm gonna stick with you as long as I can,” Eddie promised as he shot me a grin.

  Eddie was a great guy. He wasn't an asshole who had to push around anyone he wanted to prove that he wasn't a chickenshit. He was a good guy who had been watching out for me practically since I had come here. I had made a rule not to mess with any inmates so I could get out alive and maybe get out on good behavior, but that didn't stop others from coming at me. That's where Eddie came in. I was having some trouble, but before it got out of hand, he stepped in and saved my ass. People backed away from him and said they'd get me later. They didn't though, because Eddie was always there to have my back. When I asked him why he stuck his neck out for a new guy, he gave me an answer I didn't expect.

  “I like you.”

  I hadn't even met Eddie before that time, so why did he like me? I was going to ask, but I didn't want to look a gift horse in the mouth. I was just grateful to have some help in this place and I wasn't wanting to rock the boat.

  “Thanks,
Eddie.” I looked around at the sea of blue jeans and denim jackets that were the uniforms of the inmates of Falling Rock. Some of them were from the same cell block that Eddie and I were from and the others were from around other parts of the prison. “Hey, Eddie, you notice anything about some of the others in this place?”

  “Like what?”

  I shook my head. “I'm not sure. Look around, Eddie.”

  He lifted his head and looked about the dining hall. After a time, he shook his head and went back to his breakfast. “What about 'em?”

  “They look pretty sick, or out of it.”

  And they did. I was no doctor, but I had noticed that a number of the inmates weren't looking so great. They were pretty pale, moving around kind of slowly and just seemed to stay in one place, staring ahead at something we couldn't see.

  “Maybe they're high on something?” Eddie suggested. “You know places like this, plenty of drugs going around without the BWs noticing.”

  BWs, or Black and Whites, were the prison guards at Falling Rock. We called them that because they all wore bright white work shirts with black slacks and shiny black shoes.

  “Either that or there's something going around.” I really didn't want to catch anything from someone in here. Aside from the crap you'd get from being raped in prison, God knows what the hell these guys carried and if they were contagious.

  I turned back to my own breakfast and finished off my eggs. I was about to try and snake Eddie's bacon when I heard a scream. Eddie and I immediately forgot our food and looked at the source of the scream. It wasn't pretty.

  One of the inmates was on the floor, holding onto his arm, which was bleeding pretty badly. Standing above him, was one of the sickly inmates, the same blood smeared across his mouth. There was a long strip of denim hanging out from between his lips.

  “Jesus Christ! I think he just bit that guy!”

  Eddie laughed. “Looks like those drugs are really giving these guys a case of the munchies!”

  My stomach turned as a bunch of BWs came through the dining room to help. They managed to pull the bleeder away from the biter, but it wasn't that productive; while they were focused on those two, a number of other sick ones started to munch on the ones closest to them.

  An alarm started to blare through the dining hall and a flood of BWs came through the doors. There was an order of lockdown coming in from the loudspeakers, so while those injured and attacking were being dealt with, the rest of us were taken out as quickly as possible. Eddie and I were taken back to our cell block and put away in our separate cells. His was directly across from mine.

  “One helluva morning, kid!” He was grinning from ear to ear. “Looks like you don't have to worry about Hangman or Hound for awhile.”

  I gave him a shaky smile. I turned away from the block and laid down on my cot. I had a fairly full belly from breakfast, but I felt like I was about to throw it all back up. I wasn't feeling to well.

  The images of the biters and the bitten weren't doing any good to help me either.

  Chapter Three

  I must have fallen asleep. With little to do and some trouble going on in your gut, it's natural to sleep for a while to pass the time and help whatever the hell is bothering you to pass as well. I had a rough, but dreamless sleep and I was rudely shaken out of it by a pair of big hands and a gruff voice. With a start, I opened my eyes and saw who it was that was manhandling me.

  It was Eddie. He was saying something to me, but at first I couldn't make it out. He sounded muffled, but as I pulled myself further away from sleep, I was able to hear the last five words that left his mouth.

  “...the fuck out of here!”

  “Huh? Wha-” I waved him off and sat up. “Eddie?” I yawned and rubbed my neck. I felt sore. “What's going on?”

  “We have got to get the fuck out of here!” He grabbed my arm and pulled me to my feet. He nearly threw me into the wall of my small cell. “Come on, kid!”

  “Eddie! Eddie, you're not making any sense, what are-” I stopped and finally caught something I should have caught the first time I had seen him. He was actually in my cell. “Eddie, how'd you get in here?”

  “Everything has gone to shit,” he said grimly.

  I was going to ask what he meant by that, but he pulled me out of the cell and into the block. There was no one there but us. The cells to the doors were all opened, but there wasn't anyone inside! The entire cell block was completely deserted, save for me and Eddie.

  Prison break! I thought a prison break had been going on while I was asleep, but that's when I noticed something else was amiss. There was no alarm, no alert that signaled that there was a problem inside of Falling Rock. I turned to Eddie to ask him what was going on and that's when I noticed the bloodstains on his front.

  “Eddie?” I tried to keep calm, but my heart kept racing like inside my chest. “What is going on? Why do you have blood on you? Where is everyone? What-”

  “Shut up!” he cut me off with a snap. “Just shut the hell up and listen to me, kid!”

  I nodded. He had my full attention now.

  “Something really bad has happened here,” he said slowly, as calmly as he could. “It's all fucked up out there. People are running, people are shooting, people are dead or dying-”

  “Jesus, Eddie.”

  He wiped his chin. There was nothing on there, but I think he did it just for some kind of comfort. “We have got to get out of here, kid. We have got to get out of here now, find some help.”

  I looked at Eddie for a long time. I had known him for only a short while, but I had come to know him well enough to know that he was scared. No, scratch that. He was absolutely terrified. The man who wasn't afraid to come between a new guy and a bunch of thugs wanting to make a name for themselves was now looking like he was about to shit himself.

  “Alright, Eddie.” I nodded. “We'll get out of here. Where should we go? The warden?”

  He shook his head. “Nuh-uh man, we can't stay here, period! We have got to get out, out past the fences and the towers.”

  “Eddie, that's breaking out-”

  “That is survival!”

  I shook my head. “Eddie, I don't get you. You've seen fights and all kinds of shit in this place before; what's got you so damn spooked?”

  His face tightened. “Come on and I'll show you.”

  Chapter Four

  If what I had seen at breakfast hadn't made me feel sick to my stomach hadn't done the trick, what I saw outside of the cellblock did the job. Eddie was telling me the truth, though I hadn't thought of him to be much of a liar to begin with. The halls were filled with dead bodies.

  Guards and prisoners alike, their corpses looked like they were torn to pieces. It was like the dead had taken it upon themselves to give the area a brand new paint job. Some of them looked worse than others, but for the most part, they all shared many of the same sort of injuries.

  Many of them looked like they had been eaten.

  I turned away and threw up in the corner.

  “That's not the worst part of it,” Eddie said quietly.

  “Worst of it?” I spat the last chunk of partially digested egg out of my mouth. “What the hell do you mean 'worst of it'?”

  “Take a look for yourself.”

  I looked back and at first, I saw nothing other than the dead laying on the floor, but then I saw some movement in the back, around a corner. A shadow. “Hey! Someone's still moving! They can help!” I started to move towards it, but Eddie held me back. “Eddie, what the hell-”

  “Shut up and just watch.”

  The shadow moved and the body that belonged to it shuffled into view. It was a guard, but he looked like shit. His neat uniform was ripped and shiny with blood. Half of his face had been torn away and he was missing his left eye.

  “The...fuck...”

  The guard caught sight of us and a loud moan echoed down the hall. He looked like he was trying to hurry towards us. I found myself wanting to back awa
y from it, although it was a fair distance away from us and moving at a slow pace.

  “Eddie?”

  “I told you, didn't I?” He let go of me and picked something up from the floor. It was a pipe, like one you'd see from a bathroom fixture or something. It was coated with blood, but Eddie didn't seem to mind. “Everything has gone to shit.”

  Without another word, he moved towards the guard, pipe in hand. He held it like it was a baseball bat and he was a professional ballplayer, ready to knock one out of the park. He said something I couldn't catch, but I watched as he swung the pipe and it connected with the guards jaw.

  A crack...a nasty, sick crack...echoed down the hall and I actually found myself flinching at the noise. That same sound came again and again and again until Eddie stopped bashing the guard altogether. He knelt beside his beating victim and walked back to me, carrying something in his hand. It was a pistol.

  “Come on. We're getting out of here.” He held out the gun and two magazines. “This is a Glock 22. It uses .40 Smith & Wesson rounds and each magazine carries fifteen rounds of ammunition.”

  I looked at the gun. I stared at Eddie.

  “What? I spent my life around a shooting range. You got a problem with it?”

  “No.” I took the gun and the clips. I put the clips into the breast pocket of my shirt and checked the gun. I was no rookie to firearms either, although I wasn't near Eddie's level of knowledge. All I knew was load, aim and shoot. “Thanks. You gonna be okay?”

  He held up the pipe. “I can be alright with this for now.”

  “You sure?” I looked around. “There should be some other guns around here, I mean some of these are guards and-”

  “First thing the others took when shit hit the fan,” Eddie shook his head. “This was the first one that I could actually find on a BW.”

  “So why give it to me?”