***
Python and Jill approached the hard cases’ block in the early afternoon. Though their number had dwindled, there were still forty or fifty of the convicts that preferred to live together, instinctively afraid of the Edens – of contamination, perhaps, or of being turned into sheep.
Or of being cured of their sick desires.
Behind Jill and Python, ten of their guardians waited, close enough to intervene if things got out of hand. At the bottom of the front steps the two stopped, looking up at the tattooed man that sat keeping watch. From inside the block Jill could hear the sounds of grunting and group encouragement – weightlifting, or a physical contest, she hoped.
“What?” the man asked disdainfully.
Python said, “We need to talk to Drake.”
“Drake don’t need to talk to you,” the bull-necked bruiser replied.
“Why don’t you let him decide?” Jill cocked her hip suggestively.
“Don’t need no Sicko whores, either.”
“Tell him we got something he wants.”
“What?” The man stood up, towering over them from the top of the steps.
Python shook his head, slowly. “For Drake.”
Finally the hard case grunted and signaled for another to watch the door while he went inside. A few moments later a fit man in a sleeveless undershirt stepped out. He looked about forty, with thick hair and intelligent eyes. Muscular, but not massive. Jill knew that somehow this man managed to keep these men in line and working for him, so he had brains as well as brawn.
“I’m Drake,” he said, wiping his sweaty hands on a towel. Unlike his underlings, he seemed devoid of bravado. “You are?”
“Python. This here’s Reaper. We have some information for you, and a proposition.”
Drake nodded, looking closely at them both. “Come in.”
Python smiled. “No thanks. How about we sit down at that table over there, where your boys and ours can all see us.”
Drake stared coldly at them for a moment, then turned to speak back through the doorway. “Get Fish.” A moment later a broad man with scarred knuckles stepped out, and the two convicts walked over to the nearby table.
Jill and Python went to the other side, and they sat down together. Drake stared at Python expectantly, until he made a motion with his eyes at Jill. “Ah, so you’re the boss,” the felons’ leader said to her. “His type I know. He’s been inside. But you…you puzzle me.”
“The same to you, Drake. I’ll enlighten you. I’m a military cop. The only thing I did wrong was get my legs blown off in the desert and then get infected with the Plague. You know what?” She lifted a trouser leg to show the two-tone skin of her calf. “I’m damn glad I did, because now I got new feet. Your turn.”
Drake’s eyes narrowed, and he took out a pack of cigarettes, lit one. He didn’t offer them to anyone else, not even his lieutenant. “I ran a little smuggling operation down south. I still have some connections, even here. I can get things no one else can.”
“And to the hard cases, you’re the devil they know.” Jill reached over to pluck the cigarette from his fingers with two of hers. Although she didn’t really smoke anymore, she had in her youth, and so managed not to cough as she drew a lungful before starting to hand it back.
“Keep it,” he said. “I’ll put off getting the Plague a while longer.” He took out another and then lit it. The whole time his eyes never left hers. “You got balls, I’ll give you that, lady. What you want?”
Jill handed the smoke over to Python, who took it eagerly. “I want what everyone else wants. Out of this hellhole.”
“Hellhole?” Drake laughed. “This place ain’t so bad. Frickin’ country club compared to a supermax.”
“It’s not bad yet, but with two meals a day, food’s going to get tight. Can you keep all of your guys happy?”
“Probably. For quite a while.”
“With your connections, right,” Jill deliberately mocked. “But then there’s the attrition problem.”
Drake’s eyes narrowed, but he said nothing.
Jill continued, “Attrition means –”
“I know what it means, Miss Reaper. I’m a well-read man. You mean that every now and again, one of my guys gets the Plague, and I lose him. But eventually they’ll ship some more hard cases in, and I’ll have reinforcements. And I prefer this arrangement over a supermax pen, even with the crackdown. So again,” Drake pounded his index finger on the table in time to his words, “what – do – you – want?”
“I have a plan to get out. You need to get out. Nobody but you is likely to want out. Me and Python, we’re different, but most of these people are sheep. By the time they get their courage up, it will be too late. They’ll be weak from lack of food. Eden metabolism is too fast. We can’t store fat the way the uninfected can. On the other hand, we can regrow limbs, so…” Jill shrugged.
“Get out how?”
Jill shook her head. “Not yet. Need to build some trust first. Bring four or five guys who can keep their mouths shut to the back corner of chow hall nineteen, tomorrow at two p.m. We’ll show you from there.”
“So you can jump us?”
Jill snorted. “In broad daylight? And where am I gonna get ten guys willing to attack you? My boys here do all right as long as they’re defending someone, but a well-read man such as you should know that Edens aren’t very good at making unprovoked assaults. Unlike yourselves.”
Drake took a drag. “Two it is, then.” Then he handed her the half-full pack of cigarettes.
She accepted it with a nod of thanks, knowing the gesture represented a step forward. Drake and Fish got up and strolled back into their block, and Jill and Python rejoined their own men, returning to their barracks.
They spent the evening preparing.