Omega Days (An Omega Days Novel) by John L. Campbell Read Free Book Online Page A

appeal process, TC to face arraignment for allegedly slashing another inmate’s face with a piece of sharpened plastic over a cigarette debt. Truthfully, there was no
allegedly
about it, and TC had been aiming for the man’s throat, not his face. The van had just reached the Richmond–San Raphael Bridge when it was stopped at a California Highway Patrol roadblock still being hastily set up. The correctional officer who was riding shotgun had spoken with a helmeted Chippie for a few minutes, and then they were turning around, heading back to the Q.
    The gates were in view when the prison siren went off, and the van pulled quickly onto the gravel shoulder. Now they sat and watched pillars of black smoke rising behind the high walls, overhearing the COs up front behind their steel mesh divider talking on the radio and listening to frantic chatter.
    “What’s happening, Carney?” TC asked.
    “Like I know.”
    “Is it a riot?” His younger cellmate craned his muscled neck to get a better look out the windshield, over the heads of the COs. “Man, that’s my luck to miss it. The perfect chance to shank that motherfucker LeBron.” Freddy LeBron was an inmate who had twice disrespected TC in front of others, and TC owed him a death. Carney elbowed the younger man hard and whispered for him to keep his voice down, but the COs hadn’t seemed to hear the comment. TC looked at his cellmate with a hurt expression. “You didn’t have to do that.”
    “Shut the fuck up,” said Carney, “I’m trying to listen.”
    Cochoran, physically more powerful and infinitely more violent than the older man, looked out the side window and pouted.
    “Hey, CO,” called another inmate. “What’s going on?”
    “We’ll let you know when you need to know,” said the driver, not looking back. The inmate flipped him off below the seat, where the officer couldn’t see it.
    As the flat, single-tone siren blared through the morning air, Carney expected to see California Highway Patrol and Marin County Sheriff’s cars go racing past them toward the prison. The road was empty. Ahead, he saw thick columns of smoke blowing out into the bay, and then came the far-off crack of a rifle. Everyone in the van stiffened.
    There was fast, panicked chatter on the radio now, and although most of it was unintelligible, the word
breach
came through clearly. The driver immediately put the van into a U-turn and headed away from the prison.
    “C’mon, CO, what the fuck?” yelled the same inmate. The others were demanding answers too, all except Carney, who sat quietly and watched the two officers. They were tense, anxious, and something bad was happening. Frightened, armed men in charge of chained, helpless men was not a good combination.
    The van drove for a mile and then turned onto a side road, traveling through hilly country of short pines and August-brown grasses. Carney read a blue road sign as they passed it:
California DOC Tactical Training Facility ½ mile.
The COs stayed quiet.
    Within a minute the van arrived at a turnoff and a gate set in a high chain-link fence running off in both directions into the pines, topped with razor wire. One of the COs spoke into the radio, and the gate rattled open, allowing them to drive into a small parking lot occupied by one dirty Ford Taurus. The gate rattled closed. At the edge of the lot stood three single-story cinder-block buildings with dark green shingled roofs. On the other side of them, a gun tower—identical to those at the Q—rose into the blue sky.
    When the van stopped, the COs turned in their seats and looked at the inmates, who had fallen silent. The radio still crackled nonstop in the background, but they had turned it down. It was the driver who spoke, the senior man. “Listen up. The Q is in lockdown. You’re all going to be held at this facility until the situation is resolved. It is not designed to hold inmates, so we’re making accommodations. However, that does not mean you get the