Refuge From The Dead (Book 1): Lockdown (3 page)

CHAPTER 4

TWO DAYS LATER

Michael Caine drove up the long, winding hill. The beautiful country around the institution had a calming effect. Fresh air, beautiful surroundings, wildlife roaming the area – it could almost be mistaken for a vacation spot. Beautiful shades of orange populated the scenic drive up to the top of the mountain. Black Mountain State Prison was situated at the end of a nearly two-mile long road. As he turned once more, the lone sign for the prison came into view. The lone sign for Black Mountain State Prison was unassuming. It had the name of the facility, seal of the Commonwealth of Virginia, and the warden’s name. Since the warden had recently changed, the name was absent. There was a certain amount of claustrophobia that passed over Michael as he drove past the sign. Once someone passed that sign, there was no turning back. There was no exiting the area without going on to the prison. Michael always thought the sign should have read “abandon hope all ye who enter” instead.

The facility hadn’t been in operation very long. Opened in 2010, Black Mountain was the archetypal facility for the “new” prison model in Virginia. Billed as being 100% “escape-proof,” it certainly looked that way from the outside. The chain-link fence that surrounded the outer perimeter was just the beginning. In addition to an inner perimeter fence, both were covered from top to bottom with copious amounts of razor wire. The tops were accented with a combination of concertina wire and razor wire. Not much was visible from the outside of the facility, except for the admin building and the pair of watchtowers. Each tower stood over three stories tall, manned by an armed CO with a Remington 870 and an AR-15. Inside the inmates’ cells were not much different. An eight-by-eight concrete enclosure with a four-inch wide, three-foot tall window, a metal toilet and sink, and a door made up their abode.

If you don’t like the accommodations, don’t make the reservation,
Michael’s instructors used to say when asked about inmate living conditions.

The housing units that Michael would be assigned to were not visible from the parking lot. Black Mountain was a very difficult place to get a fix on. The warden had made sure that the address of the prison was kept in strict confidentiality, even going so far as to take the prison’s address from Google Maps. There was a no-fly zone over the entire perimeter that extended over a mile in every direction. Motion sensors, razor wire, silent attack dog teams, armed towers, and plenty of Corrections Officers made sure that the place stayed locked up as tight as humanly possible.

In Virginia’s institutional classification system, there are six levels of security. Level 1 is for nonviolent, non-sexual based offenses and has more freedoms inside the prison than most. Level 2 is for sexual predators and some violent offenses. Levels 3 through 5 house the vast majority of the inmates in the correctional system. There are over 30,000 incarcerated offenders at any given time in Virginia.

Then there was Level 6.

Black Mountain was the only Level 6 prison in Virginia. Most of the prison housed inmates on 23-hour lockdown, meaning they only left their cells for one hour of recreation a day, five days a week. They showered, lived, and ate in their cells. Interaction between inmates and staff and inmates and other inmates was very limited. One building housed the institution’s “Good Behavior” section. Those prisoners were either given that designation from acting civilly for a few years, or they were on the cusp of getting out of the prison system altogether. Contrary to popular belief, most inmates who were imprisoned did have a release date. Most of the time when someone went to prison, it was “out of sight, out of mind” until their name came up again for whatever reason. Roughly 75% of the inmates in Virginia would end up back out on the street at some point in their lives. Alpha building was populated by many of those inmates.

Alpha is where Michael would be posted.

The large, green administration building was directly in front of him. That’s where he was supposed to go inside. Once in there, he would have to make time for getting through the front search officer. While it didn’t take long, thirty or so other officers were trying to get in as well, slowing progress a bit.

Michael parked his truck and sat for a moment. He was nervous to the point of shaking. Throughout the academy, their instructors had told the future officers that life was going to be different once inside the walls of the prison. They’d been warned of what actual prison life was like as compared to the academy. Things that were taken for granted on the outside were in short supply once inside. Temptation would be there, fights were going to happen, and a person was genuinely going to test his or her ability to cope with extremely difficult situations. Most of the facility was on 23-hour lockdown. Those were deemed the “worst of the worst” in Virginia’s penal system. Murders, rapists, child molesters, vicious gang leaders and the like were going to be the people that Michael had to deal with on a daily basis. That being said, there was a new protocol for dealing with prisoners, and it would make drawing the line between the convict and the officer a little blurry.

Throughout their training, they had been taught dialogue. Not just talking to someone, but also effectively
communicating
with them. Ask open-ended questions, try not to fall into arguments, and whatever you do, don’t insult them. Virginia had a long, sordid history of having issues with the treatment of inmates, but now that tide was turning in the favor of making them into productive citizens. Gone were the days of straight, brutal punishment. Incarceration alone was not enough to make a person ready to face the outside world again. Programs, therapy, and counseling were now a bigger part of the indoctrination of reintegration into society.

There remained room for the iron fist, but wrapped in a velvet glove.

Michael grabbed his duty belt. On it were his OC holster, cuff pouch, flashlight, and radio holster. Meager as they may be, they were his tools of the trade. From that belt, he was supposed to be able to subdue and take into custody any inmate in the institution. Well, he wasn’t fucking Batman, so would have to rely on what little training he had in the ways of defensive tactics. What he had been taught at the academy was to keep your shit together and stay alive long enough for help to get there. That length could be anything from a few seconds to a few minutes, depending on the severity of the situation. If you were taken hostage, the state would do everything in its power to rescue you, but they would not trade an officer for an inmate.

Basically, if you were taken hostage, you were fucked.

Michael took a deep breath and exited his truck. What he wouldn’t give for a cigarette. He had smoked one right before getting to the prison, but there were strict rules for smoking
at
the prison. Inmates weren’t allowed to have tobacco products, and neither was he. Bummer.

“You ready for this, Caine?” A familiar voice called to him.

Michael looked around for a moment before spotting Zachary Grant. “Oh God. I have to work here with your ass on my shift? At least it’ll be interesting.”

Grant walked up to Michael and held his hand out. The two engaged in a hearty handshake. “Damn right you will! I figure on locking up at least two of ‘em tonight!”

In prison, the term “locking up” meant a trip to the Segregated Housing Unit or SHU. If you fuck up in life, you go to prison, if you fuck up in prison, you go to SHU. Nothing to read but religious materials, no access to commissary, and only three phone calls allowed per month. The old term for SHU would have been “solitary confinement.” However, it wasn’t completely solitary. Inmates could still yell through the small cracks in the doorframe or tap coded messages on the wall in Morse code. They were conniving little bastards.

“Well, as long as you leave me alone tonight, I will call that a victory. How’s that sound?”

Grant shrugged his shoulders. “Works for me, bro.”

A half-hour later, Michael Caine was at his assigned building for the night, Alpha Building. While it wasn’t the best post on the compound, the guys in Alpha rarely gave the COs any trouble. Most of them had worked their way into Alpha building by behaving and acting like civilized human beings, or were close to being released. They had to work to get where they were, and allowed a few more amenities than the rest of the prison. They weren’t going to do anything to fuck that up.

* * *

Officer Caine sat at the small metal desk in Alpha Pod 1. Outnumbered eighty to one, he was the lone officer in his side of the building. Pod 2 held 96 inmates, and Pod 3 held 80 more, so even greater numbers than that outnumbered him and his fellow officers.
The only reason you get to go home in the morning is because they let you do so.
Words of wisdom from Captain Chance rang through his head. He was there to do a job. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Most of the inmates were milling about in the day room area of the pod. Eight round, metal tables lined up in an upside-down “V” made up the seating. Two sets of aluminum staircases on either side of the room led to the top tier. A closet was off to his left, and another closet was on the top tier. The top tier had railing all the way around, along with a flat, metal strip that ran along the bottom, preventing the inmates from sliding underneath the railing. Every door was painted green, with the cell number in white. The cell number was painted vertically, to be easily identified from the control room that sat above him. The control room sat fifteen feet above him, mindful of everything going on in the pods below it. The control room had Pod 1 to the left, Pod 2 directly in front, and Pod 3 off to the right. Between the control room operator and the myriad of cameras in the building, very little went on that the staff did not know about.

“Look at this muthafucka here! It’s the goddamn rookie of the year!”

Michael snapped out of his stupor. Daydreaming was not conducive to a safe work environment. He would have to work on that. When he did look up, there was an inmate standing over his desk. While the man wasn’t overly big, he still made Michael a bit leery. This guy hadn’t been sent to prison for missing church on Sunday. He was about five feet, ten inches tall, and around a hundred and eighty pounds. While the rest of the population around Black Mountain was white, nearly half of the inmates in the prison were black, as was the man standing in front of him.

The inmate had his orange, state-issued ID card clipped to his shirt. “Mr. Stanley. How can I assist you?”

Inmate Demarco Stanley held his hands up. “Ain’t tryin’ to cause no trouble, officer…Caine,” Stanley said, leaning down to see Michael’s own state ID card on his chest.

“Then what do you want, Offender Stanley?” Beads of sweat popped up on Michael’s brow. This was the first genuine encounter with an inmate that he’d ever had. While it was not overly stressful, it was something new and relatively awkward.

“Look, man. I get out this bitch in fifteen more days. I ain’t tryin’ to stir no shit up. I just noticed that you ain’t ever worked in this pod, so I figure I would come by and make nice with the CO. Don’t get it twisted, son. I ain’t givin’ you no shit, but this is my house – you just work here.”

“I appreciate that, Stanley,” Michael replied, trying to keep his cool. He had to stay on his toes, though. This was another game. One of the inmates would try to distract the floor officer, while others snuck things back and forth. It was a simple bait and switch.

“Just wondering if I can get you to put the TV on CNN. These niggas here ain’t tryin’ to watch reruns of
The Walking Dead.
Niggas always be dyin’ on that show.”

Michael had to chuckle a little bit. For some reason, the black characters always seemed to be getting killed off regularly on
The Walking Dead.
It didn’t make much sense to him, but that was Hollywood’s decision. He’d been a big fan of all things horror since he was ten years old.

While he wasn’t entirely comfortable with hearing the “N” word every other sentence, he understood where Offender Stanley came from. Just because a prisoner was from a certain area of the state, it did not mean that he would be locked up in that area. Most of Virginia was culturally diverse, but Western Virginia was mostly white, while Eastern Virginia was primarily black. Cultural diversity was something preached at the academy. Michael knew from the moment that he walked into the prison that he would face racism. He could tell from the looks of some of the inmates that they hated him just because he was white. No reason need be given; they threw him into the stereotype of the typical Appalachian male. Some black inmates would hate him just because he was white. White inmates, especially White Supremacist ones, would hate him if he tried in any way to help a black man.

Michael reached into the drawer and grabbed the remote, flipping it over to CNN. From what he could tell, there was more media-induced panic filling the airwaves. While some of it might have been legitimate, the news always had a knack for exacerbating any bad situation. Civil unrest reported in some East African countries, as well as spats in Eastern Europe. The virus that he’d heard of in the last few days was making the rounds overseas.
Won’t be long until that shit makes it over here,
Michael thought.

“Look at that shit. More niggers rioting? What now? Did some white cop shoot a black man?”