The Killing Floor Blues by Craig Schaefer Page A

if not into sleep, into an uneasy waking dream.
    The alien maggot inside my skull, the gift from the King of Worms, squirmed across the meat of my brain. I could see it when I closed my eyes, its black, rubbery skin still reflecting the light from distant stars. Its hunger growing.

14.
    I dreamed of Caitlin.
    It wasn’t a message, no mystic vision. Just a snatch of memory on repeat. Sitting at a plastic two-seater in the secret little pizza parlor at the Metropolitan, side by side, sharing Cokes and fat, greasy slices of pepperoni pizza. She flashed her smile my way and I felt…whole. Human. Warm inside.
    Then I woke up to the clattering and shouts and stench of the cellblock. My new home. My new home for the rest of my life if I didn’t start making moves.
    I joined the line for the showers, letting myself be herded like a cow, hating how fast it became routine. Brisco’s boys, Ray-Ray and Slanger, fell in on my left and right. I gave Ray-Ray a nod.
    “Brisco wants us to cover you while you shower,” he told me. “In case the Calles get stupid. Just do the same for us, okay?”
    “Good deal,” I said.
    I stripped down, setting my folded clothes on a long wooden bench, and stepped into the narrow shower stall. The curtain hung short, and even with it pulled closed I could see my new bodyguards’ feet outside, standing watch for me. For five minutes, at least, I could exhale and let my guard down.
    I didn’t, though.
    Something was off. As the lukewarm water splashed across the stubble on my scalp and rolled down my naked back, I stretched out my psychic tendrils. A mind here, a mind there. Snatches of confusion, of sudden anxiety, adrenaline spiking.
    Fewer minds than there should have been. And the ones I could touch were
leaving
.
    I turned around in the stall and looked down to the curtain gap. Ray-Ray and Slanger were gone.
    Here it comes, then
, I thought.
    In the moments before a confrontation—when you know it’s going to be genuine kill-or-be-killed violence, no discussion, no debate—the world slows to a crawl. Time turns into an hourglass filled with molasses, the seconds dripping down one leaden echoing heartbeat at a time. Your vision narrows, the walls closing in around you.
    I took a deep breath, living in that silent, eternal moment.
    Then the curtain ripped open, and everything happened very, very fast.
    He was shorter than me, Asian, cropped black hair, but my eyes were on his knife. Not prison junk. Carbon black steel, spec-ops style, and forged to carve skin like butter.
    Pro
, said the back of my brain while the rest of me went into overdrive, dodging to one side as he lunged at me. The blade stabbed empty air, one inch from my left shoulder. I grabbed his wrist, twisted, shoved him a step backward, and slammed his arm against the shower stall opening as hard as I could. His forearm met the white tile with a shotgun
crack
as a bone fractured. He grunted through gritted teeth, but he clung to the knife with a death grip.
    He had a buddy with a blade of his own, dancing around outside the stall like a prizefighter waiting for his title shot. The stall was too small, and they could only come at me one at a time. My only edge. That, and the weapon they didn’t know I had.
    The first hitter grabbed his knife with both hands, using his good arm to push as he forced me back a step, my shoulder blades pressed to the cold tile. The tip of the knife inched toward my belly as the shower rained down, drenching us both and turning the world into a wet blur as the downpour washed over my eyes.
    As I pushed his hands back, straining against him, the alien maggot in my skull writhed with excitement. I felt it crawling across the back of my eyeball. Then it squirmed its way through the gelatinous tissue and nestled inside.
    The hitter got a bright idea. Suddenly he wasn’t pushing, he was
pulling
, hauling me off-balance and sending me stumbling out of the shower stall. Out into the empty room, where they