The Last Days of October by Jackson Spencer Bell

that office back there—go put them on and let’s
bounce.”
    Justin did.   Jeans, socks, sneakers, tee shirt,
hoodie.   Despite his present
circumstances, he felt immeasurably better when he rid himself of the jail
garb.   Getting rid of that felt like
shedding a rough, raspy, second skin in which terrible things could happen to him.   He didn’t feel like himself again, but he
felt better.
    Back in the
in-processing lobby, Petey leaned against the frame in the doorway to the
control room.   He’d been leaning over
again, but he straightened up when Justin approached.  
    “Sure you’re okay?”
    “Listen,” he said,
ignoring the question.   “This whole
motherfucker is a lockdown facility.   None of these doors is going to open without somebody buzzing it open,
and when the finger comes off the buzzer those locks are going to engage
again.   So what we’re going to do is, I’m
going to buzz them and you jam them open as you go through.   We’ll get in my truck and haul ass.”
    “Gotcha.”   Justin went and stood by the door that led
out to the little waiting room outside the in-processing lobby.   But then he stopped.
    Claw marks.
    He thought of the
rest of the building rising above him.   Two, three floors of deputies and inmates, some as innocent as he—some
even more so.   Some cell blocks and bunk
rooms hadn’t been opened tonight.   There
were men up there, trapped behind locked doors as he himself had been trapped
behind the bars of the holding cell.   If
someone didn’t come neutralize this situation in two or three days, they would
all die.   Like colonists buried alive in
the days before coroners, medical examiners and such simple yet critically
important things as establishing death before sticking someone in a pine box.
    “What about
everybody else?”   He asked.
    Petey, who had
moved behind the glass in the control room, scowled and stuck his head
out.   “What about them?”
    “Are we going to
leave everybody in here?   What about your
fellow deputies?   What about the people
in the cells?   We can’t just abandon them.”
    “Come in here for
a second.”
    Petey motioned him
into the control room.   Justin found
himself standing before a bank of black-and-white television monitors.
    “Look,” Petey
said.   “This shit’s everywhere.”
    On the bank of
glowing monitors covering one wall of the control room, men struggled and fell
in the bunkrooms that comprised the main part of the jail—the part he himself
would have been in but for Petey’s largesse—while jailers and trustees stumbled
in the corridors.    Black, white,
Hispanic, they all had the same narrow, wolfish look as the one who had tried
to gain entry to Justin’s own cell.   Justin counted two bunkrooms that appeared normal; in these, jumpsuited
men lay on bunks, on the floors, apparently unaware of the commotion taking
place outside.
    They’ll find out soon enough.
    “Holy shit,”
Justin whispered.
    On one monitor, a
brown-shirted deputy stopped and stared at the camera.   Its black eyes held him motionless as he felt
suddenly overcome by the notion that the thing could see him, too; that it knew
he was there, could sense his bewilderment and fear.  
    It grinned and
bared its fangs.
    “This is so fucked
up,” he said.   “How did it get up there
if this guy out here brought it in and you stabbed him?   I mean, that’s him laying right out there,
right?   How is this even possible?”
    “It must have been
in here earlier,” Petey said.   He coughed
and grunted.   “Up there.   Came in again through in-processing, with
Asshole out there.   Came in from outside
the jail, though.   Means…”
    “This same problem
might be developing out in the public.   Right now.”
    “Bingo.   And check this out.”
    Petey punched some
keys on a computer keyboard at the bottom of the monitor bank.   The top row of screens blinked and refocused
on new scenes.   In the corridors