The Last Days of October by Jackson Spencer Bell Page A

above,
small knots of afflicted deputies and trustees stood motionless outside of
bunkrooms.  
    “They’re waiting
to get in,” Petey said.   Light from the
monitors reflected off the sheen of sweat covering his face.   He took his breaths in uneven gusts that he
released in ragged sighs.   “Those are the
unaffected cells.   Eventually, they’re
going to figure out that if somebody buzzes those doors, they can all get in
there and eat.”
    “Those guys in
there are fucked,” Justin said.
    “Unless you want
to fight through an army of vampires to save them.   You want to do that, be my guest.   But my ass is…hey, check this out.”  
    Petey pointed to
the leftmost monitor.   Justin
looked.   Three figures in sheriff’s
department uniforms stood motionless before a closed door.
    “What’s that?” he
asked.
    “That is…”
    Petey rose from
the chair and stood in the doorway.   He
pointed to a door beside the inprocessing office.   The stairwell.
    “…right
there.   Hit the wrong button, those
bastards are coming out.”
    Justin stared at
the door, then back at the monitor.   He
hadn’t thought it possible for his guts to feel any colder, but he’d been
wrong.   Less than ten feet separated him
and Petey from the creatures on the monitor.
    The inmates of
this jail were damned.   There was nothing
he could do.
    “So I suggest,”
Petey labored, “that we get the fuck out of here.   Now.”
    He rummaged around
in a toolbox under the monitor table.   Finding nothing that suited him there, he straightened up and surveyed
the table.   Sweat dripped from the bags
beneath his eyes; he looked to Justin like he hadn’t slept in weeks.   The control room was redolent of body odor
barely concealed beneath his cheap cologne and the smell of latex from his
gloves.
    He grabbed a pair
of clipboards and thrust them at Justin.   “Here,” he said.   “Use these to
jam the doors open.   I’ll be right behind
you.”
    “Don’t hit the
wrong button.”
    “I won’t.   Bank on it.”
    Stepping over the
bodies, Justin made his way to the first of two doors that led from the
outside.   The buzzer sounded, the lock
clanked and he entered a tiny, square room the size of a broom closet.   To his left, a glass window looked into the
control room.   To his right, an
elevator.   In front, the door to the
public lobby.   And freedom.
    He wedged a
clipboard in the first door and pulled the handle until the door’s weight
firmly held the clipboard in place.   He
stepped back and rested a hand on the second door and waited.
    No buzz.
    “Okay!” he
yelled.   “Go ahead and hit the second
one!”
    Still nothing.
    He turned to the
window and plastered his face to the glass.   On the other side, Petey sat before the glowing monitors, jamming his
index finger at a button on the console.   Justin passed back through the first door and stepped into the control
room.
    “What’s going on?”
he asked.
    Petey’s head
seemed to be swaying atop the mountain of his chest.   For a moment, Justin thought he had lost
consciousness.   But then he turned, his
face knotted with confusion.
    “Won’t work,” he
said.   “I press the…button and…nothing
happens.”
    If Petey had
looked sick before, now he looked near death.   His skin had gone white and pale, his lips a bluish tear at the bottom of
his chubby face.   Sweat beaded on his
broad forehead.   He blinked and turned
his head when he addressed Justin, almost as if he had trouble focusing.
    He didn’t get bit, Justin thought.   He
didn’t!   He said so!
    Why don’t you ask him to show you his hands?
    Justin looked
down.    A pair of white latex gloves
covered both of Petey’s hands.   He could
have received a bite on one of those.   Justin wouldn’t have known.
    He swallowed and
said, “It’s probably a security measure.   Only one door open at a time, right?   Keep prisoners from escaping?”
    “Yeah,” Petey
panted.   “I