Steve took off to the warden’s office while Cara left to free Bohdan. The tourists on the trams were now roaming the tunnels unable to escape, scared for their lives and the vampires were now regaining consciousness. The prison was on lockdown as Steve controlled all systems from various control panels throughout the pods, and the authorities were now on their way to evaluate the situation. The shit had hit the fan.Steve found his way to the warden’s office and reached for the doorknob, it was locked. He fished out his master key from his massive key ring and popped open the door. He found Kathy sitting behind her desk holding a pen like a knife. Steve smiled and entered the room. “What are you going to do with that?” Steve asked.“What’s going on?” Kathy asked. She was a bit dizzy from the gas that had found its way into her office. She got a small amount and was becoming more lucid every second.“I gassed the place,” Steve replied. “Except for your office. Some of the gas must have
“I don’t know, I thought I was supposed to,” Steve replied.“Now you see why I demoted you,” Kathy said. “You’re going to have forty six vampires running around in this building with thirty six tourists. What do you think will happen?“I can lock the tourists up in the guard pods,” Steve replied. “Or we can get the fuck out of here,” Kathy said.“There’s only one way out and that’s the tunnel system in the basement.”“Wait a second,” Cara said. “I didn’t plan this so we could all run. I planned this so we could live independently. The vampires will feed on the tourists, but not kill them. We will run this prison as our new home.”“Are you fucking nuts?” Kathy asked. “Do you think criminals will play by your rules? These inmates may be vampires, but they are also convinced murderers. They won’t do what you want them to, they will kill all the tourists and then try to escape.”Steve heard sounds coming from the door to the tram tunnel. Voices that got louder and louder. He stepped over
Three hours into the prison takeover, the nine humans left alive pondered their fate locked up in guard pod three with no way to escape. Steve, Cara and Kathy all sat at the control panel filling the only seats with the rest resting on the floor with their backs to the walls. From their vantage point they couldn’t see the bodies and blood on the commons floor, it was a blessing considering the mess.“How long till it starts to smell?” Paula Borodin asked. She was a fifty something woman who dragged her husband to the zoo as a getaway trip for the both of them.“Depends on the temperature,” Ted, her husband replied. “But I’d say two days.” “Oh my God, that’s going to wreak!” Paula snapped back.“This was your idea, not mine,” Ted replied. He was pissed. He didn’t want to go on the trip in the first place.“Yeah, well at least I tried to do something, that’s more than you would have.”“No, I wanted to go to Kansas City, but no, you wanted to see the vampires. Fuck these vampires, I didn
“I hate skinheads,” Bohdan replied. “He tried to recruit me as their new leader. I refused.”It wasn’t long before vampires entered the commons area and started removing the bodies. One by one they would drag them out of the room and down the hall. The distance from the commons to the yard was about fifty yards with the yard in the center of the rectangle shaped prison building. It was the only open air space they could get to.Two hours later smoke could be seen rising into the air from the window, the only window they could see from the pod. Steve clicked on the monitors and brought up the image of a stack of bodies burning in the center of the yard. Surrounding the bodies were six vampires who were tending to the fire, tossing on paper and wood to keep the flames burning. They found it wasn’t easy to burn something made up mostly of water.Cindy Lewis stood up and walked to the monitor and looked over Steve’s shoulder. She hadn’t said anything the whole time she’d been in the pod,
Rancid paced around pod one trying to think of what he could do to save himself, if he could save anyone else, that was extra, and he didn’t care. “What kind of tools do we have access to?” he asked aloud.“You know as well as we do, nothing,” Charles replied. He was not a skinhead, but was as frustrated a vampire as any of the rest. “The guns are locked up in the armory, the kitchen is locked, and so is maintenance.”“We need to break into one, get some tools we can use, which would be the easiest?”“Kitchen I suppose, maintenance is locked down as much as the armory I’d think, they keep a lot of shit down there. But I don’t see how you plan to open a sealed door, the kitchen has a deadbolt I’m sure, if not more.”Rancid was pissed, he knew that all the cells were the same, with the beds, tables and toilets molded as part of the cell with no moving parts. They were designed that way so they couldn’t be used as weapons. But where there is a will, there is a way. “There must be a key s
“There’re humans left, they won’t do that.”“They will try to rescue them, once they do, we’re done,” Rancid said.“They have no idea how many humans are left, they won’t do anything unless they can account for everyone who was working at the time.”Rancid scratched his chin and thought for a second. “Yeah, you’re probably right. Until they can force us out, they can’t do much.”“We need to get the humans out of pod three and into a cell, so we can keep an eye on them. Maybe put them if a few different cells so they can’t get to them at the same time.”“You forget something, I’m not in charge,” Rancid said. “You want to be,” Anita replied.“Want and be are two very different things. I might have some pull with the skinheads, but that’s about it. I’m surprised you’re talking to me. Why don’t you take the lead?”“If I thought I could, I would. The women here get no respect at all. If we didn’t keep together, we’d be raped and killed,” Anita said. “It’s still a man’s world.”“Well, I don
“What are our options?” Kathy asked. She looked to Steve for the answers. “There must be a way to get out of this pod.”“Yes there is,” Steve replied. “There is an escape hatch built into every pod in case of a prison riot or takeover, just like this.”“Great, why didn’t you mention this before?”“Because it won’t work unless you have someone in maintenance to open the door at the end of the tunnel. Every pod has a hex key in the emergency box that will let you open the pod escape door, but once you traverse the tunnel, which is only two by three feet, you have to exit by another hatch door that is opened by someone in maintenance. Last I checked, Alex was dead and I’m here. And unless the National Guard goes in and opens the hatch door, we’re fucked.”“There’s no way to open it from inside the tunnel?” Kent asked.“You won’t fit in the tunnel anyway fat boy,” Steve replied. “What are you? Three fifty?”Steve expected to get beat for his comments, but Kent was more of a gentle giant w
Early evening creeped in and the group in the pod were becoming restless. Only a few vampires could be seen walking the halls across the commons as the sun glared through the window and began to set.Then Bohdan spoke up to Steve, “How come you didn’t get gassed?”Steve turned and looked to Bohdan, “The maintenance department is on the same vent system as the tram lines. That’s so we can fix them when they break down.”“Didn’t your boss die in the gas? Isn’t his office in the maintenance department?” “No, his office was in the administration section, down the hall from Kathy.”“Kathy survived,” Bohdan said.“I kept her office off the vent. I wanted her alive. Long story.” “Seemed odd that you survived when all the rest of the staff died.”“I wasn’t going to connect the boiler to the vent system if I knew I was going to die in the process.”Then the lights in the pod blinked on and off. And again, only this time it went dark for a full second.“What’s going on?” Ted asked.Steve replie
“I have the feeling that he’d kill you in a second if it benefited him.” “And I would gladly die for him if that’s what he wanted.”Preacher Jack shook his head in disgust. He heard what Cara was saying, but he knew she was too screwed up in the head to realize she had a sick unhealthy obsession with Bohdan. There was no way he was going to help her, she was too far gone by now. “What if they send him somewhere else and he doesn’t come back?”“Don’t say that, I don’t want to hear…” Cara couldn’t finish her sentence.“You can live here as long as you want. We don’t have many women around here, we could use a new one,” Preacher Jack said.“If he doesn’t come back, I’ll escape, I’ll find him.”“No vampire that I know of has ever escaped this prison. You’d be the first.”“I’m not like the rest of you, I’m special, this zoo can’t hold me,” Cara said. She looked up into the stars above and took a deep breath. “I will pray that he returns by morning, if my prayers are not answered, I will fi
“Did you hear that?” Isaac asked.“Hear what?” the warden asked. “I didn’t hear anything.” “Sounded like dogs.”“I heard it too,” Bohdan said. He raised a finger to silence everyone in the room. “There it is again.”“They have the bloodhounds out looking for me,” the warden said. “I knew you couldn’t keep me for long.”“Fuck, now what are you going to do?” Isaac asked. “Is there a basement?”Brother Adam replied, “No, the ground is almost solid clay.”“There has to be a way out, when it rains, how do they drain the pit?” Bohdan asked. The warden was silent, but everyone knew he was keeping something from them. “What are you talking about?” Isaac asked. “Why do you give a shit about rain?”“It’s not the rain I’m concerned about, if the ground is solid clay, the rain that comes down would fill the pit and drown everyone in it. There must have been a drainage system put in place to remove the excess water. Where is it?” Bohdan looked at the warden, the one person in the room who should k
“Bohdan, is that you?” a voice called out. Bohdan instantly recognized the voice as Isaac. Bohdan looked around in the dark and saw Isaac standing alone in a wooded area near the Mormon house.“Yes, it’s me,” Bohdan replied.Isaac rushed over and met Bohdan, noticing right away he had the warden in his grasp. “What are you doing with the warden?” Isaac asked. He still had his familiar British accent.“I took him when they weren’t looking,” Bohdan replied. “When who wasn’t looking?”“The guards,” Bohdan replied. “Where have you been all this time?” “I’ve been living with the Mormons.”“The Mormons? I heard they’re a bunch of killers.”“No, not at all, you should meet them, Brother Adam is a very nice man.” “Brother Adam?”“That’s what they call themselves,” Isaac explained. “Come with me, I’ll show you.”Bohdan didn’t have much choice, his options were very limited in the pit and it would be a short time before the guards came looking for the warden.“Let him go,” Isaac said.Bohdan le
“How do you explain me raping them first? If I were gay, I’d have a very hard time getting hard, if you know what I mean,” Bohdan said with a grin.“Another rumor squashed,” Lucy Jo said. “How did you pick your victims?” “By chance mostly.”“You didn’t seek out certain types of women?”“I was lucky to find the ones I did. I didn’t have the luxury of picking and choosing. When you live out in the country, you take what you can.”“I see, but with such a limited number of women, didn’t that play to your disadvantage? I would think they would have figured you out quickly.”“And they did quite often. I lived on the run for most of my life, up until they captured me. I’m actually glad in a way they did. I’m so sick of running.”“So you like the Vampire Zoo,” Lucy Jo stated.Bohdan paused for a long time before answering. “Actually no, this place is a shit hole. They toss the vampires in a pit and let them fend for themselves. Then they charge admission to watch them. It’s very vile.”“From
The sound of a rock hitting Bohdan’s cage woke him up and let him know the tourists that came today weren’t happy. He had fallen asleep in the midday sun and ignored the very people who had paid to see him spin in the wind. He raised his hand and gave the crowd the finger in defiance. He knew it was a hollow gesture and that the crowd would take any interaction they could get from him. Then he felt the cage start to lower. Usually he stayed elevated until sunset, but for some reason, was being let down.When the cage came to rest on the ground below, two guards unlocked the door and let Bohdan out. A rumbling came from the crowd as they didn’t know what was going on and didn’t want the star attraction leaving. The tickets were expensive enough.“You’re going to the warden’s office,” a guard said. “Now what?” Bohdan asked.“You’ll see when you get there,” the guard replied and the two escorted Bohdan up the tower, across the bridge and to the administration building. As he passed by th
Bohdan returned to the pit after his meeting with the warden. It was late afternoon and he was covered in Ashley’s dried blood. The other vampires kept a distance as they were warned by the warden to keep away from his prize. Bohdan had a love/hate relationship with his fame. He got what he wanted, but he wasn’t always happy about it. He liked his isolation, to a point. Like any social animal, he needed someone to interact with and Cara was the only person she could stand.“How did your show go?” Cara asked. She met him at the front door of the miners building.“The warden was happy, the governor was too from what I heard.” “What did they make you do?”“I had to rape and murder Ashley,” Bohdan replied. “Who?”“Ashley, remember her?”“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me, you killed her? Last I knew she was still back in Seneca with Isaac.”“They charged her with accessory to murder, along with Isaac.” “Where’s he?”“Ashley said they were transferring him here today. I haven’t seen him.
Bohdan noticed several tools on the ground lying on the sand just outside Ashley’s reach. He bent over and picked up a butcher’s knife and a long steak knife with serrated edges. It was obvious they were put there for Bohdan to use. He looked at the stainless steel shine and admired how they reflected the sunlight and blue sky from above. “This is out of my control,” Bohdan said. He paused for a moment and smiled. “This will hurt, very badly.” Again he paused and gauged Ashley’s reaction. “First I will rape you, then I will cut you to pieces and take out your heart. I don’t know what I’ll do with it once I have it, but that’s my plan.”Ashley pulled away as far as the chain would allow. “But you know me, we worked together. We were part of a team!”“We escaped from the prison before it blew up. That was out of my control. Otherwise we did spend time together, but that wasn’t because I had any fondness for you. I probably would have eventually killed you anyway. You were lucky I was se
For two weeks straight the warden had Bohdan suspended twenty feet above the ground trapped in a cage. The cage hung from the bridge that connected the tower to the guard post on edge of the pit. Spectators came from far and wide to see Bohdan as word got out he was now a prisoner at the Vampire Zoo. His reputation caused overcrowding that choked the prison grounds and made life more difficult for the guards and other inmates. The guards were pissed their workload had increased and the other inmates were jealous of the attention Bohdan received.From his cage, Bohdan could see the three buildings and watch the other vampires as they carried on with their lives. They often stopped in groups to look up at him and jeer. Many times they threw rocks and stones and tried to hit him, often hitting the sides of the steel cage with a clank. Bohdan was hit a few times, but was never injuredThen the day came when the warden called him back into his office with some news. It was an idea he had h
“Do you have a daughter?” Bohdan asked.The warden paused for a moment. “Why do you give a shit?” “How old is she?”“Old enough that I can let her watch you rot in that cage. Do you know what it will be like to sit out in the hot sun all day? And in the rain? Fuck, it gets pretty cold in the winter too, you’ll be an ice cube vampire. But they will come from all over to pay to see you,” the warden said.“You know why I like to fuck and kill little girls?” Bohdan asked. He was trying his best to get to the warden. “They’re easy, and they turn me on.”“I bet, sick fucks like you are a dime a dozen, I’m surprised they’re not more of you in prison. How you got a reputation is beyond me.”“I’m not who you think I am, but I do share in this rippers desire for girls. Maybe he is a copycat, maybe I inspired him,” Bohdan said.“It shouldn’t take too long to identify you. I’ll wire the marshal’s office today and get someone down here to check you out. In the meantime, I’m ordering the cage be bu