Chapter 63

CHAPTER 63

BEING PROCESSED into Dead Rock included standing bent over naked with your butt cheeks spread as painfully as possible while a group of men and one woman looked on. The woman was also videotaping the proceedings, which added considerably to the dignity of the event. The body cavity search completed, their heads were then shaved.

Suspicion of lice, Stone heard one guard say, while another chuckled about a weapon perhaps being concealed in their hair roots.

They sat crouched in a corner naked while men scrubbed them raw with stiff brushes that felt steel-tipped. After this a fire hose blasted them with such force that they were pinned against the wall like ants at the mercy of a berserk garden hose.

Dressed in orange jumpsuits, cuffed and shackled, they were led down a stone hall to a cell. Guards held stun guns an inch from their prisoners’ sides, seemingly just praying for a reason to hit them with a 50,000-volt tickle. The cell door was solid two-inch steel with a food and cuffing slot cut into the bottom half and a small viewing window in the upper half. They were pushed in, the shackles removed, the jagged links stripping at their skin, and then the door slammed shut and was loudly bolted behind them.

Knox and Stone slumped down next to each other as their gazes drifted dully over the eight-by-twelve-foot space. There was a steel toilet and sink unit bolted to the wall with no knobs that could be fashioned into weapons. There was also a steel slab for a desk and two steel slabs on the wall with a thin plastic mattress and pillow on each. A six-inch vertical slit in the thick concrete block and rebar wall constituted the sole window.

For the next half hour each man groaned and moaned and rubbed at innumerable bruises, cuts and bumps on their bodies.

Knox finally sat back against the wall, wiggled a loose tooth in the back of his mouth with his finger and looked over at Stone. “Whatever the hell happened to due process?”

“It seems to be growing less popular these days,” Stone replied as he rubbed at a knot the size of a quarter on the side of his head.

“I’m surprised they put us in here together. I’d assumed we’d be segregated.”

“They did it because they don’t care what we tell each other.”

“You mean because we’re never getting out?”

“We don’t really exist. They can do anything they want. And he murdered a man right in front of us. That shows he doesn’t expect us to be a witness anytime soon. You think the cell is bugged?”

“I doubt they care that much, but you never know.”