Fear Me

25

Romero was on the far side of the yard, watching the bonfires and the smoke billowing up into the night sky from burning buildings. The cons were still agitated, but many were drunk and stoned, laughing and cheering and talking freedom and brotherly love. Romero had been listening to speeches and crazy schemes all day. But unlike many of the others, he wasn’t naïve enough to believe any of it.

Sooner or later, this was going to meltdown and the body count would be high. Either the cons would go after each other or the cops would storm the place and take care of business.

It could come from any direction, but Romero was only concerned about Palmquist.

“I found him,” Aquintez said, out of breath from running across the yard and wherever it was he’d come from. He pulled Romero away from a group of cons smoking a joint. “I found the kid.”

“Where?”

Aquintez told him. Down in the hole. The cons had piped him, cracked his head good. He was out cold and they couldn’t revive him. They brought him up to the infirmary.

“He’s in a bad way, man,” Aquintez said. “If he ain’t dead, he’s gonna be soon. In a coma or something. You gotta see that infirmary. Fucking bodies everywhere. Some blacks are running the place, they got a couple hacks tending to the wounded.”

Romero sighed. The kid was still alive then. Was that a good thing or a bad thing? He tossed his cigarette. “This could be real bad, JoJo. That thing in him… his brother… it’s already pissed off about the beating the kid got and now this.”

“And it’s dark out,” Aquintez said. “Pitch fucking black.”

A chill went up Romero’s spine. “I’m going up there.”

But Aquintez said that wasn’t a good idea. As he passed through the yard on the way to the administration building where the infirmary was, he could hear the cops out there. It sounded like maybe they were scaling the walls, positioning themselves.

“I’m going anyway.”

Aquintez clapped him on the shoulder. “Ah, Romero, the original Latino James Cagney. Heart too big and balls twice that size. Okay, I go with you, my friend.”

But what they were going into, they had no idea.