EXODUS

— by Jeff Karamales

Chapter 2
Dead Man Walking
 

The newscaster that stood outside the wall with the large sign denoting it as the Kissimmee, Florida Federal Maximum Security Penitentiary gave the lens of the camera that her video tech aimed at her the most grave and serious face she could muster. A light breeze ruffled the thin scarf at her neck that was offset by the deeply plunging khaki top that was belted at the woman’s waist. It wasn’t even semi professional attire, but showed enough bronze skin that viewers would enjoy watching her no matter what kind of news she reported.Fortunately the sound was turned down on the TV screen that sat outside WyattRenner’s cell, though the sound could have been turned to its maximum setting as the caption banner at the bottom was all but quoting the vapid looking journalist verbatim. Of course the news was about him, the first in a series of death row inmates that were being executed sequentially in what many were calling the ‘Marathon of Slaughter’.

Wyatt wasn’t sure what had prompted the somewhat controversial move, but he understood why he was going to be the first. To hear the media tell it, Wyatt Renner was more insidious than Ed Gein, John Wayne Gacy and even made historical figures like Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin seem warm and compassionate in comparison. He was honest in that he had well over a dozen people that he’ killed to his credit and made no argument against the fact. During his trial he refused to argue a plea of insanity and even told the judge, while looking the man in the eye, that he’d killed and would repeat his actions all over again. He’d been fairly sure that his lawyer was going to have a stroke at that point.

With Wyatt’s adamant refusal to plea anything other than guilty, the trial was one of the shortest in modern history. Nor did the man wish to file an appeal, knowing that no matter what, he was going to die. Whether it was by the State, or from the actions of a vigilante, Wyatt Renner’s days were most certainly numbered.

Looking at the screen as he chewed his last meal slowly, Wyatt shook his head as the camera operator panned away from the reporter and focused in on the crowd that was divided almost equally in front of the prison’s main gate. On the left were the neo-hippies and do-gooders with signs protesting the death penalty in general while many had Renner’s face and name with different slogans requesting his commutation to a life sentence. On the other side were just as many signs denouncing him with comparisons to the Antichrist. Both groups were yelling and shaking their fists at each other, and that was what irritatedWyatt the most.

“It’s like a circus out there,” the man that had stepped up to the perforated glassteel door to Wyatt’s cell commented. “How was the shrimp?”

“Pretty good, but the cornbread was the clincher. Tell Missus Bernard I said thank you.” Wyatt smiled at the guard as he forked off the point of a slice of key lime pie. “I haven’t had cornbread like that since I was kid, Phil. It’s appreciated.”

The corrections officer waved negligently as he leaned against the wall and looked at the man enjoying his last meal. There were rules when it came to interacting with prisoners, particularly those that were on death row and scheduled for immediate termination, but corrections officer Philip Bernard felt that while most of his charges were where they needed to be, some people didn’t seem like they deserved to be on his block, and of those, Wyatt was one of the second group. The man that was slated to die in a little less than three hours had never caused trouble and had been, if there was such a thing, a model prisoner. “The warden denied my request to be on your escort detail, Wyatt. I tried.” The guard sighed. “This new group that’s taking over the guard detail is handling everything now. That, and I think the warden’s afraid I’m…well, a little too chummy with some of you guys. Sorry.”

Wyatt shook his head and swallowed the last tart bit of pie. “It’s okay, Phil. I think it might be better this way. Besides, it’s going to be lethal injection. What do I have to be afraid of, right?”

Philip shrugged. “I don’t know if I’m the one to really answer that.” He looked as the man in the cell set the plastic pie plate back on the tray and felt a certain pang of regret at the imminent termination of a person that, in other circumstances, could have been a friend. “Are you sure you don’t want a preacher or something? Maybe a Bible?”

Wyatt laughed and shook his head. “I lost my faith in that book a long time ago. I think it would just irritate some of the people out there even more if I suddenly got religious.” He looked up at the guard and realized that the offer was more for Philip than himself and that his execution was causing the other man no shortage of concern. “The thought is appreciated, though. It truly is.”

The corrections officer nodded silently and swallowed, taking several calming breaths before speaking again. “Maybe Warden Cohen is right. Maybe I am too friendly to you guys, but this…this just doesn’t feel right.” He looked up and down the aisle of the block and saw that the other three corrections officers, all of them private contractors and recently transferred to his section, were out of earshot and he dropped his voice so that the audio/visual pickups wouldn’t record his next words. “There are a lot of new people here, Wyatt. I don’t know why all the prisons in the system are switching to these contractor guys, but I don’t like it. It’s…it’s like something from one of those old war movies about a concentration camp.”

Before Wyatt could answer, the corrections officer jerked up right and turned to face the three other guards that made their way to where he was standing. Wyatt didn’t see them until they stepped in front of the transparent panel of his cell. Instead of the tan slacks and dark green shirt that Officer Bernard wore, the other three guards wore all dark grey with black body armor. The patches on the shoulders were the same as Philip’s, but that was where the similarities ended. The lead man of the trio stepped between Bernard and the door to Wyatt’s cell.

“We’ll take things from here, Officer Bernard,” the man said as he handed a folded slip of paper to the other guard. “Warden Cohen wants us to escort the prisoner to the preparation room.”

Philip looked at the paper he’d been handed, a small scowl forming between his brows. “But there’s still an hour and a half before he needs to be in prep. Let the man digest his meal, for God’s sake!”

“We have our orders, Officer,” the grey clad man replied frostily with dark eyes that devoid of emotion. The other two guards moved so that they weren’t directly impeding Bernard, but the threat was evident and their eyes roved between the prisoner and corrections officer while the apparent leader of the trio placed his hands on his hips below the edge of his armor and looked at the individual in the cell. “Finish up, prisoner,” he ordered Wyatt harshly.

Irritated by the way the new guards were treating Officer Bernard, Wyatt put the fork down, the utensil made of some indestructible substance so that he, or other death row inmates, wouldn’t be able to deny the powers-that-be their sanctioned executions by breaking and swallowing bits of hard plastic, and smiled at the grey clad guard. “I don’t have time for an after dinner cigarette?”

The new guard bristled at the jab and motioned curtly for the other two to drag the prisoner out of his cell, not seeing the wink and slight smile Wyatt shared with Officer Bernard. The door slid open once the three security protocols had been met of hand print, numeric code and physical key. The other two men hauled Wyatt to his feet and set about putting cuffs and shackles on over his pink prison jumper, the wrist and ankle binders linked by a flexible steel cable that kept him slightly hunched over. The lead guard of the trio watched the proceedings with his hand resting on the butt of his holstered Taser pistol.

Within a few minutes Wyatt was shackled and marched out of the cell between the other two guards. He paused to look at Philip Bernard. “Thanks, Phil. You take care of yourself.” He then turned away, saving the other man from having to reply and let himself be led away.

There were several security points that the group had to go through before Wyatt was led into the room that he would, for some reason, undergo a thorough physical exam prior to being hauled into the actual execution chamber.The condemned man stoically endured all of the poking and prodding, the vials of blood that were drawn and even more unpleasantness that followed, though he was curious as to why a prostate exam was necessary. In retrospect, the bureaucracy that was involved with the Department of Corrections probably had a mandate that said a prisoner had to be in the best health possible prior to being put to death.

The doctor that oversaw the physical exam, with the guards still in attendance, left Wyatt Renner with little dignity intact, and it was with some surprise that towards the conclusion of the medical evaluation that the prison’s warden, Norbert Cohen, came into the preparation room. “How is the prisoner?” Cohen grunted to the doctor, the man breathing heavily with the rasping inhalations of a man that smoked too much.

“Fit with good vitals. He’s ready,” the doctor replied with a satisfied expression. “We can proceed at any time.”

Cohen nodded, his cold blue eyes flicking to Wyatt with as much warmth as a person would regard the available selection in a meat case. “It’s a little early, but everyone that’s authorized to sit in the execution gallery is there. “Let’s go ahead and get Renner situated. It’s not long before show time.”

Wyatt looked at the warden with distaste as he spoke so blithely of the young man’s imminent demise, though his ire was replaced with confusion as Warden Cohen spoke with the prison doctor and gestured often towards Wyatt. There seemed to be a great deal for the two men to discuss when it came to the execution and Wyatt briefly wondered if someone planned to botch his termination. It had been years since a death row inmate had suffered a failed execution attempt, but Wyatt knew that with the different newscasts that been aired with clinical psychologists weighing in on his alleged motivations, he was a universally reviled individual and there would be few people that would be dismayed if he were made to suffer as long as possible.

As soon as Wyatt had redressed, the guards again shackled him and turned the man to a featureless metal door that was painted the same shade of cool blue that the rest of the facility was done in, the color supposedly calming. Before her could be taken into the next room, a sterile chamber with a restraint bed and the apparatus that would administer the injection that would pump him full of anesthetics moments before the potent poisons would be introduced into his body, Warden Cohen stopped the procession with an upraised hand. “I think it would be best if Mister Renner were also gagged.”

The man watched as the guards moved to comply with the directive and a soft rubber mouthpiece was crammed into Wyatt’s jaws before the straps were buckled tightly. Once everything was in place, Cohen leaned forward. There was something in the man’s eyes that caused the first real pang of fear to run through Wyatt, the short hairs along his neck standing on end as an icy knot filled his stomach. Renner knew from the malevolent look in the warden’s eyes that this wasn’t going to be a simple execution, there was more to it, and he tried to scream his defiance as a smirk pulled at Cohen’s pale lips. As soon as he began to fight the restraints, the guards were there, holding Wyatt upright as much as they were holding him back.

“See you in hell, Renner,” the warden quipped smarmily before the guards took the prisoner into the next room.

For his part, Wyatt tried to make forcing him onto the table as difficult as possible, though with the high tensile strength steel restraints there was little he could actually do and a few well placed blows to his kidneys and ribs settled him down enough for the guards to get the man onto the curiously shaped table and the incorporated restraints in place. Renner’s screams of protest were muffled by the gag, though even if he could speak, the sounds wouldn’t make it to the viewing gallery where a dozen people he didn’t recognize watched the proceedings with only mild interest.

Fighting the restraints of the table was futile and Wyatt let his head fall back against the thin pad behind his skull, his mind racing as he wondered just how long it would take for the doctor to actually getting around to killing him. Perhaps, in the end, this was a sort of justice. His mother had languished for more than a year in the nursing home in a constant state of pain while trapped in a body that had become ravaged with age, infirmity and the added confusion as her mind continued to sink into the black morass of dementia, kept alive by machines that burbled and hissed as her blood was cleansed three times every twenty four hours. Other machines fed her nutrient rich fluids while others introduced electrolytes and still more pumped her veins full of medications. It certainly hadn’t been living as far as Wyatt thought of the word. The woman had been kept alive past her time and the pleading look his mother had given him in a fleeting moment of lucidity had filled Wyatt with so much guilt that he thought his heart would quite literally break. With a nod and feeling of chagrin that he had forced his mother into such an existence, Wyatt got up and looked at the machine. If he unplugged it, the staff at the care facility would simply come and turn it back on, the continued process stealing what little dignity his mother had left as they kept her amongst the living.

What revolted Wyatt then was that his mother wasn’t the only one in such a state and she lay in a room with fifteen others in, more or less, the same condition. Many had gowns that didn’t cover them properly, their modesty inconsequential as they lay in near vegetative states save the pain of being trapped in worn out bodies. The doctors, nurses and attending staff that ran the facility were like parasites, each body in the beds providing a set amount of state and federal income on top of the money that was paid by the families of the victims in the large room. It was enough to nauseate Wyatt before filling him with a righteous fury that smoldered like the core of a blast furnace within his chest.

There was little reason to lock the various supply cabinets in a place where the people that were tended couldn’t get out of bed, and Wyatt followed the signs to the room that was marked clearly as a fire station. Inside the young man found extinguishers to compliment the building’s integral fire-suppression system. He also found a beaked fire ax.

The cold of the alcohol swipe that sterilized the injection site ended Wyatt’s recollection of ending his mother’s turmoil, the last memory of the hefty blade in his arms swinging down…

He didn’t understand why the doctor that was going to put the needle in his vein that would soon terminate his own existence insisted on swabbing his skin. It wasn’t like Wyatt would be getting an infection, and he didn’t even flinch when the large bore needle pierced his flesh, the momentary burn of the isopropyl alcohol being rapidly replaced with the feel of the cold steel in the confines of his arm. Wyatt realized that his sentence was being recited by one of the guards, as if they wanted to make sure that the young man knew that he was being executed for ending the lives of sixteen individuals.

“…will now be injected into your body until you are dead in accordance with your sentence decreed by the Supreme Court of the State of Florida,” the grey uniformed guard said before tripping the switch that began the flow of orange colored fluid in the line that had been inserted into Wyatt’s arm. The guard, the senior of the trio that had hauled Wyatt from his cell, looked at the younger man and smirked as if he knew something that Wyatt didn’t. “May God have mercy on your soul,” he added with a contemptuous snort.

The fluid hit Wyatt’s vein and filled it with a sort of warm tingling that spread rapidly throughout the rest of his body. The strange mélange of emotions that he’d been feeling vanished as the drugs coursed through his bloodstream, the exotic substance, whatever it was, filling him with a sort of carefree lassitude. Moments later it reached his brain, the intravenous substance mixing with the other compounds his own body produced and Wyatt felt his eyes grow heavy and before he could give it any more attention, he slipped into a black void.

The doctor that oversaw the injection into Wyatt Renner looked at his watch as the execution crew waited. After ten minutes he stepped up to the supine form on the table and began his final examination. Once satisfied, he turned to the head guard and nodded. Without preamble, the shutter to the observation window was closed and the guards and doctor went to work. While the three grey-uniformed men wheeled in a long tube of satin finished stainless steel, the doctor disengaged the machine that had pumped the inmate’s arm full of chemicals and withdrew the line, though he left the needle in Wyatt’s arm. Working quickly, leaving the restraints on, the guards lifted the limp form of the prisoner and deposited him in the steel tube that looked less like a coffin on the inside and more like a portable med-bed.

Once Wyatt was placed in the tube, the doctor attached a line that provided a constant drip of saline and other substances to the needle that was still in the man’s arm before popping a hidden access plate on the strange coffin and activating an oxygen tank and one other that had no discernible markings on it, though his nose wrinkled a little at the whiff of sweet scented gas that escaped before the lid was closed and locked.

“Welp, that was about the easiest twenty thousand bucks I’ve ever made,” the head guard said quietly with a grin. “Remind me to thank the Colonel for landing us this job!”

The other men shared the same sentiment, unsure why they were being paid to fake executions then prepare the ‘dead’ inmates for transport to an undisclosed location, but with the monetary incentives they were receiving, none of them wanted to question the situation too much. All any of them knew was that Jannissaries LTD. had nabbed one of its most lucrative contracts without having had to leave the boundaries of the Continental US.

Satisfied that Wyatt Renner was asleep and would stay so until he reached his destination, the doctor, who also worked with Jannissaries LTD. double checked the lock on the lid of the odd coffin and nodded to the others. It was indeed easy money and they got to thin the ranks of undesirables in the process. As far as the doctor was concerned it was a win-win for everyone concerned.

— NEXT CHAPTER —

Unless otherwise noted, all material © Ted R. Blasingame. All rights reserved.