First draft

The cement floor that lead down past the cells glistened under the fluorescent lights.

‘Mopping the floors at 3am Riley?’ Carter asked. ‘I’ll have to tell Anne you do more housework here than at home.’

Riley paused filling out the attendance book and grimaced. ‘I’ll get you a chair so you can sit outside the cell.’

‘I usually sit inside.’ Carter said.

‘You’ll not want to sit in there and I’m not opening that door. You can talk through the slot.’

‘If I have to, do you have the facts sheet?’

‘The Sarge will be coming in with it soon. We want to take a DNA sample tonight. It can either be with his informed consent’ he snorted. ‘Or not. We have reasonable cause under section 46 if we want to take it anyway. But he’s asked for you.’

‘Well I’m going to need the facts sheet before I can advise my client if you have reasonable cause or not.’

‘He’ll be here in a minute’ said Riley, and went back to filling out the paperwork.

The door to the rest of the station opened and the Sergeant walked in. Still dressed in his civvies with a faint stench of cigarettes and bourbon hanging around his enormous frame. Every cop had been called in tonight, on duty or off. Both of them.

‘Sergeant.’

‘Carter.’

‘So are you going to tell me what’s going on here? All I get is a call saying get down here, Jack’s been arrested. What’s he done, gotten ratshit drunk and beaten up his old lady again?’

The Sergeant looked down the corridor. ‘He cut her head off. Here’s the facts sheet’ he said, handing Carter a sheaf of paper.

‘What?’

‘It’s all in there. You’ve got fifteen minutes until we’ve finished the paperwork for the sample, then we’ll take it.’

‘I’m going to need…’ Carter started.

‘Fifteen minutes’ said the Sergeant. His eyes stared back down the corridor as he swayed slightly, unfocused. He wasn’t drunk. Hell, Carter had seen him finish an entire bottle of scotch at a sitting that barely affected him, but he wasn’t steady either.

‘Alright, fifteen minutes. Riley give me that chair I’ll go talk to him.’

Riley passed me the plastic chair and Carter started carrying it down the hall. There were only four cells in the station, lined up in a row on the right hand side of the hall. Each one sealed up by inch thick plexi-glass that had replaced the steel bars years ago. The first three were dark and empty. Carter approached the last cell door and stopped. The entire glass door has been smeared with blood. He looked back to the monitoring desk, but Riley and the Sergeant had gone back inside the station.

Carter placed the chair down on the floor and sat down, peering through the slot where meals were feed through. The office beige walls inside of the cell were also completely covered in blood.

He bent forward to try get a better look around the cell. It looked empty.

‘Jack’ he said. ‘Jack’. No response. ‘Look Jack, it’s me, Carter. What the fuck is going on here? Are you alright?’ he paused. ‘Are you hurt or cut? I can get you to the hospital if you are. You’re being charged with’ he looked down at the papers the Sergeant had given him ‘homicide. As well as a bunch of back up charges. Jesus Jack, what’s going on? Are you there?’

Silence. ‘Look, Jack. They’re going to want to take a sample for DNA. Now, pursuant to section…’

A loud crash against the door cut him off. A smudge on the smeared door marked where it had been hit.

‘Jack?’

A low growl came from the cell. A primal sound that a hundred thousand years ago had howled across the Siberian wilderness, lodging in the lizard brain of early humans who had evolved an instinctive survival trait when they heard it. Run. Run for your life, run for your sanity. The growl came again and that instinct, dormant for hundreds of generations, kicked in again. Carter started up, knocking the chair over behind him, and slowly backed away down the corridor.

Another crash pounded against the door. Carter saw a hairline fracture crack along the door. ‘Holy shit’ he murmured to himself.

The door to the station flung open and the Sergeant and Riley burst into the cells. ‘What the fuck is that cunt doing?’ shouted the Sergeant.

There was another crash from the cell.

‘Alright then’ said the Sergeant, ‘you’re fucked now Jack.’ He picked up a some keys and a baton off the monitoring desk, and walked up the hall towards the last cell. ‘The cameras aren’t working in here Jack, so it’s just you and me buddy’. The sergeant turned to Carter. ‘You, you’ve met your client, now get the fuck out of here. Riley, get him out.’

‘Sergeant’ Carter said. ‘Don’t open that door.’

‘Don’t given me your lawyer bullshit Carter. You didn’t see what this animal did back there. This is resisting arrest.’

‘Sergeant’ yelled Carter. Riley grabbed him and dragged him to the station door. ‘Sergeant’ yelled Carter again, ‘I don’t give a fuck about the law or your cop bullshit, just do not open that cell.’

Carter grabbed the doorframe as Riley was trying to pull him through it. He watched as the Sergeant held the baton ready in his right hand and slowly put the key in the lock with his left, turned it and pulled opened the cell door towards him.

‘Come on Jack’ said the Sergeant. ‘Let’s get this over with.’ He walked into the cell.

There was a muffled cry and then a loud, wet crunch. ‘Sergeant’ yelled Riley.

The Sergeant backed out of the cell and turned towards the men in the door at the entrance to the cells. His chest had been ripped open, ribs pointing out of grisly red flesh like white fingers. Without a sound he fell down onto the floor. The third growl came from the cell.

‘Sergeant’ yelled Riley, who started into the cells.

Carter grabbed him. ‘No you idiot’ and pulled him into the station, slamming the door shut.  Carter looked at it, it was solid steel. ‘Riley, can you lock this door?’

Riley stared blankly at Carter. ‘The Sergeant’ he said.

‘Riley, listen to me, can you lock this door?’

Riley looked at Carter as if for the first time. ‘Yes, yes, it locks automatically on the inside. You need to swipe the pass to unlock it’.

Carter sighed. ‘OK then.’

A massive impact hit against the steel door from the other side, as if a large weight had been slammed into it.