Drawing Dead Read Online Free Page B

Black Guerrillas. When he finished, he stepped back an inch. Then he said, still under his breath:
    “If you buy it, there’s nothing else for me to say. I just told you all I know. For this one, it’s us against them. You believe that, then it’s the Death House. Bring whatever you want, bring whoever you want. But it’s only going to be the five of us doing the actual work. That means we all lose some men.”
    “All?”
    “All,” Cross confirmed. “No kind of body armor is going to keep them off for long. If they get to us before we’re ready, we’re done, too.”
    “Five? You and me, that leaves three short.”
    “Ortega and Banner.”
    “Banner? That Nazi’s already been breathing longer than he should. What do we need with two white men?”
    “Who’s the boss of the Hmongs?”
    “Recognized them right away, huh? They a seriously bad bunch. But they ain’t all same tribe, man. His crew, it’s also got Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese…probably others I don’t even know about. And, listen now, in here, they forget all that. They play it like an all-for-one mob. They got no choice. But you can see they really don’t like each other any more than they do us.”
    “It’s only the Hmong I want.”
    “Why him?”
    “I speak a few words of the language.”
    Nyati stared hard at Cross. And took the same in return.
    “Okay, man. It’s your show. What time?”
    “Midnight.”
    “Done.”
    “For the race!” Cross shouted. Before anyone on either color-side could react, Nyati echoed, “For the race!”
    Then, to the stunned surprise of the watching convicts, they stood in the middle of No Man’s Land and clasped hands.
    Midnight. The Death House area was clogged with convicts, still divided along racial lines, but not openly antagonistic toward one another. “Frightened” would be a better description of their mood; fear was the single unifying factor among them.
    Whites, blacks, and Latinos were all there, with a sprinkling of Asians. Everyone was armed with whatever they were able to procure from the broad spectrum of prison-available weapons.
    Soldiers just before combat act the same way in prison as they do on any battlefield: some smoke, some pace, some pray. Every man was anxious to get it on, and even more anxious for it to be over.
    Cross was standing with Nyati and Ortega, their backs against the gas chamber wall. One of the Asians approached, a short, thin man holding what looked like a strip of razor blades on a string. His face was unlined, but his eyes were not those of a young man.
    Banner detached himself from his crew and moved over to where the others were standing. “Deal me in,” he said.
    “Just you?” Cross asked.
    “Look around, brother. We’re all here. But it’s got to be me up front. I’m the shot-caller, so this is my place. Like you said, this is for the race. So, whatever goes down, I’m down with it. But I have to go standing up, see?”
    Cross nodded. He turned to Ortega. “Your man knows what to do?”
    “For this, I am my man,
hermano
. After you first talked with me, I reached out. What you say, it is true. It has always been true. All the way back to the Aztecs. The Mayans and the Incas. So it is just as you and Nyati called it out. For La Raza!”
    “For the race,” Banner echoed, but very quietly.
    Each man held up a fist, waist-high. And then they slammed them together in an unmistakable gesture of final unity.
    “You sure it’s coming, man?” Nyati asked.
    “Look around,” Cross answered. “If it wants to hunt the real life-takers inside these walls, we’re the best game in town.”
    The Hmong nodded but said nothing. Then he vanished.
    A shadowy blotch materialized within the densely packed men. It thickened and lengthened, gathering mass. Then it began moving like an anaconda through a swamp.
    Blood spurted wildly as individual men were torn into random pieces. Their body parts flew through the darkness until they hit the nearest wall, where