The War Gate Read Online Free Page A

gentle grasp. She tried to imagine a logical scenario for what had just happened. Her mind had conjured up sights and sounds that no one believed. There seemed a single explanation for it. The devil had come in the last hour to rattle her cage. Break her faith. Well, she wouldn’t have any part of his dealings. She shook a fist at the ceiling. “Be gone!” she commanded the air. “Get behind me.” Then to her escorts, “I’m ready now. Let’s get this over with.”
    She walked hand in hand with Chubby across the dayroom floor. Her thong slippers made little clacks. She heard the sound of fists hitting the cell walls, knowing that her fellow inmates were in the throes of protest. Her legs felt unusually heavy. There was a persistent ache in her lower back that hadn’t been there before.
    Father Mathews began reciting scripture when she passed through the dayroom vault into the long corridor. She concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, carefully distributing her weight lest she stumble and fall to the floor in an undignified belly flop. She gave a halfhearted salute to one of the surveillance cameras above. A door at the end of the hall opened when they approached. She filed through with her escorts into the octagonal room.
    The huge observation windows of the execution chamber were cranked wide open for optimum view. Several reporters, along with a few city officials, sat in a long row of frontline chairs. A number of friends and past employees of her husband, who also happened to be her friends, were in attendance. Most of them did not make eye contact with her.
    How awkward, how morose it all seemed. Her face flushed hot from embarrassment.
    The sergeant spoke for the benefit of the staff after having listened to his radio. “Surveillance reports from all stations that there was no intruder on the prison property at any time tonight. All cellblocks are clear.”
    Avalon ignored the report. It was the devil. Case closed. Her bucket of give a damn was empty.
    Refusing assistance, she mounted the gurney to splay herself out. Father Mathews droned on, reciting passages until he settled on Psalm twenty-three. He raised his voice, accentuating every word for all ears to hear. Two guards began buckling the straps while another readied two intravenous drip lines that were routed from behind a curtained station. The doctor applied a heart pickup, then adjusted the controls on a nearby monitor.
    A face appeared over Avalon that she had seen just twice before. It was Warden Remy, a man with too much hair gel, a ruddy complexion, and too little time. He held a small microphone at her chin while addressing her in a calm, measured tone. “Do you have any final words you’d like to express, Avalon?”
    She nodded, turning her head toward Chubby who stood to her right. He looked off balance, but his eyes remained fixed on her, soulful and unblinking.
    “I would like Raymond Hammersmith to know, in answer to a question he asked me eleven years ago, that, yes, I would have been very proud to have accompanied him on a real date. He should always remember that beauty is in the heart, and resides in the eye of the beholder. That’s all. Oh yeah, I’m innocent. But I suppose that doesn’t matter anymore.”
    Chubby blinked several times. A fat tear rolled off his cheek to plop on floor. Avalon winked at him. He tried to return the gesture but both his eyelids fluttered, his eyes beginning to fill with a wash of emotion.
    When the abdominal strap was cinched over her, there came with it an indescribable pain that radiated all the way to her heels. Her breath caught in her throat. She clamped her teeth with all the strength in her jaw, determined that she would not cry out. But after holding her breath, a loud exclamatory bark escaped her throat. The contents of her stomach threatened to blow like a fountain.
    “Hold off,” said the doctor, nudging the catheter-wielding guard to the side. He placed a stethoscope