Chapter 8

This chapter is a bit short, sorry.

A Day on the Other Side

The man’s name was Tyler Smith, and today was just a normal day, at least normal in regards to his new job. He was a guard at Dominion’s prison, a massive step down from being a mafia courier on the integrity scale. True, he was scumbag whenever he transported guns, drugs, and even the occasional human, but at least when he woke up in the morning, he didn’t immediately see a legion of wailing faces scream at his mind’s eye.

With a groan, he slammed the off button of his alarm clock. He woke up alone, his wife already busy tending to their son. Just another day. He got dressed and went into the kitchen. His wife would usually prepare eggs and toast for him, but that all stopped when the prison was built. She was feeding their young son, Sam, but as Tyler entered the kitchen, she spared a glance with her dead fish eyes.

The right side of her face, she only ever showed him the right side. It was the side her face had been branded. F078, the 78th citizen of Dominion’s empire. The F stood for ‘family’, as in her relation to Tyler. Working for Dominion was the only way he could protect his wife and kids and keep them out of the prison. Sam, their four-year-old, was F019. The brand took up almost half his face. Tyler himself was C109, the 109th Collaborator employed at the prison. All that was missing was his teenage daughter, Allison, but he never saw her. No, she wasn’t a prisoner, she just hid in her room, refusing to be in the same room as her father. Like her mother, she blamed Tyler for what was happening in the town.

They were technically citizens, but that was just barely better than being under house arrest. After all, where were they supposed to go? The city was cordoned off, all the buildings being added to the prison. Tyler was paid in food, gas, utilities, and heating oil, and even clothes and other things if requested, so stores were obsolete, even if there were any actually open.

With almost all of the children in the city now imprisoned, the schools were closed, the wives of guards homeschooling their children instead. It was why Allison was so angry at her father. She was supposed to graduate in the spring, but now the schools were closed and several of her friends were held in the concentration camp because their parents didn’t work for Dominion. Few citizens left their home, even communicated with each other. With almost everyone in the city incarcerated, it didn’t feel safe to be outside.

Nothing was said during breakfast, and after eating, Tyler brushed, shaved, and finally put on his Guard uniform. His wife didn’t say goodbye to him when he left, she didn’t even look at him. She couldn’t bear the shame. Throughout their marriage, she had a feeling he worked for the mob, and when Dominion took over the town, Tyler finally came clean about everything. His past crimes were hard enough to swallow, but it was his current job that made her sick to her stomach. A guard, a collaborator to that monster, helping to keep the people of the city enslaved.

She wanted to take the kids and run, but once she cut off ties with him, she’d no longer be a Citizen, and the spawn would probably seize them for imprisonment. If he suggested they leave, if he said “honey, pack the car, we’re leaving”, she could have forgiven him, she could have forgiven him for everything. So why wouldn’t he?

Outside, Tyler got in his car and turned it on. His eyes flicked to the rearview mirror, showing the grotesque and deformed humanoid sitting in the back seat. Its rotting flesh, its misshapen bones, its evil gaze, it was the wraith that Dominion had tagged him with. If he tried anything, if he disobeyed, he’d be killed and his family would be taken to the prison. He wanted so desperately to take his family and flee, to just drive south until the tires melted, but he couldn’t do it. It was better for them to be miserable in their own homes than to become prisoners. His son kept in a pen like an animal. His wife and daughter turned into ... breeders.

He didn’t tell his family anything about what went on in the prison, about what he did as a guard. His wife knew nothing about the women he had been forced to inseminate. Their screams haunted him, the agony and humiliation in their voices as he raped them. He hated it, how good it felt. Each time, it got a little easier. Every time he ejaculated, it would take longer for the feeling of shame to arrive. He didn’t want to imagine his wife and daughter in those stocks, getting violated again and again.

Resigning himself to another day of swallowing his conscience, he backed out of the driveway and headed off towards the city. It was a cold morning, utterly silent. The only cars on the road belonged to Guards heading to or leaving the prison, or collaborators who were tasked with things like food deliveries. The city was livelier, in a tragic sense. Work crews operated 24/7 to expand the prison. Not a second went by that power tools weren’t whining and bricks weren’t being lain.

The workers and laborers operated in shifts like the guards. Their clothing was just warm enough to prevent frostbite, but the only real way to avoid the chill was to worker harder. The parking lots were left untouched so that guards had a place to leave their cars, but there was no excuse for lateness, so it was best to arrive within half an hour of one’s shift, just in case the good spots were taken. Anytime someone was late, they’d be tied to a post and whipped like an old sailor. Tyler found a spot behind a pizzeria he used to enjoy going to. Now it would be used to hold more prisoners.

He made the quick walk to the central building, his pace driven not just by fear of being late, but desire to get out of the cold. As he moved, he averted his eyes from the spawn. He couldn’t stand looking at them, those freaky abominations. If they were just regular human conquerors, that would be one thing, that would be bearable. These grotesque beasts, their presence was a constant reminder that being a guard didn’t mean being at the top of the food chain. Really, they were just prisoners with better living conditions.

He got inside with dozens of other guards, while just as many departed. Twelve-hour shifts, they were exhausting, physically and mentally. Glad to be out of the cold, he got in line for the employee time clock with his coworkers. No one spoke to each other, not even amongst friends. Everyone had formed a mental seal to try and block some of the stress of working in the prison, a way to work on autopilot. The imaginative energy needed to hold a conversation would tear a hole in that seal, letting guilt and despair soak into their minds like a poison.

He got his punch card stamped, then a receipt slipped out of a slot below the clock. It was his list of his assignments for today. Before reading, he stepped into the nearby employee break room. It was routine for those arriving to duck out of the way of others and go into the break room to read their assignments, and perhaps get a cup of coffee from the vending machine.

7:00 am to 11:00 am, he’d be guarding the children’s pen. 11:00 am to 11:30 am, first break. 11:30 am to 2:30 pm, oversee the construction outside. 2:30 pm to 3:00 pm, second break. 3:00 pm to 7:00 pm, perimeter watch.

The two breaks were supposed to be enough for a guard to get from one job to another, as well as get a bite to eat. Half worked on that kind of schedule, the other worked a day of two five-and-a-half-hour guard positions with and hour-long break in between. That way, when one crew left a job for their next shift, the crew on the other schedule would remain. Whichever schedule one got was random, supposedly chosen by a computer. The assignments were also random, making sure that every area was properly guarded with an even distribution of men, but no pattern as to who would get the jobs and when during their shift.

One of Tyler’s friends, kinda paranoid, said that it was one of Dominion’s mind games, to keep the guards in line. With a routine that changed every day, it was hard to get complacent. The different combinations of locations and hours meant different stressors and levels of fatigue, with the brain never having a chance to adapt and establish a pattern. The men could only plan ahead up to the next 24 hours, then things would be shuffled up like a labyrinth changing itself. Perhaps that friend was right.

Wait, his second break, it had been overwritten with an assignment. Breeding. He’d have to inseminate another prisoner. He looked around the break room, noting everyone’s expressions as they looked at their schedules. Half had a one-break schedule, the other half had a day like Tyler’s, with many looking at the b-word with dread and revulsion. The rest eyed it with lecherous grins. It seemed it was easier for some men to turn evil than others, but despite everyone in the room being former mafia members, it still sickened Tyler that so many of them had become so twisted.

He swallowed his rising breakfast and forced himself to push the thought out of mind. Right now, he needed all his strength. First, he went to his locker to retrieve his gear. A stun gun, pepper spray, and shotgun with beanbag rounds with a pistol loaded with rubber bullets. The guards were forbidden from killing the prisoners. He crossed the prison, once more braving the cold to reach the children’s ward. His keycard got him inside and up the locked corridor to the catwalk that ran the length of the building.

The ward was split into three sections, each the size of a football field. The first was for the infants, the pre-ambulatory. They spent all their time in cribs. Tyler paced along the catwalk, along with other guards and the ever-present sentinels. Their focus was on the women taking care of the babies, either new moms who were still lactating and could feed them, or barren women who couldn’t be used as breeders. It was an exhausting job, constantly feeding, changing, and caring for the infants. They were given cots along the side of the room, but it was impossible to get much sleep. The sound of crying was their alarm clock, and the sooner they got the baby to stop, the sooner they could get some rest.

In a way, Tyler envied the babies. They received the most care of all the prisoners, and best of all, they were completely unaware of the evil around them. Their troubles were no different than that of any other baby. In a way, they weren’t even prisoners. There was no freedom for them to lose, no choices or abilities to restrict, no fear or respect that they needed to feel. As long as they were taken care of, this place was no different from home.

Tyler then moved to the next ward, the young children ward, from ages one to six. By now, most of the crying had ended. At the start, they all screamed endlessly for their parents, for their homes, for their toys, for better food. By now, they had mostly learned that crying wouldn’t get them anything. Well, it would get them some attention from the caregivers. Looking after them were the elderly who couldn’t perform hard labor, and most of their work involved feeding and changing the toddlers. These children were learning to adapt, they spent their time playing games with each other. It was all they really could do to distract themselves from despair.

It was a horrible sight, seeing them smile with shaved heads and wearing prison uniforms. It was remarkable how resilient children were, how they could adapt to hardship, but in a just world, they wouldn’t need to adapt. They shouldn’t have to adapt to this hell. If the world were fair, if the world were kind, they would smile and laugh because of something, not despite something.

Tyler wondered, just as he always did, how Dominion could possibly be so indifferent to their suffering. How could he go through life seeing no value in the lives of others? How could someone so deprived of light possibly exist? It was like these children were a commodity. Who they were inside didn’t matter, their feelings and pain didn’t matter. To Dominion, all that mattered was how he could use them once they were old enough.

Tyler shook that dread aside. If he got lost in thought, the evil spirit in his shadow would growl in his ear, a warning to get back to work. He headed to the third ward, for older children, ages six to twelve. The age range made it the largest holding pen, several hundred children. They were assigned caregivers like the last ward, but their job was mostly keeping the children from fighting and making sure the younger ones ate their food. Unfinished protein bars littered the floor.

Here, adolescence was starting to make its presence known amongst the older kids. Budding breasts, cracking voices, and a hormonal scent that the other two wards didn’t have, it was like middle school. Tragic as this whole scenario was, Tyler found himself strangely interested in these kids, seeing how they behaved and interacted with each other. Boys and girls would form cliques, make nervous glances at each other, and friends would giggle and laugh when they noticed one of their own looking at the other group. They were at the age where they were starting to notice each other.

To Tyler, it actually brought a smile to his face, seeing how innocent they were. It wasn’t like watching how the younger children adapted to this place, rather, it was a sign of just how powerful the instinct for human coupling was. They were trapped in the Devil’s prison, yet to the older boys and girls, their biggest trial was trying not to blush when looking at each other. For these kids, none of Dominion’s monsters were as scary as the prospect of talking to their crush. The power of the undead was nothing against the power of hormones.

Some couples had already formed, tweens nervously holding hands away from their friends, looking for some romantic corner where they could try to understand what they were feeling. Maybe the boys would promise the girls that they would find a way out, that they’d protect them from the monsters. They’d share a dream of somehow escaping, of defeating their captor like in a comic book, and then they’d grow up and get married and live happily ever after.

High on the nostalgia, Tyler would silently root for them. He’d hope that something would change, that someone would manage to kill Dominion and set everyone free. He wanted to see these kids leave this place and live their dreams, to experience adolescence under trees and in school halls, not a prison, but he knew that life wasn’t so kind. A few children had already been taken away.