Chapter 0: Z

                 "...and you are listening to KISS 101, Walla Walla's rock and roll station on top of the Marcus Whitman Hotel in downtown Walla Walla! You just heard Guns N' Roses' Paradise City, yet another wild hit from this up and coming band’s debut album and now we follow it up with rock n' roll newcomers, Skid Row with what's going to be a smash hit, Youth Gone Wild which is exactly what you're gonna do when you hear this adrenalin fueled song!" The DJ's voice is abruptly cut off with a rotation and a click.
                "Dammit Jeff, that sorta music is what makes you dumb enough to be stuck on transport duty." The weed of a correctional officer glares down from the aisle of the bus to the young driver.
                "Come on Skip, you know I had an accident on the tower!" The frustrated driver darts his eyes up from the traffic on Poplar street to the awkwardly thick face on the lanky, thin haired guard leaning against the prisoner grate. He hits the blinker and turns into the St. Mary's hospital's back parking lot.
                "Jeff, you fell down the tower ladder because you were looking at the administration girls with your binoculars and weren't watching where you were going!" The thin guard's awkward belly jiggles as he laughs. His words bring a buzz of discussion to the dozen blue jump-suited inmates on the other side of the cage followed by various points of laughter throughout the dingy, white, criminal transport bus.
                "Shut up!" The driver shoots death sentences at the mirror and over his shoulder then back again to the unloading zone leading to the automatic doors of the medical center. The transport screeches and hisses to a stop, shotguns are equipped, and the line of shackled inmates is stretched and dragged through the back entrance of the hospital and directed by gunpoint to the cancer wing where they are processed and cuffed to inspection tables individually, getting prepared for examinations and physicals, pads and monitors, samples and injections.
                Hours pass while correctional officers Skip and Jeff absently surf through magazine after magazine only breaking the silence and monotony when they share a scantily clad advertisement for juvenile amusement or groan at the clock's honest display of the time.
                The waiting of the correctional officers finally pays off and their prisoners are returned to them, albeit more hollow and pale. Jeff turns from his magazine to the inmates and then to Skip, "Well, looks like we got our kids back."
                The officers stand and return to their jobs, herding the husks that were once prisoners back to the transport and then to the prison on the hill. The bus pulls through the penitentiary gate and out of the haunting silence as the lengthy cage guard muses, “Unloading is always more relaxed than the loading.” As he unlocks the cage door and prepares the gravely silent inmates for relocation. The prisoners move slowly but steadily from the bus to the human corrals, shambling to their pens by action more than thought.
                Hours pass, Jeff and Skip clock out and go home. The dinner hour comes and goes. Even the sun drops below the western hills, painting the wheat fields before it lowers into slumber. Before the call for lights out is sounded through the penitentiary, each of the twelve inmates that returned from the hospital transition from sallow to visceral, turning on their cell mates and pushing violence onto the contained prisoners. Whether it is the punch in the face or a savage bite, the inmates burst into riotous discord. The screams signal to the guards that all is not well within the cell block and the officers signal control to call in the Emergency Response Team, the prison's equivalent to police SWAT. By the time the first inmate is forcibly passed over the top rail and hits the ground three stories below, the ERT has entered the cell block and begun to contain the rampaging inmates long enough to bring the Specialized Emergency Response Team in with their rifles. The increased stress that this government militia brings provides just the final incentive to encourage the already panicked and enraged inmates to lunge forward as one wave of hatred crashing down on the shield bearing guards. This sudden burst of violence begets a reactionary explosion of violence with the report of gunfire. The altercation lasts less than five minutes and results in dozens of lifeless prisoners and twice the amount in spent rifle shells.
                The extra time the tax payers unwittingly put money toward is in the cleanup of the remains. In time, the prisoners with family are dealt with in a manner that accommodates the next of kin while the inmates that have no legacy are wrapped like deli meat and buried in the back property, not quite affectionately known as nine wing, like a family pet with no more than a brick and a government number. In a month's time, all is forgotten and new prisoners are quickly shipped into the void left by the bloody riot.