Found scribbled on the back of a log after the night of October 5h, 2008.
“Attention Night Shift Staff. Be advised that there is a water restriction in place until further notice. The water has been determined to contain a harmful chemical that may cause extreme health risks. The Warden will advise when the water restriction is lifted.”
I looked over at the day shift officer who was collecting his things and preparing to leave.
“What’s all this about?”
He looked at me absentmindedly and scrunched his face up in deep thought. I relieved McMillan most days, and he always managed to look like conscious thought was a lot of effort. He never struck me as a deep thinker. The longer I interacted with him, the more I realized that the department’s standards were slipping pretty low if he’d made the cut. McMillan looked like the effort of flexing all twelve of his brain cells might start a fire, and it took him a few minutes before he came up with an answer.
“Oh yeah, not supposed to use the water. Major said so when he came to put up the sign.”
I rolled my eyes at him.
McMillan had told me nothing that I couldn’t have gleaned from the notice.
“Ya, but for how long?”
He shrugged, “Till you hear otherwise, I guess.”
Then he left, and it was just me and a dorm of one hundred and fifty warm bodies.
This was going to make my life just ducky.
The complaints started almost immediately.
The heat from McMillan’s backside hadn’t even adequately cooled from the chair before I got my first complaint of the night. The dorm I was in had four quads that held about thirty to forty peoples per Quad. On average, I have about one hundred twenty, and tonight they were all mad about the lack of water. The fella at the squawk box, his finger smashing the button hard enough to go through the wall, looked like he ate pushups and shit sit-ups on the daily. He was bald, his black beetle eyes staring out of a face that looked shaped from clay. He was looking at me through the glass as he pressed the talk button, which was making a loud click in my office.
I pushed the talk button on my end and asked what he wanted.
“So we can’t use the water?”
Through the glass, I stared at him to let him know how great a question this was with my most convincing “You’re a real genius, Champ” expression.
“That’s what the sign says.”
“So then, how are we supposed to take showers?”
“You aren’t.”
He looked back at me, his face looking like he might come up with another question if I was willing to wait.
“What are we supposed to drink?” he said, just as I had given up on a follow-up question.
“I don’t know. I’m sure someone with a higher rate of pay than me will sort that out.”
“Well, what about…”
I rode over him, “If it’s related to water, there isn’t any, so stop bothering me.”
And that was how I spent the first hour and a half of my night. Different representatives from each Quad would approach the box, their questions taking on differing elocution levels until I finally announced that there was no water. I didn’t know when the water would be back. If it made them feel any better, I also did not have any water to drink, and it didn’t look like management was going to send me any either. So, unless their further questions had to do with something other than water and when it was coming back, I had no answers. After that, I sat in my chair, found a book that someone had left, and began reading.
I could see them out of the corner of my eye, though. Some of them had taken the news meekly, but most had formed into tight little angry groups that seemed to be holding individual pow wows about the water situation. I saw a lot of furtive looks cast my way, but I didn’t let on that I had seen them and kept reading. This situation was out of my hands. If management wanted to send down water kegs or plastic bottles or a God Damn tidal wave to wash us all to hell, that was fine by me.
The weirdness didn’t happen until after eight.
No one had come to help me count, so I just hadn’t gone out to count at seven o’clock. This was not uncommon, but no one had called to bother me about it either. No one showing up might be an everyday thing, but the control room shouting about it was not. Control liked to have their count on time, damn it. If it wasn’t called in, then there would be hell to pay, and their lack of communication was unsettling. The radio hadn’t made any noise either, but that was nothing to get excited about. I might have had a bad radio. It was also possible that, for once, no one had anything to say.
These thoughts soon slipped out of my mind, however, when Warten approached the fountain.
Warten was a typical inmate. He was slight, pigeon chested, with a uniform that hung off him and a shaved head that was sprinkled with stubble. While the others had been holding a council, Warten had been staring at the water fountain. After about half an hour, I had only been pretending to read my book and was instead staring at him over the top of the Stephen King novel I had found under the desk. His simple, inbred face was held in the mirage-like grip of the silver drinking fountain, and he darted his tongue across his parched lips as he thought about the bounty that must be inside. He had likely drunk something today, a beverage with lunch or a sip of something cool on the yard from a keg that was filled by maintenance, but it’s strange how being told that you can’t have something makes it so important to you.
I watched as he got up after staring at the thing for nearly an hour and a half. He walked over to press the button, and I expected nothing to come out but a little air and disappointment. To my surprise, a stream of water arced out into the bowl of the fountain. Warten looked as surprised as I was and smiled as he bent his face down to have a drink. The others in Quad 2 looked over at Warten and seemed to notice that the water was working again. They glared over at me, clearly curious why hadn’t I told them about this revelation? They went to stand behind Warten as he drank at the fountain, wanting a turn at the cold crisp water. His smiling face was gulping it down as he looked euphoric, but after a few moments, his laughing friends became less friendly. They slapped at Warten, wanting to drink some of the water as well. The bald one who had asked the initial question pushed him away like a rag doll, sending him sprawling as he bent to drink.
Warten lumbered up like a wild animal, and the brute had taken no more than a few sips before Warten threw him from the fountain violently, his head leaving a red skree across the wall.
Warten bent to the fountain like a starving animal. He gulped down mouthfuls of water, the rest sliding down his chin, as he slurped greedily. The big bald brute came shakily back to his feet, a cut on his head leaking blood, and grabbed Warten by the shoulders. I thought he would beat him to death right there. Instead, he tossed him back into the day room like a sack of trash. Warten slamming into a concrete bench, his arm bending strangely, as the other man bent to slurp water. The others who had walked over with him stepped away, not wanting any part of what was going on. To my surprise, Warten got up and staggered towards the fountain again. His arm was quite clearly broken, but he lifted the wounded hand to his mouth and sucked at the blood coming from his purpling hand. I looked back to the guy at the fountain and saw that he hadn’t even noticed Warten approaching. He was drinking water like he’d never seen the stuff. The water was sliding down his chin, his throat working furiously as he guzzled it down, oblivious to the world.
I turned back to Warten and sucked in air as I noticed the shank in his unbroken hand. He had curled his broken arm to his chest, shuddering as it spasmed, but his other hand had found a short, crude little weapon made of twisted metal. He ran up to the drinker, and his friends called out a little too late. Warten stabbed him about a dozen times, but the drinker never stopped, never even wincing, as Warten rammed the knife into his kidneys and back.
When the drinker slid down the fountain, his lips were still sucking at the air like a nursing infant.
As Warten took his place, standing over the corpse as he drank, I heard panicked banging from the other side of the dorm.
Robinson was my houseman in Quad Three. He was an older lifer who made the best of his situation and never complained. I had seen him many mornings in the day room, a cup of coffee in one hand and yesterday’s paper in the other, taking his ease before he started cleaning for the day. He was an amiable guy, and I found that I liked him as far as inmates went.
He was not the one knocking at the glass.
His roommate, a redhead named Griggs, was banging on the glass window that separated him from the hallway and pointing to the shower in the corner. Quad One’s inmates weren’t the only ones to discover that the water was off-limits but not off. I could see Robinson kneeling on the floor of the filthy shower, naked as the day he was born, his head lifted to catch the water falling from the showerhead. There were others there too, three or four who had been trying to get him out of the shower and were now just as powerless to leave as he was. They were all catching the water, mouths open and elbows prodding for a better position. They looked like worshipers who have recently discovered manna from heaven. Their faces were masks of ecstasy as the water cascaded down them to the drain. The inmates in three stood watching them, some of them laughing, but others looking scared as they banged on the glass and tried to get out.
I picked up my radio and called for medical. I had no other choice. I had an inmate bleeding in Quad One, and I had several others displaying strange behavior. The protocol was very clear on what I had to do. I had to get someone down here to help. I called for emergency traffic, calling for medical and an A-team response. After five seconds of nothing, though, I called again. The static had a pregnant dread about it as I stood staring into the walky. A-team response usually brought all kinds of people running. I was literally feet from the Captain’s Office, and the fact that I didn’t have people banging to get in was very odd.
When I picked up the phone and didn’t get so much as a dial tone, that was when I really started freaking out.
The glass tinkled to the ground as I pulled out the emergency keys. I wasn’t supposed to leave the station unattended, but this seemed like one of those emergency situations they talked about in training. I’d sign whatever incident report I had to after I had gotten some help here. I was way beyond freaked out, and I needed someone to laugh at me and say that this was normal; tell me how this was nothing compared to the riots of blah blah or the incident in blah blah.
The key slid in easily enough, but the maglocks wouldn’t release when I put my shoulder against the door.
I slammed against the door, the lock disengaged, but the door refused to open. I crashed against it, again and again, my shoulder burning, my nerves tuned up to a million. I had to get out! Suddenly this station was about two sizes too small and what I needed was fresh air and the sounds of crickets. I needed to run up the concrete road to the control room, uniform left behind me, and not stop until I was sitting in my car in just my boxers and undershirt. I could hear the other Quads banging, seeing what was going on from various vantage points, and wanting escape or answers or just reassurance.
Instead, I slid down the door, sitting on the concrete floor and letting all the anxiety crush me.
It’s midnight now, and they’ve all mostly gone quiet.
I managed to make it back to the desk, posting up by the phone in case it starts working again. I wished, at first, that I had stayed where I was. The Quads have developed into warzones. Inmates fought over petty gang feud, fought out of misguided fear, or fought over the precious water that they now all crave. I can see some of them at the fountains now, but there are others in the shower with their mouths open and the water soaking through their cheap prison uniform. Others are in their cells, heads under sinks, or even in the toilet as they drink and drink and drink.
Warten is still at his fountain. The others have left him alone as they search for their own water or just hide and wait for all of this to be over. He’s been drinking for hours, his body expanding as he threatens to burst. I can see dark spots on his pants where he’s messed himself, and I imagine there are dark spots under his clothes, too, where his organs or blood vessels have burst due to the swelling. His smile, though, is the most cherubic thing you’ve ever seen.
It makes me wonder what he’s experiencing as he gorges himself on water.
I find myself looking at the fountain in the station and longing to find out. It’s only been a few hours, but I can feel my tongue sticking to the roof of my mouth as I watch the quads devolve into madness. It’s funny what you miss when you can’t have it, right? A few hours without water begins to feel like a thousand years. Even though I know it would kill me, I still want it. I figure this will be the last thing I write before I go try the fountain. Maybe our water isn’t tainted. Perhaps it was just the inmate’s water that holds whatever this is.
It hardly matters.
I’m so thirsty now, and it doesn’t look like help is coming anytime soon.
If anyone finds this, just know that I died smiling.
Just know that I didn’t die thirsty.