THE DEVIL YOU KNOW:PART III

 Why'd you come back, Shay? I asked through pained breaths. Shay gave me a frantic look. When I got back out to the car, the driver was dead. His throat was ripped out or something, I don't know. I grabbed his keys and came back for you two. I don't know where we are, but I'm getting you out of here, he explained. I looked at him in amazement. I had never thought in a million years Shay would risk his life to save some scumbag inmates. So what's the plan? Timmy asked, sweating heavily, his eyes wild and pained.

How are we getting out of here without dying? Shay shrugged. The door locked behind us when we came in, I said. Unless we can break it down and get back to the car. We passed by buttons labeled Emergency Dispatch under glowing red emergency signs. I wondered if we could get help somehow through them. Halt! someone cried from behind us. I looked back, seeing a man in a black correctional officer's uniform. He ran toward us, his hand on the radio hanging from his belt. But something immediately seemed off about the figure.

As he got closer, I realized why. He had no face. His entire head was just smooth white skin, without hair or any signs of features. He spoke again, and the voice seemed to come from all around his body. You must report to the medical ward, the strange figure said. We do not allow injured people in the hallways. No, we're fine, Shay said grinning. See buddy, I work for the DOC too. He pointed at the identification clipped to his breast pocket. The figure raised his radio to his lips. We have resistance near Dormitory 1, the fake CO said into his radio before any of us could stop him. Shay ran forward, knocking the radio from his hand.

The CO instantly straightened up and whipped out his pistol, pointing it at Shay's torso. He fired, and I saw Shay's chest explode in a blossoming flower of blood. No dammit, Timmy said, running forward. I saw a silver gleam in his hand, and I realized he had taken one of the scalpels from the undead Shay had killed in the medical ward. As the fake CO spun to point the pistol at Timmy, Timmy ran into him, stabbing the scalpel deeply into the CO's neck. They fell together with Timmy on top of the fake CO. His body weight drove the scalpel deeper into the white, featureless skin. Blood the color of soot spurted from the wound. 

The gun went off, the bullet missing Timmy entirely and smashing into the ceiling. The CO's gurgling death gasps seemed to come from all around his body. I grabbed Timmy. Get the guns, I said. They're both dead, we need the guns. He nodded, grabbing the CO's gun and taking an extra magazine from his belt. I did the same with Shay's gun and magazine. I pressed the button labeled, Emergency Dispatch, as more faceless men appeared far off down the corridor. Then we fled as fast as we could from that hallway. 

 But, seeing as we were both in pretty bad shape, it wasn't very fast. At that point, I was just glad to be alive though. We wandered around the prison, avoiding the faceless CO's whenever we saw them patrolling the hallways. They would radio to each other, their voices always surrounding their bodies rather than coming from their heads, which I found extremely eerie and unsettling. A couple times, I saw men in black SWAT suits with automatic rifles gunning down the fake CO. I wondered if this was the Emergency Dispatch. Timmy and I avoided them as well, and we gave a wide berth anytime we heard gunfire.

We passed cells with mummified corpses hanging from the ceiling. We passed dormitories where the victims of the strange werewolf-like creatures littered the floors, rotting and stinking like roadkill. Occasionally, I would catch a glimpse of another survivor, a pale face peeking out from some hiding spot. But Timmy and I kept pushing forward, looking for a way out. We were in a sprawling gymnasium, sitting down and resting for a few minutes, when we encountered the warden. We heard a demonic roar from the hallway, a mixing of many strange, inhuman tongues.

As Timmy and I sat up quickly, a decapitated body flew into the gym, and a creature from hell followed after it. The body smacked into the concrete wall with a soft, fleshy whack. The warden stood ten feet tall. He had on a black correctional officer's uniform and a leather visor cap. His face looked like it had no flesh. A thick layer of bone covered it with two reptilian eyes, peering out from behind slitted pupils. He hissed, a forked tongue shooting out of his gaping maw. His fingers looked like sharp daggers of bone. 

 A smell like old leather and blood rose from his body. "'Shoot it!' I screamed, raising the pistol and firing at its head. The first shot blew off its visor cap, revealing the hairless reptilian skull underneath. But the bullet only gouged the top of its skull. It ran at us with powerful, bounding steps, covering the distance in moments. Timmy and I fired as fast as we could as it got within a few feet of us. It bounded into Timmy like a freight train hitting a car. Timmy's body went flying and smashed against the back wall with the sound of bones shattering. I slammed another magazine in the pistol as the warden turned to me. 

 We had hit it, I saw. One of its eyes had exploded in a shower of gore and vitreous fluid, and its head was bleeding badly. I raised the gun, aiming for the same eye and firing. The warden smacked his hand against his face as if he had forgotten something, falling to the floor. I ran forward, putting the pistol point-blank against his ruined eye before emptying the clip. By the end, he wasn't moving anymore. "'Oh God,' I said, walking over to Timmy. I saw his shattered legs, his broken spine and his snapped ribs. He coughed up blood. 

 "'I'm sorry, Timmy. I really am.' His head might have nodded slightly as he died, giving a final death gasp before falling still. I found a ring of keys on the warden's body. In excitement, I ran downstairs and tried the locked door. It worked. I went to the van, pulling out the dead driver and starting it. After smashing through the garage door, I drove it through the gate. It did catastrophic damage to the prison van, but it got me far enough away before the engine gave out. I don't know what kind of prison that was, but I hope I never see that hellscape again.

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR READING👄