Hideout by Jack Heath (iphone ebook reader txt) 📕

listen for approaching sirens, and hear nothing. Officer Lewis must have been fooled.

Donnie unlocks the door and heaves it open, casting a long rectangle of light on the stained floor. By day, the slaughterhouse looks shabbier. The sets are revealed to be plywood, the props plastic. But looking at the prisoners creates the opposite effect. The bags under their eyes, the scars on their chests and the chains around their wrists and ankles look all too real.

Donnie hands me a stack of plastic bowls and a bucket of dog food. ‘I’ll be checking on things over there,’ he says, gesturing vaguely towards the greenhouse. ‘Holler if you need anything.’

None of the prisoners make eye contact as I walk in, but I can feel them watching me as soon as I look away from them. They remind me of zoo animals. Not the cheery ones that run over at feeding time, like monkeys and otters. Nor the big ones that don’t care you’re there, like tigers or alpacas. They’re like eels, or octopuses. Afraid of visitors, always desperate to get out of sight, cowering in the hidey-holes not quite big enough to conceal them.

I put down the bucket in the centre of the room. I’m hungry. Is there real beef in the dog food? Some vegetarians buy meat for their dogs. I don’t know why—the cows are no better off in dog biscuits than in burgers.

‘Ironic, right?’ One of the prisoners has worked up the courage to talk to me. He’s Indian American, forty-something, with deep-set eyes under a heavy brow. He’s going both bald and grey. His clothes look like old army fatigues, with leaves and dead grass glued to them.

‘What is?’ I open the bucket and scoop some dog biscuits into a bowl. The sour smell is sickening. Even I wouldn’t eat that—and I once ate my own thumb. Dogs must hate humans.

‘It needs to be closer,’ the man says. ‘I can’t reach.’

One of his hands is free, the other is chained to the floor. All the men are secured like that, by one wrist. The women are chained by one ankle instead. This man looks withered and weak, but I don’t want to come within reach of his free arm. I nudge the bowl with my foot so it slides over to him, the dog biscuits rattling inside.

‘Thank you,’ he says. ‘You must be the new guy.’

I cock my head. He can’t see my face behind the mask. ‘New guy?’

He’s not fooled. Maybe he recognises my voice from yesterday, or noticed that I only have nine fingers.

‘I’m Gerald,’ he says.

‘Lux.’

‘Was it you, last night?’

He’s asking if I sabotaged the cameras. I pretend to misunderstand: ‘I didn’t pull the trigger.’

‘Oh.’ This time he buys it. I can see him trying not to look disappointed.

‘What are you in for, Gerald?’

He swallows. ‘Rape.’

I’d read the profile of the Rapist on Cedric’s computer. A year ago, he concealed himself among the trees of Memorial Park dressed in a homemade ghillie suit. When the sun went down, he assaulted a court stenographer on her way home from work. She later said it was like the forest had come to life and attacked her. After the rape, he attempted to blind her with a vial of acid so she couldn’t identify him. It must have worked, because he was arrested but never charged. The profile included hacked emails and text messages with his attorney, which revealed what he’d done. There were also screenshots of several news articles, complete with photographs of Gerald—looking a lot fatter and happier than he is now.

‘It’s bad, I know,’ Gerald says. ‘But this isn’t justice.’

I move on to the next prisoner, no longer interested in conversation. This one is dressed in black, with a swastika armband. I guess she’s the Nazi. I recognise her from some photos, too.

Looking around, I realise that all the prisoners are in costume. The guy in the brown rags must be the Isis fighter. The woman in white is the KKK Queen.

The Scammer’s body is still here, in the early stages of decomposition. He would still be edible, but not for much longer. Now that I’m paying more attention, I realise his dirty jacket is a lab coat. I can see his bare chest underneath it, covered with scars—some from sharp implements, some blunt, some hot. None older than two months or newer than two days. There’s a tattoo, hard to read against his dark skin. It’s a jagged line, like an ECG, and some heavily stylised text which I think says RECYCLE ME.

I’ve seen similar tatts on bodies in the FBI morgue. Those bodies were usually missing hearts, kidneys, livers—people acquire the tattoo to make sure doctors know that they’re organ donors. Or to get themselves laid. Apparently generosity is sexy.

If he’s an organ donor, surely he wouldn’t mind if—

‘We don’t deserve this,’ Gerald is saying. ‘No one deserves this.’

The Nazi holds out a hand for a bowl of dog food. I know what she did, too. She walked up to the tall spiked fence surrounding a Jewish school in Minnesota during recess, dropped a lit cigarette into a milk bottle filled with gasoline and flung it over. No one died, but three children and a teacher were hospitalised with severe burns. In her photos alongside the news coverage, she was smiling. Even before I got here, I knew about this attack. The TV news couldn’t use any footage of the children, but they made the most of the screaming teacher being loaded into the ambulance.

I give her the dog food and move along to the Terrorist, who flew to Syria and fought for Isis, taking several wives and trying to bring about the end of the world. He takes his bowl with long, almost skeletal fingers. These people are like the living dead, their tastiest