Chapter 1 1

PART ONE. Chapter 1

- Quicker! Let's go! Began!

Cindy Scavello, overseer of the Chowchilla Women's Center of Central California*, grabbed Melinda Thores by the arm, pulling her off the chair she was sitting on, about to eat. In surprise, she dropped the sandwich, which fell to the floor and fell apart. Thores looked at him in annoyance, lowering her gaze.

- Faster! her companion called out. - I'll show you! It's a real horror, you've never seen anything like it!

As if to confirm her words, they heard a hoarse, pain-filled howl.

- That's her? Tores whispered incredulously, her blood running cold at the sound.

Scavello nodded and impatiently dragged her along as she darted out of the room. Thores obediently followed her, burning with curiosity. She got a job here recently, but she had already heard about a strange prisoner, a suicide bomber, who terrified the entire prison, both prisoners and guards. Some called her obsessed, others called her crazy. But few people believed in the latter, crazy people are not sentenced to death. She was said to talk to the dead.

She was held on death row, a two-story, nine-cell building isolated from other inmates, and was known throughout the prison for more than just being a suicide bomber. When a suicide bomber is brought to a prison, this is an event in itself. Women on death row are rare. In addition to her, two more suicide bombers were kept in prison, Cynthia Coffman, whose sentence was passed in 1989, and Maureen McDermon, convicted a year ago, in 1990.

Coffman** was a pretty, dark-eyed, brown-haired twenty-nine-year-old girl who, along with her boyfriend James Marlowe, was sentenced to death for the murders of four women in October and November 1986 (she was personally convicted of two of the four murders).

McDermott*** was convicted of hiring an orderly at the hospital where she worked to kill her roommate Stephen Eldridge. The motive was to get mortgage insurance on the house they co-owned. Eldridge's penis was severed after several stab wounds. The orderly testified that this was done at McDermott's urging to make it look like the murder was a "homosexual murder" because she felt that, in theory, the police were unlikely to investigate it thoroughly. And I was wrong.

Caroline Randall, sentenced for the brutal murders of five people, two men and three women, did not look like a terrible killer at all, tender and beautiful, like the lamb of God. She was quiet and did not give the guards any problems. No violence, tantrums, despair and tears. Calm and seemingly resigned to her fate. Cold-blooded, courageous. And only her eyes were filled with the endless pain of a dying creature. Pain doomed to death. But this look was not strange or unusual, on the contrary, it was the only thing about her that did not seem strange. Anyone sentenced to death should have that look.

Thores had already seen her - a very beautiful young woman with magnificent, but completely white curly hair. She was not yet thirty, but she was completely gray, to a single hair, and this gray hair did not even shimmer with silver, being just white as snow. They called her here - Snowflake. Sweet and harmless-looking Snowflake. But that was at first, when she first arrived here. Before they began to notice her oddities. Incredible, inexplicable and frightening. Because of these oddities, she was kept in the farthest cell, away from the other two suicide bombers, so that they could not see what was happening to her.

Everyone knew that she was the wife of the famous lawyer Jack Randall, who himself was accused and tried for murder and attempted murder. The sensation about how Randal went crazy right in court when his wife was sentenced to death thundered all over the country.

More than one month has passed, and the media continued to savor what happened, keeping their all-seeing eye on Jack Randal and not depriving him of their attention more than ever.

His trial was so high-profile that even all of his lawyers could not prevent publicity of this magnitude, although they tried to achieve confidentiality and a closed process. Perhaps they would have succeeded if they hadn't been on the scene of a journalist, as a result of which all the media exploded with a sensation that Jack Randall had cracked down on the lawyer who defended his wife, and also, for some still unclear reason, with his father, blaming them for what sentence his wife received. The bomb exploded, and all of his incredibly talented and toothy lawyers, led by Zach Riley, who furiously rushed the whole company to Randal's defense, could no longer stop this explosive wave. The whole country, perhaps the whole world, followed the process, which was already impossible to prevent. And this publicity, this scrutiny, terribly interfered with his lawyers,

And everyone forgot about the unfortunate wife of the famous lawyer, no one was interested in her anymore. Her fate was decided, and no one believed that Jack Randall's lawyers, bending over backwards, seeking appeals and trying to save the condemned woman, would achieve something, except that the unfortunate woman would sit behind bars for many years, while they will fight for it.

But in the prison itself they already knew that she would not last for many years. She was fading before our eyes, something was killing her, but no one could figure out what. The doctors threw up their hands. She herself was silent, but her look showed that she knew what was happening to her, but did not want to explain. Something definitely happened to her. Something was draining the life out of her, and it didn't feel like a disease.

They ran past Coffman's cell.

"Shut up that wicked one!" Again this unbearable stench will stand for a week, I will complain! Get her out of here! Coffman glared angrily at the guards, who didn't even spare her a glance. - Why does it always stink after her screams? What is happening there? Can someone please explain to me eventually? What did she do with Perez? I want to know! Stop, you fat-assed pigs... - she muttered quite quietly, moving away from the bars and returning to the bunk. - What the hell is going on here?

Running up to Randall's cell, the guards stopped.

On the bunk, clinging to the mattress with whitened fingers, a white-haired woman, thin to the point of exhaustion, was writhing in pain. Her pale face was twisted with pain, and she gritted her teeth in an attempt to bear it.

- What with her? Thores sighed.

- It hurts, - her partner answered with knowledge of the case. - Come on, I'll show you. Just don't touch her. It is forbidden.

"Wait..." Thores grabbed her hand as she unlocked the cell door. - Are you sure?

Instead of answering, she flung open the door and resolutely stepped inside. Thores hesitantly followed her, not taking her eyes off the prisoner, unconscious, tossing and turning on the bunk.

- Emily ... please ... faster ... - she suddenly groaned, almost audibly.

- Who is she talking to?

- Look, - Scavello pointed with a baton at the woman's hand, convulsively squeezing the mattress. A spot appeared on the skin, which quickly began to increase. Arching, the prisoner opened her mouth and screamed heart-rendingly from unbearable pain.

The stain appeared not only on the arm. On the chest, neck and even crawled onto the face. In place of the spots, some kind of wounds suddenly began to form, similar to ulcers, or something like that.

- Faster! Emily! the woman yelled, suddenly raising her oddly injured arm as if she were trying to grab someone.

"Wake her up," croaked Thores, numb with horror. - What are you standing for? Wake her up!

- No, don't touch!

But Scavello could not stop her when the frightened partner leaned over the prisoner and began to shake her violently, then beat her on the cheeks in an attempt to bring her to her senses.

- Wake up! Wake up, come on!

- No... no... - she groaned, weakly resisting, but then nevertheless opened her eyes, staring at the woman bent over her.

- Emily! she cried.

- There's no Emily here, wake up! You had a nightmare, - Tores blurted out and fell silent because her last words seemed ridiculous to her. Looking down at the stains on the prisoner's body, she was relieved to see that they had stopped spreading. And suddenly she jumped back with a cry, seeing how something was swarming in one of the fetid, some kind of rotting ulcers.

- Oh my God! What's this?

"It's a worm... if you hadn't woken her up, you wouldn't have seen it," said Scavello, involuntarily stepping back and grimacing in disgust. - To the exit. Fast.

- I don't understand... - Thores groaned, stunned by what was happening.

Following her gaze, the prisoner with trembling fingers picked up the white worm swarming in her flesh and threw it off her. Then she raised her large, bloodshot eyes, which suddenly flared with rage.

- I did not have time! I told you not to touch me! Because of you... I didn't have time because of you! Stupid fat bitches! I told you not to mess with me! - with some wild, inhuman growl, the prisoner jumped up and rushed at them.

Thores worked in prisons for many years, it was difficult to surprise or frighten her, but now she froze in a daze, looking at the distraught woman ... Or rather, not a woman, but something ... reminiscent of horror films about zombies or the walking dead. It wasn't a person who rushed at her... it couldn't be a person. It was a revived corpse, with cadaveric spots, decomposing flesh, in which worms swarm, with terrible eyes ... Thores remembered exactly that the prisoner's eyes were a transparent blue beautiful color, like sapphires, and she had never seen more beautiful than these eyes . But now, instead of a blue iris, there was something red, which at first seemed to Thores as if her eyes were bloodshot. Thores suddenly felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end...