Mad Dogs Read Online Free PDF Page B

Said: “Get your GODS, link up back here in 15 minutes.”
    â€œWait,” said Russell.
    â€œNow what?”
    â€œYou forgot.” Zane’s eyes pointed up through the ceiling.
    Eric nodded as Hailey told me: “Good people say good-bye.”

7
    RAVENS Castle has five floors.
    First Floor is Administration, doors with electronic locks, the Keepers’ lounge, the Computerized Monitoring System installed before the secret black money that creates the Castle’s budget started being siphoned off to fuel the war in Iraq.
    Second Floor is the Medical Unit with an operating room where you can get a face switch, a fingerprint graft, a bullet removed. You can stay on Second Floor and never know about your upstairs neighbors.
    Third Floor belongs to Wards A ble , B ravo , and C razyville .
    Able is for short timers. The temporary hysterics. Spy Plane/Jungle Crash crispy critters adjusting to burn scars they can never tell the truth about. Pentagon Apocalypse Bluesboyz haunted by mushroom cloud/plague dreams. Able Ward houses the just passing throughs who the doctors will be able to recycle.
    Bravo is for the broken but bandageable. Battleground Beirut Bravehearts who went batshit but who can get by after six months or so of Castle therapy. Bravo veterans take their bandaged act home and lead “a productive life” sitting in their living room clothed in cover lies, waiting for their cried-out wife to finally walk out for good and leave them watching flickers of the TV or their NSA monitored computer, leave them waiting for the mailman to deliver their secret pension check.
    Crazyville is our country. All the Wards have locked doors, but to get out of Crazyville takes knowing extra keypunch security codes. Took the five of us days to spy out those codes. Pros like us should have busted the codes sooner. But don’t forget, we were crazy. Functional but so far gone nobody figured we were ever coming back.
    Fourth Floor is Main Street. The dining room with its serving line. Main Street has a “cyber room” to let you surf the Internet—our Keepers track every wave. Russell had “a thing” in 2003 with a Security Monitor who got so intrigued by the list of songs he snagged through file sharing programs that she finessed a security review to meet him, and fell into the darkness of his sunglasses. She cried when Admin caught her, swore the sex was consensual, that she’d never known the slamming surge of being bent over her desk by anyone except Russell, but still they shipped her out to sanitizing duty at an Alaskan NSA listening post. Next to the cyber room is a gym with weights, Eric’s treadmill, and Hailey’s mirrored ballet studio that Russell, Zane and I used for gung fu.
    Fifth Floor of our Castle is a long corridor of locked doors.
    My black shoes stepped with nary a sound on the Fifth Floor’s sunlit green tile. I eased my way down the corridor from the stairwell exit. Scents of ammonia and tears floated around me as I pressed against Door Number Six and oh so softly, tapped it with our secret knock, slid open the observation slot. He’s one of those people who even his lovers call by his last name, so I whispered: “Malcolm!”
    Wait for it. Wait/NO TIME GOTTA EVAC OR THEY’LL— Wait .
    Finally, unseen, he said: “You’re Victor.”
    â€œRight.”
    â€œLast visitor was the woman. Hailey. Two breakfasts ago. I had a lemon poppy seed muffin went purple smoke.”
    â€œWe meant to visit more often.”
    â€œLife gets busy. Visits are hard.”
    â€œNo excuse.”
    â€œBut true. You were the first. Snuck up here. Took me, oh , awhile to figure you were real— did not eat yours! Before you, was decades of secret lonely. Thanks.”
    â€œYeah, well it was good for us, too.” Locked alone in that padded room, he couldn’t see me smile. “Sneaking up here kept us sharp. Kept us us . Plus, we