New Taboos Read Online Free PDF Page B

left was a wall, to her right were doors, with wired glass windows in them. Faces appeared at the windows to watch, looking ghostly in the shifting, indirect light. Someone shouted at her from a door. She hurried to catch up with Carlos and Rudy.
    They reached the end of the tier, and Carlos tried the door. “Still unlocked!”
    â€œHow about the doors to the outside world?” Faye asked.
    Rudy chuckled. “Separate circuits. Plus there are autoguards, there are drones, there’s the worm, more walls, more buildings, just more and more and more, lady.”
    â€œElectric fences, you go far enough,” Carlos said, leading the way through the door. “Couple of miles out from here. First touch on gives you a little jolt, makes you jump back. Try again, lethal jolt.”
    That reminded her of something she’d read, somewhere, in her research.
“Privatized prisons are so badly built and so inefficiently run they have to be especially harsh to keep prisoners in.”
    They were in a different style of cellblock now. There were bars instead of the wired-window doors. “This is Sub18,” Rudy said. “Part of an old jail. They built the prison around it. They like to have the view into the cells from the walk, here …”
    There were women in the cells, Faye saw; two women in each. They all seemed to be cringing back away from the flashlight as it went by. Most of them were Hispanic; she saw two black and one white woman. All of them were fairly young. They wore prison orange shifts.
    â€œI was told there were no women prisoners in this pod,” Faye said, barely aware she’d said it out loud.
    â€œNot any on the books,” Rudy said.
    â€œI should talk to them.” For a moment she found she couldn’t quite speak, then she asked, “Rudy—is this what … Is it …”
    â€œYeah, Rudy said. “These women are kept here for people to use. Not for other prisoners. I mean, they’re here for big shots, and prison personnel. When they get old enough they get harvested … Oh
fuck!”
    The lights were going on, starting down the tier, flick flash flick flash, as if stalking down the hallway toward them. Faye blinked in the sudden blaze of light.
    Rudy looked around, eyes widening. “Shit—Carlos we got to get back before …”
    Too late. The autoguards were coming from both ends of the cellblock. Behind one of the autoguards came Rita and Gull staring coldly at Faye as they marched toward her. They seemed quite confident behind the rolling, flashing machines.
    â€œDo
not move,”
the autoguards said simultaneously.
“Remain exactly where you are.”

    Faye sat in the warden’s office, across from his desk, her wrists cuffed in front of her. The hand cuffs were linked by a long shiny steel chain to ankle restraints. She wore a prison ID badge on a thong around her neck. She was still in shock, feeling unreal.
    She was sitting in the warden’s office, across from the desk. Sitting at the desk, silent and nervous, was a pale, nearly chinless man in his midsixties, wearing a white shirt and tie, with a badge that said,
Howard Skaffel, Assistant Warden.
Rita stood beside him, her arms crossed against her chest, face expressionless. Gull was waiting just outside the door. Faye could hear him shift his weight out there from time to time.
    â€œAre you a Muslim, Faye?” Rita asked.
    She’d called her Ms. Adullah before. Now she’d switched to that condescending use of the first name that people in authority chose when they were treating you like a bad child.
    Just get through this. They can’t do this for long. Eventually they have to let you go. They’re just trying to scare you.
    â€œA Muslim?”
    â€œYour father was Muslim.”
    â€œIt’s not an ethnicity. It’s a religion. I’m not a believer.”
    â€œYou’re half Palestinian.”
    â€œI’m partly