Hell’s Janitor

01: Prison Is Dirty

-They called me the Janitor. Well, they called me a lot of things, really. Can’t say to rightly that they were wrong, most of the time. I drank and I smoked and I cursed, like most people do nowadays. Truth be told, I didn’t have much to look forward to. Being a janitor in a prison does that to ya.-

His real name was Bill Locke. And they did have a lot of names for him, although most of them he never heard. The Janitor was the most popular one. Or Trash. They left him well enough alone, if only because he made them feel better about their own predicament.

The Janitor was a portrait of a man on a road to nowhere. Middle aged, approaching his mid forties. He was a grizzled man that looked older. Gray streaks in his hair and beard. A slight beer belly. Rugged skin. A tired look that never seemed to leave. He came into work, day in and day out, and he did his job.

He mopped and swept the floors. Cleaned up the puke and blood off the messhall grounds. Which there was a lot of. He did dishes on the weekends for two hours a day. He did the same thing all the time.

He washed his uniform. He slept in a small room that they rented to him for a depressingly high price. He ignored the tough sounds from prisoners as he walked by. The new ones anyway. Eventually, they all just left him alone.

He watched television until he fell asleep. He drank the cheapest beer and he smoked the cheapest cigarettes. It’s all he spent his paycheck on besides food and porn mags and the occasional hooker.

Bill Locke was a broken man, with no hope left in him. He was as condemned as the prisoners around him. This was it. This was his life. He would live in this prison, doing dishes and cleaning floors, until the day he died some ten or fifteen years down the road. And, although it had taken him a while, he had grown to accept that.

Until now.

It was a Saturday. Bill stared at the calender with a naked redhead lying spreadeagle for the picture of the month to make sure. Yup, it was Saturday alright. It would be working time soon. Dishes. Mountains of them. Trays and plates and silverware and cups and bowls. All of them stained with crud and food, encrusted and hard to get off. He would shove them all through the industrial sized dishwasher down in the kitchen.

But that wasn’t for another two hours. He still had time. On that note, Bill grabbed another brew and popped the top. He put his feet back up on the battered old footrest, reclined in the battered, old recliner and returned his attention to the shitty little tv in the corner. Which was seated precariously on a rickety old table.

The news was on. There was nothing else on, so he watched it anyway. A pale news anchor with slicked back, shiny black hair and a thousand dollar suit sat primly in a swivel chair behind a desk and held a datapad like it meant something. He was talking.

“And in other news, it appears that the rioting around the planet is appearing to increase almost to an uncontrollable level. Three smaller colonies have fallen silent and major fires have broken out in the metropolis of Johnson City that are seemingly uncontrollable. Authorities report that a full scale evacuation is a very serious possibility...”

Bill stared at the television screen uninterestedly. A full scale evacuation? That might shake things up a bit. Bill drained his beer and tossed the can into a pile after crushing it. He reached over to a tiny end table next to his chair. His hand touched blank tabletop. He glanced over and then sighed tiredly.

Out of smokes. Bill placed his feet on the ground. He put the back of the chair up and again wished that the bottom part of it wasn’t broken. The old footrest he’d had to buy had cost him forty bucks. But the thought was a fleeting one. He stood up. Popped his knees and his neck. Reached for that battered old hat.

The hat was floppy and misshapen. It hadn’t been replaced since he’d started ten years ago. It was a faded blue and the white words that represented his job title were even more faded to the point of obscurity. Bill pulled the hat firmly over his head. It was a protector. Something that kept them from messing with him.

He turned off the tv and left the room. Hmm, riots; he mused. The prison had riots fairly often, but none of them ever really got anywhere. Shutting the door, Bill stepped out into the gritty, grimy corridor beyond. Flickering, dim fluorescent lights provided the only luminosity. Bleakly, he made his way down the hallway.

This represented the living quarters of the staff that lived on site. Most of them didn’t, like the guards. It was for people like Bill. Kitchen crew, janitorial, a few of the guards. The librarian. The priest. Those that didn’t have anywhere else to go. Those that lived their jobs and nothing else. Those that had hit rock bottom.

At least the prisoners didn’t have to pay for three hots and a cot. Bill exited the hallway and came into a small lobby. The cigarette machine was nearby. The Janitor reached into his pocket and felt around. His wallet was back at his place. He sighed again. Bill turned and spotted a fat, sweating guard posted behind a desk, staring at a magazine with naked women in it. He was supposed to be guarding the area.

But nothing happened around here.

“Hey, Tom.” Bill said, approaching.

“Yeah, man?” Tom replied without looking away. With his free hand, he grabbed a handful of chips from a family sized open bag on the desk.

“Got a buck?” Bill asked.

“Yeah, man.” Tom replied. He reached into his shirt pocket and fished out a dollar, then tossed it onto the desk. All without looking. A tiny fan that was working itself into overheating blew the dollar onto the floor, halfway across the room.

“Thanks.” Bill said. He walked over, leaned down and retrieved the dollar. On his way again, the Janitor pushed his way through a door into an awful smelling break room that was, for the moment, empty.

He made his way across the room towards the softly humming, glowing cigarette vending machine. It was half empty. Bill heard something outside and could see a flutter of commotion through the barred windows. But he ignored it for the moment. Probably just some ‘look at me, I’m tough’ prison fight.

He inserted the dollar and selected the cheapest brand. There was a buzz, and the bland, white cigarette packed dropped to the bottom. Bill leaned down and pulled it out. He broke the packet open, pulled one out, stuck it in his mouth and lit it up with a blue Bic lighter that said ‘Flick your Bic’ on the side of it.

He flicked his Bic. The cigarette tasted old and bad, but he smoked it anyway.

“Now, what’s this all about?” Bill murmured to himself. He walked over to the window and stared outside.

The exercise yard was on fire and the prisoners and guards were fighting desperately against a ravening horde of the walking undead; whom were feasting upon the living. Bill stared and after a long moment, let out a long sigh. It was a weary sigh, a sigh that said, ‘I’m tired’.

“Zombies, huh?” he said, and took a puff of the cigarette. “Well, okay.”