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  Dead Snupe

  A Novella

  Copyright © 2017 by Spikes Donovan

  Thanks for purchasing my newest novella! You should be able to read it in about two and half hours. When you’re finished, you’ll have a good idea of what technology will be able to do for you – and to you – in the near future.

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  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Be sure to check out Spikes Donovan’s free book at Amazon Books!

  The Last Infidel

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter One

  You might say that I was one of the lucky ones at Long Wait Prison. When I got there, I still remembered my family, my friends, and most of my life before my arrest. But some of those memories are fading now, like ghosts crossing over; and some, I’m afraid, are already gone.

  I was the kind of kid that liked riding the rapids on the Ocoee River in Tennessee, hiking, and camping with my Mom, Dad, and my best friend, Carlos Sanchez. If you saw me, you’d swear I was a basketball player – or maybe the goal post – because I’m six-foot-nine. Pretty tall for a high school senior. I’m always reminded by one teacher here at Long Wait that I’m a bedazzling blonde with amazing blue eyes. I can’t see how my looks are really any of her business, but I just smile, wink back, and leave her to her fantasy. I’m Ryan Glass. Some refer to me as the guy who wears his pants one size too baggy. Some call me the tall dude. But I prefer to go by Shorty, for less obvious reasons having to do with my ability to get things done here in prison, all of it under the radar. My grades are top notch, the staff trusts me and leaves me alone, and none of the students here gives me any trouble.

  That’s because I’m the student-chef-in-charge of the cafeteria, and unless you want your just desserts – and a bad case of diarrhea – you’d better learn to stay on my good side.

  I have everyone at Long Wait Prison eating out of the palm of my hand. If you’re dying for a pizza at midnight, I can get it for you. If a basket of hot, wilting, chocolate chip cookies is your thing, I can make it happen. If you’re a teacher needing to impress another teacher, I can rustle up steak, lobster, a bottle of wine, a table in the terrarium up on the roof, and a student violinist. Whatever you want, I can get it for you – as long as I can get it, of course.

  But, like everything else at Long Wait Prison, my catering services come with a price tag. Nothing’s free here in Long Wait – and everybody knows that. Most people pay for goods and services up front, or they pay cash on delivery. But I do things differently. I bill my customers because, one day, I’m going to need their help getting out of here. For me it’s like buying lottery tickets that never expire, and I’ve bought more than my fair share. One of these days, my lucky stars are going to line up. And Long Wait Prison has enough stars behind bars to build a second Milky Way. I’m talking about kids with real ability, kids like Elton Peacock, for instance – probably the sharpest kid I’ve ever come across here at Long Wait Prison.

  I knew Elton was strange right out of the chute, and it wasn’t because he wore those thick, over-sized glasses, used too much hair gel to tame a wild cowlick that seemed to have a life of its own, or because his tie reached down below his knees. I mean, sure, he looked like he’d just stepped out of the latest cartoon, but so did a lot of other kids. But what do you do with a twelve-year-old who passes up a movie and popcorn every Saturday night to read the latest report on Quantum Mechanics? Yep. That’s what I said, too: the boy must have been from another galaxy. Kids here teased him when they first met him – pointing at his funny glasses, messing up his hair, yanking on his tie. But Elton never knew what to make of it other than smile and laugh, and you knew he meant it, too. In fact, years later, he told me he liked all that attention – that it was better to be picked on than to be ignored. The looniest thing I ever heard. But maybe that’s why the boy became a hit with all the girls here at Long Wait Prison. After all, everybody, including the girls, loves the underdog as much as they love the bad boy. I was neither.

  In spite of his age and appearance, Elton could memorize a page in a book just by smelling it. He was just that good. In class, teachers ignored him when he raised his hand just so they could give the other kids a chance to answer a question. And you hoped that once, just once, Elton might get at least one answer wrong. But it never happened – not in class discussions, not on tests, and not with the teachers in their offices.

  One day, when Elton was thirteen, old Ms. McConnell went nuts because he’d asked her one too many times to cite references to back up something she’d said. She ignored his request, but he insisted. The class was full at the time – full of juniors and seniors. The headmistress of Long Wait usually handled discipline issues, but Ms. McConnell was of a mind to take care of things herself that day. And boy did she. By the time Headmistress Miller found out what had happened, the damage had been done.

  Ms. McConnell dragged Elton into her adjoining office and slung him to the floor. She held him there for thirty seconds, slapping and punching him in the face and swearing at him like a hooker cursing a sailor who hadn’t a dime after the fact. Then she grabbed him by his tie, swung him around the room, and let go. Elton tumbled into her wooden desk and broke his nose. Then Ms. McConnell picked up her tablet and called the prison doctor and told him that Albert Einstein was dying. When the doctor and nurse arrived, they found Ms. McConnell in tears. She tried to inform the doctor that Albert – young Albert – had just returned from space and that, by the grace of God, he’d gotten back before he’d gotten too young and she’d gotten too old. And now that he’d done this awful space-travel thing, there’d be no way she could ever hold a candle to the likes of those lovely young girls in Long Wait. Albert had planned the whole thing from start to finish, knew what he’d been doing from the get-go, she said. The nurse sat Ms. McConnell down and gave her a sedative. Headmistress Miller and security were called, and they hurried Ms. McConnell away.

  The woman had been losing it for some time, is what some kids said, and they meant no harm by it. But after beating the hell out of Elton Peacock the way she did, Ms. McConnell got sent up to Pinevale Rest Home, or some crazy place over in who-knows-where. At least that’s what I heard. Ms. McConnell had taught Physics at Long Wait Prison for nearly forty years, and they say she’d done one heck of a job, too. Even Elton said as much, and he sent her a handmade birthday card every January fifth – through Headmistress Miller, of course – until the day she died. And a few years later, when he got the news that she’d passed, the boy bawled like a baby.

  Elton may have been the smartest guy and one of the finest friends I’ve ever had. But he was also the slickest and sneakiest of any I’ve ever come across. The things he pulled off over the years at
Long Wait Prison were legendary, and I still can’t figure out how he got away with as much as he did. But one of his hobbies was passwords. OPP, as he called them – Other Peoples’ Passwords. He got them, alright, and sometimes he sold them. I should know, because I bought one. I needed access to OFOS, the Online Food Ordering System. Every Tuesday morning, an hour before Administration sent out the food order for the next seven days, I’d tweak it and switch some things around. Maybe I’d order two fewer steaks and add ten Ben and Jerry’s in their place – you get the picture. But I’d always have to be careful to keep the price at the bottom of the screen the same, and that took some doing. Sometimes, it couldn’t be done. But Elton? He never got caught stealing passwords, and nobody ever turned him in.

  I came to Long Wait Prison a few weeks after I started the sixth grade. I remember my arrest – kids here call it The Abortion – like it happened yesterday. There isn’t anything in this world that tears you to pieces like being called into the principal’s office and having cuffs slapped onto your wrists. And when you feel the bite of those cold steel shackles and wonder at the dark faces of the two police officers standing over you, you try to put two and two together. You try to say something, but you can’t. The best you can do is whimper for your Mommy.

  And that’s just what I did.

  A year later, I was formally sentenced for my crime. I committed treason. I gave a speech in speech class arguing for term limits for everyone in the Federal Government. I got the idea from a hundred-year-old book I had found hidden behind a fake wall in Carlos Sanchez’s basement. Carlos insisted I take it home with me, and I did. It was illustrated, written for kids, and full of neat ideas. And since I was a fast reader with a photographic memory, I memorized it fairly quickly.

  That night, I dreamed I had run for the office of President and won.

  My speech went off without a hitch. I just recited verbatim what I’d read in the book. The principal sat in on the class that day, whispering with the teacher while the kids just sat at their desks, staring at their watches, wondering what the heck I was talking about. I should have known then that I’d been had. But, like they say, hindsight is no sight at all. Not really. There is no way I could have known. One of my sources here at Long Wait later told me that Carlos Sanchez got a huge wad of money just after my arrest. He and his family moved uptown. I learned the hard way that friendships in this world always come with a price tag. I was just sorry that I’d been on the sale rack that day and that Carlos was buying.

  I never dreamed a place like Long Wait Prison could exist, a place that was a prison, a school, and a workplace all combined. But it must exist because I’m dreaming about it every day. This is where the government sent me. To Long Wait. The name fits the place because we all know we’re here until – well, nobody actually knows. My sources tell me that the age of thirty is the magic number, but they don’t tell me what the word magic means, and I’m afraid to ask.

  And where is this place? When I found out, I got wobbly on my legs and cried. You won’t believe me when I tell you that I’ve been on the sidewalk just outside of Long Wait, just on the other side of the prison’s ornate, black iron gates. As a child, I often walked there with my parents, heading up Second Avenue North in downtown Nashville on our way to eat at the Old Spaghetti Factory. I would drag a stick along the bars of the gate every time I passed it. The building I’m in belongs to the Federal Government – that much everyone knows, I suspect. Or maybe nobody knows. It’s a large, windowless, brick building, it’s ten stories high, and it takes up the entire city block between Second and Third Avenues. I think.

  This building was built just for people like me – people who think, intelligent people. People who pose a danger to themselves, others, and the United States Government. That’s what they tell you when you get here. But they also point out that you now work for them. Go figure. It’s true that Long Wait is a school of sorts. But it’s actually a prison where America’s best and brightest are put to work for their grateful nation.

  All this to tell you about a guy named Bobby Griffin. Yep. The same one you heard about in the news. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me just say that, without me, Elton Peacock, and a girl I’ll tell you about later, things might have turned out far differently than they did. Not only here at Long Wait, but in the whole I’ll-be-danged Schoolag Archipelago as well. But, like I said, I’m getting ahead of myself. So hang in there for a few moments.

  I’ve already told you about my job in the kitchen. What I didn’t say is that I cook for all of Long Wait’s tenants, which include the teachers and Miss Zoe Miller, the headmistress. The only people I don’t cook for are the State Police thugs. We call them the Boneys, after the creatures of the same name in the classic movie, Warm Bodies. They keep the place, and us, pretty well hammered down around here. Just like everyone else, I have the scars to prove it.

  But being the student-chef-in-charge also means I’m here to protect people – kids who find themselves being bullied or marginalized. It’s not in my job description, it’s just what I do. I’ve helped quite a few kids over the last couple of years, some of them more times than I can count. Take Luther Stacey, for instance, the ten-year-old kid who came to Long Wait after he programmed his stepfather’s sex robot to bite down and shut down, both at the same time. One of the Boneys let me in on that little shindig, showed me the news clips. I suspect I’m the only kid in Long Wait who’s seen it. Tell you about it? No. I’ll let you use your imagination. But Luther was a fat kid, and he got teased the moment he got here. I put him on a diet, got him thinned down, and got him active again. Now he kicks butt on the junior high volleyball team.

  And then there was April Olson, a ninth-grader. Not a bad looking girl, not by a long shot. But not good enough for Long Wait’s Bitch Clique, if you’ll pardon the expression. I don’t like the phrase, but that describes them. You know girls. Maybe April was too friendly, too unassuming – heck, I don’t know. But I do know what Dad always told me. He said, “The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.” So I put April in charge of the chocolate supply. Didn’t take long for her to meet every guy and girl in the joint. Now she’s the most popular girl in school – even when we’ve run out of chocolate.

  Thanks to the Calorimeter, my team in the kitchen knows just what each kid in Long Wait needs for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. That means I can play with your meals and nobody can say diddly about it. If you’re a bully, I’ll lace your ice cream with time-released laxatives that slice through your guts right in the middle of whatever it is you’re doing. And I’ll be there to watch it happen, too. Or maybe on steak night, I’ll arrange a little scam. I’ll tell the kid being bullied to get in line behind the bully. When the bully steps up, I’ll point to the Calorimeter, shake my head, and tell him the machine says Bran and Kale Smoothie. He shakes his head because he knows he’s gonna be on the toilet all night. The bullied kid gets the steak and, per my instructions, trades his steak for the bully’s smoothie. I’ve gotten more bullies and bullied together in Long Wait than I can count. And that’s the danged truth. Headmistress Zoe Miller seems as happy as a fried clam that I’ve worked out this little thizzang between the oppressor and the oppressed.

  I tell myself I’m doing the Lord’s work here, that I’m a real social justice warrior. But I also want out of this place. Since I’m surrounded by all of these geniuses, some of whom might be able to get me out of here one day, I do what I have to do to win them. And if the crap ever hits the fan, I know there’ll be somebody standing next to me holding an umbrella.

  You can call me selflessly selfish if you want to. But I’ve got the best job in Long Wait, and everyone knows it. I have power here. And I’ll tell you right now that, when I caught Bobby Griffin – the guy I want to tell you about – stealing ten feet of wire from under one of my serving islands one night, I let him have it.

  Bobby Griffin was ripped from the world and sent to Long Wait in the summer of 2034. He was a year behin
d me, in eighth grade. He was fourteen years old at the time. April was at the Calorimeter that night, saw him coming, and made a few remarks about him. She vowed and declared she could see something wonderful in his face. Maybe it was a goodwill sort of thing she saw, or maybe a spark of joy she detected underneath all that shock and fear gnawing on his face. Now, looking back, I suspect April had just taken a fancy to the kid like girls always do when the new boys arrive.

  Bobby had short brown hair that was pulled back, revealing a strong, innocent face. He wore thick black glasses, and he had clear blue eyes buried deep in their sockets. His eyes shifted every time something near him moved, just like mine did when I first got here. He still wore his street clothes. Good stuff. Levis, Nike shirt – tucked in neatly. Nike shoes. I could tell then that Bobby had come from money. Maybe I thought it because I’d never owned any clothes as nice as he wore that day. My folks weren’t rich. But they were richer than some. And I always got my shoes used, at Marti and Liz’s.

  Bobby was an industrial-strength computer whiz outside in the real world. And I’m talking an absolute marvel. A real magician with the keyboard. Not like a lot of kids back then doing the usual crazy stuff on computers. You know how the social media was, how it still is. Kids stealing your information, selling your email address for two bucks a pop to the list people, putting your face on nude models and sharing it with all your friends. Bobby was the unreal deal. Maybe he was a whiz because he worked with his father, Curtis Lane Griffin, the Curtis Lane Griffin of Cyber International; and you know a man with three names who runs that place has got to be without peer. And if he’d been teaching his kid everything he knew, then Bobby must’ve been at the top of his game before he stopped crapping his diapers. Like I said, the boy was one heck of a computer geek. And you could just smell it.