Chapter Text
“Man, they’re gone.” Slowly, Poussey poked her head around the corner, and upon seeing that the hallway in front of them was empty, gestured Taystee forward. “All the guards. They all got cars. Why would they stay here?”
Taystee wrinkled her nose. “Then what about our girls? Look, I know I was talking about escape before, but thinking about those woods, I don’t like their chances. Maybe after this, we should—”
“Hold up.” Poussey stopped so short that Taystee nearly ran into her. “You hear that?”
The voices that floated up the stairs that led to the laundry room were a very particular type of hushed. They were the voices of naturally loud people trying to be quiet, and not doing a very good job of it. Poussey jerked her head in the direction of the door.
“Uh, guys?” Taystee said as she walked into the room with Poussey at her heels. “If you think we can’t hear you up there in the hall, you’re wrong.” Nicky muttered a fuck under her breath, hopping off the folding table. Morello, who’d been perched next to her with her knees drawn up to her chest, leaned forward just slightly, as if she were thinking about making a grab for her.
“What’s it like out there?” Boo asked. “Still Dawn of the Dead?”
“We killed the one in the yard,” Poussey said. “And we’re, uh…” She trailed off, exchanging an uneasy look with Taystee.
“We gotta go finish off that white girl,” Taystee finished, looking grim.
“Yeah, the one who got bitten,” Poussey confirmed. “Look, we’re sorry if she was your friend and all, but—”
“No, by all means.” Boo strode forward to look cautiously up into the stairwell. “Kill the fucker. How many people are dead out there?”
“One of the guards got turned, so we killed him too,” Poussey answered. Boo arched an eyebrow.
“Okay, new plan. I’m sticking with these guys. They get shit done. Hey, have either of you seen Doggett? The skinny kid with the hoodie?”
“Pennsatucky? She’s in the cafeteria.”
Boo turned to Nicky and Morello, who were still hanging back. Morello had her hand on Nicky’s shoulder, her fingers curled into her shirt. “You really want to go out there?” Nicky asked. “I don’t know, Boo, we got a good thing going in here. Y'know, until we need food, or a bathroom, or—” She ran her fingers through her hair, agitated.
“Chang opened up the commissary,” Taystee offered. “She’s giving all that shit away for free. It’s going fast.”
Nicky let out a snort of laughter. “Going fast means it’s already gone. Come on, imagine it. All those free chips and tampons would’ve been blood in the water.”
But Morello wasn’t really listening— she was staring longingly at the stairs up out of the laundry room. She was almost out of her commissary-bought mascara, and Franny hadn’t topped off her account yet. Who knew if she ever would now? Who knew if she was even safe? She swallowed the lump that was forming in her throat and put a hand over her chest, pressing in with her fingers to try to dull the sudden tightness there.
“Nicky? Nicky, I wanna go, okay? Boo’s right, you know we can’t stay down here forever.” Commissary mascara wasn’t really going to help anything— of course she knew that. It wasn’t even good mascara, and they never carried her brand or any of her favorite shades. But if she could just freshen up her face a little, she knew she’d feel better. The makeup she had on now was smeared with sweat and tears. If she could make herself look nice and ready to take on the world, she was sure things would be just a little bit easier.
“What do you think, Nichols?” Boo asked. “I told Doggett I was going to have her memorize the Dyke Pledge of Allegiance. You really wanna pass up the chance to help me write that? Because this offer is going once, going twice—”
Nicky groaned, but she offered a hand to Morello to help her off the table. “All right, all right, all right. Jesus. Into the shitstorm we go.”
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“What’d they say her name was? Marnie? Mercy?”
“Marcia. You know, like the girl from The Brady Bunch?”
Poussey guffawed. “You watched the fucking Brady Bunch?”
“Man, shut up, I—” This time it was Taystee that stopped short, cutting herself off. “Is that a guard’s radio?”
“Shit, yeah.” Poussey brushed past her and trotted over to where it was lying on the ground several yards ahead of them. “You think we should try to call someone? Do they have their own frequencies? I don’t know how these things work.”
“How the hell did this thing end up on the ground? I thought they were, like, connected to their uniforms.” Taystee took the radio and fiddled with it, tapping the mouthpiece and pressing buttons. “Uh, hello? Hellooooo? Caputo? Maxwell? Anybody, c’mon!”
After a long moment, the radio crackled. “Taystee?”
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“Cindy?!”
“Yo, gimme that!” Janae made a grab for the radio that they’d pulled off the body of Donaldson, lying motionless at their feet. “Guys, there’s dead guards all over the place out here! You lucky we were passing by one and heard you call. When are you coming out?”
“Look, there’s a lot of shit going on in here. White girl zombie’s still running around the dorms.”
Janae scoffed. “That sounds like a whole lot of not your problem.”
“Come on, T.” Cindy leaned in over the radio. “We gonna get us a car.”
There was a second’s hesitation from Taystee on the other end. “We gotta do this. You really gonna go without us?”
In the background, Poussey muttered something that neither of them could catch.
“Man, listen.” Janae pressed a thumb to her temple, kneading it. “This is the smart thing, getting out while we still got a chance.”
“But we got these radios!” Cindy interjected. “We used radios like this at the airport, and they got more of a range than you’d think. By the time you ready to come, maybe we still be in contact. Maybe we can meet up. Y’all go kill your white girl, do whatever you gotta do, and then you come. Aight?” She looked to Janae, standing tight-lipped and silent next to her, for confirmation.
“Yeah,” Janae finally said. “Yeah, Cindy’s got a good plan. Don’t you two go messing it up by feeling like you gotta be the prison heroes just because you the best at killing zombies.”
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After hanging up with Cindy and Watson, Poussey and Taystee were both quiet for a few minutes until Taystee spoke up. “What did you mean by that thing you said?”
“What thing?”
“I asked if they was gonna leave us behind, and you said ‘Wouldn’t be the first time’. What’d you mean by that?”
Poussey looked away. “Think you know what I meant.”
Taystee gripped the radio a little more tightly. “You thinking of me too, when you say stuff like that?”
“Look, just forget about it, okay?” Poussey shook her head, speeding up a little. “Doesn’t matter.”
They walked on in silence.
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“They’re not coming.” Janae’s footfalls quickly turned into outright stomps as she and Cindy continued on their way to the parking lot. “Man, whatever. Doesn’t fucking matter.”
“Woah.” Cindy put a hand on Janae’s arm, stopping her. “Whole mess of Spanish girls, twelve o’clock.”
Mariza noticed them first, and pointed. “Hey, you! Have you guys been bit? You better tell us if you’ve been bit, because—”
“No, we haven’t been bit, fool; you think we’d be alive if we’d been bit?” Cindy snapped.
Janae crossed her arms over her chest. “You all headed to the parking lot?”
“Yup,” Gloria answered, a little warily. Her arm was still around Daya, who had her teary face half-buried against her shoulder.
“You got keys?”
“We gonna hotwire.”
Janae and Cindy looked at each other. Janae gave a slight nod, then turned back to the group. “We walk together for safety?”
Gloria glanced around for any kind of objection, and then answered for them. “Sure. Let’s go.”
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The door to A-Dorm stood ajar. Taystee could see the dead white girl lying on the floor, blood pooling around her from a large hole ripped into her neck. “Damn,” she said in a hushed voice. “She don’t even look like a zombie. She just looks… dead.”
“She’s not gonna look like that for long if we don’t take care of her,” Poussey said. She hesitated a moment, remembering their tense conversation a few minutes earlier, and then reached out and squeezed Taystee’s arm. “Come on. We gotta do it.”
Slowly, the two eased their way into the room.
“I feel like we should say something, like in her honor,” Poussey said as they stood over the body. “This feels fucked. Like desecrating a body.”
“Just be quiet for a minute.” Taystee was breathing a little more heavily than normal. “I just… need the quiet.” She steeled herself, then grabbed the girl by the front of her shirt, trying to avoid touching too much of the blood as she hauled her up and took hold of her head. “Marcia,” she said, staring into her dead face. “I’m real sorry that this happened to you. And I’m sorry we keep calling you ‘white girl’, ‘dead girl’, ‘zombie girl’, all of that. I want you to know—” Her breath caught, but then she continued. "I want you to know that I’m gonna be calling you by your name from now on. I didn’t know you, but I’m gonna remember who you were.” She looked over at Poussey. “You got anything you wanna add?”
Poussey swallowed thickly and shook her head. “Nah, that was good. That was perfect.”
“Okay, then.” Taystee closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and swung Marcia’s head hard towards the concrete wall.