The Road to Nowhere

Even though his given name was John, his parents called him Jack from the get go, kind of in the same fashion as JFK. Life at home with an abusive alcoholic wasn’t easy and he grew up hard. By the time he was fourteen he was in juvenile detention convicted of aggravated assault for beating his father into a coma. His first armed robbery occurred when he was only sixteen.

By the time he was eighteen he was seasoned vet and placed into an adult facility. Over the first few months of being inside, things were brutal. Tall, lean, good looking, it didn’t take too long before the vultures started circling the fish to try and get a piece of his ass. He was having none of it and made it clear in no uncertain terms, but sometimes people can’t take no for an answer

One such person was Moses Able, a lifer, and ranking member of the fairly strong Red Hand faction within the joint, and he had a thing for handsome fresh faced Jack, but when Jack didn’t give it up willingly, he sent out some thugs to drag Jack back so he could take it.

Jack reached up and touched the faded scar on his face. He got that memento the day it went down, that and seventeen other puncture holes in his body, but in the end, he survived and two of his attackers were dead. And Moses never got ahold of Jack.

He spent the next three months in the prison infirmary, during which the investigation into the incident concluded that though excessive, Jack’s actions fell under the umbrella of self-defense.

The day he got out of the prison’s hospital ward, he tracked down the orchestrator of his attack, Moses Able and went to his cell and beat him so bad the man was left little more than vegetable. He was still in the cell, stomping the man when Tactical interceded and took him down. He got four additional years added to the end of his sentence, ‘for the vicious and callous nature of the offense’, plus he spent eleven months in the digger, another name for punitive solitary confinement.

It was all about respect and by the age of twenty, he had earned some stripes, but he knew it wasn’t over. The Red Hand would eventually be coming for him, undoubtedly green lit to take him out. It was around that time he met Jake Ryan, young like him and in the crosshairs of the some of the jail’s resident chicken hawks. Jack pulled him under his wing and the pair became tight. In a span of less than a year, Jack’s circle of acquaintances grew forming a crew consisting of eight, each solid, each willing to take a blade for the other.

The bigger groups began to take some notice, particularly, the Red Hand. They made their move the day Jack turned twenty-two. When the smoke cleared, there were seven dead prisoners, one of his people, the other six belonging to the Red Hand.

The whole jail went on lockdown and stayed that way for half a year during the aftermath. Jack and Jake both wound up in solitary, though housed side by side where they could still talk to one another. The whole jail knew the play, knew what happened, but nobody seemed willing to testify other than one jailhouse pigeon who somehow wound up OD’d on junk in protective custody.

When administration lifted the lockdown, the landscape was different. Four of Jack’s guys had been shipped out to three other jails and several members of the Red Hand had been scattered throughout the region.

With only three of them left in Stonehaven, Jack, together with Jake and their other remaining crew member, a hulking brute of a human being whom they called Kong, based on the fact the man looked like a bigger version of the wrestler named King Kong Bundy, maintained a fairly low profile, content to just let sleeping dogs lie.

In the vacuum created by the outgoing transfers, another power emerged fairly rapidly, absorbing the remnants of the Red Hand and calling themselves the New Order. Using force and intimidation, the New Order quickly dismantled several of the smaller cliques, recruiting them to bolster their ranks, but as the organization was growing, with no counterbalance to keep it in check, it was becoming increasingly more corrupt, ruthless, and underhanded.

Jake said the wrong thing to someone in passing, offense was taken, and he wound up shanked and left and for dead.

Another lockdown ensued. A day after the stabbing, Officer Kelton came by Jack’s cell to let him know Jake had died in the infirmary while they were awaiting emergency medical transport. Jack raged, surrendering to mindless anger lest grief get ahold of him. Filled with dark purpose, he plotted, pulling together resources and personnel to prepare a counter offensive the moment the screws cracked the gates.

Three days later, the lockdown was lifted, an hour later, the whole jail was in a condition of pandemonium as a full scale riot erupted.

It took five days for staff supported by elements of the National Guard before they were able to retake control of the prison. When the dust settled there were fifteen prisoners dead and damages estimated in the millions placing Stonehaven in the same breathe as New Mexico State, Attica, or Lucasville.

Amongst the dead, all three executive members of the New Order. Anyone who knew anything, said nothing, others whispered it was One Eyed Jack, the man sporting a black heart tattoo on one side of his neck, a spade on the other, one each for the two one eyed jacks in a deck of playing cards.

All of the suspected instigators were rounded up and involuntarily transferred up in security including Jack and Kong, both winding up in Elmhurst Supermax. On twenty three and a half hour lockdown every day, Jack spent two years in solitary with little to do except exercise.

In the course of the next three years, Jack was bounced around to four different jails, moving frequently because no one wanted him, fearing the mischief he might incite. Eventually he wound up back at Stonehaven, five years after he left. Stepping off the transport bus, he was immediately taken to the hole where there was a reception party of guards who remembered him from his previous stint and beat him bloody and unconscious, leaving him for three days in handcuffs and shackles.

Warden Dawes came down to the hole personally, telling Jack he wasn’t a shot caller anymore, just a broken down excuse of a man clinging to an obsolete con code and reading him the riot act, demanding Jack sign a behavioral contract as a condition of getting out of solitary and remaining in Stonehaven. Jack shook his head and spat on the paper.

That was a six months ago, and now he was in the Pit.