The Beasts of Juarez

laughing, too. This caused Atlas to laugh for the first time in months. What the hell…was he actually making friends?
Not likely.
Sitting alone at his own table, he pushed his plastic spoon through the stew, unable to stop the look of revulsion on his face. What he was being forced to eat looked like bite-sized dog meat dipped in cream of mushroom soup with a sprinkling of turmeric and pepper. If meal-planning for the prison system was a state-mandated thing, these motherfuckers were failing miserably. He ate it anyway because he needed the protein and the carbs. If he wanted to survive, he needed to remain quick on his feet and ferocious. If not now, how else would he dissuade the shot callers from messing with him?
He was just about to the bottom of the bowl when some jackass bumped into his back. The inmate sunk his elbow into Atlas’s spine like he was itching to start something. Atlas turned ever so slightly, watching the offending inmate out of the corner of his eye. A few of the stooges at a nearby table snickered, but the rest of the guys—those who saw this as potential entertainment—got extra quiet.
Keeping his head low, largely ignoring them, Atlas snuck an upward glance at the guards on the second floor. They were armed with tasers and shotguns, and judging from past experience, the shotguns were loaded with bean bag rounds. If any of them had seen what had just happened, it wasn’t registering on their faces.
Hunched over but acutely aware of everything, Atlas forced himself to eat the rest of his meal. For as calm as he tried to look, his senses had gone to high alert.
The nature of the talk around him changed, the white noise of the others amplifying. That’s when he heard the fish that bumped him say, “You said I was poking a rattlesnake, but he didn’t even move. What a coward.”
Filtering out all the other noise, Atlas twisted his head sideways and zeroed in on the new guy, some oversized scrub that easily had six inches and fifteen pounds on him.
One of the lifers told the fish, “Your mistake was thinking you’d piss off a rattlesnake. Hargrove is the bear that you just didn’t poke hard enough.”
Atlas felt dozens of eyes fall on him. So it was going to be like this…
Deep inside his chest, he felt the blood pumping a bit harder, fresh stores of adrenaline flooding into his bloodstream. He flexed his pecs, squeezed his biceps, set his jaw. This was not the day to test him, not after he had just done thirty days in the hole. Then again, maybe that’s why this fish felt so brave. Everyone assumed Atlas would take it because he wouldn’t want to go back to solitary. They assumed right. The other possibility was that they were trying to get his ass on the ghost train. Normally he wouldn’t mind a good fight, but Atlas didn’t want to be shuffled around to other facilities, not when Leopold worked so hard to turn the screws on this warden in this prison.
The stupid mutt next to the offending brute glanced at Atlas and then said, “You smoke that dirty pig and you become a legend. Mufukkas here be holding your pockets, not the other way around.”
The big mistake this FNG was about to make was thinking he was dealing with the Atlas Hargrove that first arrived in NorCal State Prison. That particular Atlas was wet behind the ears, asshole freshly probed, dressed in a fresh pair of blues not knowing shit about shit. That guy was soft, scared—a real mess. That guy was dead and gone. Now, five months after Ukraine, with three trips to the hole and multiple prison murders under his belt, he was walking rage, the epitome of a problem child. He wanted that part of him well known. That’s why—until Leopold got him the hell out of there again—he refused to shave his beard, cut his hair, or stop training the several hours a day he did train for whatever fight was coming next.
But the problem with running so hot all the time was that if Leo didn’t summon him soon, if the ultra-rich vigilante financier didn’t give Atlas a proper outlet for all this pent-up agitation, he was going to blow. Unbeknownst to everyone, Atlas’s dreams of dying young hadn’t been squelched in the courtroom. The real death sentence was him dying of natural causes fifty years later after having spent an eternity putting up with these knuckleheads in this god-awful place.
Turning his head, he eyeballed the moron who had nudged him. He was getting ready to take this joker to the floor when an audible ruckus caused him to glance around.
“Fresh meat!” someone called out.
“Fish gets fried!” someone else shouted, prompting the remaining inmates to chime in. The chanting grew louder and louder, the inmates’ voices more fanatical. Pretty soon everyone was stomping their feet and banging their fists on the tables, the uproar so loud, Atlas couldn’t even hear himself think. That’s when he saw the FNG.
“Son of a bitch,” he muttered.
The instant Baxter “Butane” Kirtman was escorted into the proximity of others, the renowned serial killer let loose a shit-eating grin that Atlas hated with a passion. There was a certain kind of ugliness about him you could feel from a mile away. It oozed off him like a sickness, the look of it like toxic waste being rubbed into your eyes.
When Baxter disappeared on his way to his new cell, the noise died down and one of the guards eased up to him. “Don’t get any ideas, child-killer.”
“Like what?” Atlas asked, looking up.
The guard snickered and walked off leaving him to wonder what the heck