Prison buses and trucks with horse trailers were peeling out of the rear staging area, some covered with crazy attackers, some crashing before they got out of the parking lot. The animals were all over the place. Marcus saw a bucking, panicked mare with a blazed face dragging a snarl of concertina wire with people tangled up in it.

Making for the inner gate of the camp-the triple-fortified central compound that contained the main cellblock-Righteous and Voodooman found themselves once again falling in with a fleeing mob, but here there were fewer crazies to be seen, perhaps because all the spectators had reflexively run the opposite way and were bottled up down at the exit. This was a much smaller crowd, mostly prisoners and trusties, not a single one of them female, and some even armed.

The gate guards watched stupefied as men poured through from the farm, unsupervised and completely out of order, babbling incoherently about crazy women and blue devils. The guards didn't try to stop or interrogate them-leave that for the block captains and the warden, wherever he was. The quick-response team had already been dispatched to the arena with tear gas as well as more lethal munitions. Clad in their imposing black riot gear and shields, resembling a Roman cohort, they'd mop up any trouble quickly, and the prisoners knew it. Emergency procedure during a jailbreak was first and foremost to get everybody under lockdown, and these boys were obviously eager enough to do that for themselves.

Voodooman and Righteous Weeks were another story: Two convicts riding into a restricted area on the warden's prizewinning stud was a clear violation of something, and the guards were quick to draw down on them. "Stop right there!" they shouted. "Get down off'n that horse!"

"You gotta close the gate!" Marcus shouted, jumping to the ground. "They're right behind us!"