by Shaun Hutson
He reached down for the door-knob; his hand rested on it.
If the orderly was there he would want to know why Scott was out of bed.
If he wasn't, he couldn't be far away.
If…
Scott glanced down at the door-knob again.
He swallowed hard.
Still silence from the other side.
He hesitated, looking across at the bedside table. To the jug of water.
Scott turned and headed back, sitting on the edge of the bed. He waited a moment then pushed the metal jug. It landed with a loud clang on the floor.
No one came running to see what was happening.
The door didn't open.
Scott got to his feet and crossed to the door, this time turning the knob immediately. He peered out into the room beyond. It was empty but for a small desk and some cupboards round the walls.
On the corner of the desk was a steaming mug of tea.
Scott realised that the orderly who'd left it would be back to claim it.
He had to move fast.
The laundry chute was directly opposite him, a hole in the wall about three feet square.
Scott closed the door behind him and made for the chute, clambering in feet first, feeling the cold metal against his back when the surgical gown opened. He supported his weight against the frame of the chute, aware of the dull ache in his skull.
Please don't let it be a long drop.
He let go of the frame.
His weight carried him faster than he would have liked; in seconds, he found himself coming to the bottom of the chute. He went hurtling off the metal lip and sprawled on a pile of dirty sheets, rolling over once.
He grunted in pain as he hit the bottom and flopped over onto his back, the pain in his head intensifying for a moment.
It was almost pitch black in the laundry room, the only light coming from a furnace that stood in the centre. It was used to burn any linen too soiled to be used again. The small chamber was lit by a hellish red glow from the furnace's mouth.
Scott got to his feet, touching his head tentatively, aware of the stench around him.
The sheets he was lying on were smeared with excrement. Scott grunted and dragged himself upright, wiping the reeking mess from his hands with a clean portion of the sheet. Still, they had served their purpose to break his fall. As he looked around he could hear the low rumble of the furnace. The stone floor beneath his feet was warm.
Scott squinted in the gloom and finally found what he sought.
The laundry cart was there, just as Porter had promised.
Scott crossed quickly to it, rummaging through the dirty linen inside.
He found the prison overall.
Moving swiftly he pulled off the surgical gown and tossed it aside. Climbing into the overalls, he held on to the side of the cart momentarily as he felt a particularly violent stab of pain inside his head.
Not now.
It passed. He continued searching through the cart, ignoring the stench that rose from its contents.
His hand closed over the torch and he pulled it free. Ficking it on, he tested the beam in the gloom of the furnace room.
At the bottom of the cart he found the knife.
It was fully ten inches long; Porter must have taken it from the kitchen. Scott ran his thumb gently along the edge of the blade, feeling its razor sharpness. Satisfied, he slid it into his belt.
The door of the furnace room opened out onto one of the prison's two courtyards. As Scott peered into the night he could see search-lights moving slowly back and forth over the open, cobbled area.
A little to his left was the drain cover, two feet square and rusted. He knew he must remove it.
He stood there for moments, trying to estimate how long he had between the light passing. It was no more than ten seconds.
The beam swept by and Scott hurried across to the cover. He dug his fingers inside and pulled.
It wouldn't shift.
The light was turning, sweeping back towards him.
He pulled at the lid again.
Jesus, it was heavy.
Five seconds before the light returned.
He pulled.
Pain filled his head as he grunted with the effort.
Four seconds.
It moved a fraction.
Three.
Scott dropped the lid again and scurried back inside the furnace room as the light swept by.
He watched it disappear in a wide arc then tried the lid for the second time.
It moved a fraction more, the rusty metal scraping against the stone.
Come on. Come on.
The light was beginning its movement back towards him.
Scott lifted, his muscles screaming with the effort, the pain in his head intensifying.
Nine seconds away.
The drain lid was coming away.
Eight.
He lifted it free with a final triumphant grunt and shone the torch down into the black maw below.
Seven.
The powerful beam picked out a rusted metal ladder. Far below, the light reflected on the surface of a stream of filthy water.
Six.
Scott swung himself into the outlet, climbing down the first few steps. Gripping the metal grille in one hand, he hauled it back into place behind him.
Five.
Jesus, the pain.
Four.
The grille dropped into place above him.
Three.
He clambered down the next few rungs as the light swept over. Scott hugged the ladder, his breath coming in gasps. He shone the torch below surprised how far down the shaft went. The old sewers must be a good seventy or eighty feet below ground. Scott swallowed hard, then began to descend.
NINETY-ONE
The stench was almost unbearable in the tunnels but Scott pressed on, wading through filthy water that lapped as high as his knees. The walls on either side of him were crumbling, pieces of rotten stone falling away as he touched them. Occasionally his hand encountered patches of the green slime that coated the subterranean passages like putrid mucus. It was like walking through the gangrenous veins of some sleeping giant, paddling in stagnant blood.
Scott realised that the sewer tunnels were so full because of the rain that was still falling. The knowledge hardly made his journey any more palatable, all the same. He would stop every few hundred yards to catch his breath and try to get his bearings. The tunnels usually ran straight, but when he reached the junction of two he had to be sure he was travelling in the right direction; otherwise he would merely double back on himself and end up wandering these cavernous halls until he collapsed.
There was one such junction up ahead.
Scott leant against a wall, feeling the slippery slime soaking through his overall. He ignored the cold and pointed the beam ahead. It cut through the tenebrous blackness, picking out something that glinted dully in the luminosity.
About fifty yards ahead there was a grille, the steel not yet rusted and crumbling like most of the metalwork down there. It must have been recently fitted, he assumed. Behind the grille the tunnel was much narrower. At present Scott could walk without needing to stoop; if he'd been able to get past the grille he would have been forced to crawl, such was the narrowness of the outlet beyond.
He moved off to his right, grunting as he felt a renewed stab of pain inside his head.
He tried to quicken his pace, but the water rushing around his knees prevented that. He fought his way on through the reeking flow.
Again he paused, sucking in deep lungfuls of the vile air, coughing at its rankness. The spasm set off a dull and persistent ache in his skull. He closed his eyes for a moment, touching one hand tentatively to his bandaged head.
When he brought his hand away he noticed, with horror, that there was blood on his fingers.
'Oh God,' he whispered, the sound amplified by the confines of the tunnel.
He must have opened up the wound when he f
ell from the laundry chute, he guessed. He'd have to be careful to keep it clean. If any of the dirt down in the sewer got into it, God alone knew what would happen.
Scott pushed on, reaching another tunnel junction.
Left, right or straight on?
He shone the torch first one way, then the other.
The right hand tunnel was blocked about twenty feet on by a new stone wall.
He chose to go straight on, trying to get some kind of mental picture of where he was. He guessed he was below D Wing by now. He couldn't be that far from the wall, surely? It felt as if he'd been walking for hours. His body was quivering from the cold and the pain inside his skull was getting worse.
Perhaps it was the cold breeze blowing into his face which…
The realisation hit him like a thunderbolt.
Cold breeze blowing into his face.
The breeze had to be coming from up ahead.
He'd passed beneath many outlets above, but had felt no cold air coming through them because of the depth of the tunnels. But now the wind was blowing into him. He must be heading in the right direction. He pushed on, his throat dry, his head throbbing but the thought of escape now giving him added energy.
Escape.
It had a beautiful ring to it.
He even managed a smile.
Ahead of him there was a loud splash.
Then another.
Something had dropped into the water.
Scott shone the torch around and it picked out two pinpricks of yellow light.
Eyes.
Staring back at him.
There was another splash, closer this time.
He felt something nudge his leg.
There were rats in the water.
The knowledge brought with it a stark and quite irrational terror that he found difficult to shake off. He moved forward more slowly now.
Close by him a furry shape scuttled along the low ledge that ran alongside the flowing effluent.
Scott moved away, his hand sliding into more of the noxious slime that coated the walls.
He moved as quickly as he could, the cold breeze now strong in his face.
Ahead, less than twenty feet away, he saw the grille.
Beyond it he could smell grass.
He tried to run, to reach the barrier more quickly, gripping it with both hands when he finally did. He could see through, out into the darkness of the night. He could see trees swaying, silhouetted against the swollen clouds that filled the sky. The stream of filth was now hardly over his boot tops. He tugged at the grille.
It remained firmly in place.
He tried again.
Still no luck. It was stuck fast, secured by six heavy screws which fixed it to the wall.
Scott pulled the knife from his belt and placed the blunt edge in one of the grooves on the screw-head. He turned it, putting all his strength into it, his teeth clenched.
He closed his eyes as he felt that all-too-familiar pain inside his skull.
The screw began to come free.
He turned it, twisting it the last quarter of an inch with his fingers. He dropped it into the water and set about the second one. Then the third.
Despite the cold wind he could feel the perspiration on his face as he worked to remove the screws.
The last one came free and he tugged the grille away from the wall, hardly feeling the pain as the steel cut into the palm of his hand. He tossed it aside and blundered out into the fresh air, almost slipping on the muddy ground. He breathed in the air. Clean air. Untainted by the stench of captivity.
The air that came with freedom.
He wondered if revenge would smell the same.
A brief image of Plummer flashed into his mind.
Then Carol.
He set off across the open ground towards the trees. Beyond it there was a road.
He would be well away before first light.
Free.
He ignored the pain in his head as best he could, but as he ran across the muddy ground a thought occurred to him.
The effects of the morphine were beginning to wear off.
And when it did, the pain would return.
Pain unlike anything he'd ever felt before.
Scott looked back over his shoulder, as if fearing he was being followed.
The prison seemed to be a part of the night itself, the huge walls apparently hewn from the solid blackness.
He ran on.
He knew what he must do now.
NINETY-TWO
The pain was returning.
Unchecked by pain-killers, it filled his skull more intensely as each moment passed.
Scott fell against a tree and leant there, slumped and dishevelled, trying to get his breath, trying to think about something other than the excruciating agony that was lancing through his head. He put both hands to his temples and felt the bandages there. He fancied he could feel his cranium swelling with each beat of his heart.
He had reached the road now. Looking back in the direction of Whitely, he could see that the prison had all but disappeared in the tenebrous blackness of night. Rain was falling heavily now, the cold droplets beating onto his head. He stumbled onto the tarmac and began walking, not even sure which direction he was heading. Scott didn't know how far the nearest town was but, he surmised, there must be a house of some kind in the vicinity. It was farming land around the prison. Surely there would be somewhere for him to seek shelter. He flicked off the torch and jammed it into his belt along with the long bladed knife, using both hands to wipe the rain from his face as he walked. Every step seemed an effort. And, with each contact he made with the ground, that searing pain would spear through his skull, making him wince, once almost making him topple over.
Make it stop.
He leant against one of the trees at the roadside, hoping the pain would subside. Then he pressed on, turning a bend in the road.
To his left, across a dark field, he saw some lights.
A house.
Just ahead of him was a wooden gate that opened onto an unguarded dirt tract. Scott assumed it led to the house. He could see rain falling in the puddles that had formed in the ruts of the track. As he tried to edge his way forward, avoiding the worst of the mud, one foot slipped in the slimy ooze and he sank up to his ankle in the clinging muck.
Cursing, he shook himself loose and prepared to trudge on towards the beckoning lights.
The approach of car headlamps made him duck back into the bushes.
The car, he guessed, was about a hundred yards off, its lights cutting a swathe through the gloom as it drew nearer.
It was moving slowly, the driver obviously taking care in the treacherous conditions.
Scott, his head throbbing, remained hidden in the sodden bushes.
If only he could stop it…
He touched the hilt of the carving knife almost unconsciously.
The car was less than fifty yards away now; soon the headlamps would pick him out.
He moved quickly, walking out into the road, lying down on the wet tarmac. It was an old trick but it was all he could think of.
He lay on his side, facing away from the car whose engine was now audible. His left arm was stretched out beneath his head, his right resting on his hip, close to the knife.
The pain filled his head as he lay there, rain beating against his pale face.
The car rounded the corner, its lights picking out his immobile form. He heard the driver slam on the brakes, the slight squeal of rubber as the car came to a slippery halt on the greasy surface. He lay there, rain soaking through his overalls, waiting.
Waiting.
The car was still where it had stopped, its lights bathing Scott in a cold white glow.
This wasn't right. The driver should have leapt out of his car. Instead, Scott could only assume that the man was still sitting behind the wheel wondering what to do.
Come on. Come on.
He heard a door open, heard a woman's voice in
the background saying something about being careful. Then he heard a man's voice too.
There were two of them in the car, perhaps more; he couldn't see from the position he was in.
He heard footsteps coming closer, hesitant and unsure.
His right hand slipped a couple of inches so that it was touching the hilt of the knife.
The footsteps came nearer. A shadow fell over him, the driver silhouetted in the powerful headlamps.
'I think he's alive,' the man called, moving nearer.
He could hear the engine of the car idling.
The man could only be a few feet from him now.
Scott heard more footsteps. Drawing closer.
Closer.
The man knelt beside him; Scott could even hear him breathing. He felt a hand on his shoulder, turning him gently on to his back.
'Oh, Christ,' murmured the man, noticing Scott's prison uniform, spotted as it was with blood and excrement, reeking of filth.
Scott's eyes snapped open and he found himself gazing into the terrified features of a man roughly his own age.
Scott struck out with his left hand, catching the man full in the face with a punch that broke his nose. He fell backwards, cracking his head on the concrete of the road, opening a gash on the back of his skull that immediately began oozing blood.
Scott was up in a second, hurdling the prone man, heading for the car.
He saw and heard the woman scream as she locked the passenger side door, then leant over to secure the driver's side of the Renault.
Scott grabbed the handle and tugged, managing to beat her to it.
She screamed again and tried to back away from him,
but he grabbed her by the hair and pulled her across the driver's seat, hurling her from the car into the wet bushes at the roadside. One of her high heels came off and she scraped her face on the branches as she fell, blood running from a cut on her cheek.
Scott slid behind the wheel, jamming the car into gear.
The man was rising, coming towards the car again, blood streaming from his nose.
Scott floored the accelerator and the car roared, forward like a bullet.
It slammed into the man, hurling him into the air and sideways into the bushes where he landed on his back close to his companion, who screamed again as Scott roared away, exhaust fumes filling the air, mingling with the acrid stench of burned rubber.