by Paul Herron
None of it looks promising. And it’s only going to get worse over the next eighteen hours.
He sits at his desk and listens to the storm. The noise is relentless, a constant barrage of howling and screaming. The heavy slam of rain on the roof. The constant creak of the building, like it’s about to collapse at any moment.
He gets up and peers through the small window. It looks like the middle of the night. Something is sparking and flashing in the distance. A fallen electric cable? Fuck. That’s all they need. For the power to trip. They have generators that would keep them going for… what? Twelve hours if they’re lucky. Emergency lighting would work, air circulation, that kind of thing. But after that? Everyone would be screwed.
What the hell is he supposed to do? Just wait? For help that isn’t going to come? Have they been abandoned? Forgotten in the chaos? It’s entirely possible. But where does that leave them?
Fuck.
Montoya has gotten through his life by avoiding making big decisions. Big decisions mean big risks, and big risks mean lots of blame if something goes wrong.
What should he do? There’s no way they can evacuate everyone. Hell, they only have one bus. The rest had been taken to fetch inmates from the other prisons. It will be a tight squeeze to fit just the skeleton staff that is still here.
He keeps skirting around his thoughts, not liking where they want to go. But he can’t avoid it any longer.
He stares at his desk. Not blinking. Not moving. He’s scared that if he moves, the idea will become real. That it will mean acknowledging he is capable of such thoughts.
But it’s there. Waiting. An insidious root that crawls through his mind, pushing its way forward.
He can leave the inmates behind.
Abandon them to their fate.
If the hurricane passes and the prison is still standing, no harm done. Really, his duty is to his officers. They’re innocent of any crimes, whereas the inmates—they’re murderers, rapists, child-killers, drug dealers.
Why should he risk his life for them? He deserves more. His staff deserves more. And it’s not as if he’s just abandoning them to die. Of course not. He’ll evacuate the staff, then once they’re out of the hurricane path he’ll inform the National Guard that the prisoners still need help. Hell, he might even get a medal. Everyone could die if he doesn’t take the brave step and leave, exposing himself to the elements to get word out. He’s doing the right thing here.
He pushes the button on his desk mic. “This is Sheriff Montoya. All staff is directed to meet in the cafeteria. Repeat, all staff to the cafeteria right now.”
He grabs his car keys, then pauses. Habit. None of them can just drive out in their cars. They won’t make it twenty feet. The bus is their only hope. He drops the keys back on the desk and leaves the office.
The cafeteria is full by the time he arrives. Lots of annoyed and worried uniforms all talking at the same time. He holds up his hands for silence. It doesn’t make a difference.
“Settle down!” he shouts. He waits till he has their attention. “Here’s the situation. You all know about the hurricane. Well, it’s gotten worse. Hannah and Josephine have joined together and formed some kind of mutant superstorm. Category Five. They say it’s going to be bigger than Irma. Which means we need to evacuate.”
“How the hell are we going to do that?” asks Bright, a young woman from New Orleans. “We have eight hundred prisoners here.”
“I’m not talking about the inmates.” Keep it cool, he thinks. Sell it like your life depends on it. “The staff that is still here is evacuating in the bus now. Jefferson says the Federal Emergency Management Agency is working with the National Guard and are going to evacuate the prisoners as soon as they can.”
“Who’s staying behind to keep an eye on things?” asks someone.
“No one.”
“But there are people in the infirmary—”
“I understand that. But we’ve got no choice here. Everyone will be locked in their cells till help comes.” He looks around. “Any other questions?”
Nothing. He was expecting some argument, but everyone stays silent. He’s not sure whether he should be happy that it makes things easier for him, or disappointed in their lack of commitment to the job.
“Where are we going?” asks Bright.
“We’ll get onto the I-95 and head north. We keep going till we hit Dade City.”
“That’s nearly three hundred miles away!”
“Yeah, three hundred miles away from the hurricane.”
“Unless it heads north too.”
“We’re not going to think about that,” says Montoya. “Anyway, last I heard it’s going to keep moving west and taper out over the Gulf of Mexico in a couple of days. Let’s just focus on putting miles between us and this place. Okay?”
A few nods from the staff. Not everyone looks comfortable, but no one is complaining.
“Okay… Make sure everyone is in their cells and meet me in R&R in twenty minutes. Go.”
The COs spring into action, filing out of the cafeteria to make sure all the prisoners are locked down. As soon as he’s alone, Montoya sags into a chair and wipes the sweat from his face.
The bus is parked outside R&R in the roofed-over depot, left there after bringing the inmates back from cleaning the old prison. Jesus. How the hell is that place going to survive the coming storm?
Don’t think about it. Not your problem.
He wasn’t the one who volunteered the place as a refuge in the first place. That’s on Jefferson. In fact, he needs to start seeding that as soon as they get to safety. Jefferson planned all this.
He waits as the staff files into the foyer, arriving in ones and twos. He ticks off their names on his clipboard as they step outside into the depot. The bus slowly fills up, the nervous staff taking their seats, squashing together, some forced to stand and hold on to the seat backs for support. Finally, after about another ten minutes, everyone seems to be accounted for.
He has to check, though. Montoya ducks back inside the prison, moving through the empty corridors, looking into abandoned offices. It’s… eerie. That’s the only word to describe it. All the years he’s been here, the prison has never been empty. There has always been movement, life, plus an overwhelming sense of desperation that he’s always attributed to the inmates. Except that feeling isn’t there anymore. Which kind of means it must have come from the staff instead.
It’s all clear. He heads back to the bus and climbs inside. The driver scowls at him. It’s Hicks. Montoya doesn’t like the look of him. Never has. Young, skinny, greasy skin and a tattoo on his forearm, visible below his rolled-up sleeve.
“We need to get going,” Hicks says.
“The hell you waiting for, then?” growls Montoya. He surveys the bus. It’s filled to bursting point. Everyone looks worried. Scared.
“The gate,” says Hicks.
“What?”
“Someone has to open the gate.”
“Jesus! Louis. Open the gate.”
Louis looks up from his seat. He’s another young kid. Barely into his twenties. “Why me?”
“Because you’re young. You can run faster. Move it.”
Louis hurriedly heaves himself up from his seat and squeezes past Montoya.
“Wait.”
Louis pauses and Montoya unclips the huge key ring he carries on his belt. It’s got all the universal keys he uses to get around the prison. They’re the symbol of his position, his power. He hands it over reluctantly. “You’ll need them to get into the security room.”
Louis grabs the keys and runs back inside the prison. Montoya watches him go, feeling suddenly small and unimportant.
Louis moves quickly through R&R, using Montoya’s keys to get through the locked doors. He heads straight for the closest security room, the one beyond reception that guards the sally port into Unit 1 of General Population. He unlocks the door and pulls a chair over to sit down at the computer, then grabs the mouse a
nd hovers the pointer over the gate leading out of the depot.
He hesitates, eyes drawn to the cells clearly visible on the five computer screens to his left. All the doors are marked red, showing that they’re locked tight.
Christ. He stares guiltily at the screens. They’re running away. What’s the point in pretending? They’re bailing on their responsibilities, saving their own hides because the storm is going to take them out.
If they leave the inmates like this, they’re all going to die. Drown. Trapped in their cells as the water slowly rises.
But is what he’s contemplating any better?
Yes. It is.
If he was an inmate, he knows what he’d want. He’d want a chance, however small it might be.
He hesitates one last second, then thinks, fuck it, and uses the mouse to open all the cell doors in the prison. Then he opens the doors and sally ports leading between the various units. Obviously he doesn’t unlock the outside doors. He doesn’t want anyone actually escaping. But at least this way the inmates might survive any flooding until help gets to them.
Last thing he does is open the gate, then he sprints back to the bus. He’s done the right thing, surely? The inmates in A Wing would definitely have drowned if he’d left them in their cells. That whole wing sits close to the bottom of the hill, and the prison is already starting to flood.
Yeah, he did the right thing.
About five minutes after the kid heads inside, the depot gate slides open.
As soon as it does so, the shrieking begins.
When Montoya was a kid, he used to stay at his grandma’s house. She had a fireplace she never used, but when the storms came rolling in, the wind would howl and whistle down the chimney, the noise impossible to block out. This noise is the same, only magnified by a thousand—a hundred thousand.
The wind whistles through the slowly widening gap. It hammers the gate, slamming it back and forth in its guide rails. Rain and debris surge into the hangar, slapping into the windshield of the bus.
Something hits hard and cracks the glass. A few of the guards cry out. Everyone grabs hold of the seats. Louis comes barreling back onto the bus, his face pale, eyes wide with fear.
“Keys?” snaps Montoya.
Louis looks confused; then a look of alarm crosses his face.
Jesus Christ, the idiot has lost your keys.
“You want me to go—”
“Just sit the fuck down and shut up.” The keys aren’t important anymore. Staying alive is all that matters.
As the gate opens wider, the depth and pitch of the wailing wind changes, shifting from a shrill whistle to a scream, then to a long-drawn-out thunderous roar.
The bus shudders and rocks as the gate finally trundles to a stop. Hicks just sits there, staring through the windshield, his fingers curling and uncurling around the wheel, his knuckles white.
“Hicks.”
He doesn’t move. Just stares straight ahead.
“Hicks!”
He jerks and turns panicked eyes to Montoya.
“We move, we drive away from the hurricane. We sit here, the hurricane comes to us. Got it?”
Hicks licks his lips, then nods. He revs the engine and the bus edges slowly forward, heading out into an afternoon that is as dark as night.
As soon as they leave the hangar, the wind slams into the side of the bus, lifting it up onto two wheels. This time everyone cries out, Montoya included. He falls back against the doors, the back of his head slamming painfully into the glass.
This is it, he thinks. The bus is going to flip. We’re all going to die.
But then the wind eases slightly and the vehicle slowly heaves back down onto all four wheels. Hicks has frozen again, his knuckles white as he clenches the wheel.
“Move,” says Montoya. “Get up.”
Hicks blinks up at him. “What?”
“You’re a liability. I’ll drive.”
“But… you’re not authorized. I could lose my job.”
“Get out of the fucking seat, Hicks!” shouts Evans, appearing suddenly from behind Montoya and grabbing Hicks by the shirt. Hicks scrambles to his feet and Evans yanks him back toward the passenger seats.
Montoya takes his place, buckling the safety belt over his fat stomach and checking the controls. It’s been a while since he drove a bus, but nothing much has changed. He’s got this.
He puts his foot down and the vehicle surges forward. No time for pussyfooting around now. He wants out of this dump, to get on the road and head north as fast as they can.
He accelerates down the hill, speeding toward the prison gates. The Glasshouse is somewhere on their left, but he can’t even see the lights. It feels like he’s driving in a slowly constricting tunnel. He can’t see anything. Just sheets of rain illuminated by the bus headlights.
The perimeter gate looms suddenly out of the darkness. Montoya slams on the brakes. The bus skids, slewing sideways through the mud before finally rocking to a stop, side-on to the gates. The headlights shine directly on the gatehouse.
If it wasn’t for the electrified fence, he would have just driven through. But he can’t risk it. He doesn’t know if it’s still live. He needs to open the gates properly.
He glances over his shoulder. No one is looking at him. Everyone is staring down, avoiding his gaze. They know what he’s going to ask.
“Evans?” he says hopefully.
Evans looks up, but shakes his head.
Cowards. Fine. He’ll do it himself. He undoes the buckle and pulls the lever to open the doors. He’s instantly drenched, rain surging in and soaking him through, shoving him back with a wet slap.
He staggers outside. The wind punches him as soon as he sets foot on the asphalt. Once, twice, over and over, pummeling him from all sides. He slips and falls to his knees. The wind slams against his back and tries to lay him out flat, but he manages to push himself to his feet and stagger toward the gatehouse. The rain feels like shards of metal against his skin. The roar of the wind deafens him to everything.
Montoya pulls open the door and falls inside. He grabs hold of the desk and pulls himself up. He takes a few deep breaths, then fumbles in his pocket for his keycard and holds it in front of the scanner, unlocking the computer. He scrolls to the front gate controls and clicks on Unlock.
He peers through the window, but can’t see if the gates are opening. He staggers outside, making his way back to the bus. Someone is waiting just inside to open the doors, and he staggers up the steps and drops into the cracked leather seat.
He takes a few steadying breaths, rubs the water from his face. The wipers are on, but aren’t doing a thing. He still can’t see if the gate is open.
He puts the bus into reverse and spins the wheel to the right, the bus slowly coming around to face front. The gates stand wide open. He lets out a sigh of relief. He hits the gas and the bus surges forward. He hunches close to the windshield, trying to see as the bus vibrates and slides along the asphalt.
He eventually stops at the bottom of the road leading up to the prison complex. Two options. The 95 goes straight north, but it runs close to the coast. The 75 will take them west for about a hundred miles before turning north, but will add another hour onto the trip. Left takes him toward the 75. Right to the 95.
He hesitates, but he really doesn’t want to spend any longer than necessary driving in this.
He turns right.
He can’t go fast. He wants to. His foot is itching to jam the pedal right down. But there’s too much debris. Palm trees have fallen into their path. Cars are skewed and abandoned randomly in the road. Some have flipped, others have crashed into each other. The asphalt itself is hidden beneath about a foot of water. He has to be careful. Too much power and they’ll hydroplane.
This trip is going to take longer than he thought. Thank God he didn’t choose the 75.
It takes them twenty minutes to travel the four miles to the 95. He turns onto the interstate with a feeling of relief. Relie
f mingled with nervousness, because the water is deeper here. Easily two or three feet. Plus, the ocean is just to his right. He can’t see it, but he can hear it above the storm, the roaring of the water surging and breaking against the sea barrier. And if he can hear it from inside the bus, it must be crazy out there.
He keeps telling himself it’s okay. He has time. The hurricane hasn’t even hit yet. Jefferson told him landfall would only be at 6 or 7 p.m. As long as he’s far enough north by then—
And then the bus is floating, sliding sideways off the interstate. Montoya hears screaming from behind him, but his attention is focused out the windshield. All he can see is foamy seawater. A huge wave has broken over the barrier and is pushing them off the road.
The water slowly recedes and the wheels touch the ground again. He unclenches his hands from the wheel. They’re shaking. He clenches them into fists to try to steady them. It doesn’t work.
Louis is using the comms, talking to someone. Montoya thinks he hears something about the National Guard, but he can’t focus.
The engine has cut out. He tries to start it up again, but all he hears is a throaty growl that won’t catch. Questions are being thrown at him; he ignores them as he focuses on the engine.
Come on. Start, you piece of shit. Start!
The engine finally coughs reluctantly to life and the demands and questions behind him turn to cries of relief.
He puts his foot down and the bus inches forward.
The sea barrier cracks and falls away, miles of concrete crumbling and washing out into the ocean.
A massive wave hits the bus full on, rolling it onto its side and slamming it up against the lane divider. The water keeps coming, surging through the breach in the barrier, pummeling the vehicle until it’s completely underwater.
Then the bus is pulled back with the current and dumped unceremoniously into the ocean, where it fills with water and sinks slowly to the seafloor.
Seven
3:45 p.m.