by Paul Herron
Lucky number seven, she thinks woozily.
She lifts her eyes to the inmate. He’s only a few feet away. He’s going to get her.
But then he skids to a stop, his eyes moving along the corridor to her right.
Someone shouts. The inmate turns to run, but four figures bolt past the infirmary door and grab him. He goes down screaming, and the figures pile on him with metal pipes and knives.
Sawyer manages to pull the keys out and close the door. She fumbles, trying to put the key in the lock to secure the door from this side. She feels her vision fading. Everything is turning hazy and gray.
The last thing she hears before she passes out and falls to the floor is the click of the lock sliding into place.
Eight
11:00 p.m.
I’m trapped by a cloying web, suffocating in the darkness. I struggle against it, trying to pull myself up to the tiny light glimmering far above me. I start to panic. Jesus, I’m going to die. I need to get away—
My eyes snap open.
My whole body aches. My muscles are stiff and tight. Like I’ve run a marathon in my sleep.
I attempt to sit up. I hear the sound of clinking metal and my arm jolts to a stop. I squint down in the dim light, trying to focus eyes that feel too big for my head.
My left wrist is handcuffed to a bed.
I look around in confusion, struggling to figure out what’s going on. There’s a dark shape against the wall to my right. I lean closer. It’s an old ECG machine. Unplugged. Dead.
I’m in the infirmary.
What…?
And then I remember. Wright. Tully. Fighting to get to them. Having my fingers around Tully’s neck. The COs coming for me, Evans using his stun gun…
I squeeze my eyes shut and let out a scream of frustration and rage. I had him. I had Tully in my hands and I let him get away.
I thrash around on the bed, pulling against the cuff, straining to get free. My vision swims. My head pulses with the effort, throbbing against my skull.
I drop back onto the bed, fighting down a surge of nausea. I take slow, deep breaths.
Keep calm. Don’t freak out…
My eyes slide closed. I drift for a while, fading in and out of consciousness. I dream that I’m standing in a river, the water lapping around my legs…
My eyes open again. I stare up at the old white roofing tiles.
I’m not dreaming. I really can hear a lapping sound.
I lean over the bed.
The floor is hidden beneath about two feet of water.
The room is flooding. For a moment, I’m puzzled, wondering if the toilets and showers have backed up. But then I realize. The hurricane…
“Hey!” I shout.
No answer.
I pull on the cuff again, hoping to break the metal frame it’s hooked around. I jam my feet against the bed and heave with everything I have. My vision swims with blackness. A wave of dizziness washes over me and I flop back onto the thin mattress.
I close my eyes again… just for a minute.
Just to stop everything from spinning…
… and then something cold wakes me up. Something… wet?
I look down. The water now laps gently over the bed, touching the back of my legs.
I tense my muscles and pull against the cuff. My tendons and veins stand out. My wrist pulses with sharp pain as the cuff cuts into my skin. The metal bars of the bed groan. I grit my teeth, putting every last ounce of strength into the effort.
The frame finally pops out of the join where it curves down to form the legs of the bed. I pause to take a few breaths, then slide the cuff over the end of the rail and drop into the water.
It’s surprisingly warm. Almost unpleasantly so. I wade to the door, try to push it open.
It doesn’t budge.
I peer through the wire-reinforced window. There’s a light coming from somewhere down the corridor, but all it reveals is an empty flooded passage.
I do a quick check of the room. There’s a metal drip stand in the corner. I grab it and try to wedge it between the door and the frame. It doesn’t work. The gap isn’t even wide enough to insert a knife.
I ram the bottom of the stand against the small window, but all I manage to do is bend the metal. The glass is way too thick.
I pause to catch my breath, fighting off waves of dizziness. I realize this isn’t just the aftereffects of the stun gun. I’m actually struggling to get air into my lungs. I glance up at the air vent. If the power is down, that means the ventilation system won’t be working, either. I’m just breathing my own recycled air.
I kick the door over and over. But it’s hopeless. It’s not like whoever designed the prison wanted the inmates to get out.
I slump back against the wall. Is this it? Is this how I go? Drowning in prison? Or slowly suffocating to death?
There’s a metallic clicking sound to my left. I turn in surprise just as the door opens, pulled slowly outward against the floodwater.
A woman moves hesitantly around the door and stands in the entrance. She’s holding a red fire ax in her hand. In the faint light from the passage, I can see she’s young. Still in her twenties. Tanned features, possibly Mediterranean. A delicate face and hazel eyes with crinkles underneath that make it look like she’s going to break into laughter. Amy had that. It was what first drew me to her.
We stare at each other for a long moment.
“Hey,” she says. It’s almost a challenge.
“Uh… hey.”
Another drawn-out silence.
“I saw you earlier today when you were brought here. One of the COs said you used to be a cop.” She says it accusingly.
“Yeah. I was.”
“They said you’re in here because you killed the guy who murdered your wife.”
“And my baby.”
“What?”
“My wife was pregnant. And I only killed one of them. Two got away.”
“Oh… okay. Um… serious question. You’re not, like… psycho, are you? I mean, you’re not a mass murderer or a rapist or anything like that.”
“No.”
“So… you’re not going to cut my throat? Or bash my head in?”
“The day’s young.”
Her eyes narrow.
“Sorry,” I say. “Bad joke.”
“Right. Great timing. Way to read a room.”
Her fingers curl and uncurl around the ax. She still looks like she’s trying to decide between ramming it into my head or running away.
“I’m Jack Constantine.”
“Keira Sawyer.” She pauses. “I’m new here. First day.”
“That’s… unfortunate. Mind telling me what’s going on here, Keira?”
“Nobody calls me Keira. It’s Sawyer.”
“Okay. Sawyer. I’ve been out since around two. Can you fill in the few gaps?”
She takes a deep breath. “Right. Strap yourself in. It’s around midnight now. Hurricanes Josephine and Hannah have joined up to form some kind of superstorm. You may have noticed that the infirmary is flooding, which doesn’t bode well for the rest of the prison. And the hurricane hasn’t even reached full strength yet.”
“Jesus…”
“Yeah, hold that thought. It gets worse. All the cell doors have been opened. Every single one in the prison. Which means all the inmates are free. I sincerely doubt that’s going to end well. So… to sum up. Inmates running around killing each other. Prison flooding. Category Five super hurricane hitting us… What else? Oh yeah. The COs are all gone and I don’t think anybody on the outside actually knows about us, so no help is coming.”
“Wait. What? Back up. What the hell are you talking about?”
“The National Guard was supposed to come and relieve the staff. Watch over you guys until the hurricane passed. They didn’t turn up. My guess is they’re dead. Montoya decided all the staff should leave when the Guard didn’t show. Now they’re dead too.”
I open my mouth to
speak, but she cuts me off.
“I heard it on the radio. Trust me, they’re dead. So…” She shrugs. “We’re well and truly on our own. Or to put it another way—fucked.”
“So why are you still here?”
Sawyer looks embarrassed. “I… got lost. They left without me.” Her hand rises to touch her head. Her hair is matted at the back with what looks like blood. “One of the inmates hit me. I made it in here, locked the door with my keys. But I passed out. Only just woke up.”
“So… you haven’t been out into the prison again?”
“Not for a few hours.”
“How do we know anyone’s still alive?”
“We don’t.”
I glance away from her, my thoughts racing. Think about it logically, I tell myself. Take it step by step. Obviously the first thing to do is get out of the infirmary. The whole place is going to be underwater within an hour.
“You still got the keys?” I ask.
She shakes her hip slightly. Metal jingles and I see the keys attached to her jeans.
“Good. We need to get out of here.”
She looks at me like I just said the stupidest thing she has ever heard. “Good idea. Wish I’d thought of that.” Then she turns and starts wading through the water.
I follow after, letting her lead the way through the infirmary.
As we move away from the cells, drawing closer to the outside walls of the prison, the sound of the hurricane increases in volume until it gradually overwhelms everything. The thundering of the wind ratchets up so it seems like it’s slamming through the bricks themselves, enveloping us in an earsplitting scream.
And the rain… it smashes and hammers the roof, sounding like a million stones being thrown against metal.
How the hell do we survive this? The water is past my waist. If it carries on rising as fast as it is, then the whole of Ravenhill will most likely be underwater by dawn. We need to get to higher ground. Somewhere to hole up until the hurricane passes.
As we wade through the water, I find my thoughts returning over and over to the Glasshouse. I’m not sure if it’s because Wright and Tully are locked up there or because it’s the highest ground in the area, but either way, I come to realize it’s probably our best shot. It’s even shielded on one side by the bank of a hill. It’s old. Sturdy. And the authorities obviously thought it was strong enough if they were shipping inmates there.
Except… how the hell do we cross the open ground to even get to it? If the hurricane is as bad as this woman says it is, we’ll be ripped apart if we step outside.
We leave the corridor behind and enter an open ward. There are hospital beds all around the walls, just visible beneath the water. In the center of the room is a bank of ruined ECG and EEG monitors.
Sawyer stops moving, staring off to the left. I follow her gaze. There’s a large shape bobbing gently in the water. I move closer. It’s a body. The guy’s arm is pulled out to the side, still handcuffed to a bed that’s bolted to the floor. The figure is facedown, hospital gown hanging obscenely open at the back.
Sawyer hesitates, then tears her gaze away. There’s nothing we can do for the poor bastard, so we start moving again, heading through the door into the corridor beyond. Bandages and wound dressings, still sealed in their sterile bags, float past us. Sawyer grabs one and stuffs it down her shirt. I don’t ask why.
Sodden sheets blossom out across the surface of the water. Various machines line the corridor, their cables and attachments drifting around like the limbs of a jellyfish. Defibrillation paddles, blood pressure machines, oxygen masks.
As we draw closer to the end of the passage, the hurricane grows even louder, a horrific roaring and screaming that doesn’t let up. It pummels my senses until I can hardly think straight. I can actually feel the wind now. It barrels down the corridor, whipping the floodwater into miniature whitecaps. We struggle against it, pulling ourselves along the walls, fingers scrabbling for purchase on machines or door frames.
It gets worse the closer we get to the nurse’s station, until we finally emerge from the corridor into a scene of utter chaos.
The windows are gone. Empty, gaping maws that now spew floodwater into the infirmary. I try to shield my face from the worst of the storm, but it’s impossible. The screaming wind whips the water up into a stinging rain that lashes my skin like tiny needles. The wind batters us, shoving us sideways into the walls. It overwhelms everything, blocks out all rational thought.
We unconsciously grab hold of each other’s arms, wading forward against the storm, heading for the locked door that leads out of the infirmary and into the prison.
I try to shield Sawyer as she uses her keys in the door. When she finally manages to unlock it, we both pull on the handle, using all our weight. The force of the floodwater makes it difficult, but we heave it slowly toward us. Water surges past our legs and through the gap, frothing and pouring into the lit corridor beyond. Sawyer slips through the gap and I follow, letting the weight of the water slam the door shut behind us.
The noise of the hurricane dies down slightly. Not a lot, but enough that I can hear myself think again. There’s power out here, light.
I know we’re in my unit, A Wing, but it looks different. I glance around at surroundings that appear simultaneously familiar and alien. There are blood smears all over the walls. Some of the lights hang loose from the ceiling, dangling from red and blue wires.
A body lies a few feet away. It’s almost completely submerged in the water, arms floating up above its head. I check left, then right, but there’s no one else around.
I squat down and turn the corpse over. The guy is Puerto Rican. I’ve seen him around the yard, a member of the Ñetas. The guy’s stomach is a mass of puncture wounds. The numbers 031—the sign of the Bloods—have been carved into his chest with a knife.
I feel around under the body, checking for a weapon. Wishful thinking. A scream echoes in the distance. It’s the kind of scream you make when your life is being taken forcefully.
“We need a plan,” says Sawyer nervously.
“You think?”
There’s a second door to the right of the infirmary entrance. A freight entrance, where medicine gets delivered. I stand up and peer through the glass. There’s a short corridor beyond and an exit at the far end.
“Give me your keys,” I say.
“Why?”
“Just give them to me.”
“No!”
I snatch them from her belt, ignoring her angry protest, and turn back to the door, ramming each key into the lock until I find the one that works. I push the door open and hurry to the exit at the end of the passage.
“What the hell are you doing?” says Sawyer, trailing behind me. “Those keys are for internal doors only. You need a keycard to get out.”
I cup my hands against the glass, peering outside. At first I can’t see anything. Just utter darkness. But then a bolt of lightning arcs across the clouds, illuminating the outside of the prison.
It’s like looking into hell.
I thought it had been bad earlier in the day when we were in the bus. But looking outside now, I know instantly that a bus wouldn’t make it five feet before being plucked up by the hurricane.
Outside the door is a small staff parking lot. Most of it is under water, and all the cars have been blown and tossed into the retaining wall that was built into the side of the hill. In the brief flash of light, it looks like they’ve been sitting in a scrapyard for years. Twisted and destroyed, smashed up and ripped apart.
There’s another flash of lightning, and this time I see that a telephone pole has been thrown into the ground like a javelin. It’s cut right through the asphalt and buried itself about ten feet deep.
“They say the winds are going to push one ninety,” says Sawyer softly. “Maybe even two hundred.”
“Jesus…”
“Can I have my keys back?”
I hand them over wordlessly. Any hopes I had of reachi
ng the Glasshouse, whether for safety or to get Wright and Tully, are gone.
“We need to get out of here,” says Sawyer.
“What’s the point?” I say softly, still staring out the window. “You think Ravenhill is going to survive this?”
“I’m not talking about Ravenhill. I’ve been thinking about this. I’m talking about the Glasshouse.”
“Are you blind? If we step outside, we’re dead. There’s no way we can get to the Glasshouse.”
“Not now. But in about five hours we can.”
I look at her in confusion.
“I was in the sheriff’s office. I saw the storm reports from the National Hurricane Center. The eye of the hurricane passes over the prison at five forty a.m.”
“The…” I glance sharply out the window. The eye of the hurricane. Of course. It will be totally calm outside. A hurricane this big, the eye will last at least half an hour before it passes over. Maybe even longer. “Shit… I didn’t even think of that.”
“Well, don’t beat yourself up too much. I hadn’t thought about it, either. Not until I saw the reports.” She fishes around in her jeans pocket and pulls out a keycard. “Plus, I can get us out the Northside staff entrance.”
I reach for the card, but she snatches her hand away and slips it back into her pocket. “Uh-uh. We stick together. You watch my back, I watch yours. Think about it. I’m a woman trapped in an all-male prison. You’re an ex-cop trapped in… well, prison. We need each other if we want to get through this in one piece.”
I briefly consider just taking the keys and card from her. Leaving her here to fend for herself. But the thought vanishes almost as fast as it comes. I couldn’t do that. To be honest, I’m surprised at this realization. I thought this place had killed any compassion I had left. I mean, there wasn’t much in there anyway, not after Amy died, but still… it’s nice to realize I’m still slightly human.
“That keycard, does it open any other exits?”