by Paul Herron
I glance at Sawyer as we move. She looks like she’s taking strain.
“Are you okay?” I eventually ask.
She shakes her head, but doesn’t say anything. Her face is tight, cold. Her eyes glisten. She’s trying to stay in control. Trying to keep it together. She needs a breather. A couple of minutes to take stock. I think we all do.
I check the closest door, but it leads into a storeroom. The next one is the bathroom, then a few offices.
“The hell are you looking for?” asks Felix.
I don’t answer. A couple of doors later, I find what I’m after. A staff break room.
“In here.”
I usher the others in and take a quick look around the room. I sigh with a small amount of happiness when I see a coffee pod machine.
“Constantine? What are we doing?” asks Felix.
“Taking a break.”
I cross the room and put a pod in the machine, then grab a mug and place it beneath the nozzle. Sawyer slumps into one of the chairs around the small table.
Felix looks at me like I’ve just stripped naked. “Seriously? We’re running for our lives and you want to stop for a break?”
“Don’t you feel like a cup of coffee?” I hold up one of the pods. “Real coffee?”
He hesitates. He’s been in here a lot longer than I have. I know he’s craving something better than the shit we get from the commissary.
“I don’t know, man. We should keep moving.”
I nod subtly at Sawyer. He glances over at her and his face clears. He mouths, Oh… and winks at me. Good old Felix. As discreet as a brick to the face.
“I know what you’re doing,” says Sawyer without looking up. “And I’d like you to stop it. I’m not a child.”
I hear the coffee trickling into the cup behind me. “No idea what you’re talking about. Milk?” I turn around and grab a milk pod.
Sawyer doesn’t answer for a moment. “And two sugars. Actually, make it three.”
“Coming up.” I swap the full mug for an empty and insert a new capsule, then pour in the milk and sugar. I pass the mug to Sawyer and wait for the next one to fill. Felix stands at the door. No one speaks.
I put two more mugs down on the table and sit opposite Sawyer. Felix joins us and we all stare contemplatively into our mugs.
“Well…” says Felix. “Isn’t this nice?”
I nod. “We should do it more often. We never get a chance to just sit down at the end of the day and check in with each other, you know?”
Felix nods seriously. “I do, I do. So how was your day?”
I breathe out noisily and take a sip of my coffee. I pause to let the flavor hit. Christ, this is good. “Well… you know Sinclair? Over in accounting?”
Felix looks like he’s thinking. “Tall guy? Skinny? Made a move on you at the Christmas party.”
“That’s the one. Threw himself out the top-floor window today.”
“Is that right?”
“It is.” I take another sip and smack my lips appreciatively. “Said he couldn’t live without me. That if he couldn’t have me, there was no point in going on.”
“Poor guy. If only he knew the real you. Fucker dodged a bullet.”
Sawyer stiffens at his words. I glare at Felix and mouth, What the fuck? He just shrugs helplessly.
Sawyer sighs and looks up. “You can stop now. Actually, I’m begging you. Please stop now. I’m fine.”
“You sure?” Felix reaches out and puts a hand over hers. “Because if you’re not,” he says gently, “you can talk to Constantine.” He takes his hand back and wraps it around his coffee mug. “I’m no good at all that feelings shit.”
Sawyer laughs softly. “I’m okay.” She pauses for a moment. “I mean, we’re alive, right? What more can we ask for?”
I think about it. “Shelter that’s not going to fall on our heads?”
Felix nods. “Guns?”
“Scuba gear?”
“A submarine would be nice,” says Felix.
“I’m talking figuratively,” says Sawyer.
“Well, shit,” says Felix. “Why didn’t you say? I mean, the woman is talking figuratively.”
“Shut up, Felix,” she says.
“Shutting up.”
She bows her head and sips her coffee. Felix and I are watching her carefully. She eventually snaps her head up and glares at us both. “Will you two stop looking at me like I’m a baby bird that fell out of its nest or something. I said I’m fine. Yes, I was just forced to play a game of Russian roulette. But so was he”—she nods at Felix—“and so were about twenty other poor bastards who didn’t survive. You want to feel bad for someone, feel bad for them.”
“Okay,” I say, “she’s fine. Break’s over. Let’s go.”
Felix looks at his coffee in dismay. “I want to savor it.”
“Tough shit. You were right. No time for a break. Hustle up.”
He sighs and gulps down his coffee, then glares at me. “That is not how coffee should be enjoyed.”
As we make our way through the unit, I’m getting more and more worried about the prison’s ability to hold up. The hurricane lashes us with a ferocity that builds with every minute. Every creak, every distant rumble is making me more and more jumpy. I just don’t think this place is going to last till the eye of the hurricane arrives.
But what the hell else are we supposed to do? Stop? Hide under a desk somewhere? No. We have to keep moving forward. Because anything else is admitting defeat.
We carry on, wading through water that is almost up to my waist. The building creaks and groans like a pirate ship. The wind sounds like the ferocious howling of animals. It rises and falls. Grows louder, then fades. It feels like the hurricane is a predator circling a campfire, waiting to strike.
A lot of the corridors we try have already collapsed, forcing us to retrace our steps and find alternative routes. But going by the evacuation plans stuck on the wall, we’re getting close.
We turn into a corridor and pull up short. About halfway along, a bent-over figure is trying to drag what looks like a huge slab of concrete through a doorway. He’s not making much progress. The slab looks way too heavy.
“That’s Leo,” says Felix softly.
Which explains why he’s not making much progress. The guy is about eighty years old.
“Who’s Leo?” whispers Sawyer.
“Old guy,” says Felix. “Always talking about escaping. He’s been here since he was twenty or something.”
“What did he do?”
“No one knows. There are rumors. That he went a bit crazy in the army. Killed some of his own squad.”
“Leo?” I call.
Leo glances over at us, barely registering our presence before resuming his task.
“What you doing there?” asks Felix as we approach.
“Pole dancing,” he says. He straightens up and arches his back with a wince. “The hell do you want?”
“Just passing through,” I say. “Heading for the Northside staff room.”
He snorts. “Not this way you’re not.”
“Why?”
“You can’t get through. The Mental Health Unit is still locked down.”
“We have a key.”
He shrugs. “Whoop-de-fucking-do. Even if you get in there, you’re going to have to fight off the retards and rapists. They’ve all been let out of their cells. Then you have to get into ACU. Last I heard—and this was before the staff corridor went down, mind—Preacher’s followers had turned that place into some sort of crazy-ass church, waiting on him to return like he’s the Second Coming or something.”
Shit.
“We still have to try,” says Sawyer.
I look at her. “We don’t have any weapons.”
“So we sneak.”
“Why you got such a hard-on for the staff room?” asks Leo.
“I have a keycard to get out,” says Sawyer. “When the eye of the hurricane passes over, we’re going t
o the Glasshouse.”
Leo still looks confused. “Why?”
“To ride out the storm.”
He bursts into laughter. “Seriously? In the Glasshouse? You’ll be lucky if that place is even still standing.”
“But… they were shipping in prisoners from all over the place,” says Sawyer. “They said it would be safe.”
Leo shrugs. “They lied. Or they’re lying to themselves. Trust me, I’ve been inside the Glasshouse. The foundations in that place are crumbling. The mortar holding the bricks together is like sand. Not a chance it’s going to survive.”
I can see the dawning realization settling on Sawyer’s face. Her shoulders slump and she turns away from us, walking off a few steps as she tries to think her way out of this. I glance at Felix, but he just shrugs.
Sawyer finally turns back. She looks at me numbly. “So that’s it? We’re dead?”
“Not if you help me here,” says Leo.
“Why?” I ask. “What are you doing?”
“Trying to get to the tunnels.”
Jesus. This again. “There are no tunnels, Leo. You’ve gone on about them for as long as I’ve been here—”
“Longer,” says Felix.
“Longer. Exactly.”
“So?”
“So they’re not real.”
He laughs. “Oh, so you know so much about this place? How long you been here exactly?”
“Three years.”
He turns to Felix. “You?”
“Eight.”
“Want to know how long I’ve been here? About sixty years. Sixty fucking years. You don’t think that gives me some special insight?”
Felix shrugs. “Don’t really care, Leo. You’re starting to bore me.”
“Oh, I’m boring you, am I? Tell me—you guys know about the history of this place, right? The Cross-Florida Barge Canal project?”
“Sure,” I say.
“Right. And do you know about the floodwater system below the prison? It’s like the G-Cans in Tokyo.”
“What the hell are the G-Cans?”
“It’s this huge storm sewer that’s supposed to protect Tokyo from floods. An underground tunnel system, about four miles long. The tunnels connect up to these silos that drain into this massive room they call the Temple. The place is like… a cavern. Two hundred and fifty feet deep and nearly five hundred feet long. The floodwater from the city’s drainage heads through the tunnels and ends up in the Temple. Then it’s pumped out into the river.”
I can see Felix is starting to get annoyed. He’s looking around, deciding which way we should go.
“What does that have to do with this place?” I ask.
“We started building a smaller version of the G-Cans here in the sixties, when construction started up again on the canal project. So there are all these tunnels underneath us. The first set joins up with the Glasshouse, then to the flood system below us. But they were never used. When the project was canned, we didn’t bother connecting the tunnels and silos up.”
“Wait. Back up.” I stare hard at Leo. “These tunnels. You say they connect to the Glasshouse?”
“Yeah. The basement tunnels in here join up with the basement tunnels in the Glasshouse; then they lead down to the flood system.”
I try to fight down the excitement building inside me. “So… we can gain access to the Glasshouse through these tunnels?”
“I suppose.”
“That means we can get inmates from here and the Glasshouse to safety,” says Sawyer excitedly.
Everyone looks at her.
“What?”
“I don’t get it,” says Felix, ignoring her and turning back to Leo. “Won’t we just drown in the tunnels?”
“Are you stupid?” snaps the old man. “If the tunnels are going to carry floodwater, they have to be waterproof. Which means water can’t get out and water can’t get in.”
I nod to the corridor Leo was trying to clear. “This leads to the basement tunnels?”
“Yeah. These buildings are all part of the original build. Admin too. From when this place still belonged to the Engineer Corps.”
We’re all thinking about what he’s saying. If it’s true, it means we don’t have to even head outside. We don’t have to wait for the eye of the storm to arrive. We don’t have to hope and pray the building holds.
“Are you sure you’re not crazy?” asks Felix.
Sawyer shakes her head. “Martinez told me the same thing this morning, when she was giving me the tour. She mentioned the storm tunnels.”
Leo looks smug. “See?”
“But we can’t just hide underground without telling anyone on the outside,” says Sawyer. “We have to get word out.”
“Why?” asks Felix.
“What if Ravenhill comes down on top of everyone? We’d all be trapped in the tunnels. No one would know we’re down there.”
“Wait,” says Leo. “What exactly do you mean by everyone?”
“Everyone who’s sheltering down there. The inmates—”
He shakes his head firmly. “Not gonna happen. Who are you anyway? Why is there a woman wandering around… No, doesn’t matter. I don’t care. This is my escape route. I’ve been planning it my whole life.”
“You can’t just keep it to yourself,” says Sawyer sharply. “You have a chance to save hundreds of lives.”
Leo shrugs. “Fuck ’em.”
I burst out laughing at her look of shock. Even Felix has a grin on his face. Not because Sawyer doesn’t have a point, but because Leo does as well. Not one inmate has done anything to help us during the night. They’ve been trying to kill us, torture us, or let us drown. But that still doesn’t stop her wanting to save them. Castillo nearly killed all of us, but I guarantee she doesn’t regret rescuing him from the flooding room.
“I wouldn’t even bother arguing, Leo.”
“Why would anyone argue?” she asks earnestly. “What’s the choice here? Letting hundreds of people die, or saving their lives?”
I leave Leo to deal with Sawyer’s sense of moral outrage and peer into the passage he’s been trying to clear. It’s about fifteen feet long, but the roof and the left wall have caved in, leaving huge slabs of concrete completely blocking the way.
“Leo,” I say, “if you won’t do it for altruism, you need to do it for survival. Because there’s no way we can clear this rubble. Not before the building comes down. We need way more hands.”
Leo gestures hopefully at Felix. “Not even with this guy?”
Felix checks out the corridor and shakes his head. “I know I have the physique of a Nubian god, but even I can’t move this much without help. We need some of the other inmates in here.”
“And get word to the outside,” says Sawyer.
“How do you suggest we do that?” asks Leo.
“What about the radios in the security room? I was talking to the COs on the bus when they crashed.”
I shake my head. “Not powerful enough.”
But Sawyer has given me an idea. A couple of years ago, when the inmate corridor was on lockdown, the COs brought me through this unit to get to my job at the maintenance shed. They took me other ways as well. Through the yard outside—though I don’t think that’s going to work right now—and once into the staff corridor and through Northside itself.
The point is, the shed isn’t separate from the rest of the prison. It’s part of the same building. I can get to it from here—and that’s where Henry had been building a ham radio for the past couple of years. It was a secret project, right under the COs’ noses. There were no nefarious reasons for it, as far as I could figure out. He just wanted to chat with people outside the prison. But he never completed it. He wanted my help to run the antenna up into the ceiling space so the radio would get a signal. We just never figured out a good time to do it. The shed was always under observation.
I tell the others. Sawyer breaks into a smile, then hesitates. “Where’s the shed? Can we get there?”<
br />
“Yeah. I think so.”
“Okay,” she says. “Let’s go.”
“You don’t need to come. You can stay here with Felix. Help clear this rubble away.”
“Take her,” says Felix. “You might need someone to steady the ladder.”
“What ladder?”
“I don’t fucking know. I’m assuming. I’ve never been in the shed.”
I shrug. “Fine. Come if you want. Felix…” Felix glances over from where he’s studying the collapsed passage. “Do what you can here. We’ll be back in ten minutes.”
He nods. “On it.”
Nineteen
4:50 a.m.
We don’t get back to Felix and Leo in ten minutes. It takes us that long just to reach the maintenance shed, moving through semi-collapsed corridors, backtracking to find a different path when the way forward is blocked, taking cover every time it sounds like the ceiling is about to come down on top of us.
And with every passing minute, the storm grows stronger. There’s no difference in the volume of the wind, no increase in the shrieking, the howling. How can there be? It can’t get any louder than it already is. No, I can sense it. Feel it weighing down on me. It’s a rising pressure, a steady mounting of tension that has nowhere to go. It fills me with a sense of urgency that has no outlet. It just keeps building and building. Like I’ve put my hand on a hot plate and now I’m waiting for the pain to hit, for the stench of burning flesh to fill my nostrils.
Add to that, I’m sure we’re being followed. I can’t confirm it, and I don’t have time to wait around to find out. I hope it’s just coincidence. Inmates moving around the unit, exploring, looking for a way out, for weapons. If it’s not?
Shit, I don’t know. Deal with it the same way we’ve dealt with everything else tonight. Wing it and hope for the best.
After those ten minutes, we finally reach our destination. The maintenance shed is more like a miniature airplane hangar than anything else. Over to the left sits a tractor with its mower detached. The tractor is blue, but the paint is chipped away, revealing the original green underneath. The six-foot blade attachment sits on a workbench against the left wall. Henry and I took it off yesterday. It looks like Henry had already been sharpening it. The metal gleams in the light.