Breakout

by Paul Herron

  After about five hundred and fifty yards or so, the end of the tunnel appears, a solid brick wall with a thick rust-colored metal door blocking the way. It looks like it’s about ten feet high by ten feet wide. I knock on it. It gives off a dull metallic thud. No echo at all.

  “That’s a pretty solid door right there,” says Felix, knocking on it hard with his own knuckles. “I’ve seen thinner doors in bank vaults.”

  A silence has fallen behind us. I glance back and can almost feel the whispered murmurings passing back through the inmates. This is it. Salvation. I’m sure they think it means freedom too. I think most of them believe they’ll be able to run once the hurricane has passed. So did I a couple of hours ago. Although how we all plan on moving around in a flooded county with FEMA and cops and firefighters conducting salvage operations is another matter entirely.

  I turn back, push down on the heavy handle, and give the door a shove.

  It doesn’t budge.

  I push harder, then try pulling, even bracing my foot against the wall, but the door is closed tight.

  “It’s locked.” I look at Leo. “Leo. It’s fucking locked.”

  Leo’s face shows confusion. “But… it can’t be. It wasn’t locked before…”

  “Fifty years ago maybe! But it sure as shit is locked now!”

  Leo gestures helplessly. “There’s not even a lock on it, though.”

  I look. He’s right. No keyhole. Nothing.

  “It must be locked from the other side,” he says.

  I try my best to restrain my anger, but it’s sure as hell getting hard. “There’s no keyhole, Leo.”

  “Maybe there’s a bar across it or something? I don’t know!”

  Jesus suffering fuck! Why did I believe a word this senile old goat said?

  I fight down the rising panic. There’s still time. I still have time. I turn around and set off back the way we came, wading through the water, pushing past the huddled mass of inmates.

  “Where are you going?” shouts Sawyer.

  “I can get to the Glasshouse. I’ll open the door from the other side.”

  “Are you insane?” shouts Felix. “The prison is falling apart. The hurricane…”

  “… hasn’t come back yet. The eye is still right above us. It will last about three quarters of an hour.”

  “It’s already been over twenty minutes,” says Sawyer.

  “So stop talking and let me go!”

  “You can’t, man,” says Felix. “You heard Leo. The Mental Health Unit is locked down. So is the ACU. It’s suicide.”

  “And waiting down here isn’t? Once the eye passes over us, this place is going to flood. We’ll all drown. Every single one of us.”

  “There has to be another way.”

  “There isn’t.” I turn to Sawyer. “Time to put your money where your mouth is. Give me the keycard.”

  Sawyer hesitates.

  “Come on, Sawyer. The clock’s ticking.”

  “I’ll hang on to it.”

  “Sawyer, there’s no time—”

  “I’m coming with you.”

  “Me too,” says Felix.

  “Don’t be stupid. I’ll do this on my own.”

  “Look. I don’t think you’re a bad guy,” says Sawyer, “but forgive me if I don’t quite trust you.”

  “Trust me to do what?”

  “What’s to stop you just going off on your own to get those two guys who killed your wife?”

  “You think I’d let everyone here die? I said I’d open the door, and that’s what I’ll do.”

  “Maybe you will. But I’d like it opened before you head off on your suicide mission, and I get the feeling you might not agree with that.”

  We stare each other down. I can see there’s no way I’m going to convince her to stay.

  And why bother anyway?

  If she and Felix come with me, they can open the door to let the inmates through, and I can go for Wright and Tully.

  It’s win–win.

  Twenty-One

  5:50 a.m.

  It seems to take so much longer to retrace our steps back up to the prison than it did to get down. We wade along the tunnels, then up the slope, pushing through the water that surges against our legs and knees and makes every step harder than the last.

  I try to count heads as we move. I figure that our first guess was pretty close. Nearly two hundred inmates have responded to Felix’s call, most of them shouting questions at us as we try to get past, questions I don’t want to answer in case I set off a riot.

  Sawyer, of course, doesn’t think like that and eventually decides to try to calm the inmates down by doing something no one should ever do.

  She tells them the truth.

  Not the best move, all things considered. They don’t take it well, hurling abuse at her as if she personally locked the door and put their lives in danger.

  Things aren’t totally out of control. She’s handling the insults and the questions pretty well. Until someone—I see it’s Dexter, the guy who organized his own personal fight club—mentions rape.

  That’s when Sawyer steps back, takes out the Beretta I gave her, and points it at his face.

  “Say that again.”

  Dexter stares at the barrel of the gun. He licks his lips, frowning. His eyes flicker right and left, taking in the other inmates watching this go down. I can see exactly what will happen. He won’t want to lose face in front of the other prisoners, especially not to a woman. He’s not going to back down.

  I rest my hand on the Ruger, making sure he notices. “Don’t be a moron, Dexter.”

  “Jack,” says Sawyer kindly, her arm not wavering, her voice as steady as before, her eyes on Dexter. “If you don’t back off right now, I will shoot you both.”

  I look at her in surprise.

  “I’m serious. I can fight my own battles.”

  I shrug, swing the gun onto my back, and move a few steps away to join Felix. We watch as Sawyer and Dexter stare at each other for a full twenty seconds before he laughs, nervous but trying to hide it behind volume.

  “Just messing with you, sister. We all good.”

  “You sure?” asks Sawyer.

  “Yeah. You’re cool. We cool.”

  “Everyone’s cool, huh?” says Felix, amused.

  We set off again and finally arrive in the large room that holds the army beds. I shut the door behind us.

  Sawyer frowns. “What are you doing? You can’t lock them in.”

  “I’m not locking it. But a closed door will stop more water than an open one.”

  She nods. “Fair enough.”

  We move through the rooms and back to the basement stairs. They’re hidden behind a literal waterfall that is so strong we have to pull ourselves up by the handrail. It’s way worse than before. The roar of water echoes in the small space, cutting off any chance of communication. The spray gets in our eyes, up our noses, in our mouths. I think the whole of Ravenhill has started to breach. Whether the floodwater is pouring in through the walls or the windows, I’m not sure. But if it is the windows, then that means the water has risen high enough that the entire prison will soon be submerged, tunnels and all.

  We arrive at the top of the stairs and make our way past the remnants of broken rubble and into the corridor beyond. The water is up to our stomachs now. We push on, heading in the direction we were going before we bumped into Leo. We should have just fucking left him and carried on with our own plan. I should have known Leo’s plan wouldn’t be as easy as that.

  The lights are failing all over the building. I can feel water sluicing down the walls every time I touch them, an invisible curtain that pours into the prison.

  There are other noises too. Louder now that the hurricane has died down. Creaking, rending sounds. Crashing. Metal under pressure, bending, making loud wailing noises as roof supports sag and buckle.

  We pass more inmates on the way. Most of them are already heading for the corridor in response to Fe
lix’s announcement. But there are some who aren’t, some who still seem ready to fight when they see us. They look like trapped animals, eyes wide with fear and panic. We explain to them about the tunnel—in case they missed the announcement—and without fail they head off without giving us any more trouble. I mean, that could be because of the guns rather than our skills of persuasion, but either way, I’m not complaining.

  And after what seems like way too long, we finally arrive at our destination.

  The Mental Health Unit.

  I unlock the door using Sheriff Montoya’s magic keys and push it open.

  The first thing we hear is the screaming. A constant shrill shriek that goes on and on, pausing only for whoever is responsible to draw breath.

  Most of the lights are down. Only a few remain, casting cold cones of harsh white over a deserted nurse’s station. We move slowly past the desk and enter a long corridor with cells to either side. Felix is in the lead. I can see he’s nervous. He has the second Ruger we took from Preacher’s guys raised in the firing position, swinging it left and right at the slightest sound.

  The cells all have windows in the doors. Dim light filters out. I glance into a couple as we pass. They all have padded walls and a single bed with leather restraints attached to top and bottom.

  Felix is getting more and more agitated. He’s gripping the gun tightly, his knuckles white.

  “I don’t like this, man. I can’t take crazies.”

  “They’re not crazies,” says Sawyer. “They’re sick. They need help.”

  “Not sure they really deserve our sympathy,” I say. “The people in here are rapists, mass murderers, torturers… the worst of the worst. They’re all here because the judges ruled them insane. Either that or they were mentally unfit to even stand trial for what they did.”

  “So don’t try any kind of Mother Teresa act on them,” warns Felix. “They come at you, you do not talk. You shoot.”

  Sawyer throws me a worried look but doesn’t reply.

  We move slowly along the corridor, guns held at the ready. After a while, I notice a sound coming from one of the cells up ahead. Felix stops walking, levels his weapon.

  Sawyer pushes the barrel down. “What are you doing?”

  “There’s something in there.”

  “Someone, you moron.”

  He frowns at her and backs up. I move slowly to the door and peer inside.

  There’s a man sitting on the bed. He’s not moving. He’s just sitting there, staring into the corner of the cell.

  Felix reluctantly joins me and peers over my shoulder. “What’s he doing?”

  The man hears him and slowly turns his head to look at us. “Can you see her?” he says.

  Felix doesn’t answer.

  “Can you see her?” His voice is more urgent.

  Felix shakes his head.

  The man points into the corner. “She’s standing right there. The woman in black.” He smiles at Felix. “She’s watching you.”

  Felix turns and starts walking away. “Uh-uh. I’m out. That’s a big nope from me.”

  I shiver and follow him, Sawyer at my side.

  “Can’t that bastard stop screaming?” says Felix, now even more on edge. “Shut the fuck up!” he shouts.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I snap. “You’ve just announced our presence here.”

  “Good. Then I can shoot something.”

  “Jesus, Felix. Stop being an asshole. You could have stayed in the tunnel. We don’t need anyone panicking.”

  “I’m not panicking. Don’t tell me I’m panicking.”

  I can hear the brittle edge to his voice. I try a different tack. “Listen, I get you don’t like it in here.”

  “Do you now? Do you really?”

  “Yeah. I don’t like it, either. But can we please just try and keep quiet? The quieter we are, the faster we can move.”

  “I see your point,” he says grudgingly, “but I’m not promising anything.”

  He walks on. The passage we’re in leads to a security door that opens into the staff section of the unit. The screaming is getting louder. We move at a faster pace. There are inmates in some of the staff rooms. Most of them are busy in their own worlds and don’t even look up when we pass. One of them stands on a desk, arms spread wide, talking in Spanish about angels and God. Another lies in the floodwater, his head the only part of his body above the surface. He smiles as we glance into the office. “Don’t tell anyone,” he says. “I’m at the beach.”

  We leave him to his vacation and enter an open ward with about fifteen beds around the walls.

  We all stop walking. Even Sawyer brings her Beretta up into firing position as she looks nervously around.

  The beds are empty, but every one of them is stained with blood. We move slowly through the ward. There are cards propped up at the bottom of each bed. I grab the closest.

  Touched children. He has been judged and sent to hell.

  I stare at the bloodstains, then glance at the other cards. All bear mention of crimes and punishments.

  And all the cards are signed by Preacher.

  Sawyer looks around nervously. “Do you think he came back here after moving through Carl’s unit?”

  I really hope not. I’d thought maybe a few of his followers would be trapped in the Administrative Control Unit. That we’d be able to sneak through. But if he’s there, that’s a different story. His congregation of psychos would have followed him. They’ll be everywhere, and I don’t think we’ll have enough bullets for them all.

  We move through the ward and out into the corridor beyond. The screaming is still going on. We’re all on edge. Tense. But we finally make it to the door leading out of the unit.

  It’s unlocked.

  That’s a bad sign. We step through into the passage beyond. The door at the far end of the sally port stands wide open.

  We slowly enter the corridor. The security control room to our left has been destroyed, wires hanging everywhere. There’s writing on the wall. In blood, by the looks of it. One message reads, He shall also make restitution for what he has done amiss. Another says, Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

  “I think I had that on my doormat,” says Felix.

  Sawyer glances nervously between us. “So are we thinking Preacher is in there or not?”

  I really hope not. Because we now only have minutes left before the eye of the storm passes over.

  Twenty-Two

  6:10 a.m.

  The entrance to ACU leads into a rounded corridor that curves away to the left and right. There’s an open door directly opposite us that leads us into a large octagonal room.

  The room is lit by red emergency lights mounted in the ceiling. The octagon has doors on each wall—the entrances to the cells. There are four levels in the room, making thirty-two cells in total. The doors are all closed, but I don’t know if they’ve stayed locked the whole night or if someone has closed them again.

  I turn in a slow circle, checking out the higher levels to make sure no one is up there watching us.

  The place seems deserted.

  “How big is this unit?” I whisper to Felix.

  “No idea.”

  “You’ve never been in here? No violent outbursts?”

  “Shit, yeah. Lots of outbursts. Solitary confinement, though. I was never brought in here.”

  The room is about fifty feet wide. There’s an open door opposite us leading into a dim corridor.

  Curiosity overcomes me. I move to the closest cell and peer through the safety glass. It leads into a small sally port about the size of an elevator. I test the door. It opens. I enter the confined space beyond and peer through the window into the cell.

  There’s blood everywhere. On the floor, smeared over the wall. There are even spatters on the ceiling. The cell is illuminated by a harsh white light recessed into the ceiling. It makes the blood look black.

  There’s a
man sitting on the bed staring intently at something in his cupped hands. He senses my presence, or maybe I make a noise or something, because he suddenly looks up.

  His eyes are empty holes. Black, gaping wounds with tears of blood caking his face. He holds his hands up as if in offering. His eyes nestle together in his palms. I look away, feeling sick, and my gaze falls on the writing on the wall. It’s scrawled in blood.

  And if your eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away.

  Sawyer and Felix have joined me in the cramped sally port and we stare at the tableau for a long moment.

  I’ve seen a lot of shit in my time. A lot of it objectively worse than this. But there’s something intensely disturbing about the scene in the cell. There’s no logic behind it. Not that there’s any logic in war, but this… this is sick. Demented. It’s almost like I’m staring at a piece of modern art.

  We back out into the octagonal room. Nobody says a word. I move to the next cell, enter the sally port and look through the window.

  Someone has been burned alive. A charred body lies curled up on the floor, black scorch marks haloing around him like wings. The ceiling is dark from the smoke, the recessed lighting dimmed with soot. I can just make out writing on the wall to the left.

  Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

  Preacher needs to get more material. He’s starting to repeat himself.

  I rejoin the others. “Why wasn’t Preacher in the Mental Health Unit?” I ask. “He wasn’t, right? He was here? In ACU?”

  “He was in Mental Health a while back,” says Felix. “But he did something like this before. They had to move him here. They figured the best way to deal with him was to lock him down twenty-three hours a day.”

  “Looks like he’s making up for lost time.”

  Felix nods. “He’s probably been taking notes on everyone in here. Now he’s free, he’s doing what he likes to do best.”

  “Well… they do say to find a job you love.”

  Sawyer throws me a disgusted look.

  “Relax. It’s just a joke.”

  “Not a good one. Are we going to stand around and stare at the dead people, or do you think we should actually get moving before the hurricane comes back?”