by Paul Herron
The noise is overwhelming. I try to filter it out, scanning the cells, looking for Wright and Tully. But it’s no use. I can’t see clearly enough.
Then, as I’m standing there wondering what to do, a portion of the wall about sixty feet up suddenly collapses. Plaster, concrete, and metal supports plummet down the central shaft of the Rotunda.
I throw myself out of the way, landing with a splash as the huge chunks smash into the water, the falling debris just missing the COs’ security tower.
I push myself shakily to my feet. I’m running out of time here. “Where’s Wright and Tully?” I shout.
No one hears me. The inmates are busy panicking, shouting and swearing at me, begging with one breath and threatening with the next.
I cup my hands to my mouth. “Wright and Tully!” I shout.
Again no one hears. I pull out the Beretta I took from Sawyer and fire it into the air. The shot splinters through the inmates’ shouts, echoing back and forth around the walls.
The Glasshouse falls silent, everyone’s attention focused on me.
“Wright and Tully!” I shout. “I want them. Point them out, and I’ll release you all. We’ve got a way to safety. Underground. You want to live, show them to me.”
All the inmates start shouting over each other, pointing toward a pair of cells on the fourth level. I look up and see Wright and Tully holding on to the bars, staring down at me.
I feel a surge of excitement as I look at them.
Finally…
Another rumble sounds from deep within the building. The floor shakes. I steady myself and run through the water, heading toward the elevator. It isn’t there. I peer up the shaft. It’s stuck on the top floor. I take the metal stairs instead, sprinting up to the fourth level. My feet clang over the metal grating. Inmates shout as I pass, reaching out between the bars to try to grab me.
I ignore them all. My attention is focused on Wright and Tully. They watch me coming, fear in their eyes. As I get closer, I keep seeing the same image over and over in my head. The moment I entered the living room and found Amy lying on the floor, her blood soaking into the carpet. I’m so close. I can almost feel it. Justice. Revenge.
I’m about ten feet away when the wall to my right collapses.
One moment I’m running, the next a huge section of wall just sloughs away. Wind and rain explode inside. The walkway buckles, tossing me into the air. The gun flies from my grasp and I land heavily, the walkway tearing away from the bolts that hold it in place. I hang on for dear life as it swings outward, dangling thirty feet above the Rotunda floor.
The wind slams against me, tossing me back and forth. I blink through the pouring rain, my eyes darting back to Wright and Tully. Their cell is still in one piece. I can still get to them.
I hear the scream of tortured metal and peer over my shoulder. The remaining supports that hold the walkway in place are buckling. The grating shifts suddenly, then lurches to a stop, the bolts sliding partway out of the wall.
I wait, holding my breath.
Then one of the bolts drops out and tumbles into the water below. The walkway sags even more. I look down. I’m hanging directly above the fallen debris from the roof. Jagged rocks, metal struts, and poles…
I reach up and force my fingers into the square holes of the walkway, slowly dragging myself up. The grating drops slightly, then jerks to a stop. I’m about five feet from the still-intact section. I hesitate, then slowly reach up.
The walkway lurches again. I freeze.
“Jack!”
I look up to see Sawyer leaning over the edge, her hand stretched out toward me.
I reach up and grab it, but I’m way too heavy. She slides partway through the gap, just managing to stop herself from falling by hooking her other arm around the railing support. I swing for a brief, terrifying moment, then use the momentum to grab the lip of the walkway with my free hand. Sawyer takes as much of my weight as she can and I slowly rise up, hooking my elbows over the edge and pulling myself onto the metal grating.
I lurch quickly to my feet, turning to stare across the gap in the walkway. It’s about twelve feet. I’m sure I can make it. I can still get to Wright and Tully.
I brace myself.
Sawyer grabs my arm. “Jack!” she shouts. “Don’t be stupid.”
I try to pull away, but she digs her fingers in.
“Let go!”
“No!” She’s screaming to be heard above the wind. “You’re going to get yourself killed!”
“I don’t care! Let me do this!”
“I can’t!”
“Sawyer, I have to do it! Don’t you understand?”
She moves closer until her face is inches from my own. “No. I don’t. Look, I get it. You think you failed your wife and kid. But you didn’t. There’s not a single husband in the world who wouldn’t want revenge. But if you kill those two men, you cross a line you can’t come back from.”
I hesitate.
“What would Amy say to you right now? Would she want you to do this?”
What would Amy say?
I turn around, glance across at Wright and Tully. They’re gripping hold of the bars, watching me.
I turn back. I can almost see Amy standing next to Sawyer. Staring at me. Frowning in the way only she could. I know exactly what she’d do. The same thing she’d have done if she found out I was planning on shooting myself with the fourth bullet I’d cast. She’d kick me in the nuts and call me an asshole.
“It’s not worth it, Jack!” shouts Sawyer.
I stare at her. At this woman who has been by my side the whole night, helping me survive despite what I did to her brother.
She’s right. It isn’t worth it. It never was. I open my mouth to say something—
—and the walkway lurches beneath our feet.
I barely have time to shove Sawyer to safety before the structure gives way with a grinding shriek, and I fall.
There is a moment of emptiness, followed by the jarring thud as I hit the water. Stars erupt across my vision as my head hits submerged concrete. My eyes close and I feel myself sinking down into nothingness. Darkness enfolds me, embraces me. It’s like a lover’s caress. Comforting. Calming.
It would be so easy just to let go.
To drift away.
No.
My eyes snap open.
Blackness greets me. My chest is tight, my lungs empty. I open my mouth for air, swallow water instead. I surge upward in shock and fear, breaking the surface. I retch, vomiting water as I stagger to my feet.
The sounds of the hurricane burst against my ears, broken only by the shouts and screams of the inmates. I turn in a confused circle. I look up and see Sawyer moving toward the stairs, peering down at me with wide eyes. She gestures frantically toward the guard tower.
The cell doors.
I limp to the tower and climb painfully up the stairs that corkscrew round and round, emerging into the security room at the top. The windows have cracked and splintered, some of the frames now entirely empty. The wind and rain pummel me, a physical force trying to shove me back down the stairs.
I glance quickly around the room. There isn’t much in here. Nothing electronic. It’s all old-school. I see a series of heavy levers sticking out from a metal control panel. There are faded signs underneath them: Level 1, Level 2…
I yank the levers in turn, pulling them all the way down. I can’t hear anything over the storm, but I see the cell doors slide open, one after the other, level by level, all the way up to the top of the Glasshouse.
The inmates explode outward, sprinting along the walkways, lowering themselves down over the broken sections, and dropping to the floors below. I retreat back down the stairs to find Sawyer waiting for me at the door to the tower.
The inmates are already milling around by the time I get there. I cup my hands around my mouth. “You want to live, follow this woman! We’ve got a place to hide out from the hurricane!”
Sawyer heads toward the exit, then pa
uses when she sees I’m not following. “You coming?”
“I’ll bring up the rear. Make sure everyone gets out.”
She hesitates.
“Go. I’m not going to do anything stupid.”
She nods and disappears through the door, the inmates following. There’s another crash, and more bricks fall from the wall, tumbling down into the water. I step back and wait while the inmates make their way into the corridor beyond.
I’m waiting for a reason.
Wright and Tully appear. They hesitate when they see me.
I stare at them, not moving. They glance at each other, then slowly move past me and through the door.
I wait until there’s no one left; then I turn and follow them.
Twenty-Five
7:20 a.m.
As I make my way back through the Glasshouse, I feel shell-shocked. I can’t believe I let them live. After all these years. After what they did…
Was Sawyer right? I try to imagine having a conversation with Amy, talking it through. I try to add my viewpoint, but every time I do, Amy shuts me down.
She wouldn’t want me to ruin my life. Not any more than I already have. I’d convinced myself I was doing it for her. For our child. And in a way, that was true. But really it was for me. I’d hoped it would lessen the pain. Would give me… I don’t know. A sense of peace? Closure? But that was just stupid. If I’d gone through with it, I would have been signing my soul away.
And Sawyer knew that. Just as Amy would have.
Nobody speaks as we hurry through the corridors. There’s no point. The deafening sounds of the hurricane overwhelm everything. The threat of destruction, of death. So close to all of us, held at bay by a few bricks and tiles and ninety-year-old mortar.
We retrace the steps I took earlier, arriving back in the corridor where we first entered the Glasshouse and following Sawyer down into the depths of the old building.
There aren’t many lights that work down here. We make our way through long patches of darkness, broken only by an occasional bulb hovering in the distance like a streetlamp in the night. The water is deeper here, past our waists, and the lower we go, the higher it rises.
Finally the line of inmates comes to a confused stop. I wait at the back. I can’t find the energy to move forward, don’t have the will to shove my way through the crowd to see if there’s a problem.
We start moving again after a few minutes. I push myself off from the wall and wade through the water, eventually emerging into a wide room. There’s a huge rusted door to the left that has been pulled open, and inmates from the Ravenhill side are now shuffling through. Some of them are holding flashlights. Someone must have had the bright idea of raiding a supply cupboard.
Felix and Sawyer stand by the door as Leo guides everyone through, pointing to an open door to our right.
“Through there. Keep going. Come on, people. Move it.”
Felix sees me and approaches. “So? Did you get them?”
I shake my head. “Sawyer talked me out of it.”
Felix glances over at her, surprised. “Okay…” he says. “Didn’t see that coming. But… I’m glad.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. The coldhearted-killer thing—it’s not you. You need to leave that to those of us with the experience.” He slaps me on the shoulder and heads back to the door.
I feel distant as I watch everyone move to safety. Over two hundred inmates. Say three hundred, counting those from the Glasshouse. That’s all that’s left from the eight hundred or so that were locked up here.
I should feel… something, surely? Relieved? Proud? But I don’t. I feel nothing. Just… empty.
And then it’s just me and Sawyer left. She stares at me slumped against the wall.
“You okay?”
“Not really.”
She nods. “You waiting here to drown, or you coming?”
I don’t answer. She waits, watching me.
Then holds out her hand.
I look at it, and the tears that have been threatening finally fall. Why does she care if I don’t? Why does she give a shit after what I did to her brother?
I hesitantly reach out and she clasps my hand tightly. She smiles, and we move into the dark corridor. Once inside, I let go so we can pull the door closed. Water trickles through invisible gaps between the door and the frame. We’re not safe yet. We still have to get to the actual storm drains.
Someone has given Sawyer a flashlight. She shines it around as we walk. The corridor is lined with avocado-green tiles. There’s hardly any dirt on them. No one has been down here for half a century.
We reach a long flight of stairs. At the bottom of the steps is a tunnel that looks more like an aqueduct, an arched passage about ten feet wide with raised walkways to either side. We’ve caught up with the inmates now, and follow them until the tunnel finally opens into an old-fashioned control room. We push through the crowd to get inside. It looks like something out of a sixties science-fiction movie. Hulking machines and analog control panels.
There’s no power down here. Inmates shine their flashlights around, beams of light picking out computers and file cabinets.
Leo stands in the center of the room, looking around with satisfaction. He sees me and nods toward a metal box mounted on the wall. “Jack? If you please.”
I pull it open. There’s a huge circuit-breaker switch inside. I push it up and a loud hum vibrates through the air.
Dim lights flicker to life, but not only in the control room. The walls are lined with viewing glass, and beyond it distant lights switch on, revealing what I can only describe as a cavern.
I peer through the window. The space below is utterly massive. Easily a hundred and fifty feet high and a hundred wide, an enormous concrete room that disappears into the distance, the arched ceiling supported by huge, hulking pillars.
“This is the final flood chamber,” says Leo, appearing at my side.
“You weren’t lying when you said it was big,” I say softly.
“There are five more just like it heading north. All connected by about twenty miles of tunnels.”
“Watertight?”
“Watertight.”
We leave the room and descend the steps into the vast chamber. Leo leads the way, heading toward a service door about fifty feet ahead.
“That door connects to the storm tunnels,” he says.
“Why don’t we just wait in here?” asks Felix, his head arched back as he tries to make out the distant roof.
“This place wasn’t finished,” says Leo. “I don’t think it’s sealed properly. Look around. There’s been deep water in here.”
He’s right. The walls are covered with tidemarks and old algae stains.
He kicks at the ankle-deep water covering the chamber floor. “See? Already filling. The storm drains are watertight, though. We can wait there till the floodwater recedes.”
“How long will that take?” asks Sawyer.
Leo shrugs. “Your guess is as good as mine. Might be a couple of days. You got any better ideas, though?”
She doesn’t, and so the inmates trudge wearily across the chamber floor, remove the heavy bar locking the door, and file into the storm tunnels beyond. Despite the uncertainty, there’s a feeling of relief in the air. We all thought we were going to die tonight. This is a second chance.
The four of us hang back until the last of the inmates have gone through. Leo goes next, Sawyer close behind him. Felix glances over at me. He opens his mouth to say something—
—and the top of his head bursts into a fine red mist.
The crack of automatic gunfire erupts, the chamber amplifying the noise to ear-shattering levels. The echo makes it sound like a hundred rifles are going off at once.
I feel a massive punch to the back of my ribs. I stagger and look down, staring in amazement at the blood spreading across my prison scrubs.
Felix topples over. I drop to my knees, see Sawyer’s shocked face as she watches fr
om inside the storm tunnel.
The shooting stops. Sawyer hesitates, then steps forward as if to help. Gunfire erupts again, chips of concrete exploding around the door. She yelps and ducks back inside.
I turn painfully around.
Kincaid strides toward me, a Ruger rifle raised to his shoulder. He fires at the tunnel again. Sawyer has no choice but to yank the door closed.
I fall back against one of the massive pillars, slumping down into the water, my hand going to my ribs. I can feel my blood pulsing, pumping from the wound.
Kincaid keeps his gun trained on me as he approaches the door and slides the bar back in place.
“Better,” he says. “We don’t want any interruptions.”
He backs up a step and leans against a pillar. I can’t take my eyes off Felix. His face is turned away from me, the wound submerged in water. Maybe he’ll get up. Maybe he’s fine…
“We were interrupted earlier,” says Kincaid casually. “Back when we were cleaning the cells. There was something I wanted to talk to you about. To tell you.”
I wrench my attention away from Felix. Kincaid cocks his head to the side. “You took my wife from me.”
“You… already told me that,” I say, gritting my teeth against the pain.
“I know. But I didn’t get to tell you everything. I wanted to savor it.” He smiles briefly. “See, I couldn’t let it pass. I had to return the favor.”
I frown. “The hell you talking about?”
“You think Novak, Wright, and Tully just happened to be at your house that night?”
I stare at Kincaid, struggling to understand the words. He can’t be saying…
“I see your mind working. Wondering. Let me clarify. That was me. You took my wife from me, so I took yours from you.” He frowns. “I don’t like that phrasing. Makes them sound like property. Something we own. But we both know that’s not how it was.” He watches me for a moment. “I get what you’re feeling. It’s like it’s just happened, right? You’re hurting all over again. But this time, you’ve got the guilt too. Because it’s all your fault. Your wife’s death. Your kid’s death. It’s all on you, Constantine.”
I feel my body go cold. My whole world drops away from me, like I’ve fallen over the edge of a cliff. I shake my head, not wanting to believe it.