Breakout

by Paul Herron

  “See? That right there. That’s the look I wanted to see,” says Kincaid in satisfaction. “That’s what I’ve been waiting for. Why I wanted us to be alone for this.”

  I let out a scream of fury and pain and launch myself at him.

  He tries to swing the gun around, but I grab it, throw myself against him. I slam my forehead into his face, feel the crunch of breaking cartilage, then bring my knee up into his stomach. His breath explodes outward and I yank the Ruger from his grasp. I stumble back, swing it around so it’s pointing at him.

  Our eyes lock. Kincaid straightens up. There’s something in his eyes. Resignation. Acceptance.

  Hope?

  “Do it, then,” he says.

  I hesitate, confused.

  “Do it!” he shouts.

  I pull the trigger.

  The click echoes through the chamber.

  A look of disappointment flashes across Kincaid’s face. I stare dumbly at the gun, then stagger back and slump against the pillar, sliding into the water again.

  Kincaid sighs, then reaches into his pocket and pulls out a revolver. I’m assuming it’s the same one he forced Sawyer and Felix to play Russian roulette with. He checks the chamber, turns it slowly, then carefully closes it again.

  “When I found out my wife was gone…” He shakes his head. “No words can describe it. Everything you say is a cliché, right? It doesn’t feel real. It feels like a movie. But it’s true. I still thought she was going to walk through the door, come visiting day.” He sighs. “But she never did. And when that finally sinks in, when all the denial is gone, when you’re sitting there feeling like your insides have been scooped out, you realize what loneliness really is. That utter emptiness of the soul. You know what I’m saying? There was a part of me that was entwined with her. Our history, our memories. Our love. And she took it with her when she died. You become less of a person. A ghost.”

  Kincaid looks around the chamber, then smiles sadly at me. There are tears in his eyes as he holds the revolver up in the air. “One bullet left. I don’t think I’ll waste it on you, Jack. I think I’d like you to suffer a bit longer with what I’ve told you.” He thumbs back the firing hammer. “But you know what? If tonight has taught me anything, it’s that I just don’t care anymore. About anything.”

  And with that, he puts the revolver under his chin and pulls the trigger.

  I shout out in shock as the gunshot booms around the chamber and Kincaid falls back into the water.

  I sit for what feels like forever, my eyes fixed on his body. After a while, I notice that the water is rising. It’s up past my stomach now, pouring in through the roof. There’s been no maintenance in these flood chambers. Leo said they weren’t even completed. This place is going to fill up. Just like Ravenhill. Just like the Glasshouse.

  I push myself painfully to my feet and turn to face the door that Sawyer and the other inmates went through. I take a step toward it, but then stop. Why go that way? Do I want to spend the rest of my life in prison?

  Do I even want to live anymore? Maybe I should follow Kincaid’s example. The only thing keeping him going was the thought of telling me what he’d done. He wanted me to hurt. Once he’d done that…

  I pick up a flashlight someone dropped, limp over to Felix. I squat down, put a hand on his chest.

  “See you ’round, buddy.”

  I straighten up and study the chamber. I find what I’m looking for and head toward the far side. There’s a series of round tunnels cut into the wall. They must be how the water exits the flood chambers.

  Which means they connect to the ocean.

  I step into the closest one and shine the flashlight around. The tunnel is concrete, gray and rough, unfinished.

  I start walking. I walk until the pain is too much. Then I rest against the curved wall until I find the energy to push on again. My clothes stick to the bullet wound, forming a makeshift bandage. I’m not sure how much blood I’ve lost. A lot. Enough that I don’t think I’m going to make it.

  I don’t care anymore. I don’t deserve to live. All this was my fault. Everything. I killed Amy. I killed our daughter. It’s all on me. If I die, I die. If I don’t… well, I have a lot to make up for, a lot of guilt to pay off.

  I’m not sure how long I keep walking. How many minutes or hours pass as I stagger through the pain and the haze of delirium.

  I finally reach a door in the tunnel. No, not a door. A round metal gate that sits flush with the tunnel walls. I can’t see how to open it. I feel around for some kind of switch or lever before I finally stop.

  What am I even doing? The hurricane is still raging. What’s the point?

  I chuckle to myself, slump down in the water. The tunnel is filling up. The water is up to my ribs.

  Not much longer now.

  I close my eyes.

  Epilogue

  Four months after the hurricane, Keira Sawyer sits at a table on Venice Beach, sipping a cold beer.

  She stares out over the ocean, smells the salt in the air, watches the surfers and families playing in the sand. She shivers a little as the waves crash over the kids, listens to the laughter and screams of teenagers. She has to fight down a flash of fear at the sound. Has to remind herself that everything is fine. That no one is going to die.

  Thirty hours they were trapped in those flood tunnels. Thirty hours. The weird thing was, she never once felt in fear of her life. Not from the inmates, at any rate. All that mattered was surviving. At that moment, they were just human beings trying to stay alive, nothing else, and they all looked out for each other.

  It was a strangely uplifting thing to experience. The world might be a shit show, but there is some decency left. Humanity has a way of pulling together when the chips are down. It makes her feel optimistic about the future.

  A shadow falls across her table.

  “This seat taken?”

  She takes off her sunglasses and glances up. Her eyes go wide as Constantine lowers himself gingerly into the seat opposite. He’s holding a bottle of Bud that he sips from while she gets over her shock.

  “Jack… I thought… we all thought…”

  “That I was dead? Yeah. Me too. It hasn’t been a pleasant few months, I can tell you.”

  “But… how?”

  “I made it into the outflow tunnels. Couldn’t get through the gate, though. Didn’t realize it opens automatically when the water pressure gets high enough. The weight of the water just sort of pushes it open. I was thrown out into the ocean during the tail end of the hurricane.”

  “And you didn’t drown?”

  “Nearly did. Washed up on the beach. Just managed to strip my jumpsuit off before passing out. FEMA found me, took me to the hospital.”

  “How did you explain the bullet hole?”

  “Looters. They didn’t make a big deal of it. There was too much going on.”

  Sawyer nods. She stares hard at him, then takes a big swallow of her beer. “Why are you here?”

  He places something on the table. She leans forward. It’s a memory stick.

  “What’s that?”

  “My confession. About how I framed Kincaid. How your brother shouldn’t be in prison. It’s all there. How I stole the drugs from dealers. Planted them at Kincaid’s place. Set up the bust for when I knew he was at home.”

  She reaches out and takes the memory stick with a shaking hand.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “Really.” He finishes his beer and stands up.

  “Wait.” Sawyer looks up at him. “What are you going to do?”

  “Not sure. I’ve got a few contacts. People who can make me a fake ID. Maybe I’ll go up north. I’m sick of the heat. I’d like to see some snow.” He gives her a small smile, and she can’t help noticing the sadness behind it. “Or maybe I’ll take up a hobby. Storm chasing sounds interesting.”

  She smiles. “Take care, Jack.”

  “You too, Sawyer.”

  She watches him disappear into the crowd. She
clenches her hand around the memory stick and sits back with a contented sigh, watching the setting sun flash orange on the tips of the waves.

  Acknowledgments

  I would like to extend appreciation and thanks to my amazing agents, Sandra Sawicka and Leah Middleton, and to my editors, Toby Jones and Wes Miller. Your suggestions and comments without a doubt made the book much stronger and tighter.

  Also, I would like to say a special thank-you for your empathy and concern during a very difficult time. It was (and is) greatly appreciated.

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  About the Author

  Paul Herron is a Scotsman struggling (and failing) to survive the heat and humidity of South Africa. Although Breakout is Paul’s debut thriller, he also writes computer games and comics, and has worked on over twenty-seven television shows, one of which was nominated for an International Emmy Award. One of his previous works of fiction is being developed by Jerry Bruckheimer Productions and CBS as a television series. Paul lives with his wife, Jo, on the east coast of South Africa. He has three children.