Sunfall (Book 3): Impact

by Gideon, D.

  More footsteps echoed down the hallway, and Simon gestured at the cells. “Sounds like the others are coming. Best get yourselves settled in.” He pointed at Marco. “That’s Marco. He needs to see everyone once we’re ready to get started. Let everyone know.”

  Trench cast a look over his shoulder and back, nodding. “Yessir, Warden.” He dropped his duffel by the door and held up a fist. Another wet, tattooed arm reached out of the darkness to bump it. Two more men stepped into the pod.

  “None of that,” Simon said. “Anyone over there hears you call me Warden, they’ll catch on pretty quick.”

  Mumbled agreements from the growing crowd at the doorway made him sigh. He couldn’t expect them to change year-long habits overnight.

  Father Bill made his way through the human block, shaking hands and greeting each man as he passed. Against one shoulder he carried something long, wrapped in a poncho.

  “Sheriff,” he said, stepping up and shaking Simon’s hand. “I brought Nurse Macy and the doctors Butcher. They’ve gone to see the infirmary, but I’m sure they’ll swing by to say hello. Thank you for offering us this shelter.”

  “Only makes sense,” Simon said. He pointed at the long bundle. “What you got there?”

  Bill smiled and patted the poncho. “This is my other girl,” he said. “She’s been with me probably about as long as you’ve been alive. Where can I lay her out and freshen her up?”

  Simon pointed to Corey’s table. “Anywhere, really, but all the gun cleaning stuff’s over there.” He laid a hand on Bill’s shoulder. “Father, once you get a minute-“

  Bill gave him a kind smile. “Having doubts?”

  “Those are townspeople over there,” Simon said. “And from what we’ve learned, they’ve got no choice.”

  Bill’s face grew serious. “We’ll try our best not to engage. But Simon, each of those people do have a choice. They might not like the choices, but those choices exist. It’s not like they’re facing death if they don’t go along with Frank’s orders; they’ll just have a harder time. And if they fire at us, it’s pretty clear where their priorities lie.”

  Simon rubbed a hand over his face. “You sure I’m not just as bad as Frank? As Wilhelm? I could be sending people to their deaths.”

  Bill lowered his bundle down so it rested on top of his foot, and leaned a hand over the top of it. He flicked his fingers in the direction of the former convicts, who were poking through cells now, deciding where they were going to bunk up.

  “If any of these men said they didn’t want to go with us tonight, would you make them?” Bill asked.

  Simon frowned. “It’s what they signed up for when we offered them the New Home deal.”

  “But would you make them?” Bill propped his chin on top of his—well, Simon could only assume it was some sort of long rifle—and raised his eyebrows.

  Simon took a deep breath and sighed. “No,” he admitted. “But they’d still be helping. I’d find something else for them to do. Guard the front doors. Get up on the roof and cover our return.”

  Bill smiled and he reached up to pat Simon’s shoulder. “Mmhm. Don’t worry, Simon. You’re nothing like Frank Stalls and Kenny Wilhelm. Now, I’ve got some preparations to make.” He hefted his bundle back to his shoulder and clapped Simon’s arm.

  Simon watched the little man cross to Corey’s table and start unwrapping what turned out to be a beautiful antique sniper’s rifle.

  “I sure hope you’re right,” he muttered to himself. People were going to die tonight, and if he had anything to do with it, Mayor Wilhelm would be one of them. Ultimately though, he just hoped they could get Dotty out alive.

  A lawman arming and leading lawless men to rescue an innocent woman from a tyrant. You couldn’t make this stuff up.

  Forget doubting my morality; it’s my sanity I should be worried about, he thought.

  Shaking his head, he crossed to Corey’s table and picked up one of the weapons from the prison’s armory.

  “All right, gentlemen,” he said. “Who has experience with a rifle?”

  Dotty

  Dotty had spent a long time after the trial wallowing in her grief. Frank had come in and taken off her plastic cuffs, and was going to give her another MRE for dinner, until he saw her unopened one on the cot.

  “Not even grateful enough to use what you’ve been given,” he said, and lightning crackled in a shocking clap.

  It got her attention.

  Frank left the room and locked her in, and she sat there, sure someone was trying to tell her something.

  Use what you’ve been given.

  To do what? To fight her way out of here? To maybe break out?

  But what had she been given? She looked around the room, at a loss. The bottle of water? The MRE?

  She tore it open in a frenzy. Soft lined packets, a chemical reaction pack, a piece of hard candy and a plastic spork. What could she do with a spork? She wasn’t sure she was up to stabbing someone, and even if she did work up the nerve, the darn thing probably wasn’t sharp enough.

  The grout between the floor tiles was rough and she tried sanding the handle against it, but mostly it just scratched the plastic and made it look chewed-on. Applying more pressure might help, but she was afraid to break it.

  Okay, so maybe that wasn’t what she’d been given.

  Think, Dorothy. Think. Use your head.

  And then she started smiling. That was what she was supposed to use: her head.

  She’d been given this life and this intelligence, and if she just sat here and let these vile people take that away from her without trying to protect those gifts, she wouldn’t be showing God how grateful she was for them.

  So she focused on her goals: either break out, or be able to fight when they came for her. Focusing on the goal first and working her way backwards had always worked best for her; it kept her from getting tunnel vision. Tunnel vision like trying to figure out how she could use a spork, when what she needed to do was find any way to fight or break out.

  Fighting was a last resort, as she never saw any of them without their guns and she was so much smaller than they. Breaking out was a more likely option.

  There was a short, very wide window high in the wall at the end of the stalls. It was far too tall for her to reach even when jumping, and it didn’t open anyway. It was just to let in light. It looked to be some sort of hammered glass; probably to obstruct vision. But if she could figure out a way to break it, and a way to get up to it, she was pretty sure she could fit through it.

  Each stall had a toilet, a flat stainless steel panel set into the wall behind it with a camera to tell it when to flush, a couple of tube handlebars on either side of the stall, and toilet paper dispensers. The toilet’s seat was a flimsy plastic that wouldn’t do her any good; it would likely shatter if she hit the window with it. The bars, though...those looked pretty sturdy.

  She tried unscrewing one of the bars with the end of the spork. It didn’t work. She took off Bill’s socks and climbed up on the bars, and pulled herself up to peek over the top of the stall. It was skinny and wobbled a bit under her weight, but if she could get up here, she could possibly jump down onto someone. She filed that under Last Resort. Besides, it had taken her so long to do that she’d never accomplish it between the time they started unlocking the door and when they stepped in.

  But the height gave her another idea.

  She climbed the bar in the last stall--this one screwed right into the cinder wall--and reached for the bare cement edge of the windowsill. She could put all of her fingers on it. She might be able to pull herself up there. But she still needed to break that window.

  It had gotten dark enough that she couldn’t inspect the room in detail, so she went to her cot and sat to think. She fixed her meal and ate every bite. She’d need that energy. She tucked her spork into the the tube sleeve of the cot to hide it, and fell asleep working the problem over.

  She slept better than she thought she would.
Morning found her at the mirror, using the spork to dig at the silicone sealant securing the edge of the mirror to the wall. If she could get under the mirror, she could break it. A broken piece of mirror could be a weapon or a tool. Disappointingly, the silicone had been put on well. The spork barely made a dent in it.

  She could maybe kick one of the faucets and get it to break off, then use that to break the window. Kicking the faucet would make a lot of noise, though, and she’d risk breaking her foot. She also filed that under Last Resort and moved on to the beds.

  She squatted down and inspected the military cot she’d been sleeping on. It was made with hollow square aluminum tubes. It wasn’t very heavy, but it was far too bulky for her to pick it up and swing it.

  She wanted something she could swing.

  Everything seemed to be welded together at attachment joints. The crossbar on the end of the cot seemed to be the only exception. She didn’t see any pins or screws holding it in place. Screws wouldn’t make sense anyway, being as the military liked things that could quickly be put up and broken down without using tools. She tugged on it, and it wiggled a bit. She scooted over to the other side and compared.

  Nubs. The crossbars were held in by plastic nubs, and pressure from the canvas. She pulled hard on the end of one, levering it away from the body of the cot. It popped off of the nub and nearly flew out of her hand from the tension of the canvas.

  This, she could use.

  She popped the other end of the crossbar off of its nub and slid the bar out of its canvas sleeve. A couple feet long, it was lightweight but sturdy. Plastic caps kept the ends from being sharp. She frowned. They might also keep the bar from actually having enough force to break something. The plastic might soften the blow. She wondered if she could work those out.

  She swung the bar a couple of times, testing it. Any sweat at all and it would probably slip right out of her hand. If she intended to use it as a weapon, she’d need to wrap it.

  She’d already figured out a workable solution for that problem, when she was trying to find a way to break the big mirror over the restroom sinks. Her t-shirt tucked into her pants for a good eight inches or so. That was fabric that she could tear off without anyone noticing. She’d planned to wrap her hand with it and hit the mirror if necessary, but now that she had something resembling a bat, she wouldn’t have to.

  She hurried back over to her own bed and folded her blanket into a long pillow that stretched the width of the cot. This, she tucked the bar into. Then she moved to the door and looked the room over. You could clearly tell that that third cot was missing its crossbar. The canvas sleeve drooped down and called attention to itself.

  Moving back over, she took that cot’s blanket and re-folded it also, and laid it carefully across the foot of the cot, tucking the drooping canvas under it. She stepped back and gave it a critical eye.

  Good. That concealed the missing bar. Another minute re-folding the blanket for the middle cot, and all three of them matched. Anyone coming in now wouldn’t notice anything unless they checked her blanket or tried to sit on it.

  Lightning crackled overhead and a few moments later, thunder rolled through the building. She smiled up at the ceiling.

  “I’m working on it,” she told the storm. “You just hold off a little longer, slow down a bit, and I might have something for you to see when you get here.”

  By noon, she’d used the spork to tear the bottom of her shirt into strips, she’d tied the fabric onto the crossbar as a grippy handle, and she had the workings of a plan.

  Wait until it was dark and everyone was asleep. Climb the handles and use the bar to break the window during a crash of lightning to cover the sound. Use the bar to clear out as much glass as possible. Throw one of the blankets through the window to cover any remaining glass...then hope like crazy that she was strong enough to pull herself up and through it.

  There were a lot of other variables that could make this go very wrong. The drop to the ground outside might be further than the one inside. She could break something and not be able to run. There might not even be ground; maybe the window opened over a shorter roof. The storm itself might be dangerous enough to hurt her or kill her. Someone might hear her break the window.

  But she had to at least try.

  The pin jiggled in the lock and she hopped up from the cot to draw attention away from it. When the door swung open, she was pacing in front of the mirror.

  Frank tossed an MRE at her and she nearly missed catching it.

  “Lunch,” he said. “And a visitor. You’ve got two minutes.”

  Bill stepped into the room, a poncho dripping water over one arm and a legal pad in his hands.

  “Bill! You didn’t have to come out in this mess,” she said, hugging him.

  “I came to take your last will and testament, since the Bishop is on his way to Annapolis,” he said, then slid a glance at Frank, who had positioned himself in the doorway and was obviously not going to give them privacy.

  “In two minutes?” she asked.

  “Well I didn’t know about that part until I stepped in here,” Bill said, and turned to Frank. “The pat-down almost took longer than that. Maybe I can leave the pad and pen? You already looked it over and verified there’s nothing written in it.” He held up the pad.

  Frank scowled.

  “There’s no way I can take down her will in two minutes, and the Judge gave her this extra time to do exactly that,” Bill said.

  “Fine. Whatever,” Frank said.

  Bill walked over and dropped the pad on the cot, along with a cheap pen from his pocket that had the church’s name and address printed on it. Then he stood back and looked her over, and screwed his face up.

  “It’s a shame they haven’t given you anything to use as shoes. Quick, take off those filthy socks,” he said, dropping the poncho on the floor and bending down. “We’ll switch.”

  Dotty looked down. The bottoms of the socks he’d given her were nearly black from walking around in them, but what did that matter? They were keeping her feet warm.

  “No, Bill, that’s fine. They don’t-”

  “Take them off,” he insisted. He’d slipped out of his loafers and had one sock off already.

  “I didn’t say you could give her more socks,” Frank said. “I didn’t even say you could give her the first pair.”

  “After patting me down, you’re afraid I’m going to give her a pair of tactical socks?” Bill asked. “Maybe she’ll use them to shoot a hole through the wall and escape?”

  Frank rolled his eyes. “You’re down to thirty seconds.”

  “Quick, Dotty, take them off,” Bill said, gesturing at her feet.

  She slipped out of them and held them up. “New ones will just get dirty-”

  Bill grabbed the socks she held and thrust his into her hands. He shoved the dirty ones into his pocket and reached for her.

  She closed her eyes as he kissed her forehead and pulled her into a hug.

  “We’re coming,” he whispered. “Be ready.”

  “What’s that?” Frank said.

  Bill stepped back and scowled at Frank. “I said ‘I love you’. Is nothing private?”

  “Not in here, it’s not,” Frank said. “You’re not her lawyer. And time’s up.”

  Bill snatched his loafers and poncho from the floor and walked to the door. “You could’ve given us more time, considering what’s happening in the morning.”

  Frank lifted a shoulder and smirked. “You got out-planned. Deal with it.”

  They left and she heard the pin slide into the lock.

  She stood frozen, waiting to be sure Frank wouldn’t come storming back inside.

  When a few minutes had passed, she hurried to the cot and pulled the socks out from behind the MRE in her hands, and turned them over.

  A slim black device slid from Bill’s sock into her hand. It was a tube covered in grippy ridges, had a small flashlight on one end, and a sharp, lethal-looking point on the oth
er. There was a little pair of wings etched into the side, with a TF symbol in a circle between them. She pulled on the bottom of the device and the pointy cap came off, revealing a pen. If she kept taking it apart, she’d probably find more goodies.

  She’d sold devices like this in Teddy’s shop. They were part of the small, impulse-buy items he had in the case at the checkout counter, along with some knives, funny mugs, and interesting keychains.

  It was a tactical self-defense pen, the kind policemen carried. The tip was strong enough to break glass or stab someone. This pen probably came from the Sheriff himself, and Bill had risked everything to get it to her. He’d been lucky Frank hadn’t made him take off his loafers in the pat-down. He’d have seen the hard line of it running alongside Bill’s foot.

  Tactical socks, she thought, and slapped a hand over her mouth to cover a nearly hysterical burst of laughter. The laughter turned to tears and hope bloomed bright and hot in her chest.

  They’re coming for me.

  Preacher

  The world sounded like it was being torn apart, with howling winds beating at the roll-up doors of the prison’s intake bay and water pushing in under the seal. Pools stretched across the floor and little waves rippled across them. Preacher huddled against the innermost wall with the other members of the suicide squad. They’d been here for nearly an hour, waiting for the hurricane’s eyewall to pass over.

  Having no idea how large the storm was presented a problem. They’d waited in the men’s wing for hours, going stir crazy until the Sheriff finally moved them out here.

  Not knowing how small the hurricane’s eye was presented an even bigger problem. They had no idea how much time they’d have once the winds stopped. It could be thirty minutes. It could be only five.

  As if turning a switch, the doors stopped rattling in their frames and the howling dropped off; banshees retreating into the distance.

  The next minute, all was deathly quiet.

  “Holy shit,” Trench said. “Sounded like the doors were going to rip off. Is it over?”