Michael had never been a leader his entire personal and professional life. Even his military days were just doing what he needed to get by. Sure, he’d tried to impress upon his superiors when he could, but after going above and beyond and having no one notice, he stopped trying so damn hard. There wasn’t much sense in being so high on integrity when all it did at the end of the day was make him tired.
A big part of him wanted to stock up the buses with whatever they could grab and hit the road now. No sense in waiting for the assholes at Buchanan Correctional to storm the trenches at Black Mountain. If they busted ass, they could have the biggest part of what they needed loaded up within the next two days. Fluidity and the ability to change plans wasn’t such a bad idea right now. Save what you can, leave the rest. Someone would take over Black Mountain eventually, anyway. The irony of inmates trying to take over the prison they’d been released from was not lost on Michael.
“Michael!”
Michael turned around to see Travis Pierce, his father-in-law, walking up the boulevard. Travis took care of Betty and Anna while Michael and Lindsey rushed Harold Poston to Medical. From the way he was approaching, he looked like he had a bone to pick.
Michael turned to face him. “Yeah, Travis. What is it?”
“Like you have to ask, Michael. You still going through with this ‘saving the world’ plan of yours? It looks like your friend there got run off by your inmates.”
“I didn’t let them go, Travis. That was Captain Winston’s deal. Not much point in taking it to heart, in my opinion.”
Travis straightened up. “Fair enough. Fact is we don’t need to be hanging around here any long than we have to. We’ve got two buses out front. Let’s load ‘em up and we will be out of here within a day or two. We can make short runs into Bluefield for the items we need that aren’t here. After that, we hit the road.”
“As much as I want to disagree with you, I can’t. I’m sorry, Travis. We should have hit the road already.”
Travis patted Michael on the shoulder. “Don’t take it too hard, Michael. We gotta be able to change plans quickly. C’mon, let’s get somewhere we can draw up some ideas.”
* * *
Charles Witwer watched from the kitchen. In all the excitement lately, he’d managed to sneak out of intake and over to the Staff Dining area. The COs always got better food than the inmates did, and now he could see why. After feeding his face for the last hour, he was ready to make his appearance. The doors were unlocked and there were only a handful of officers left.
Time to shine, Charlie…
Refuge From The Dead (Book 1): Lockdown Page 20