Breakout by Paul Herron (notion reading list .txt) 📕

to meet in the cafeteria. Repeat, all staff to the cafeteria right now.”

He grabs his car keys, then pauses. Habit. None of them can just drive out in their cars. They won’t make it twenty feet. The bus is their only hope. He drops the keys back on the desk and leaves the office.

The cafeteria is full by the time he arrives. Lots of annoyed and worried uniforms all talking at the same time. He holds up his hands for silence. It doesn’t make a difference.

“Settle down!” he shouts. He waits till he has their attention. “Here’s the situation. You all know about the hurricane. Well, it’s gotten worse. Hannah and Josephine have joined together and formed some kind of mutant superstorm. Category Five. They say it’s going to be bigger than Irma. Which means we need to evacuate.”

“How the hell are we going to do that?” asks Bright, a young woman from New Orleans. “We have eight hundred prisoners here.”

“I’m not talking about the inmates.” Keep it cool, he thinks. Sell it like your life depends on it. “The staff that is still here is evacuating in the bus now. Jefferson says the Federal Emergency Management Agency is working with the National Guard and are going to evacuate the prisoners as soon as they can.”

“Who’s staying behind to keep an eye on things?” asks someone.

“No one.”

“But there are people in the infirmary—”

“I understand that. But we’ve got no choice here. Everyone will be locked in their cells till help comes.” He looks around. “Any other questions?”

Nothing. He was expecting some argument, but everyone stays silent. He’s not sure whether he should be happy that it makes things easier for him, or disappointed in their lack of commitment to the job.

“Where are we going?” asks Bright.

“We’ll get onto the I-95 and head north. We keep going till we hit Dade City.”

“That’s nearly three hundred miles away!”

“Yeah, three hundred miles away from the hurricane.”

“Unless it heads north too.”

“We’re not going to think about that,” says Montoya. “Anyway, last I heard it’s going to keep moving west and taper out over the Gulf of Mexico in a couple of days. Let’s just focus on putting miles between us and this place. Okay?”

A few nods from the staff. Not everyone looks comfortable, but no one is complaining.

“Okay… Make sure everyone is in their cells and meet me in R&R in twenty minutes. Go.”

The COs spring into action, filing out of the cafeteria to make sure all the prisoners are locked down. As soon as he’s alone, Montoya sags into a chair and wipes the sweat from his face.

The bus is parked outside R&R in the roofed-over depot, left there after bringing the inmates back from cleaning the old prison. Jesus. How the hell is that place going to survive the coming storm?

Don’t think about it. Not your problem.

He wasn’t the one who volunteered the place as a refuge in the first place. That’s on Jefferson. In fact, he needs to start seeding that as soon as they get to safety. Jefferson planned all this.

He waits as the staff files into the foyer, arriving in ones and twos. He ticks off their names on his clipboard as they step outside into the depot. The bus slowly fills up, the nervous staff taking their seats, squashing together, some forced to stand and hold on to the seat backs for support. Finally, after about another ten minutes, everyone seems to be accounted for.

He has to check, though. Montoya ducks back inside the prison, moving through the empty corridors, looking into abandoned offices. It’s… eerie. That’s the only word to describe it. All the years he’s been here, the prison has never been empty. There has always been movement, life, plus an overwhelming sense of desperation that he’s always attributed to the inmates. Except that feeling isn’t there anymore. Which kind of means it must have come from the staff instead.

It’s all clear. He heads back to the bus and climbs inside. The driver scowls at him. It’s Hicks. Montoya doesn’t like the look of him. Never has. Young, skinny, greasy skin and a tattoo on his forearm, visible below his rolled-up sleeve.

“We need to get going,” Hicks says.

“The hell you waiting for, then?” growls Montoya. He surveys the bus. It’s filled to bursting point. Everyone looks worried. Scared.

“The gate,” says Hicks.

“What?”

“Someone has to open the gate.”

“Jesus! Louis. Open the gate.”

Louis looks up from his seat. He’s another young kid. Barely into his twenties. “Why me?”

“Because you’re young. You can run faster. Move it.”

Louis hurriedly heaves himself up from his seat and squeezes past Montoya.

“Wait.”

Louis pauses and Montoya unclips the huge key ring he carries on his belt. It’s got all the universal keys he uses to get around the prison. They’re the symbol of his position, his power. He hands it over reluctantly. “You’ll need them to get into the security room.”

Louis grabs the keys and runs back inside the prison. Montoya watches him go, feeling suddenly small and unimportant.

Louis moves quickly through R&R, using Montoya’s keys to get through the locked doors. He heads straight for the closest security room, the one beyond reception that guards the sally port into Unit 1 of General Population. He unlocks the door and pulls a chair over to sit down at the computer, then grabs the mouse and hovers the pointer over the gate leading out of the depot.

He hesitates, eyes drawn to the cells clearly visible on the five computer screens to his left. All the doors are marked red, showing that they’re locked tight.

Christ. He stares guiltily at the screens. They’re running away. What’s the point in pretending? They’re bailing on their responsibilities, saving their own hides because the storm is going to take them out.

If they leave the inmates like this, they’re all going to die. Drown. Trapped in their cells as the water slowly rises.

But is what he’s contemplating any better?

Yes. It is.

If he was an inmate, he knows what he’d want.