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

They’re all loose. Eight hundred inmates.

And they have the run of the prison.

Sawyer feels panic well up inside her. Her neck prickles, like someone is standing behind her blowing on it. She hesitates, not wanting to turn.

Her stomach twists. She lunges to her feet, shoves the chair back and whirls around.

There’s no one there. She takes a deep breath, her eyes fixed on the open door leading out into the corridor. Jesus Christ. If she’s found wandering around…

She darts forward and slams the door shut.

She needs to get out of here. Now. Her thoughts are racing. How? What can she do?

The bus. They obviously didn’t know she was here when they left. Martinez said she wasn’t on the employee list yet. That’s why she had to give her a temp keycard. They’ll come back for her, surely? She just needs to tell them she’s still here.

Next to the monitors is a small box with an LCD screen and a transmitter hooked to the side. She grabs the transmitter and pushes the button. “Hello?”

Nothing.

She checks the box. The screen isn’t even lit up. She finds the power button. Static bursts out of the speaker. She pushes the button again. “Hello? Anyone there?” She releases the button. Still, no answer.

This isn’t going to work. She needs to know what channel the bus communications are on.

She searches around the desk until she finds a binder with laminated pages inside. She starts to flick through it when she hears a shout outside the room.

She ducks down, then crawls to the window. She peers through the thick safety glass, sees an inmate sprinting down the corridor chased by two other men. None of them try to get into the security room, but she uses the keys she found to lock the door anyway.

She stays low and crawls back to the binder, paging through it until she finds the channels for the prison buses. There are only four. She types in the first number.

“Sheriff Montoya? Are you there?”

Nothing. Just static.

She tries the next code, then the next and the next, before going back to the beginning and trying them again, one after the other, until finally someone answers.

“H… hello?”

“Who is this?” she demands.

“Uh… Louis.”

Sawyer hears a loud screeching over the speaker, then someone shouting.

“Louis? You still there?”

“Who is this? Is this the National Guard? We need help.”

She’s about to answer when she hears a sudden crashing and a scream of fear. “Watch out! Watch—”

Then a burst of static.

“Louis? Hey, Louis, talk to me.”

No answer. She pushes the button again. “Louis? You there?”

Static.

Jesus Christ. Sawyer slumps down onto the floor. Was that really what it sounded like? She can’t escape the thought.

That was the transport bus crashing.

She throws the transmitter back on the desk in a fit of rage. What the hell were they thinking? Abandoning their duties like that? Leaving the prisoners to fend for themselves while they made a run for it? Why would they do something like that?

Her thoughts race. The only possible reason—the only thing that makes the slightest bit of sense—is that Montoya didn’t think this place was going to survive the coming storm. Obviously they thought the Glasshouse would; they wouldn’t be using it for the evacuated prisoners if they didn’t. But it wasn’t looking good for the Ravenhill Correctional Facility itself.

Or for the prisoners inside.

Or, in fact, for her.

She can hear the inmates screaming and shouting now. The volume has been steadily increasing over the past few minutes, but she’s tried her best to ignore it.

She can’t. Not anymore. She blinks and looks around as if seeing her surroundings for the first time. What is she going to do? She has to adapt her plan. She can’t just abandon it al-together. This might very well be the last chance she has. If she’s going to die, she’s at least going to die doing what she came here for.

She crawls to the window and peers out into the corridor. She presses her forehead against the glass, trying to see into Unit 1. But she can’t. The angle is all wrong.

She hesitates, wondering what to do. Wait and hide? Or take a chance?

She already knows the answer. She was never one to play it safe.

She puts one hand on the keys still sitting in the lock, the other on the handle. She slowly unlocks, then opens the door, slipping the key out, then back into the lock on the other side of the door.

She hesitates one last time. Once she steps into the passage, she can’t stop again. She’ll have to keep moving or she’ll be eaten alive.

Sawyer takes a deep breath, then moves out into the corridor. She pulls the door closed behind her, locks it and pulls out the keys…

… Then she runs.

She feels an instant wave of panic. She stumbles, almost turns back. This is stupid. Suicidal. She’s going to die. She’s going to be caught. Fuck knows what they’ll do to her.

But what else can she do? Hide underneath the desk for… how long? Hours? Days? Until the hurricane strips the roof away and takes her out? No. She has to move forward. Staying still—stopping—means death.

She pushes on, forcing one foot in front of the other. She can hear screaming, shouting, shrill laughter coming from the open units behind her. God knows what’s going on in the seven complexes that make up Ravenhill. All those inmates roaming around, free to settle scores, free to do whatever they want. It’s going to be a bloodbath.

Her thoughts keep going back to what would happen if they caught her. She can’t help it. She glances over her shoulder. Nothing there. But she can’t shake the feeling that someone is going to just reach out and grab her, yank her back and drag her into a room.

And then—

“Hey!”

She throws a look over her shoulder. There are two guys standing at the other end of the corridor, back toward the security room. They glance at each other, then start to run.

Sawyer