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

at each turn, listening for sounds of approach, then doubling back and ducking into storerooms and offices until the coast is clear again. I’m not a coward, but I’m not stupid. Trying to get past inmates when they’re hyped up on blood and freedom would be like trying to reason with a kid on a sugar high. It’s not happening.

“This is it,” says Sawyer finally, nodding at a reinforced door.

“That leads into the staff corridor?” I ask. “You sure?”

“I was here just a few hours ago.”

“Okay. So we get in there and we run. We just keep going, right? All the way to the north end of the prison. Then we find a place to lay low for a few hours.”

“Think you can keep up?” she says. “It’s a pretty long corridor.”

There’s a lightness to her tone. I look at her and see a tentative smile on her face, a look of excitement in her eyes. I get it. We’re close to getting out of this. Close to reaching safety. All we have to do is make it to the other end of this corridor and then wait until the eye of the storm comes. Simple.

“I’ll be fine,” I say. “Don’t worry about me.”

She takes a deep breath and unlocks the door, then hooks the keys back on her belt and pulls the door slightly open, just enough that we can see into the corridor beyond.

Most of the lights are gone. One or two still work, casting small pools of radiance down into the darkness. The roaring of the hurricane is even louder in here. The right wall of the passage is all that stands between us and the outside world.

This isn’t what I was imagining. I was thinking an empty corridor, brightly lit, still locked off from the inmates.

Stupid me.

There are entrances to each of the units along the left side of the corridor, and it looks like they’ve all been opened. There’ve definitely been inmates here. There’s trash strewn everywhere, floating around in two and a half feet of water. Plants from the COs’ offices, photographs, food packaging, shredded mattresses. Toilet rolls that are now mushed-up islands drift slowly around the corridor.

“So… I’m thinking maybe we don’t run,” I say. “Maybe a stealthy approach is called for.”

“Yeah. I think you’re right.”

We enter the long corridor, sticking to the left wall. I can hear shouts and screams coming from inside the units, the sounds drifting back to us through the sally ports. They must all still be open. We wouldn’t be able to hear so much if they were sealed tight like they should be.

We reach the door leading into Unit 1. I gently try the handle, just to check. The door moves slightly but doesn’t open. It looks like it’s been barricaded on the other side. There’s a plastic-covered mattress blocking the window.

We keep moving. A huge expanse of darkness stretches ahead of us. The next pool of light is about a hundred yards away, a strip light that dangles from the ceiling. After that, there’s a light outside what looks like Unit 3, and then another one illuminating the door that leads into the Northside section far ahead.

We keep walking. We reach the first pool of light, and as we do so, there’s a shout up ahead. It isn’t the usual screaming we can hear coming from the units. This is much closer. We stop moving as a man stumbles out of the door and into the light outside Unit 4. He’s holding his stomach, hunched over as he tries to keep his balance.

He falls to his knees. A figure emerges behind him and wades through the water toward him.

Even from this distance, I recognize the features of Malcolm Kincaid.

“Don’t move,” I whisper.

We stand still. We’re directly beneath the light, but I’m hoping if we don’t move, we won’t draw any attention.

Kincaid glances back over his shoulder. Adler and Sullivan, two of his goons from the Glasshouse, emerge into the corridor. They’re followed by a guy who stands about two feet taller than them. His name’s Carter. I’ve seen him around the prison, but have always kept my distance. The guy’s got a bad rep.

Carter is holding something heavy in his hands. A hammer? No, a meat tenderizer.

Without pausing, he swings it around in a wide arc. Even from here we can hear the wet, meaty thud as it connects with the face of the man on his knees. He drops instantly into the water.

Sawyer tries to stifle a cry of shock, but she doesn’t quite succeed.

Kincaid, Adler, Carter, and Sullivan all turn toward us.

Even from this distance, I lock eyes with Kincaid.

He smiles coldly, then turns his head to say something to the three men standing by his side.

I grab Sawyer’s arm and shove her back toward the door. “Now we run.”

I glance back once and see Adler, Carter, and Sullivan sprinting out of the pool of light and into the darkness. Sawyer and I run as fast as we can back to the entrance to the staff corridor, exploding back into the admin building. Sawyer pauses to fumble with her keys, but there’s no time for that. I grab her and pull her after me.

Eleven1:00 a.m.

Sawyer and I sprint back through the admin complex, once again ducking into offices and empty rooms to avoid any prisoners wandering around. Every single one of them is armed with some kind of weapon: knives and sharpened pieces of wood, metal poles salvaged from the gyms or office desks, pieces of broken glass wrapped with tape or orange material torn from prison uniforms.

We weave randomly through passages as we try to shake off Adler, Carter, and Sullivan. I’m hoping the inmates we manage to dodge will at the very least delay Kincaid’s men. I’m not sure, though. Kincaid has a reputation. I don’t know if any of the inmates will want to cross him.

“You think we lost them yet?” gasps Sawyer.

“No…” I wince and press on