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

the side of the truck. I carry on toward Wright. He turns, flops over on his belly like a landed fish. He manages to push himself to his feet, one leg dragging behind him as he tries to limp away. I pause a few feet from him, wait for him to look over his shoulder—

—and I shoot his other kneecap out.

He drops, screaming. I walk forward, grab his shirt, pull him over so he’s lying on his back.

“What do you want?” he shouts.

My voice is flat. Dead. The way I feel inside. “Five weeks ago, you broke into my house. You killed my wife. She was pregnant. The fuck you think I want?”

Wright’s eyes widen. “That… that was a mistake! I swear! We were just looking for some cash, that’s all. Your wife… she walked in on us. We panicked…”

He stops talking.

There’s a noise. We both hear it.

It’s a car.

No, cars. Approaching fast.

I turn toward the dirt road and see blue and red lights flashing in the distance, brightening the darkness between the trees.

Cops?

Why the hell are the cops here?

How…?

Wright tries to crawl away. I stamp down on his leg, desperately trying to think. Wright screams as two cars burst through the trees and skid to a stop on the other side of the fallen logs.

The doors fly open. I grab the other Glock from my jeans, the one with the special bullets, and point it at Wright, ready to shoot him in the head.

“Constantine!”

I freeze, look back to see Mason, my partner, skirting around the edge of the logs.

“Constantine, don’t you dare!” she shouts.

“These are the fuckers who killed Amy!”

“I don’t give a shit!”

Other cops have exited the cars. They stand behind their open doors, guns leveled at me. Mason glances back, raises her hands in the air.

“Just wait! Let me talk to him.”

“There’s nothing to say!” I call out.

“Constantine, please. You can still walk away from this.”

I look down at Wright. Across at Tully. I laugh out loud, barely managing to stop myself when I hear the tinge of hysteria in my voice.

“Jack. Please…”

I look at Mason. Her face is twisted with grief. We’ve known each other for ten years. I’m her kid’s godfather.

“Don’t…” she starts to say.

Novak makes a run for it. He bolts from behind the pickup truck and runs toward the police cars. I act instinctively. I swivel and shoot.

The bullet hits him in the back of the neck. Mason cries out as he collapses.

I barely have time to register this before I feel a huge jolt of pain in my arm. I stagger back, the gun falling from my fingers. Mason stands there, gun leveled at me, her eyes wide with shock, as if she can’t believe what she’s done.

The police are all shouting, but I can hardly hear over the rushing in my ears.

I turn around. See Tully crawling away. Wright too. He’s already twenty feet from me. I bend over to pick up the Glock.

Then something hits me in the side and I’m thrown to the ground.

“Don’t be fucking stupid, Jack,” says Mason, right in my ear.

I try to throw her off, but she grabs my wounded arm and forces it behind my back. I scream in pain.

Then more weight falls on me. I feel hands on my head, shoving my face into the dust.

The last sight I see is the cops heading toward Wright and Tully.

ADVISORY BULLETIN

Hurricane Josephine Advisory Number 5

NWS National Hurricane Center Miami FL

5 P.M. EDT FRI AUG 27 2021

DISCUSSION AND OUTLOOK

During the past several hours Josephine has been steadily gaining in strength. Josephine is on track to make landfall over the Turks and Caicos Islands this afternoon, bringing winds of up to 120 mph (193 km/h). On this track, the center of Josephine will be approaching Miami in 12 hours. The cyclone is forecast to increase from Category 4 to Category 5 by Saturday, August 28.

WARNINGS

Evacuation is mandatory. Repeat, evacuation is mandatory.

$$

Forecaster Mills

OneFriday, August 276:00 a.m.

Prison is all about breaking your sentence into blocks of time. That’s the only way to survive. A year is too much. Half a year is depressing. Hell, even a month feels eternal.

A week, though—a week is just about manageable. Least it is if you have something to mark the passing of time. Like family coming to visit. That gives you a countdown. A reason to keep going.

I don’t have that. Both my parents are dead. No kids, no brothers or sisters. A murdered wife. So… yeah. Not much to look forward to there.

But you push on. You push on until you can’t anymore. Because that’s life, as my old man used to say. You live, you die. Anything in between is still a steaming pile of shit, but you try to make the most of it. He made the most of it with drugs and hookers. Ended up driving off a hundred-foot-high bridge into a torrential river at three in the morning, coked up to his eyeballs and wearing nothing but his Superman boxer shorts. The hooker who leaped from the car just before it went over the edge said he was screaming about Lydia—my mother—caging him in and stopping him from flying free, that he was going to prove her wrong.

Spoiler alert: he didn’t.

But he was right about one thing. You either push on or you check out. I don’t have access to coke, hookers, or a torrential river, so the alternative is either pissing off one of the gangs so they shank me in the shower (hopefully with something nonorganic, if you catch my meaning), or going for one of the guards, try to hurt them bad enough that they use lethal force.

I think I’d rather push on, thanks very much.

Felix says it gets easier the longer you’re inside, but I don’t believe much of what Felix says. He’s a habitual liar. Or, as he likes to term it, a “teller of tales.” Plus, I’ve been in here for three years now. How much