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

Jesus. This again. “There are no tunnels, Leo. You’ve gone on about them for as long as I’ve been here—”

“Longer,” says Felix.

“Longer. Exactly.”

“So?”

“So they’re not real.”

He laughs. “Oh, so you know so much about this place? How long you been here exactly?”

“Three years.”

He turns to Felix. “You?”

“Eight.”

“Want to know how long I’ve been here? About sixty years. Sixty fucking years. You don’t think that gives me some special insight?”

Felix shrugs. “Don’t really care, Leo. You’re starting to bore me.”

“Oh, I’m boring you, am I? Tell me—you guys know about the history of this place, right? The Cross-Florida Barge Canal project?”

“Sure,” I say.

“Right. And do you know about the floodwater system below the prison? It’s like the G-Cans in Tokyo.”

“What the hell are the G-Cans?”

“It’s this huge storm sewer that’s supposed to protect Tokyo from floods. An underground tunnel system, about four miles long. The tunnels connect up to these silos that drain into this massive room they call the Temple. The place is like… a cavern. Two hundred and fifty feet deep and nearly five hundred feet long. The floodwater from the city’s drainage heads through the tunnels and ends up in the Temple. Then it’s pumped out into the river.”

I can see Felix is starting to get annoyed. He’s looking around, deciding which way we should go.

“What does that have to do with this place?” I ask.

“We started building a smaller version of the G-Cans here in the sixties, when construction started up again on the canal project. So there are all these tunnels underneath us. The first set joins up with the Glasshouse, then to the flood system below us. But they were never used. When the project was canned, we didn’t bother connecting the tunnels and silos up.”

“Wait. Back up.” I stare hard at Leo. “These tunnels. You say they connect to the Glasshouse?”

“Yeah. The basement tunnels in here join up with the basement tunnels in the Glasshouse; then they lead down to the flood system.”

I try to fight down the excitement building inside me. “So… we can gain access to the Glasshouse through these tunnels?”

“I suppose.”

“That means we can get inmates from here and the Glasshouse to safety,” says Sawyer excitedly.

Everyone looks at her.

“What?”

“I don’t get it,” says Felix, ignoring her and turning back to Leo. “Won’t we just drown in the tunnels?”

“Are you stupid?” snaps the old man. “If the tunnels are going to carry floodwater, they have to be waterproof. Which means water can’t get out and water can’t get in.”

I nod to the corridor Leo was trying to clear. “This leads to the basement tunnels?”

“Yeah. These buildings are all part of the original build. Admin too. From when this place still belonged to the Engineer Corps.”

We’re all thinking about what he’s saying. If it’s true, it means we don’t have to even head outside. We don’t have to wait for the eye of the storm to arrive. We don’t have to hope and pray the building holds.

“Are you sure you’re not crazy?” asks Felix.

Sawyer shakes her head. “Martinez told me the same thing this morning, when she was giving me the tour. She mentioned the storm tunnels.”

Leo looks smug. “See?”

“But we can’t just hide underground without telling anyone on the outside,” says Sawyer. “We have to get word out.”

“Why?” asks Felix.

“What if Ravenhill comes down on top of everyone? We’d all be trapped in the tunnels. No one would know we’re down there.”

“Wait,” says Leo. “What exactly do you mean by everyone?”

“Everyone who’s sheltering down there. The inmates—”

He shakes his head firmly. “Not gonna happen. Who are you anyway? Why is there a woman wandering around… No, doesn’t matter. I don’t care. This is my escape route. I’ve been planning it my whole life.”

“You can’t just keep it to yourself,” says Sawyer sharply. “You have a chance to save hundreds of lives.”

Leo shrugs. “Fuck ’em.”

I burst out laughing at her look of shock. Even Felix has a grin on his face. Not because Sawyer doesn’t have a point, but because Leo does as well. Not one inmate has done anything to help us during the night. They’ve been trying to kill us, torture us, or let us drown. But that still doesn’t stop her wanting to save them. Castillo nearly killed all of us, but I guarantee she doesn’t regret rescuing him from the flooding room.

“I wouldn’t even bother arguing, Leo.”

“Why would anyone argue?” she asks earnestly. “What’s the choice here? Letting hundreds of people die, or saving their lives?”

I leave Leo to deal with Sawyer’s sense of moral outrage and peer into the passage he’s been trying to clear. It’s about fifteen feet long, but the roof and the left wall have caved in, leaving huge slabs of concrete completely blocking the way.

“Leo,” I say, “if you won’t do it for altruism, you need to do it for survival. Because there’s no way we can clear this rubble. Not before the building comes down. We need way more hands.”

Leo gestures hopefully at Felix. “Not even with this guy?”

Felix checks out the corridor and shakes his head. “I know I have the physique of a Nubian god, but even I can’t move this much without help. We need some of the other inmates in here.”

“And get word to the outside,” says Sawyer.

“How do you suggest we do that?” asks Leo.

“What about the radios in the security room? I was talking to the COs on the bus when they crashed.”

I shake my head. “Not powerful enough.”

But Sawyer has given me an idea. A couple of years ago, when the inmate corridor was on lockdown, the COs brought me through this unit to get to my job at the maintenance shed. They took me other ways as well. Through the yard outside—though I don’t think that’s going to work right now—and once into the staff corridor and through Northside itself.

The point is, the shed isn’t separate from the rest of the prison. It’s part of the same building. I can get to it