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

from here—and that’s where Henry had been building a ham radio for the past couple of years. It was a secret project, right under the COs’ noses. There were no nefarious reasons for it, as far as I could figure out. He just wanted to chat with people outside the prison. But he never completed it. He wanted my help to run the antenna up into the ceiling space so the radio would get a signal. We just never figured out a good time to do it. The shed was always under observation.

I tell the others. Sawyer breaks into a smile, then hesitates. “Where’s the shed? Can we get there?”

“Yeah. I think so.”

“Okay,” she says. “Let’s go.”

“You don’t need to come. You can stay here with Felix. Help clear this rubble away.”

“Take her,” says Felix. “You might need someone to steady the ladder.”

“What ladder?”

“I don’t fucking know. I’m assuming. I’ve never been in the shed.”

I shrug. “Fine. Come if you want. Felix…” Felix glances over from where he’s studying the collapsed passage. “Do what you can here. We’ll be back in ten minutes.”

He nods. “On it.”

Nineteen4:50 a.m.

We don’t get back to Felix and Leo in ten minutes. It takes us that long just to reach the maintenance shed, moving through semi-collapsed corridors, backtracking to find a different path when the way forward is blocked, taking cover every time it sounds like the ceiling is about to come down on top of us.

And with every passing minute, the storm grows stronger. There’s no difference in the volume of the wind, no increase in the shrieking, the howling. How can there be? It can’t get any louder than it already is. No, I can sense it. Feel it weighing down on me. It’s a rising pressure, a steady mounting of tension that has nowhere to go. It fills me with a sense of urgency that has no outlet. It just keeps building and building. Like I’ve put my hand on a hot plate and now I’m waiting for the pain to hit, for the stench of burning flesh to fill my nostrils.

Add to that, I’m sure we’re being followed. I can’t confirm it, and I don’t have time to wait around to find out. I hope it’s just coincidence. Inmates moving around the unit, exploring, looking for a way out, for weapons. If it’s not?

Shit, I don’t know. Deal with it the same way we’ve dealt with everything else tonight. Wing it and hope for the best.

After those ten minutes, we finally reach our destination. The maintenance shed is more like a miniature airplane hangar than anything else. Over to the left sits a tractor with its mower detached. The tractor is blue, but the paint is chipped away, revealing the original green underneath. The six-foot blade attachment sits on a workbench against the left wall. Henry and I took it off yesterday. It looks like Henry had already been sharpening it. The metal gleams in the light.

In the floor toward the middle of the shed is an inspection pit with chains hanging from the ceiling, just in case any engine work has to be done on the prison vehicles. Henry said it was left over from the time this place was the base for the army engineers, when they were still trying to get that canal project off the ground.

I never really understood how the shed was allowed to exist. It’s still part of the prison complex, with the same thick brick walls and locked exterior doors to keep everyone inside—although the doors are wide enough to drive a bus through if needed. But there are so many dangerous objects here that I was constantly amazed Henry and I were even allowed to enter.

I suppose it’s like the prison barbershop. Only the most trusted inmates are allowed to work there. I only got in because I kept mostly to myself the first year of my sentence. I didn’t talk to many people until Henry struck up a conversation with me one time in the cafeteria. Henry was another ex-cop, except he was inside for going on a vigilante spree when he busted down the door of a pedo ring. He got me the job as his assistant.

I look around uneasily, realizing with an abrupt skip in my heart that I’ll never see Henry again. This was the old guy’s home. Everything in this place reflected who he was.

And now he’s dead. Just like that. Because of a split-second decision made by fucking Ramirez. It feels like I’m intruding. I’ve never been here alone. Never been here without Henry prattling on about circuit boards or soldering technique.

Sawyer looks over at me. “You okay?”

I nod, turning my attention to Henry’s office. It stands against the shed wall, a small roofed-over cabin about the same size as an RV. We wade through the water and climb the steps. A wooden bench runs around three walls of the office, the surface covered with loose wiring, toolboxes that have already been ransacked, old radios, an ancient lamp, and a clear plastic television set. There’s a Playboy calendar from 1983 on the wall. I once asked Henry why he didn’t get a new one. He just shrugged and said it was a good year.

I take a moment to look around. The old guy’s presence is everywhere. This was his space. He told me he didn’t even mind that he was in prison. He said he’d spend his time the same if he was on the outside, and at least in here he got food and a roof over his head.

The workbench to the far right is where he was building his ham radio. It’s not much to look at. It’s made up of a base transceiver Henry had pulled out of one of the old prison buses, to which he’d jury-rigged a handheld microphone using cables and wiring from old radios.

There’s a kid’s toy sitting on top of the radio, a little Winnie-the-Pooh figure.

I’ve