Breakout, Paul Herron [chrome ebook reader .txt] 📗

dropped my Ruger. My fingers curl around it and I heft it up from the water, rolling over to fire at Kincaid. But he’s already moving, disappearing through the door. I fire along the wall until the magazine is empty, then push myself up and stagger out into the passage.

Nothing. He’s gone. I want to go after him, but I don’t have time. The shaking is growing more violent. It feels like an earthquake. The gun is out of ammo. Useless now. I drop it into the water and wade back along the corridor, turning into the passage Sawyer and Felix took.

It leads into a staff changing room. All the lockers have been forced open, the contents floating around. Civilian clothes, textbooks, novels, plastic lunch containers.

The exit is on the opposite side of the room. Felix and Sawyer have left the door wedged slightly open.

I take a deep breath, yank on it, and step out into the open air.

Twenty-Three6:30 a.m.

I feel the sweat prickling instantly on my skin. The humidity and heat out here is like nothing I’ve ever experienced, a suffocating, heavy dampness that crawls down my throat and makes it difficult to breathe.

The wall of the hurricane surrounds me. To my left, west, the wall looks to be about ten miles away. But I can see it easily, a solid wall of writhing gray-black clouds that climb into the sky. Lightning flashes within the wall, a constant flickering, pulsing glow that illuminates the coiling clouds from within.

I turn to my right with a sense of rising dread. The wall of the hurricane to the east is almost upon me, about four hundred yards away and crawling across the landscape. It’s as if the clouds are alive, reaching out with writhing, probing tendrils, mini cyclones that dance and skitter across the water, pulling waterspouts back into the cloud wall.

I can already see loose debris being sucked up into the hurricane. Fencing, broken telegraph poles, metal signs, all pulled into the heaving mass. It’s alive, a monster devouring and chewing up everything that comes into its path.

I look up. The sky directly above me is blue. To the right, streamers of sunlight burst up past the top of the hurricane wall, limning the topmost clouds with burnished gold. It’s an oddly beautiful moment, serenity within the violence.

But when I drop my gaze, everything is destruction. The entire area is flooded, sitting under about four feet of water. And if the water is four feet deep up here at the top of the hill, that means Miami is completely underwater. There can’t be anything left. Houses totally submerged. Hospitals, shops, everything, just… gone. There can’t be anything left of Florida. It must all be underwater.

This is a disaster that will change maps, and we’re not going to escape the devastation. The hurricane has already half destroyed the prison. I have no doubt it’s going to complete the job.

I’d briefly entertained the idea of escaping after I killed Tully and Wright. But I can see now what a stupid, childish thought that was. Where would I go? As soon as the eye passes over us, the 200 mph winds will return. If I’m not in the tunnel with everyone else, I’ll be crushed, drowned, ripped apart, or any one of a hundred other grisly deaths.

I have to move. The wind is warm and clammy against my face, like sticky fingers stroking my skin. I wade forward through the water, pushing debris aside as I go. The wall of the hurricane is a solid mass a few hundred yards to my right, while the Glasshouse is a few hundred yards ahead. I can actually see the hurricane creeping forward, moving at a fast walking pace. I don’t know if I can reach the prison before it does.

I can just make out Felix and Sawyer moving toward the Glasshouse building, wading as the crow flies, since the fences and walls have all been pulled down. I follow them as quickly as I can, but the depth of the water makes speed impossible. My feet keep getting tangled in debris. Wires, cables, cloth, tree branches and roots. And if I’m not getting tangled up, I’m smacking my feet into concrete, rubble, unseen detritus that has been plucked up in the hurricane and dropped in my way.

Felix and Sawyer disappear from view as they approach the front doors of the Glasshouse, but then reappear again as they make their way around the side of the building, heading toward the loading bay where the bus took us earlier. Before they vanish from sight, I see them pause and look back. I wave my hands in the air to indicate I’m on my way. They wave back and then head for the relative safety of the building.

The wind picks up. I can hear it, a whistling, howling echo, close but somehow sounding like it’s coming from far away. A waterspout leaps up directly in front of the Glasshouse doors. It hovers in the air, leaning in toward the hurricane. A cyclone branches out from the wall, stretching toward the waterspout. When the two touch, the spout explodes into movement, dancing and skittering across the water, throwing branches and debris into the air in a triumphant display before finally being sucked into the hurricane wall.

It’s too close. I’m not going to make it.

I’m going to let Amy down again.

I push my aching, burning legs on, jumping and wading, doing anything I can to try to speed up my progress.

I make it to where the perimeter fence used to stand. The Glasshouse is directly in front of me now. A hundred feet away. But the storm is closing in fast from the right. I can feel the sheer power of the wind. The water surges all around, whitecaps rising, waves blowing past me.

I’m being pushed off course. I have to angle into the wind to keep on track, but it’s slowing me down. My hair whips around