“I’m good. I knew I shouldn’t have had that fourth piece of fish,” he says. The blood slowly starts to pump back into his pale face.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” I ask again.
“I feel just fine now, but I could use some mouthwash,” he says.
“I concur.”
We come as close as we can before moving any further past the tree line because the open area between here and the prison fence will easily expose our position. The positive is that the open area is only about fifty yards from where we stand, and all we can do now is wait for the signal.
I know something is up in the tower, because the guards on the roof, who have stood in the same place for the last five minutes, begin
to move from their designated positions. I reach into my quiver of arrows and set a razor-tipped one resting on the bow shelf, waiting for the right time to take out the closest guard to us.
Finnegan and Henry move closer to the closed gates, and several guards run outside the fenced entrance with their guns drawn toward the car racing at them. Two fifty-caliber, electric-powered Gatling guns pop out on both sides of the car, and within seconds, the classic muscle car has instantly transformed into a killing machine.
I pull back on the tight strings of the bow, aiming directly at the guard on the roof, while I wait patiently for the sound of gunfire. “When I release this arrow, you better be ready to sprint your ass as fast as you can to the fence,” I say.
The car comes speeding furiously through the last turn directly in front of the entrance, and just before Finnegan barrels through the gate, he makes a hard right turn with the brakes applied and sends the car spinning a hundred and eighty degrees. With the car stopped, and the rear facing the front of the gates, about twenty armed guards pour out a side door, shouting for them to get out.
And then it happens—the rocket launcher releases, plunging through the heavy gate, and all hell breaks loose, sending pieces of steel slicing through the air, penetrating the flesh of the guards who are running back into the compound. The car spins around and blasts through the opening with both Gatling guns violently spinning.
With my eyes fixed on the guard atop the compound, I quickly release the arrow deep into his skull, sending him plummeting four stories to the ground. Gabe and I sprint across the grassy meadow and onto a paved section where the fence is buried deep into the concrete. I grab the plasma cutter and cut a small opening in the links.
Just as we knock out the opening and enter the premises, about twenty guards come rushing out of a side door, moving toward the area of the explosion, but because of Finnegan’s successful distraction tactic, we go unnoticed.
With all the doors locked from the inside, we take advantage of the one open door in front of us, where the guards came running out. Making sure no other guards might exit the door, I draw my guns carefully, dissecting every possible area and anticipating where guards may appear.
There are stairs to the right of us leading up to the next floor, and a long corridor to the left, where two doors open to an enormous open area. I start down through the left corridor when Gabe suddenly stops me. “Wait,” he says.
“What is it?” I ask.
He pauses for a few seconds, then says, “Upstairs. We need to go upstairs.”
“Are you sure?” I ask.
“Trust me, that’s where the operations room is located. We should be able to find cell room information there.”
When Gabe is specific about something, I completely trust him, so I turn around and head up the stairwell. I don’t know how he knows, but I’m not about to question his instincts now. We climb three flights of stairs until we reach the fourth floor, where a set of doors lead down a long hallway. There are so many corridors that feed off the main hall and it’s confusing; everything looks the same. I feel like a rat trapped in a steel cage and the only comforting thought is that I have Gabe with me to help guide us through this prison maze.
With my back against the wall, I slowly step to my left and peer around the corner to make sure the hall is clear of guards. I tug on Gabe’s arm, indicating it’s clear for us to move, when out of nowhere, a rush of about a fifty men come running down the corridor, firing at us. Without hesitation, I pull out both guns, squeezing the triggers until both clips empty within seconds. The first several guards in front pile up on the floor, slowing down the rest just long enough for me to reload, but before I turn around the corner to fire again, Gabe moves in front of me with his backpack humming.
He bursts around the corner, firing flying jagged metal discs that look like saw blades. The spinning discs slice through the guards, knocking them down like blades of grass, killing everyone in their path. I quickly glance around the corner and find a hall covered in blood and tangled bodies. Gabe disappears down the left corridor, and all I can hear is the shrill scream of death from the metal scrapping the sides of the walls.
In shock, I wait for him to finish before he comes racing back around the corner. He jumps over the pile of bodies, landing awkwardly in a pool of coagulated blood, and slipping on his backside in pain.
I quickly rush over to him to see if he’s okay. “Who would have thought that out of all the weapons, flying debris, and spraying of bullets, I would injure myself from a puddle of blood,” he says, wincing, then picks himself up.
“Humbling, isn’t it? Now get up off your ass, we haven’t time to waste,” I order as Gabe rolls his eyes.
We hurry down one of the other halls where Gabe believes the main operations room is located. The hall we enter is different from the others; the floor is made of steel mesh, and I can see straight down to the floors below. We walk down the hall and see a metal plaque on the wall, engraved with a map of the floor.
Gabe was right; we’re about a hundred paces from the prison administrator area and the facility operations room. The halls to the left and right of the main corridor extend outward, leading to the cellblocks.
As we get a little closer to the main room, a voice yells down from below, “I see them! Fourth floor, main corridor!”
We run down the hall, but I only notice just a handful of guards, so I stop and pull out some thin trip wire leftover from the dart guns. I have Gabe run the wire in a z-pattern across the door in front of the main corridor where we were spotted. I walk down fifty paces, draw my guns, and wait.
Five men rush around the corner, firing their guns randomly in different directions, missing everything entirely. These must be prison administrators, because they are the worst shooting guards of the bunch. When they slam into the wire, they all fall into one another, desperately grasping on to each other’s uniforms, trying to get up.
I walk within five feet of the bumbling men and shoot all but one in the head. I leave the lone survivor laying there for a moment to rethink his actions. The only purpose for him now is to be our guide through the rest of this steel slave trap. I’m not sure why I chose him, maybe because he looks so different from the others. He’s scrawny and young and looks like he’s about to piss his pants.
I cut the wires down and force the small man over by the wall. “Where did you learn to use a gun?” I ask.
“I’m not a guard; I’m not one of them. I’m just one of the administrators. I push paper, that’s all,” he says, shaking. He is all of about five-and-a-half foot tall, probably weighing in about one hundred ten pounds.
I point my gun to his head and say, “Who is your superior?”
“I don’t know, I swear. I just got transferred here today. Before this, I was filing paperwork for a Chicago Psychiatric Ward, and working part-time at a Crusty Burger,” he says, as he is about to cry. I grab his wrists and recognize soft, unlabored hands with a few paper cuts. The poor guy looks like he has never touched a gun before in his life, and the only reason he came storming with the other guards is probably because he was forced into action.
“How did these guys recruit you into coming up here with them?” I ask, pointing at the dead guards on the floor.
“Honestly, because there is no one left alive, I guess,” he says. “Please, I’m nobody’s enemy,” he declares, crying like a baby.
“Stop your crying, I’m not going to kill you,” I say, rolling my eyes. “If you’re not an enemy, then why did you take this job?”
“I don’t know. Insecurity?” he says.
“What’s your name?”
“Kyle,” he answers.
“Come on, Kyle, stand up, we need to move,” I say. He’s still shaking, and I notice Gabe trying not to grin as I look down at the man’s pants. “So, is this the result of your insecurities, or do you always soil your pants?”
“This is humiliating,” he says.
“It could always be worse.”
Kyle guides us through the main corridor and to the left near the operations room. I tell Gabe to hold back a little while I carefully turn the door handle to the room. I tightly grip my guns and prepare myself for an attack inside, but right before I burst in, two guards around the corner delay my entry into the room.
As they draw their guns and force me to stand down, I also draw mine, aiming directly toward their heads, causing a stalemate.
“Put down your weapons now,” demands one of the guards. They obviously are different from the other soldiers we have come in contact with, because they actually follow the simple rules of engagement by at least giving me a warning. Unfortunately for them, I don’t meekly surrender to the rules. I pull both triggers simultaneously, shooting both men in the head
I turn around to see Kyle nearly fainting. “Hey! You want to survive?” I ask him. He just nods and says nothing. “Then keep your head on straight. Follow me and do what I say.” I have him open the operations room while Gabe and I stand back cautiously, waiting.
When he opens the door, we find the room empty. There are no operators tending the console or any signs of anyone being in here for a while. The only remnant of someone’s existence is a Styrofoam cup filled halfway with ice-cold coffee.
In front of the console are ten screens monitoring the ten cellblocks in this facility. According to the maximum occupancy in the logs, each cellblock will hold up to twenty-five hundred inmates, but zooming in closer to the cells with the remote camera reveals a different number— each cell is packed beyond its legal occupancy; in fact, it’s doubled. I
can’t believe what I’m seeing. There must be close to fifty thousand people locked up in these confined cages.
“Is there any way these cells can be automatically opened from here?” I ask Kyle.
“Yes, but it’s not my area of expertise. I was briefly trained this morning, but not enough to remember the correct procedures.”
“Here, let me sit down and drive,” says Gabe, taking over the system. “Do you have a security code?”
Kyle puts his hand on his head, trying to remember the code he was given during orientation. “It’s 116734,” he says with his eyes closed, thinking hard.
“We’re in,” says Gabe, punching in the code.
While Gabe maneuvers around the system, checking for cellblock policies on fire drills, I stumble across some communication logs on the counter next to a dispatch radio. I open up the logbook and flip through the pages until I reach today’s prison log:
Case: 136. Codename: Black Death. Prisoners 106321 and 106322 to be incarcerated under severe supervision. Female and male, approximate age: 15. Potential terrorist threat to governmental agenda. Status: unknown. Wanted: alive if possible. If seen, take extreme precaution and report any visual status updates immediately to General Iakov.
“Gabe, not to put you under any pressure, but please hurry,” I say.
“Why?” he asks.
“Because they know we’re here,” I say, slamming the logbook down in front of him.
Gabe quickly browses through files after files and finally comes across an evacuation policy and procedure. “I found it. I should be able to unlock large sections at a time in each cellblock.” He moves to another computer with a touch screen and follows the procedures for the evacuation of all prisoners. After he activates the locks, the only thing left is to push two buttons simultaneously to unlock the cell doors.
“Here goes nothing,” he says.
“Wait!” I shout, grabbing Gabe’s hand before he pushes the button. “Can you get a listing of each prisoner in each cell?” I ask.
“Sure, why?” he asks.
“I want to know where Myra and Daniel are being held,” I say.
Gabe suddenly realizes why we are here. “Juliana!” he says to himself.
He quickly drills down to the cell module file and launches the prisoner database listing of every prisoner in each cell by name and number. He looks up prisoners by last name in the search field and
types in
Merryman.
The database pulls information on both Myra and Daniel:
Name: Myra Merryman. Sex: Female. Prisoner number: 65213. Cell Block: 3. Cell Number: 46. Status: Alive.
I feel a soothing comfort knowing that she is here and alive, but my heart sinks into my stomach when I see the next entry on the screen.
Name: Daniel Merryman. Sex: Male. Prisoner number: 65214. Cell Block: N/A. Cell Number: N/A. Status: Deceased.
I’m stunned in silence as I stare at the flashing cursor after the word
Deceased.
Gabe leans over to comfort me, but I reject his consoling gesture, and walk toward the other side of the room. I feel dejected, as if someone has just taken a part of my soul from me. And to worsen things, a memory that I have been trying to extract from my brain painfully pops back into my head. This is the same distressing feeling when I found out about Jacob’s death back at our house, and that’s the last time I saw Daniel.
After a moment of unsuccessfully taming my emotions, I turn back around as a tear free-falls from my eye and onto my jacket. “Juliana,” is all I have to say as Gabe nervously stares at the search field. While he searches for her, anxiously awaiting the results, I close my eyes and say a prayer. When the database pulls back Juliana’s information, Gabe quickly scrolls over to the status field, but it is blank. The database program has apparently crashed and is toying with Gabe’s emotions. As the entry slowly loads, I brace for the worst.