‘Into that watch tower!’ Reed yelled as he pointed right across the block.
Nathan glanced at the sheer walls and the hard–light panels protecting the control room where the warden’s guards had worked, and he knew for sure that there was no way in.
‘We can’t get in there!’
Xavier didn’t reply as they ran. Nathan saw four heavies rushing up the stairwell toward him, and he realized that they would reach the gantry right behind him if he let them complete their climb. Xavier dashed past, but Nathan turned and took two giant leaps down the stairwell.
The leading enforcer, a thick–set, towering wall of muscle looked up in surprise from the effort of hefting his bulk up the steps to see Nathan looming before him. Nathan landed hard on his left boot as he struck out with his right and slammed a blow high on the thug’s chest, right below his throat.
The enforcer let out a howl of shock as the blow toppled him off balance and he tumbled backwards into the men climbing up in pursuit. Their bodies clashed and tangled, cries of pain echoing above the chorus of madness soaring through the prison as they collapsed in a heaving pile of limbs and enraged faces, men pinned beneath the weight of others and unable to free themselves, bones breaking against unforgiving metal steps.
Nathan turned and climbed back up the stairwell to the upper gantry, then turned left to follow Xavier and Allen to where he was pulling something out of another inmate’s cell. Nathan reached his side as Xavier hauled the mattress out of the cell and turned it toward him as he yanked off the bed sheets.
‘Use it to block the gantry on both sides,’ Xavier gasped, out of breath.
Nathan helped him with Allen to turn the mattress on its end and wedge it between the cell walls and the rails. Nathan could see past the mattress to where Volts’s thugs were now rushing up other stairwells, swarming onto the other levels, their injured leader staggering in pursuit.
‘This won’t hold them for long,’ Allen said.
‘It will if it’s on fire,’ Xavier snapped back as he dashed into the nearest cell and grabbed the collar of an inmate cowering within. ‘You want to live?’
The inmate nodded frantically.
‘Then help us! You’ve got contraband in here, I’ve seen you making deals. We need a flame, right now!’
The quivering inmate scrambled to his feet and turned to one wall of his cell. Where there seemed to be nothing but solid wall, Nathan watched as he suddenly yanked out chunks of what must have been some kind of putty made from food to reveal a small compartment hewn within the concrete.
Nathan turned and saw Volt and his lackeys rushing around the gantry, rage upon their faces and shivs now in their hands that glittered in the frenzied light, flickering makeshift blades hacked from chunks of metal as wicked as anything Nathan had ever seen.
‘They’re almost here!’ he shouted back to Xavier.
From within the wall cavity the inmate pulled out a plastic bag, and from within the bag a plasma lighter. Xavier whirled and tossed the lighter to Nathan, who caught it in one hand even as Volts’s men rushed upon their position.
Nathan flicked down on the ignition button and the plasma lighter crackled as a white–hot beam hissed into life between two small metallic terminals at one end of the lighter. He shoved the device against the mattress and then yelped as searing heat burst from the material and the mattress billowed with flames and thick smoke that forced Nathan backwards. His eyes watered as black smoke spilled in boiling clouds from the burning mattress, and on the far side of the gantry Volt’s thugs skittered to a halt and backed up from the flames and heat.
Nathan rushed across the gantry to the other side, where Allen had rammed a second mattress into place. He lit the material and it blossomed with savage flames as they backed away, Volt’s henchmen coming up short on the other side, arms raised against the heat.
Nathan turned to Xavier. ‘Now what? Those mattresses won’t burn that hot for long!’
Xavier was tying lengths of bed sheet together, one after the other as he looked at the clock on the block wall and then glanced at the watch tower.
‘We’re going to fly across the block,’ he said confidently.
***
XXVI
‘We’re gonna
what
?’ Allen echoed in disbelief.
Nathan turned to look in the same direction as Xavier, and suddenly he understood. The rattling breather vents opened to draw in stale air from the block and replace it with fresh air from more vents on the back wall. The vents were barely eighteen inches high and maybe two feet wide, very narrow but enough for a man to squeeze through.
‘Where do they go?’ Nathan asked.
‘They run over the watch tower,’ Xavier replied as he began coiling the strips of bed sheet on the gantry at his feet. ‘There are grills that I could see from my cell in the ceiling that probably open and close at the same time to ventilate the control room.’
‘Probably?’ Nathan echoed.
‘You got any better ideas?’
Nathan looked at the coiled sheets, then watched as Xavier tied a chunk of masonry grabbed from the nearest inmate’s modified cell wall to the line. Xavier looked up and out over the chow hall as though gauging the distance. Nathan followed his gaze and saw thick pipework running left to right across the ceiling, roughly half way between the gantry upon which they stood and the watch tower. Xavier swung the rock and line like a lasso and then hurled the rock upward. The line swung out over the abyss and looped over the largest of the pipes. Nathan watched as the rock travelled further and then swung down, building up speed as it twirled up and over the pipe again, twisting around the pipe three times before it then dropped to dangle in mid–air. Xavier tied a second smaller piece of masonry to the other end of the line as Allen watched in mystified fascination.
‘How do you know you’ll make the line the right length?’ he demanded.
Xavier nodded to the guard rail as he worked.
‘Each rail is one meter long,’ he replied. ‘Easy to work out the total length of the block from that, and the height of the vents.’
‘The lines and measurements drawn on the wall of your cell,’ Nathan said as he put the pieces together. ‘You figured this all out, drew it to check it.’
‘More or less,’ Xavier replied. ‘I figured that if Volt wanted me dead, he’d have to work for it. I was ready to do this when you two showed up.’
‘Sorry about the delay.’
Xavier measured the length of material out, and then he ripped a small piece of yellow rubber from the waist of his prison uniform and tied it around the line before he turned to Nathan and Allen.
‘You guys wanna try it out first?’
‘We’re good, really.’
‘Kill them!’
Volt’s shriek alerted Nathan and he saw the psycho pushing his men closer to the burning mattresses, the thugs trying to grab the mattresses and pull them down.
Xavier scrambled up onto the safety rail and leaned on the line, testing its strength and the grip of the other end looped around the pipework. The dangling rock lifted a little as Xavier hauled on it, and then the line tightened and it held firm.
Xavier gripped the line right below the yellow marker when Nathan heard a chorus of shouts from behind him. He whirled and saw Volt’s men on the other side of the gantry holding another mattress that they were carrying as a battering ram. The mattress slammed into the burning obstacle with a cloud of smoke and spraying embers, metal grinding against metal as the mattress twisted sideways.
Nathan dashed toward the mattress, grabbing hold of the cowering inmate who had provided them with the plasma lighter as he passed by.
‘Help me here!’
Together, they grabbed a second mattress and dragged it down the gantry to slam it up against the burning one, further pinning it in place as Nathan leaned his weight against it to help prop up the blockade.
‘Time to leave!’ Xavier said.
‘Go, now!’
Nathan saw Xavier leap from the rail and sweep across the block as crowds of maddened inmates tried to reach up for him. Xavier arced over their heads and swung up to the watch tower, and Nathan saw him reach out and grab the edge of the vent hatch. Xavier scrambled up and into the hatch, then looked across the block toward him and swung the line. The smaller weight that he’d attached to it brought the line arcing back across the chow hall toward them.
‘Go!’ Nathan said to Allen. ‘I’ll cover our retreat!’
‘You should go first,’ Allen replied.
‘You were right,’ Nathan said, leaning back against the mattress to keep the blockade in place. ‘I got us into this. Get over there and send that rope back as fast as you can!’
Allen turned and caught the line as it returned, and then he hopped up onto the railings and leaped out over the raucous crowd below. Nathan saw him sweep above their heads and up to the vent, catching the edge with his hands and scrambling inside. Allen turned and let the rope go, the weight bringing it sweeping back toward Nathan.
Nathan moved to catch it but the inmate who had given them the plasma lighter rushed away from the burning mattress and caught the line as it returned, leaving Nathan to hold Volt’s thugs back.
‘Wait!’ Nathan yelled.
The inmate ignored him and scrambled up onto the railing as he caught the line, and without hesitation he leaped off the railing.
‘The yellow marker!’ Allen shouted from the vent on the far side of the block.
The inmate’s face creased with concern as he flew out over the hall, his hands lower on the rope than Xavier and Allen had been. Nathan watched helplessly as the smaller man swung over the riotous hall below, pulled his legs up to avoid being grabbed by the violent felons reaching out for him and swept safely past, but Nathan could see that he was already doomed.
The yellow marker was higher up the line, and the inmate’s swing wasn’t bringing him high enough to make the vent or Allen’s outstretched hand. Above the din from below Nathan heard his desperate cry of despair as he rushed toward the watch tower’s featureless wall and then slammed into it as he reached desperately for the hand just inches above him.
The impact dislodged his grip as his fingertips fell short, and Nathan heard his cry as he fell and slammed into the unforgiving floor of the hall below. The sound of crackling bones was drowned out by the cheers of the crowd as they rushed in like a pack of wolves and the inmate’s body was consumed within a frenzy of blows.
A fresh salvo of jubilant cries caught his attention and he saw Volt’s henchmen slam into the burning mattress on the other side of the gantry, and it collapsed flat in a cloud of spraying embers and billowing smoke as the thugs trampled across it in their eagerness to reach him.
Nathan saw the line arcing back toward the gantry and he knew his time was up. Simple physics: the line would swing with less vigor with each pass, like a pendulum losing energy. If he didn’t grab it now, he’d never be able to reach it.
Nathan hurled himself away from the mattress even as Volt’s thugs behind him plowed their battering ram into it. Metal screeched against metal and clouds of embers spilled like veils of orange rain as the mattress was twisted aside and the enforcers charged through with Volt behind them and shrieking like a banshee for Nathan’s blood.
Nathan sprinted along the gantry as the line swung back toward him and he reached out for it, stretched with all of his might for the weight on the end of the line. The line slowed down as it swung back toward the gantry, creeping slowly upward, and Nathan leaned out further over the rail as the gantry trembled with the combined weight of charging boots as Volt’s crew rushed upon him.
Nathan saw the weight just out of his reach as the line reached the top of its arc, and with a plunging dread he knew that it would not be close enough for him to catch it. The line swung painfully slowly to the gantry, inches from his grasp, and then began to fall away from him again toward the chow hall far below.
‘Killl him!!!’
Volt’s anguished cry of revenge rushed along with his bearded thugs as they sprinted toward Nathan, filling the gantry and his vision, and without conscious thought Nathan scrambled up onto the gantry rail and leaped into the void as he aimed for the yellow marker on the line in mid–air before him.
For an instant in time he flew through the open air fifty feet above the chow hall, a sea of warring convicts all screaming for his blood as he reached out for the line suspended it seemed along with him in mid–air, and then he touched the line on the yellow marker and he gripped it in both hands as he rushed away from the gantry.
For once, the hot, stale air of the prison seemed almost fresh and cool as Nathan swept across the block, his boots rushing across the heads of the cons below, several of them leaping from nearby tables in futile attempts to grab at him as he passed by. The line swung up toward the vents on the watch tower, and Nathan caught sight of Xavier inside the control room looking out at him.
Nathan reached up to grab the vent, and as the line reached the wall he grabbed the ledge but kept the line in his hand. With a heave of effort he hauled himself up and slid into the vent, felt a rush of hot air from fans deeper inside the system drawing heat and smoke out of the prison block. He smelled the aluminum of the duct around him, the metal warm to the touch as he slid down, pulling the line with him until it reached its maximum length and became taut, out of reach to the cons still trapped in the block. He released the line and slid along on his belly until he saw an open grill in the floor of the duct, and a head popped up to look at him.
‘Glad you could make it!’
Allen helped Nathan down into the control room, and Nathan turned to see the various work stations now abandoned by the sticks.
‘That was too close,’ Nathan said as Xavier closed the ceiling grill.
‘We’ve got other problems,’ Allen said as he gestured to the watch tower’s rear door, which led to the prison’s outer quadrants and supposed freedom.
Nathan only had to glance at it to know that it had been sealed from the outside by the fleeing guards, and that the power was switched off to most of the control panels.