911: The Complete Series

by Grace Hamilton

  Parker stepped in, pulled the guard with his feet up backwards in the office chair, and dashed the back of his head against the concrete floor. Before the other guard could react, Parker had the gun trained on his face.

  “Get up and cuff your sleeping friend’s hands behind his back.”

  The guard was young, and already looked green with nausea. He did as he was told. When Parker was certain the guard on the floor was sufficiently immobilized, he read the young guard’s nametape. Phillips.

  “What’s your first name, son?” Parker asked, noting the fear in the boy’s eyes. He was in his early twenties, he guessed, certainly no older than Sara. His sandy hair was thinning and there was a slick of sweat breaking out on his forehead.

  “K-K-Kenny,” the boy said.

  “Well, Kenny, I’m sure you want to stay alive today; would I be correct?”

  Kenny nodded.

  Parker didn’t let his face register that he saw a dark patch spreading on the crotch of Kenny’s tan pants. “That’s good, son. Now, I want to get out of this place today, and you’re going to help me. Do you think you can do that?”

  Kenny nodded again, anxiously. “I’ll help if I can.”

  “That’s exactly what I wanted to hear. Now. How many sally ports between here and the main gate?”

  Kenny’s face crumpled with concentration. He was thinking as hard as he could, and Parker could tell that the gun pointing at the boy’s face wasn’t lubricating his thought processes any. He lowered the gun.

  Kenny relaxed a little.

  “There-there are four ports between here and the main entrance, sir.”

  Parker held up the bunch of keys he’d taken from the woman. “How many of those ports will this set of keys get me through before the next set of gates won’t open?”

  Kenny thought again. “Three, sir; you’ll have to be let out again once, at the last one, like Marcia let you out just now.”

  “Okay, so if we work our way toward that fourth port, you’ll speak to the guards there and get them to let us out without any trouble, yes?”

  Kenny nodded.

  Parker stared hard into his eyes. “Because if you don’t, and you alert the officers at the fourth port to my presence, you will be the first person I kill. I will end you like you never began. Is that clear?”

  Kenny’s eyes were as big as hubcaps, his words garbled with fear. “Y-yes, sir. Understood. Copy that. Positively, ten-four.”

  “Let’s go, buddy.”

  As they moved toward the next port, along another quiet corridor, Parker thought back to the quick scan he’d made through the window in the guardroom that had looked outside. In truth, there hadn’t been a lot to see. Along one side had been the broad face of one wing of the correctional facility. Dotted along the entire two-story length of the building had been barred cell windows. Parker hadn’t been able to see into any of the cells to see if there were occupants.

  Below the cell windows, he’d seen a windswept area of concrete leading out from the cell block to three rows of chain-link fencing. The fences were there to frustrate any approach toward the high prison wall beyond.

  Parker hadn’t been able to see much past the wall other than the sky—which was deep blue, looking unbelievably fresh and enticing after his time in confinement. As a view, it had been glorious, but as a source of usable intelligence it was of limited value. All it told him was that he was in a purpose-built prison and getting out was going to be a bitch.

  In front of him, Kenny was trembling as he walked, and the small droplets of urine that fell from his pants cuffs didn’t stop until they reached the next port. Parker cursed himself for not getting the boy to change his pants in the guardroom—all it would take was for one corrections officer with his eyes on straight to see that Kenny was a walking puddle of sweat and piss, and the game would be up.

  The sally port came into view at the end of the corridor, and Parker realized asking about the ports wasn’t the only question he should have asked.

  Beyond the port was a prison recreation area, with cells running down each side of a wide hallway. As a design, it made sense. Keep the prisoners as close to the recreation area as possible, and reduce the possibility of movement snafus or trouble. As far as facilitating Parker’s easy egress from the prison, though, it left a lot to be desired. The cell doors here, running down each side of the hall, were modern and didn’t show the signs of wear he was used to. This port appeared to transition between two phases of the prison’s development: the old and the new.

  In the center of this now much wider corridor were two dilapidated table tennis tables, and beyond these a row of plastic chairs and tables were fixed to the floor. There were no prisoners in sight except for one. A thin black man in his sixties, with white hair and a creased face. He wore an orange jumpsuit and was mopping the floor from a plastic bucket similar to the one Parker had had in his cell.

  “Who’s that?” Parker hissed to Kenny as they reached the gate.

  “Gabe Henshaw. Trustee. He’s on janitor duty, sir.”

  Parker worried at his temple with the back of his hand. “If we go back the way we came, is there another way out of the building?”

  Kenny’s shoulders shook; he wasn’t happy about giving bad news to a man who had threatened to kill him. “No, sir, this is it.”

  Parker cursed to himself, but his course was set.

  “Okay, Kenny, I want you to open the port and walk through the rec hall on my right side, furthest away from the trustee. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Do not speak to him unless he speaks to you. And if he does speak, you will acknowledge him in the normal way, but you will not engage in conversation.” Parker holstered his Berretta and nudged Kenny toward the gate. “I can kill you with one twist of your neck, boy, so don’t get brave just because I’ve put my gun away. Do we have an understanding?”

  Kenny nodded and put the key into the first gate of the sally port, his hand trembling slightly. Henshaw kept swabbing the floor like a bored metronome. Soon Kenny was locking the gate behind them and moving toward the entrance to the recreational area.

  Kenny reached for the lock with the key.

  Parker put a hand on his arm to pause Kenny’s reach. He moved to the left side of the boy, ready to walk out.

  “Okay,” said Parker. “Let’s do this.”

  But as the key turned in the lock, the emergency prison klaxon began to wail, and all hell broke loose.

  8

  There was only one viable route Lieutenant Solon could have taken to hide himself so quickly. Across the highway from the Christian Center was a line of cross-gabled, small, ranch-style houses, set ten yards back from the blacktop. The front gardens had been abandoned. Grass was waist-high and what borders there’d once been had been overgrown with weeds. If Solon was anywhere, he was in or around one of those houses.

  Ava followed Sara, motioning the rest of the cell to spread out and search the other houses for the officer. Once again, they’d naturally taken the lead—after the training they’d had, and the experience, this had become the fallback hierarchy for missions. Even the resistance members who had more experience with weapons didn’t, for the most part, have as much experience actually resisting the government as Sara and Ava had had at this point. And Ava knew their position was bolstered by the fact that they didn’t particularly want to be leaders—they weren’t in this for leadership or power, and everyone knew it.

  But the whole game now was finding Solon and taking him off the board before he reached his command and control center in Terre Haute. If he did reach his command, or found a way to contact them, that would bring rolling Armageddon onto the ARM cell before they’d had the opportunity to attack the penitentiary.

  Ava approached the nearest house and ducked below the window line. She watched as other cell members, both those in ACUs and those still in their civilian clothes, jogged between the houses. Some went between the properties to see if
Solon had tried to get behind the buildings and run for the far treeline, across the grassland. Sara ducked down beside Ava and whispered, “Well, the most unlikely hiding place is probably the most obvious. I think he’s in here. You?”

  Ava concurred as they edged toward the porch. There, she paused, listening intently, hoping to hear something from within the property. Nothing. If Solon was in there, he might already be in a defendable position. They got to the doorway, still crouching. Ava reached out and touched the door. It swung back smoothly on its hinges, already open. In the small section of hallway beyond it was a large selection of framed family photographs hanging on the wall. An ordinary family. Dad. Mom. Two kids, all curls and braces.

  Normal? What’s normal anymore? Ava thought bitterly. The world was a shitshow and her best friend Finn was dead. This new “normal” was still taking some getting used to. She leaned further forward as, twenty yards from this dwelling, three cell members entered the neighbor’s property. Probably also home to the All-American Normal. Those days were long gone, though, and she wasn’t feeling nostalgic… she just felt sad. If six months ago you’d told Ava that she’d be slaughtering U.S. soldiers by slicing their carotid arteries as they walked into a goddamned church hall, she’d have laughed in your face. But Ava felt a long way from laughing right now.

  She inched forward and pushed the door fully open. The hallway was empty, its wooden floor whorled with dust and blown leaves. But in the center of the once-shiny beechwood floorboards were three definite boot prints. The light wasn’t good enough to tell Ava whether they were fresh or the recent marks of someone gaining entry to the property, looking for food, supplies, or ammunition. Better to err on the side of caution. She pointed out the prints to Sara, who nodded and raised her MP7 to her shoulder. Ava brought her SIG Sauer up and cupped her free hand underneath her right. Still tense, Ava and Sara entered the building.

  Out of the April sunlight, the house was cool and silent, and it smelled damp. The prints led toward a closed internal door. The hallway continued on past this door, and Ava could see the entrance into what she assumed was the kitchen. To her left were two other white painted wooden doors, both of them closed. Each had a paper drawing attached to it. The first drawing was of a horse, made by a child’s hand—beneath the horse was one word, Jessica. The furthest door held a drawing of a hundred tiny multicolored balloons spelling out the name Corey.

  Sara rolled to the wall by the door to which the boot prints led and aimed her MP7. Ava came to stand in front of the door and prepared to kick it in.

  Sara held up three fingers.

  Two.

  One.

  And— Jessica’s door clicked open behind them. Ava spun, ready to fire. Sara did spin and fire; a spray of bullets daggered up the wall and across the ceiling.

  Sara had narrowly avoided killing the girl who now stood in the doorway only because Ava had had the presence of mind to shove the barrel of Sara’s MP7 up with her arm.

  The girl, maybe ten-years-old and dressed in a pink T-shirt, black jeans, and yellow Adidas sneakers, had flinched into a ball, expecting to be peppered with steel-jacketed death.

  Ava moved toward the girl, who matched the face on the photographs in the hall.

  It was good fortune that she had moved, too, because as she stepped away from the door they’d been about to enter, three concussions tore fist-sized holes through the paintwork and embedded slugs in the wall and door opposite.

  There was no time to think. Ava rushed for Jessica, bundling her back into the bedroom as Sara followed them, walking backwards, firing bursts of gunfire into the door and wall hiding Solon as she moved.

  The bedroom was a typical ten-year-old girl’s bedroom, in pink shades and decorated with posters, horse books, Disney character figures, dolls, teddy bears, and a long-silent TV. The furniture was white with faux brass handles, all of it covered in princess and horse decals. It was a little girl’s dream. Ava picked up Jessica and dumped her on the floor between the bed and closet, as far from the door as possible and over to the side.

  “You stay there, and you do not move until I tell you it’s safe.”

  Jessica nodded, biting her lip. “I only wanted to tell you about the bad man.”

  Ava put a finger to Jessica’s lips, shushing her for now. “We know.”

  Sara was changing the mag on the MP7 as Ava returned to cover the doorway.

  “I know exactly what you’ve got planned for me, ladies.”

  Ava looked at Sara, not quite believing what she was hearing.

  Solon’s drawl carried to them easily. “I must, however, congratulate you on finding me so quickly. Your tactical logic does you credit. I thought I’d have a few more minutes to make my preparations, but no matter. I am fully aware that you need me dead. You cannot for one moment countenance the idea of me getting away and bringing word of your resistance unit back to my superiors. That’s why you have already executed all my men. But we have five companies of infantry itching to come looking for y’all, in Terre Haute alone.”

  Ava tried to gauge from the sound of Solon’s voice where in the room beyond the door he might be.

  “Why don’t you come out, Lieutenant Solon, and let’s talk this over, see if we can’t come to some sort of arrangement?” Sara offered.

  Through the ruined door, they heard Solon snort. “Oh pur-lease, young lady, don’t insult my intelligence when I have been so complimentary about yours. I assume your comrades in arms will be joining you soon; they can’t have failed to hear the shooting from within this property. If I were you, I would order them to stay back. That is, if you don’t want them to die with you, as you most invariably will, at some, shall we say, indeterminate moment of my choosing.”

  “Kill us?” called Ava. “Now you’re insulting us. What’s to stop us from climbing out this bedroom window here, covering the building in gasoline and burning you out?”

  Another snort. Solon was enjoying himself. “Because, quite simply, I won’t let that happen, young lady. Please, call to one of your associates and ask them to look in the firebox beneath the seat of the second truck.”

  “Why?”

  “Just do it.”

  Ava went to the bedroom window and opened it, keeping one eye on the doorway and Sara as she moved, even though she doubted the angle of the door would allow Solon to shoot through it and actually hit her. But there were security catches on the window, placed from the outside, so it wouldn’t open more than three inches without being forced, and Solon would hear that happening before they could escape.

  Damn it.

  Outside, Ava could see that Margret and a young fighter named Gray were approaching the house now, their guns raised. Ava waved to get their attention and motioned them to stop; when Gary came close enough to hear a loud whisper, she bent to the three-inch gap and told them not to enter under any circumstances.

  “When they’ve checked the far truck, ask them to check the same box on the first truck.”

  As Ava relayed these strange requests to Margret and Gary, a damp gnawing of dread and fear built in her guts. Solon sounded supremely confident for a man who was one bullet hole from death. What was he doing? Just stalling? Was there another platoon out of Terre Haute just a few miles back along the highway? Was he trying to eke out the resistance fighters’ exposure to give the follow-up team a fighting chance of catching up to them?

  No, there was something steely in Solon’s voice that transmitted a grim authenticity to his message. This was a guy holding aces.

  Gary and Margret returned simultaneously, hurrying along among the remaining ARM fighters drifting back from their fruitless searches.

  Margret’s face was grave. “The far truck’s firebox has enough C4 and detonators to wipe Indiana off the earth.”

  “The other truck, the one Brian shot up, has none, just an empty box,” added Gary. “But it’s a sure bet it had the same stockpile as the first.”

  From behind her, Solon called out: “D
id you discover what I’m carrying yet? The stockpile that will win me this little battle?”

  He gave us time to find the explosives, Ava realized, torn between screaming and laughing. And to discover more were missing.

  “Okay,” said Ava, “you guys better get back. No sense in us all going up in smoke.”

  “Ava…” Margret began, but the words died in her mouth. She knew Ava was right. If she was going to lose anyone on top of Brian, it was better to lose two than twenty. “Good luck,” Margret said softly, and she moved everyone toward the Christian Center.

  Ava watched through the window until the ARM fighters were at what she considered to be a safe distance. Soon, they were all sheltered in the shadow of the Christian Center, the fighters huddled in a knot of worry, waiting for whatever resolution was to come.

  Even though Ava didn’t really know how much C4 Solon had, whatever happened, she felt the ARM cell would be safe—for the moment, at least. Ava’s mind went into crazily high-gear unrealistic optimism. Perhaps only one of the fireboxes had carried explosives. Perhaps the other had just been for Hershey bars, and the platoon had eaten them all at their last rest stop. Thoughts and hopes about Solon’s intentions or bluff tumbled around her brain. She felt frozen with indecision. Luckily, Sara still had her head facing the correct way.

  “How do we know you’ve got explosives, Lieutenant?” Sara called from the bedroom doorway. “I’ve played poker. I know how to bluff, too.”

  There was a shuffle behind the closed door, and a detonator was pushed through one of the holes torn open by Solon’s bullets. It clunked to the floor and rolled away through the dust. “Where there’s one, there’s more. Satisfied?” called Solon.

  Ava and Sara could both imagine the shit-eating grin on Solon’s face.

  Ava looked at Sara; she was out of ideas. Sara rubbed at her temple—the same tic that Ava had seen Parker exhibit in moments of severe stress. Like father, like daughter.