911: The Complete Series

by Grace Hamilton

  Is this how it was going to end for both of them, after going through so much? To have gotten this far, stayed alive so long—to have suffered so deeply—only to check out for a nothing asshat with an overblown sense of his own importance, who’d blow himself up rather than let them get away?

  Christ, fate, whatever you want to call it, sure had scribbled some dirty lines over their lives. She might as well have never made that 911 call to Parker all those months ago. For all the good it had done her and Finn, she should have just laid down and died.

  “Quite a reversal, don’t you think?” called Solon. “I did three tours of duty in Iraq and two in Afghanistan. Basra, Helmand Province, every day ready to be tagged by an IED or fragged by a teenager hiding a suicide vest. And yet here I am, just a few short years later, thinking that turning myself into a human bomb is a fully viable option.”

  “This is a man getting ready to die,” Ava whispered to Sara. Sara nodded her agreement. The doomsday clock was ticking, and they were all out of options. She glanced to the girl in the corner, who’d curled into a ball and held her head in her hands. She didn’t blame her.

  “We could force the window,” Sara said, but there was an edge of desperation to her voice.

  “He’ll hear, and he’ll detonate,” Ava answered absently, still looking around the room. “He wants his last gloat and justification to be heard. He wants to hear us give up. But the longer he talks, the longer we have to figure something out.”

  Apart from the door and the window, there was no other route out of the room. They had two options.

  Solon kept talking, almost casually. “I didn’t sign up for this, you know. This. Police actions and crowd control over my own fucking people.”

  Ava could hear tears in Solon’s voice now, real tears. He’s crying. She imagined Solon’s thumb moving toward the detonator with every breath. Like he was using tears as gradations of sorrow to count him down to zero.

  “But I’m dead even if I do go back. I lost the platoon; Terre Haute is under martial law. No one will believe I didn’t run away and desert my own men, no one. I can die here, or with a noose around my neck in front of a jeering crowd. What difference does it make? I’ll tell you what difference it makes. None at all. This way, maybe they’ll remember me as a hero. A fighter.”

  Ava and Sara were edging back from the door. There was no time, and their lives were compressing into a singular moment. Ava reached out and held Sara’s hand, and Sara squeezed Ava’s fingers and looked into her eyes. Ava couldn’t tell if the face she saw was Sara’s or Finn’s at this point, but in these seconds before certain death, it didn’t really matter.

  “Hey ladies, are you ready?” Solon called, an angry strength suddenly popping into his voice. “I said: Are you fucking ready? Because I am. I’m as fucking ready as hell!”

  “Ma’am?” asked Jessica. “Ma’am? What’s he going to do?”

  Ava turned to look at Jessica, but before she could answer, the girl scurried to what looked to be a hatch in the floor that she’d uncovered. Lifting it open, her eyes wide, she gestured Ava over with frantic little waves. Without thinking for another moment, Ava yanked at Sara’s hand and all but pushed Jessica into the hatch before doing the same to Sara and lowering herself in after them. And that was when the house blew apart.

  The detonation lifted the roof in a gust of flame and then tore the property to shreds, forcing pieces of the disintegrating wooden structure two hundred feet into the air.

  The force of the blast knocked the walls of the neighboring house as though they’d been punched by a giant. Smoldering pieces of the destroyed building settled on the roof, starting small fires. The flames spilled out in every direction, and as the shockwave coursed from the center of the detonation, it threw both Ford trucks onto their sides like toys. The “Jesus Loves You” sign near atomized in the rush of heat and power, throwing letters into the air like plastic daggers.

  Across the street, the searing breath of the blast rolled over the ARM fighters huddled against the wall of the Christian Center.

  All that was left in the blast’s wake was a terrible silence and the occasional thud of debris raining down onto the highway.

  9

  Two corrections officers came seemingly from nowhere, but when Parker thought about it later, he realized they must have been obscured by the sally port wall and that, if the klaxon hadn’t sounded, he and Kenny would have walked into the recreation area cold, and the guards would have seen how stained the boy’s pants were for sure. The klaxon had been a blessing in disguise, even though it turned everything upside down.

  Parker nudged Kenny forward and hissed, “What’s the emergency procedure here when the alarm sounds?”

  Kenny locked the gate behind them, and turned and began to walk briskly alongside Parker as he whispered, “Any open cell doors will be locked. Prisoners from this area are in the gym now, and they’ll be stuck there with their guards for the duration of the emergency.”

  The two officers who had sprung from behind the wall, were well ahead of them now. They had split up and begun checking that cell doors were locked as they went down the line, slapping the metal with the flats of their hands and rattling handles. Henshaw had stopped what he was doing with the mop, leant it against a table tennis set-up, and gone to the nearest open cell, entering it and then closing the door behind him. Nobody looked back at Kenny and Parker, every individual intent on following their lock-down routine.

  Kenny and Parker reached the first of the table tennis set-ups.

  “What now?” Parker asked.

  “There’s a rally point in corridor nine. We’re supposed to go there and receive instructions on the emergency.”

  Parker once again found himself thanking the EMP Event which had robbed institutions like this of their means of easy communication. As Parker listened to the klaxon, there were several fluctuations in the note of the wailing. The klaxon was being sounded by hand on a winding handle.

  It’s an ill wind…

  The corrections officers went to the far port and one of them began opening it. The officer who was waiting, a short, plump guy with a comb-over, called back to Kenny and Parker. “Move it, you two, come on!”

  Parker turned his face to one side as if he were checking the cell doors to make sure they were secure, but he need not have worried; whatever the emergency was, it had caused Comb-Over to shift focus. He didn’t give Parker a second glance as they approached, instead turning back to his buddy and the gate.

  Parker sped up, and Kenny did, too. Parker could see the sweat once again starting to roll down Kenny’s cheeks and dampen the top of his collar. Comb-Over’s buddy walked into the port, and Comb-Over himself held the gate open for Kenny and Parker, slamming it shut behind them after they entered.

  The other officer began opening the next port gate as Comb-Over looked at Kenny. “Jeezus, Kenny, this ain’t a Sunday afternoon picnic with your mom. Pick your fucking feet up when I tell you to.”

  “S-s-sorry, Bryce,” Kenny stammered.

  Bryce turned his head to Parker and was about to say something else when the slow penny that was rolling around in his head dropped. “Hey… who the f—”

  But that’s as far as he got. Parker butted Bryce’s nose with his forehead. Bryce groaned, staggered back, and crashed into his buddy. Parker grabbed Gate-Officer around the neck, rabbit-punching him with three short, sharp, hard-knuckle blows. The man went down.

  “Cuff him,” Parker told Kenny as he bent to ensure Mr. Bryce Comb-Over was unconscious, as well, giving him a savage short-arm punch to the temple. The force of the blow lifted the flap of hair off Bryce’s pate like the opening to the lair of a trap-door spider, and Parker cuffed him and dragged him to a corner of the port, instructing Kenny to do the same with the other guy.

  It was only then that Parker saw that Kenny was crying.

  “I’m not going to hurt you, son, if you do as you’re told. That’s all you have to do to stay al
ive.”

  The boy nodded his terrified assent as fat tears dripped off his nose. They made him look even younger than he had before.

  Parker took the magazines from the corrections officers’ guns and pocketed them. He was amassing quite an arsenal. Right now, though, he still hoped he could get out of the place without firing a shot. Bullet slinging would offer a whole new level of pain to this impromptu prison break, and if he could walk out of here without there being a firefight, that would suit Parker just fine.

  Parker used his cuff to wipe the tears from Kenny’s face and nose. “Son, if we walk out of here and someone sees you crying, we’re busted. I need you to look normal. Well, as normal as a guy who’s peed his pants looks, okay?”

  “Y-yes,” Kenny said. “I’m just scared is all.”

  “So am I, son. So am I.”

  They made it to the next port without incident, and halfway along the corridor the klaxon wail rang down to the sound of a dying rhinoceros breathing its last.

  “Does that mean it’s emergency over?”

  “No,” said Kenny, his face dry now but his eyes still a little red. “Someone goes to the roof and operates it for five minutes. That’s meant to get everyone to the rally point who’s supposed to go there.”

  Parker hoped no one was going to do a head count of corrections officers, considering the trail of sleeping workers in his wake.

  Beyond the next port was the rally point.

  Already, thirty or so corrections officers had assembled to get their orders. There was a goldfish bowl containing ranks of dead CCTV screens, and at the front of it stood a senior-looking officer who was preparing to address his assembled teams.

  Parker and Kenny joined the back of the small crowd, and Parker tried to shrink in his shirt. Everyone was looking forward, ready to listen. Parker’s plan was to listen to the briefing and melt away while everyone was consumed by whatever the emergency was.

  The senior corrections officer, a gray-haired, sixty-year-old bulldog sporting a walrus mustache and a tobacco chewer’s mouth, put his hands on his hips and began.

  “We got a situation on D-Block, gentlemen and ladies. Hostages have been taken, weapons have been seized, and barricades have been put across both access corridors.”

  A hubbub of voices broke out. The senior corrections officer, whose nametape, Parker could now see, read “Rayleigh,” raised his hands in a placating gesture. “Simmer down. Yes, the occupants of D-Block are not what you might call the most cooperative of prisoners, but they’re political, not career, criminals. They have demands. That gives us options. That said, if you have to go in weapons hot and take out a few of the motherfuckers once the hostages have been released, I won’t be filling out any forms to have you disciplined, if you get my drift.”

  There was a ripple of laughter among the crowd. Parker felt bile rising in his throat as he listened. As a cop, he’d been in plenty of situations where he could have cleaned the streets of some serious shit with a bullet and a blind eye. But what was the point of being the same as the scum you were fighting? What was the point of fighting anything evil if you ended up as evil as them?

  Parker felt his face warming and his eyes focusing hard on Rayleigh. The walrus-faced fuck was the sort of petty autocrat who stood behind violence to shield himself from justice. Parker despised men like this. It was men of this weak character who’d created the world he’d wanted to escape from in his cabin. Men like this who broke his heart and made him doubt whether humanity had any chance at all.

  Rayleigh continued, “I’ve already sent the negotiation team in to speak to the leader. That resistance bitch, Calman. No doubt, she’ll be looking for recognition as political prisoners, just like the last time.”

  Parker’s ears pricked at the word “resistance.” It chilled him. So, there was a prison population of resistance fighters here, and some of them were women?

  Jesus. What if Sara or Ava had been captured during his weeks of solitary confinement? What if his daughter was on D-Block now, behind a barricade, about to be dealt with by teams of corrections officers going in armed and dirty, with a boss who was telling them he’d look the other way?

  Parker’s prison break had taken a whole new turn. He grabbed Kenny’s arm and dug his fingers in hard, not listening as Rayleigh finished off his pep talk. Deputies started handing out M500 pump-action, 12-gauge shotguns from an armory store next to the goldfish bowl.

  “Kenny, is there a Sara Parker on D-Block?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never worked there.”

  “Where can we find the lists of prisoners? I need to know if my daughter is about to get shot.”

  “Y-your daughter?”

  “Yes. And if you think I was mean and scary before, you’d better prepare for next level, boy.”

  Kenny was shaking again.

  “I need a list. Now. And you are going to get it for me.”

  Tears pricked the corners of Kenny’s eyes, but Parker had no time to give the boy a chance to pull himself together.

  “I said now. Where is it?”

  “Rayleigh’s office would have one, I guess.”

  “And that’s where exactly?”

  “Next to where they’re handing out the shotguns.”

  Of course it is. Yup. That’s exactly where it would be, Parker thought bitterly. One day, just one day not turning into an enormous shitshow. That’s all I ask, Lord.

  The corrections officers who were getting their shotguns were now going to another store to get Kevlar vests, neoprene arm and leg armor, and tactical ballistic helmets fixed with injection-molded polycarbonate face shields.

  The crowd in front of Parker and Kenny was thinning as the corrections officers got their weapons and armor, organizing into their strike teams under Rayleigh’s deputies. There was no longer any chance to go back the way they’d come, but then again, that hadn’t been much of an option before anyway; Parker and Kenny would reach the end of the line and have to come under the scrutiny of Rayleigh and his men.

  Although Parker was a head taller than Kenny, he stood behind him, as this would at least hide the stretched material of his shirt, and he prayed that Kenny’s pants had dried sufficiently in the last twenty minutes to escape suspicion.

  There was a line of only five corrections officers in front of them now. Parker felt his heart hammering and his mouth drying, and he wondered if that stink of sweat in his nostrils came from Kenny or himself. Probably both.

  Rayleigh turned away from the front of the crowd and went back into his office. The last few shotguns and pieces of armor were handed out. Parker tensed, ready to reach for his holstered Beretta even though he didn’t much fancy his chances against thirty corrections officers with M500s and the confidence of body armor.

  It would be a very short trip to hell.

  Parker leaned forward and whispered in Kenny’s ear: “I want you to go into Rayleigh’s office and get the prisoner list.”

  “He’s not going to give it to me. Listen, mister, I’m doing everything you ask, but if you think he’s gonna give me that information without wanting to know why, you might as well shoot me now. It just ain’t gonna happen.”

  “Just walk to the office, kid, and I’ll create a distraction that will draw him out before you get there. Remember, I’ll be watching you the whole time. One wrong move and you’ll regret it.”

  “I’m already regretting it, sir.”

  Parker put a hand on Kenny’s back and pushed him forward firmly. “Go.”

  Kenny began to walk toward Rayleigh’s goldfish bowl of an office.

  The last few corrections officers were putting on their armor, shotguns resting against the wall. The deputies had backed into the storeroom and armory to lift out equipment for Kenny, Parker, and the last few stragglers. Parker felt exposed now more than ever, but still no one was looking in his direction. He sneaked a quick look behind him to make sure no one would be able to see what he did next. From the leg pouch next to his ho
lster, Parker pulled out a small CS gas grenade. Taking a deep breath, he pulled the pin and threw it over the heads of the suiting-up corrections officers so it landed exactly where it needed to: inside the armory. No one had seen where the canister had originated, but as it popped open with a hiss, everyone knew where it was now.

  “Christ! Gas!” someone shouted. The corrections officer in the armor storeroom came out through the door coughing and spluttering, his eyes streaming. The suited officers were running backwards, away from the pall of irritant. Parker had guessed correctly that the armory was where any SGE 400/3 gas masks or equivalents might be stored, so now they were unavailable. That meant everyone was going to be concentrating on the gas, and not on Parker.

  Keeping his mouth closed and his eye slit, Parker moved toward the goldfish bowl. Kenny was already inside, and Rayleigh was pushing past him to see what the commotion was. Once inside, Kenny began pulling out drawers from filing cabinets and searching Rayleigh’s desk. The walrus-faced senior corrections officer walked into the pall of tear gas, shouting at his men, wanting to know what in the blue fucking blazes was going on.

  Parker took three more paces toward the goldfish bowl. The key to surviving CS gas without a respirator was to run away. Simple as that. Once the micro-powder got into your eyes, the pain was severe and the tears debilitating. Parker only had one eye to close. So, squeezing his good eye into a slit, he skirted around the main core of billowing gas coming from the armory some twenty feet from the goldfish bowl. He put the crook of his elbow over his mouth and nose, trying to breathe only when he needed to through the material. Parker steeled himself against the stinging in the slit of his right eye. He fixed his already compromised vision on the goldfish bowl door so, if in the end he had no choice but to close it, he at least knew the direction he had to keep walking in.

  The shouts were dying down from across the rallying area. Someone had managed to close the armory door and that had stopped the flow of fresh gas leaking into the area. There was still a huge amount of the white gas to be dealt with, but it was no longer expanding.