Stone Cold Fear | Book 1 | Powerless

by Fawkes, K. M.

  “You heard the man,” Andersen said. “Too many cooks, and all that.”

  The guards and kitchen staff filed out of the room, grumbling about the situation and not getting paid enough for this, and Pete turned to his men.

  “Ryan, Yu, Olowe, you’re with me,” he said, knowing the time had come to single out a few of his men as group leaders. They’d have to split up soon, to cover more ground, and it was better to have them divided into groups now. “The rest of you spread out and make sure no one gets into this area.”

  Marie pushed her way through to stand next to Pete, making it clear that she expected to be included. He sighed and opened the door wide enough for her to enter, then nodded that Ryan, Yu, and Olowe should follow.

  As soon as he saw Pete, Captain Sadler said, “What took you so long?”

  “You have somewhere else to be?” Pete replied, tossing a pack at him. He let out an oof when he caught it and glared at Pete.

  “Did you figure anything out while we were gone?” Pete asked Andersen. “Get the comms working? Sort out what’s going on in the rest of the building?”

  “Comms are dead, along with anything else that wasn’t hardwired to the backup generator.” Andersen gave Marie a puzzled frown when he noticed the way she was glaring at him. “But there is good news. Smith opened the cells but didn’t have time to open the barriers between cellblocks before the power went out. The prisoners can’t group together. We can secure them one cellblock at a time. Makes it slightly more manageable, at least.”

  “By ‘we,’ I guess you mean us,” Ryan said.

  “That’s enough, O’Connell,” Pete said—at the same time as Sadler. He cringed at the idea that they might have the same thought at the same time.

  He didn’t like thinking that he was anything like Sadler. Even when Sadler was right.

  “And how do you know the cellblocks are still sealed off?” Pete asked. He gestured to the computers. “You can’t see a damn thing from in here.”

  “From the guards,” Andersen said. “They’ve been making their way here, per protocol, bringing news of what’s going on in the rest of the prison.”

  “Were those all of them?” Ryan said.

  “No. There are men missing. The guards identified two dead as they made their way here, and the kitchen staff two more. Without cameras or comms, I don’t know who’s alive and who’s dead. Don’t know where any of them are, either. Last time anyone saw Dean, he was with Clyde. And your men were the last ones to see Sven.”

  “He took us to that rec room and said he had rounds to make,” Olowe said.

  Andersen shrugged, indicating that that was all he knew. “He was scheduled to look after Block Two today.”

  “Hopefully Clyde will make sure Dean gets what’s coming to him,” Marie said under her breath.

  “What was that, Ms. Simons?” Andersen asked.

  “Nothing,” she replied, but only because Pete shot her a look that she must have interpreted correctly. It said, One more word and you’re out of here.

  “How many cellblocks are we talking?” Pete asked, turning back to Andersen. “And how many prisoners in each?”

  “Four cellblocks,” Andersen said.

  Pete noticed that he didn’t answer the second question. If he didn’t have a count on how many prisoners they had here, it was going to become a problem.

  “And your guards will help us with this little project?” Ryan said.

  Sadler tsked loudly. Pete was coming to regret choosing Ryan to be a team leader. Marie was already causing him grief, and now his friend was too.

  “They’ll follow my orders,” Andersen said.

  Smith, who was on the floor in the same position he’d been in since he passed out from the tranquilizer, shifted, and Andersen quickly went to a drawer, pulled out some zip cuffs, and bound his hands and feet. As he watched, Pete wavered on his feet a little bit. The fatigue was starting to get to him.

  Get it together, Marshall, he told himself for the tenth time in an hour.

  But it was too late. Andersen had noticed the swaying.

  “You and your men are half-asleep on your feet,” he said. “I suggest food and a short rest before you tackle something like securing the cellblocks. Tired men make mistakes.”

  “Hooah, to that,” Ryan said, and yawned.

  “The overflow pantry is on this level,” Andersen said. “We just received a shipment of military food bars and bottled water. They were meant for the Army guys who were supposed to have transported Clyde, which means they’re not spoken for.”

  “How hard will it be to secure this level?” Pete asked. “We’re tired and hungry, yeah, but we need to make sure we’re safe. And we need to keep the prisoners out of the mechanical area. That comes first.”

  “I don’t know if you’re familiar with the history of Mueller, but we had a riot here about six years back. Afterward, I had a very specific sort of door installed throughout the prison.”

  Pete followed Andersen out of the control room to one of the doors that led into the hallway from the stairwell. Andersen stepped in front of Pete, took out a knife, and shoved the tip under what Pete had taken to be a seam in the wooden frames. A moment later he’d pulled the frame away, swiveled it, and brought it down in front of the door.

  “Three of them on each door,” Andersen said, gesturing to the places where Pete could now see the seams in the frame.

  “Clever,” Pete said. “So, when we’re down here, all the doors can be barred to keep anyone else from coming into the hall.”

  Andersen nodded. “Exactly. When you run a prison like this, you take precautions. Make sure you’re able to get away from the people who probably want to kill you.”

  “Smart,” Pete muttered. “Take some of your men and get to that food and water you promised. I’ll have my men handle the doors.

  Ten minutes later the doors were all barred and they were sitting with their backs to the walls of the hallway with the protein bars and water Andersen and his men had brought back. Andersen was motioning toward the battery-powered lanterns he’d grabbed as well.

  “The generators are kept full at all times, but just in case,” he said.

  “And the generators are going to keep running?” Pete asked. “They were fully protected by whatever it is you had installed?”

  “Faraday cage. Exactly. It’s a big conductive mesh deal, prevents electromagnetism from getting through and frying the electronics.”

  Pete frowned. That seemed great, but it also seemed like only a partial fix. “And the lines that lead out of that room?” he asked. “Wouldn’t those have been fried once they were outside of the protection?”

  “The mesh comes in tube form as well,” Andersen answered quickly. “So we could protect all the lines that might carry emergency power.”

  “Seems to me the control room should have been set up the same way,” Pete said.

  “That’s what I told them when they were retrofitting the prison,” Andersen said. “But it’s always a matter of budget.”

  Pete shook his head in distaste. Budget. Imagine what he could have done with the money he wasted on that ridiculous office.

  Chapter 10

  Eventually, after Pete had seen to the rest of his unit, he changed back into his regular uniform. Then he chose a corner outside the control room, sank down on the floor, and breathed out a heavy sigh. He couldn’t decide if he had enough energy to eat. Chewing might as well be a marathon, he was that tired.

  The prison guards stuck together, as did the kitchen staff, sitting in groups. Pete’s men broke into smaller groups that mimicked their social lives when they weren’t in active service. Marie had joined one of the groups, and Pete heard Baldwin ask her how her brother had come to be incarcerated in Mueller. Pete wondered if she’d give him shit, tell him to mind his own business, but instead, she began to speak.

  “Dillon was a year younger than me, and we’d always been there for each other.”

 
; Pete finally took a bite of the bar and thought about how sick he was of military rations.

  “Mom had a drinking problem so Dad got custody of us, but then he died and we had to go live with her. I was seventeen at the time, and Dillon sixteen. Mom was a crazy drunk, one minute making our favorite meals and the next, threatening our lives. It was a hard way to live. Then I met Steve.”

  Marie sipped from a bottle of water and then continued her story. “I met him in a bar known for not looking too closely at a person’s ID. He was older and traveled for business. He treated me like a princess, or a goddess. Whatever. The point is, I was smitten. And you need to understand something about being smitten. It’s not just about being in love. It’s about being stupid in love. Which I was.

  “Anyhow, Steve wanted me to come to Nebraska, where he lived. He told me we would get married, the whole deal. Dillon came into my room as I was packing my bags to leave and asked me where I was going. I told him, and he begged me to take him with me. Begged me not to leave him there with our mother.

  “‘Oh, Dill,’ I said. ‘Don’t be so melodramatic.’ As though I hadn’t stood across from Mom as she waved a hot iron at me, screaming that she was going to scar my face. As though I didn’t know exactly what he was talking about. But all I could see was myself.

  “I got to Nebraska, and Steve set me up in a shitty hotel at the edge of town. Turned out he had a wife and three kids. I was so ashamed, and felt so dumb, that I couldn’t tell Mom or Dillon. I got a job, finished high school, saved my money, and went to college for nursing. In the meantime, living with a crazy woman broke Dillon, and he turned to drugs. Before long he was stealing, and getting involved with more and more of the wrong kinds of people. He didn’t do anything bad enough to warrant ending up in Mueller, but the prisons in Washington were full to bursting when he was caught, and they sent him here.”

  The men listening to her story made commiserating noises and she paused for a long, intense moment before she continued. “I came here to visit him,” she said. “He hinted about prisoners being abused, maybe even tortured but I didn’t know what to think. I’d never experienced anything like that, didn’t have any way of knowing whether he could be telling the truth or not. To be honest, he looked so awful that I thought he’d maybe gone crazy. Then, a day later, he was dead. ‘Natural causes.’” She shook her head miserably. “I failed him while he was alive, but I decided I wouldn’t fail him after he was dead. I was determined to uncover the truth about his death, and see the perpetrators brought to justice.”

  Ryan, who so often said the things Pete was thinking, said, “Even to the point of impersonating a nurse. What would you have done if someone needed medical treatment?”

  She held up a hand. “Like I said, I went to school to be a nurse. No, I never practiced, but I was confident I could wing it if anything came up.”

  “Jesus,” Ryan said. “For someone who’s so concerned about the prisoners, you didn’t hesitate to put them at risk.”

  Marie’s face turned pink and she looked ashamed.

  Good. She should be, Pete thought. She’d been stupid to do what she did—and it hadn’t only been the prisoners she was endangering. If she’d been caught, by either the warden or the prisoners, she would have paid with her life.

  “I’m sorry about your brother,” Pete said, loud enough for his voice to carry. “But you need to be careful with your questions. We don’t want Andersen as an enemy right now. We have too much else to deal with.”

  She picked at a thread on her sleeve. “I know you’re right, and I’m sorry. It’s just been eating me up and once I knew for sure, it tipped me over the edge for a while. I promise to try very hard to keep my shit together.”

  A couple of the guys laughed.

  “Good,” Pete said, barely suppressing a yawn. “And I already know you’re a woman of your word, so I won’t make you pinky swear.”

  “Ha-ha.” Marie got up and came to sit in front of him. “I’m glad you trust me. And before you fall asleep in your food bar, there’s one more thing I want to talk to you about.”

  There is definitely no rest for the wicked. “Okay.”

  “I want you to consider the fact that some of the men in here are not as bad as the rest when you’re making your way through the cellblocks, securing the prison. It’s possible some of them might even work with us, to get some of the worst offenders under control. And, if I’m reading the situation right, we might be here for a while. We could use the help of those that are willing. The more of us there are, the better chance we have of getting out alive.”

  “Work with us? And what, exactly, is that supposed to look like? We have a big task ahead, to secure this prison until the authorities arrive to take over. I can’t imagine telling my men I expect them to work alongside one or more dangerous convicts.”

  “I’m telling you, they’re not all bad. Dillon—”

  “Dillon. Dillon. Dillon. I get it. He was your brother and you feel guilty about what happened to him, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to trust known criminals to do the right thing. I’m damn sure not going to put the lives of my men at their fingertips. All the prison records are electronic, which means we can’t get to them, which means we don’t even know what any of them did to get locked up here.”

  “But—”

  “But, nothing. We can’t ask them, ‘Hey, buddy, what’d you do to wind up in here?’ They’re not going to tell the truth. I have no doubt these guys are all liars.”

  “You’re infuriating.” Marie stood. “You know what? Get some sleep. You obviously need it.”

  “Hooah.”

  Pete watched her walk away, frustrated. How could a woman who had studied science be so damned illogical? Couldn’t she see how much danger she was putting herself—and them—in? And though he was agitated from arguing with her, he was asleep before he had time to wonder how long it would take before his mind quieted enough for him to rest.

  Too soon, Ryan was at his side, shaking his shoulder and saying, “It’s time to get the show on the road, brother.”

  Pete’s mouth tasted like something had curled up and died in it. He’d never wanted to wake up and find out everything had been a dream as much as he did just then—not even when things had gone bad with Theresa.

  He climbed to his feet, did a couple of stretches, and made his way back to the control room. At least everyone there looked as rode hard and put away wet as he felt. Cups of ersatz coffee in hand, they were starting to plan how to tackle the problem at hand: securing the prisoners back in their cells. Pete joined the conversation hesitantly, still trying to get his brain back in gear, and though Marie kept looking at him, silently urging him to bring up her idea, he studiously avoided making eye contact with her.

  Finally, she slapped the table to get everyone’s attention and made her suggestion.

  “We can’t make the mistake of tarring all the inmates with the same brush. Finding out who’s willing to collaborate and working with them may be our best chance of securing the prison and getting out of here alive.”

  Andersen rolled his eyes. “I’ve been impressed with you so far, Ms. Simons, but that is a very stupid idea.”

  “Why do you say that, Warden?”

  Before Andersen could answer, Captain Sadler piped in, “I have to say I agree with Warden Andersen. These are not boys in juvenile hall; these are men who have committed the worst kind of crimes.”

  “Of course, you would say that.” She turned away from him, holding eye contact with Andersen, and waited.

  And here we go, Pete thought, wondering if it was possible to be pathological in a desire to make amends. He was just giving his body the command to move, to try to get her to shut up, when Andersen asked the question he’d been hoping the guy wouldn’t ask.

  “What are you getting at, Ms. Simons?” Andersen leaned into his hands on the surface of the table.

  “You are a sadistic prick and you deserve to be locked up in here as much, if n
ot more, than some of the men imprisoned here. I know what you’ve been up to, and if there is such a thing as government or police anymore, I intend to see you brought up on charges of murder.”

  A veil dropped over Andersen’s eyes, and Pete knew Marie had hit her mark. One of the two guards taking part in the meeting looked horrified. The other one must have had uncomfortable suspicions, if not outright knowledge, because he appeared to be relieved to finally hear the truth spoken.

  “I’m not even sure why a woman is in a facility like this,” Captain Sadler said. “Warden Andersen has been doing the best he could in a bad situation. So few appreciate the pressure of being the man at the top.”

  Ryan took hold of the front of Sadler’s shirt and shoved him up against the wall. “You know what, I’ve had enough of you. You haven’t done an honest day’s work since the day I met you. You don’t have any say in what’s going to happen going forward, Captain.”

  Sadler blustered, mouth opening and closing, and he had never looked more like an ugly old catfish thrown onto a dock than he did just then.

  On one hand, Pete was happy someone had finally spoken the truth to Sadler, but on the other hand, they didn’t have time for this shit. He pounded his fist on the desk, shocking everyone into silence.

  “Enough,” he snapped.

  Marie and Ryan had the good grace to look sheepish.

  “Right now, I don’t care who has killed who, or who’s the most incompetent prick in the room. Right now, the only thing that matters is getting this prison secured. As Marie pointed out to me last night, we don’t know how long we’re going to be here. And we have a notorious shit-disturber loose in block—” Pete looked at Andersen, but he was staring at Marie like something had just clicked and took a moment to come back down to the conversation at hand.

  “Um… David Clyde would have been in Cellblock Three,” he mumbled.

  “Then that’s where I’ll be going with whoever volunteers. The rest of you will divide up and see what you can do in Blocks One, Two, and Four. That includes you, Sadler. If you can, make note of any of the prisoners who might cooperate. As for the rest of you…” He looked at Marie. “Do what you have to do. If it’s a matter of us or them, I take us.”