Stone Cold Fear | Book 1 | Powerless

by Fawkes, K. M.

  “Hooah,” Ryan said.

  “I don’t take orders from you, Lieutenant Marshall,” Sadler said.

  “You do now,” Pete answered. “If you can find any of the men in the unit who want to take orders from you, then knock yourself out. Otherwise, shut the fuck up and do as your told.”

  Andersen looked to be enjoying Sadler’s dressing-down, at least until Pete added, “That includes you, Warden. I’m in charge of this facility now. If you don’t like it, you can take it up with the powers that be when the power comes back on.”

  Andersen stood up straight and sucked in his gut, the way a cat will puff itself up to look larger, and Pete wished the guy would protest. Just to give Pete something to fight against.

  But the way Andersen kept his own council suggested he was more of a plotter. Pete would have to look out for him until they got out of here. That was the sort of man who would stab you in the back at the first opportunity.

  Ryan looked like he was about to add his two cents, but Pete shut him down with a glare. He was exhausted and pissed off. He didn’t want to be in command, nor did he want to deal with this situation. What he wanted was to be at home in his apartment in Oregon, with his feet up and a book in his hands. A dog would be nice, too. When he got home, maybe he’d get himself a puppy.

  Yeah, and maybe I’ll buy a vacation property on the beach and a pound of coffee to go with it.

  “Holy shit,” one of the guards said. “I just remembered. When I was inspecting the mechanical area, I came across a box full of old tools and stuff that probably should have been thrown away a long time ago. There were a couple of radios in there. They’re from, like, three models ago, but if they’re still in there, they might have been protected from the EMP blast.”

  Pete felt a small surge of hope. It was disconcerting how difficult it was to plan an operation, knowing he’d have no communication with his men.

  “Can you describe where they were?” he asked.

  “It’ll be easier if I take you there,” the guard said.

  Pete and the guard, whose name turned out to be Blaine, set out toward the mechanical area, but not before Pete delivered a final shot to the occupants of the control room. “I expect you all to get along while I’m gone. Take a moment to think about what’s important right now.”

  Even as he left, he heard Sadler bitching about how uppity Pete had always been. He probably should have continued to play nice in the sandbox, he realized, placating Sadler while running the show behind his back. Now he was going to have to keep an eye on Sadler and Andersen to make sure they weren’t planning a mutiny.

  But you just mutinied, didn’t you?

  He put that away as something he couldn’t do anything about anymore, and followed Blaine to the box he’d mentioned. The man had remembered correctly, and there were several walkie-talkies in there. There was also an ancient radio, which they took with them as well.

  “Are batteries okay after an EMP blast?” Blaine asked.

  “I think so,” Pete answered. “Flashlight worked just fine after the lights went out, as did the lanterns Andersen brought back. Now let’s get back to the control room before those idiots rip each other’s heads off.”

  They hurried back down to the hall, visions of shit going down in his absence running through Pete’s mind. But when they were back inside, everyone merely looked pissed off. Ignoring the tension in the room, Blaine dug out some batteries, and he and Pete put them in the walkies, which sprang to life like they’d been in use only yesterday.

  The radio, unfortunately, didn’t want to work. Pete gave it to Bahar, who was handy with that sort of thing. A five-minute discussion laid out the rest of the plan. Ryan would take Cellblock Four, Olowe Two, and Yu and Sadler One, each of them deciding on their own group of men. The prison guards divided themselves evenly among the groups.

  Marie said she wanted to go with Pete and his crew, but he shot the idea down immediately.

  She thumped her hand on the table. “You’re not giving me much credit,” she snapped. “I’ve got just as much right to be in there as you do. I’ve got just as much at stake here. More, in fact.”

  “You’re a total badass,” Pete said, though he thought she was more a pain in the ass than anything else.

  Then he had an idea. If she wanted responsibility, he’d give it to her.

  “That’s why I’m leaving you here to keep an eye on Andersen.”

  He also returned the syringe she’d given him. That seemed to placate her. Or give her bad ideas.

  As soon as the door closed behind them, Pete said to Ryan, “I wouldn’t put it past Andersen to screw us, especially after her little show. Someone needs to keep an eye on him, and since she made the mess, she can work on cleaning it up.”

  “No need to justify yourself to me,” Ryan said.

  “I’ve been trying to get her to keep her mouth shut since the moment I set eyes on her,” Pete continued. “And I don’t like that she’s going to be the one writing the story of what happens in here.”

  Ryan shrugged. “She is kind of a badass, though.”

  Yes, she is, Pete thought. But she’s also a loose cannon.

  Chapter 11

  As they walked quickly toward Cellblock Three, they started to see how run-down the prison had become. The upstairs had looked like something from a five-star hotel. Down here, though, paint was peeling from the walls and the cement walls and floors were crumbling in places. If an earthquake struck in the mountains, this building might fall down around them.

  Not going to worry about that. One thing at a time.

  Pete wondered how much of Andersen’s budget had been spent on off-the-books sorts of things. The guard who’d come with his group was named Kalbus, and so far he’d studiously avoided looking at the disrepair. Too late, Pete realized that it might have been a mistake to put guards into the groups. Unless they were brand new, they were going to have had some part in the behavior that went on around here—or they were going to know about it. He had no idea which of them were in Andersen’s pockets.

  And he suspected that the prisoners weren’t going to care. As far as they were concerned, the guards were complicit.

  They arrived at the door into Cellblock Three, then, and Pete’s radio crackled to life.

  “Cellblock One. It’s batshit crazy in there, Lieu,” Yu said over the radio. “Sadler poked his head in the door, trying to prove he’s as good as you, and the inmates grabbed him.”

  “Hang tight,” Pete said. “We’re on our way.” He hit the button on the radio and glanced at the men with him. “You heard him. Let’s go. Cellblock Three can wait.”

  He took off in a jog, struck by a sick sensation he’d had earlier that made him feel like he was a three-legged cocker spaniel at a time when he needed to be a greyhound. He wanted to move quickly, but his tired body was only capable of so much. In the dark. In a prison where you didn’t know what you might find when you rounded a corner.

  “We can hear him screaming in there, Lieu,” Yu said to Pete as soon as they arrived at Cellblock One.

  Pete clapped him on the shoulder, hoping to comfort him. He’d never seen Yu looked so distressed.

  “Leave it to Sadler to get himself captured the first time he tried to do anything worthwhile,” he spat.

  Yu was right about the screaming, though there seemed to be more than one man singing in that diabolic choir, and Pete took a split second to steady himself. This was going to be ugly.

  “Remember,” he said, “we don’t have an ammo tree growing outside. There’s got to be some sort of ammo room here, but we don’t know where it is and I don’t want to have to go shopping. Make every shot count.”

  His men checked their magazines and raised their rifles and Pete felt a surge of pride. They were caught in a bad situation, but here they were, following orders. Then he crouched low and opened the door. A shot pinged off the wall near his head, and the ricochet clipped Kalbus in the shoulder.

 
Kalbus cursed and staggered a couple of steps, but remained upright.

  “Stay out here and keep pressure on the wound,” Pete told him, not unhappy to have him out of the picture.

  Based on the sound that accompanied it, the shot had come from a handgun, not from Sadler’s rifle, which meant the prisoners had probably disarmed one of the guards. What a gong show. Pete dodged left and peered through the door, looking for the shooter. Lit by the sickly glow of the yellow emergency lighting, the whole scene took on the quality of an old film.

  Then he saw Sadler.

  “Marshall!” Sadler screamed, as though Pete hadn’t already made eye contact with him. “Help me!”

  “Shooter. Two o’clock,” one of his men said.

  Pete ducked and kept moving, hoping it would make it harder for the shooter to be able to get a bead on him. He looked to his right as he rolled and spotted the man with the Glock. He was holding the gun like a gangster, rather than someone trained to use a firearm, which was good for Pete. That kind of showmanship did nothing to improve accuracy.

  “Someone lay down cover fire,” Pete said.

  “Got your back, Lieutenant.”

  One of his men fired once, twice, three times, and Pete threw himself onto the floor on his stomach, took aim, and fired.

  The guy with the Glock fell backward, and the gun went flying.

  But that was only part of the problem. Who has Sadler’s rifle? And how many other guards have they relieved of their guns?

  A mad scramble began as several other prisoners went after the loose Glock, and Pete took advantage of their movement to roll to the side and bounce up onto his feet. A round from a bigger gun—Sadler’s rifle?—hit the spot where he’d just been and one of Pete’s men returned fire. A convict cried out, followed by the sound of a rifle clattering to the floor.

  But Pete was already moving again. He’d come up behind a post and slid one eye around it, glaring around the room.

  “Nobody move!” he yelled. “You’re outnumbered and outgunned, and unless you want to be slaughtered where you stand, you’ll get on your knees and put your hands behind your heads!”

  Some of the prisoners obeyed, but not all. Pete fired a single round above the prisoners’ heads, which, for the most part, had the desired effect. Two recalcitrant convicts remained standing, though, and one of them was going for Sadler’s rifle.

  Before Pete could react, Kalbus was beside him, shooting that man in the leg, which took the fight out of him. Two of Pete’s men approached the guy with their rifles high and aimed at his head.

  Kalbus fired again, missing the convict and, fortunately, Pete’s men.

  “What are you doing?” Pete yelled at Kalbus, who looked surprised by the reprimand. Pete disarmed him, grabbing the Glock and giving it a vicious twist to get it out of his hands.

  Kalbus cursed and Pete hoped he’d broken the man’s fingers. Saving his ass the first time was great. Shooting at Pete’s own men was not.

  The convict still wasn’t yielding, and at this point, Lark was pummeling him in the stomach with the butt end of his M4. Finally, he collapsed to his knees. There was nothing like having the breath knocked clean out of your body to make you more cooperative.

  “I have the Glock!” one of the prisoners said, holding the grip of the pistol in the air between his thumb and forefinger. “Someone come get it!”

  Pete jogged over and took it. “Good decision.”

  Lark walked over to Kalbus and said, “The fuck you doing, firing at us?”

  “I thought I had the shot,” Kalbus said.

  “Idiot,” Lark spat. He looked like he wanted to say more, but walked away, heading straight for Sadler.

  Pete looked around, remembering what Marie had said, but couldn’t fathom trusting any of the inmates—even the ones who had cooperated the quickest. No matter what they’d done, or where they should have been imprisoned, they were convicts. Men without morals. He wasn’t going to put his life or the lives of his men in their hands.

  But he didn’t want to kill any more of them. And he wanted to make sure they were out of the way of anyone who came through here wanting to cause trouble.

  So, with methodical care, they got the prisoners—the ones who were alive, that was—locked back into their cells. When all was said and done, the prisoners had killed ten of their own and one guard, whose body Lark found stashed in an empty cell. As for the convict Kalbus had shot in the leg…

  Pete tossed the man a shirt he took off a dead convict and told him to keep pressure on the wound.

  “I need to go to medical,” the guy moaned.

  “There is no medical,” Pete said.

  “Sadler’s in bad shape,” Lark said. “Slipping in and out of consciousness.”

  Pete went over and found that they’d beaten Sadler nearly senseless, and broken one of his legs. It was no wonder the guy was fading in and out. That was a lot to go through, especially for someone who had probably never seen a day of hard work in his entire life.

  Pete might not have been able to stand the guy, but that didn’t mean he deserved treatment like this. He just hoped none of the damage was permanent. There’d be hell to pay if they lost their captain. And a whole lot of paperwork to be filled out.

  They were just picking Sadler up, supported between four of them, when one of the prisoners shouted a question. Others followed suit, pulling Pete from his thoughts.

  “What’s going on out there?”

  “When’s the power coming back on?”

  “What about food? We haven’t been fed.”

  “How about a shower? My pits stink. Want to take a sniff?”

  Pete considered for a moment whether he should or should not answer their questions. Did it make sense to talk to them? Or just leave them here, none of them knowing what was going on or what was going to happen?

  To treat them like humans… or like the animals Andersen thought they were?

  “Lieu?” Yu said. “We going to answer them or not?”

  “We don’t know for certain what happened,” Pete said loudly, working to project his voice throughout the cellblock. “We think there’s been a solar flare and an EMP blast, and that it knocked out the power, and all but the most basic electronics. We don’t know how long it will last, or how widespread it is. We’ll see to food as soon as we can. Remember, it’ll go better for all of you if you cooperate going forward.”

  And if you try not to behave like wild animals, he thought, glancing at the pile of dead men.

  With that, Pete, Yu, and their men left Cellblock One, carrying Sadler as they walked back to the control room. Kalbus asked for his gun back on the way, but Pete hesitated.

  “Come on,” Kalbus said. “We’re on the same side.”

  Pete returned the Glock, wondering if he’d regret it.

  Back at the control room, Pete punched in the code to manually open the door and followed the same protocol as before, calling out before opening it all the way. The door flung open before he had a chance to finish, which set his guts plummeting, and Blaine came running out.

  “I’m out of here. This is bullshit. I didn’t sign up for this,” he said as he went.

  “I’ll grab him, Lieu,” one of the men said.

  Pete waved to acknowledge that he’d heard and took in the situation in the control room. The other guard was dead, Andersen was slumped on the ground, one bare foot poking out from his pant leg, and Smith was in the corner with a sock shoved into his mouth and tied tightly behind his head. Marie leaned against the wall, massaging her bruised neck.

  “What happened?” Pete asked. Since they had control of the area, he left the door open to air out the rank smell of BO and fear.

  “What happened?” she rasped. “What happened is that you left me with the sadistic prick who killed my brother and things went sideways.”

  Before he could respond, Pete’s radio crackled to life.

  “Hey, boss. Where are you?” Ryan asked. “We finished up
Block Four and came to check on you, but you’re nowhere to be found.”

  “Yu hit a snag in One and we went to help him.”

  “Do you want us to handle Three?” Ryan said.

  “No. Find out if Olowe needs help in Two. If he doesn’t, meet back at Control.”

  “Did you ever make it to Three?”

  “No, why?” Pete felt his midsection go tight.

  “It’s weirdly quiet. The kind of quiet that makes me nervous.”

  “All the more reason for you to come back here before proceeding.”

  “You’re giving the orders,” Ryan said. “See you soon.”

  Pete helped Marie to her feet while some of the men brought Sadler in and laid him on the table. Despite the fact she was shaking from head to toe, Marie went to him. She lifted one of his eyelids and shone a flashlight into it, then checked the other one the same way.

  “His pupils respond normally, so it’s probably not a head injury,” she said. “Do you know what happened to him?”

  “The prisoners in One got a hold of him,” Yu said. “After that, we didn’t see him for about ten minutes.”

  “Help me get him out of his shirt so I can look at his chest and abdomen.”

  Pete did as she told him, and as soon as they had Sadler’s shirt off, it became clear why he was doing so poorly. The whole area was purpling quickly. It was covered in contusions, and it didn’t take a real nurse to see that many of his ribs were broken.

  “He probably has internal injuries,” Marie said. “He should go to the hospital.” The look she gave Pete told him she knew that wouldn’t be happening. “Even if we took him to medical, nothing there will be working.” She drummed her fingers against her lips. “I guess the best we can do is keep him comfortable.”

  Andersen moaned, snorted, and then lay still. Lark came in, took one glance at Sadler’s midsection, and grimaced.

  “If he comes to, I have morphine,” he said. Then he looked at Marie’s expression and shrugged. “Best I can do, unfortunately. I’ll be in the hallway with the others if you decide to take advantage of it.” He turned and left without another word.