Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 98561 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 493(@200wpm)___ 394(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 98561 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 493(@200wpm)___ 394(@250wpm)___ 329(@300wpm)
The guard swallowed. “I’ve gotta go in there and try to—”
“Those guys will kill you!” I pointed behind him. “Double back through that hallway and hook up with the rest of your people. Go!”
He hesitated…then turned and ran. I let out a breath: one problem dealt with. But I still didn’t know why Packard was doing this. And the crowd had started to move, a tide of people surging out of the cell block. I pushed my way back into the crowd and grabbed one of Packard’s men by the front of his jumpsuit, the two of us carried along by the flow of inmates. “What’s the plan?” I demanded.
The man’s pupils were tiny: he was high, probably on something Packard had given him. He tried to struggle out of my grip, but I just held on tighter, then lifted him right off the floor. “The—The warden,” he stammered. “We’re going to take the admin building and Packard’s gonna give the warden what’s coming to him.”
I dropped him, my mind spinning. Packard and the warden had fallen out. Knowing the warden, he’d probably demanded a bigger cut of Packard’s drug money. Packard’s response was to kill him, but the warden’s well protected. The only way Packard could get to him was to take over the whole place with a riot. I shook my head in dismay. I didn’t have any love for the warden ,but I didn’t wish him dead and a lot of guards were going to get hurt or killed, guys who were just doing their jobs, like Bruno and Louis. But there wasn’t much I could do to stop a full-on riot, especially with Packard’s drugged-up thugs leading it. The best thing to do would be to go somewhere safe and just wait it out. I started figuring out a route back to my cell.
Then I froze, becoming a stationary rock in the river of prisoners rushing past me.
They were going to take the admin building. The infirmary was in the admin building. Olivia! The thought of her in the hands of these animals…
By now, the riot was in full swing. The yelling and screaming was an ear-splitting roar, curls of burning toilet paper were drifting down from the upper levels and smoke billowed from burning mattresses, making it even harder to breathe in the stifling heat. It was like the seventh circle of hell.
But hell is exactly what I’m suited to. I started ramming my way through the crowd, hurling people out of the way when they wouldn’t move.
They weren’t getting her. They weren’t getting my angel.
5
OLIVIA
We’d all been trained for this, of course, when we started work at the prison. Stay calm, we’d been told. Lock the door. Help will come.
But training doesn’t prepare you for the noise. There’s no sound in the world like an advancing crowd, hyped up and blood-hungry, out of control. They hooted, they bellowed, loud enough to shake the windows. Then, every few moments, we’d hear a scream as a guard was injured and then a roar of triumph from the crowd…and the sounds would move closer. They were winning, advancing second by second. Alicia and I looked at each other in terror: we could actually feel the floor vibrating from the hundreds of feet racing towards us.
Lock the door, they’d said. I’d locked it, but I wasn’t sure if it would hold, not against hundreds of determined men. Help will come…but through the window in the door, I could see guards in riot gear running away from us, down the hallway, towards the warden’s office. Had they forgotten us, in their panic? “Hey!” I yelled. “In here!” But they didn’t hear me, over the noise of the riot.
“Oh God,” said Alicia behind me. I turned to look at her. She’d gone sheet-white and looked as if she might throw up. She was probably imagining what would happen if those men got in here. I was doing the same.
The roar of the crowd got louder. They were seconds away from us now, just around the corner. There had to be something we could do… I searched the room for an escape route but the only windows faced onto the exercise yard. Even if we could break them and climb down, the rioters were out there, too.
Then I saw the drug lock-up. It’s a tiny room, no bigger than a closet. But because it’s where we store all of the controlled drugs, it has a metal door, and unlike the door of the infirmary, it doesn’t have a window in it, making it even stronger. I doubted the prisoners could get in there, at least not easily. I grabbed Alicia’s hand and pulled her over there.
Then I cursed under my breath. The door locked from the outside. Someone would have to stay out here to lock it.