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  Under the moonlight, they stopped, bathing in the telestial light. Night time excursions weren’t an option and midnight air was something they hadn’t experienced since their life began in the pen.

  Two men laughed and pushed as they reached the far end of the fence where the gate waited to be opened.

  Manson held his breath. The men would escape and he could just walk out of there, his future ahead of him. He watched as they reached out, their hands in sync with each other.

  The prisoners pushed and pulled, but the gate didn’t open. The metal didn’t budge.

  After a few desperate attempts, they turned to face Manson, their eyebrows drawn together. “What is this? You said we could get out.” Anger lowered the last syllable on their two syllable words.

  Impossible. He didn’t say it out loud. He couldn’t or he risked losing control of the yard and the rest of the men inside the pen. If they’d been free, he wouldn’t care and he’d start killing at random, but they weren’t free yet. Manson pushed past their posturing forms to study the gate. Padlocks held chains in place and those chains kept the gates closed.

  He hadn’t seen the locks when he’d glanced outside the last time. A cursory scan was all he’d been able to get. And, truth be told, he’d been mesmerized by the sight of unmown green grass and the idea of freedom beyond.

  He stilled. He had to get the answers together or he risked losing control of the entire prison. Manson turned, holding his hands up – one with the crowbar in his grip. “This isn’t permanent. We can get out still. Let’s start checking the other wards, if we can’t get out yet, we can at least access parts of the prison we couldn’t before – like the kitchens.” The mention of food did more than alter the focus, it gave them something to target – something they wanted more than freedom, at least for the foreseeable future.

  Men shifted on their feet, anxious to check the kitchens, now that their freedom wasn’t guaranteed immediately. Food had been scarcer than anything else the last few days.

  Now that the electricity was out, would the water be rare, too?

  After staring at Manson another minute, the men moved back inside, one by one, hurrying to check the kitchens and the cafeteria for food. Something to fill the hole they wouldn’t be able to ease with escape.

  Manson went back inside. He was hungry as well, but he needed a plan and he needed to know just what he was dealing with.

  Scoping out the prison and the limitations of the fences and the doors would be Manson’s only chance to gather a plan. He wasn’t planning on leaving with the men in the prison, but he’d do what he had to in order to stay alive and get out fast.

  As he walked the perimeter of the interior of the building, he couldn’t help noticing that D-Block was the least inhabited but had the most bodies. Not all of them had black seeping from their eyes and noses either. Some appeared to have taken their own lives or had been killed.

  Doors to the interior were unlocked, but the doors to get out had manual locks in place. It seemed that the prisoners escaping in a power outage had crossed the minds of the security of the prison. Probably, because they had families out in the community. Power outages could last for a few seconds to days and weeks. No one wanted their families in danger because the locks didn’t hold during a grid blip.

  Manson didn’t blame them. But their cautionary steps trapped him more fully in the cement hell he refused to call home.

  Checking the fences and the visitor center as well, Manson tightened his jaw further. Escaping wouldn’t be easy. If anything, the power going out had only made things more desperate. They had to get out or risk killing each other. The latter was more a possibility than getting out at that point.

  The only room that had any chance of escape was the security office where Manson had killed Phil. Judging by the chains on the gates, even Manson’s crowbar wouldn’t break the locks or the chains.

  He turned back to the cafeteria after investigating that direction. No reason to lead the others toward the security office.

  The crowd had gathered outside the cafeteria doors. A line separated two factions as they faced each other.

  “We’re going in, scuz. Get out of our way.” Someone in the group to the left offered, but Manson couldn’t make out the speaker.

  “Not until we go inside.” A man with tattoos crawling up his arms and around his neck pulled a shank from his waistband. He waved the makeshift knife in the air.

  An illegal shank was more common than security had known about. Unless they’d known and just turned the other cheek.

  Either way, Manson’s crowbar was still the biggest weapon in the prison. He rolled his eyes and strolled forward. “Move.” He didn’t have to raise his voice, they all recognized the sound of authority. Even if they balked at following it, something innate made them respect it when they initially heard it.

  The men shuffled out of the way. The one with the shank dropped it to his side. He backed into the men behind him as they made room for Manson to walk through. You’d think he was four times his size at the amount of space they gave him.

  Manson stopped in front of the doors and turned to the closest prisoner. No one was inside where there was food and everyone was starving. People were stupid. “Did you already go inside? Why isn’t the door open?” Leave it to the idiots to get access and then lock it again just to thwart others. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face. “Hopefully, someone went inside and didn’t wait. That would be stupidity.” His tone droll, Manson looked over his shoulder with a twisted smile.

  No one met his gaze.

  Clutching the crowbar, Manson reached out with his empty hand to pull open the door. He needed this to reestablish his leadership. If he couldn’t even get them food, then his attempts at unification to create a work team would be null and void.

  Taking a breath, Manson pushed and the doors opened inward.

  The groups forgot their differences as they rushed inside, jostling Manson as he maintained his post at the door. If they got food, they would be easier to control – for the most part.

  Exhaling as the men passed, Manson didn’t monitor the food situation. Edging around the group, Manson headed for the fridge. With the power out, cheese and milk products would go bad first. The size of the prison dictated he would walk into an overabundance of food, so much it would be hard to eat it all before it spoiled. The opportunity to see such a rich supply was a little exciting.

  In the walk in freezer, Manson stilled. There wasn’t more than two containers of mayonnaise, five or six dozen eggs, a box of milk, and a slab of sandwich cheese.

  Where was the food?

  He turned back to the shelving area. The men rifled through half-empty shelves.

  “I found that! Give it to me.” The man with the shank didn’t wait for the other man to comply. He pulled back his homemade knife and jabbed it repeatedly into the other man’s chest.

  The prisoner fell to the floor at Manson’s feet, a bag of sliced bread yanked from his grasp. His eyes stared up at the ceiling. Maroon spread across his the top of his jumpsuit.

  What a waste. Manson was all for killing when there was an abundance of people, but with the pandemic sweeping the world and wiping out mankind, they didn’t have a lot of people to go around. He’d have to ration his murders when he got out.

  When. Not if.

  He shook his head, lifting his crowbar in the growing noise of panicked prisoners, scrambling for food. He hit the broad side of the steel bar against the post of a commercial-grade metal shelf. The resounding ringing filled the room and rang off the walls.

  Everyone stopped and stared at Manson. He lifted his chin. “Listen up. There isn’t a lot of food. I’m not sure why, but we need to get out of here. I’ve studied the perimeter of the grounds and it looks like we have a good chance of escape, if we get into the grounds keeping shed on the back of this building and start digging. The fencing is buried four feet. That’s it, guys. Four feet. If we can dig down and
under the fence, we can get out of here. No one is here to stop us. I’ve tried all the doors, all the other fences. We’re stuck.”

  His face grim, Manson grabbed both ends of the bar and held it at waist level. “We need to find food. This can’t be the only place they stored it. There has to be some kind of a loading dock or maybe there’s a storage facility. We need a crew to work on the fence and a crew to work on finding the food. Who wants the glory of feeding us and who wants the glory of freeing us?” Manson could be persuasive when he wanted to be.

  As the men volunteered for jobs, Manson had no doubt they would get free. Once he had them set up and working, it was only a matter of time before he was walking out of the prison facility – with or without the rest of the idiots he’d been forced to live with.

  He was getting out. He just needed to distract the others while he figured out how.

  Chapter 9

  Margie

  “Do you see that?” Margie leaned close to Kelsey, keeping her voice down. Ryker had fallen asleep a few hours before and Margie didn’t want to wake him. The vanilla air freshener had become common place but every once in a while, Margie caught a whiff and the scent was fast becoming cloying.

  Kelsey glanced in the rearview mirror and nodded solemnly. She kept her voice down but concern laced the air. “Yeah, it’s been there about twenty minutes.” She glanced at the dashboard, tapping the gas gauge behind the glass cover. “We need to stop soon or we’re going to…” She grinned. “Stop.”

  Margie got the joke, but her worry at the presence of the red lights behind them smothered even her attempt at polite laughter.

  A red glow followed them, but only like it floated behind something. The only thing that made sense was a car with its headlights off. Their brake lights would glow about ten seconds after Kelsey would slow down or take a turn.

  The only logical explanation was someone had picked up on their lights. “Why are we being followed?” Margie twisted, glancing around to see out the back window. The defrost lines crossed the glass, breaking up the vision of the lights glowing sporadically behind them.

  “How are we going to get away from them?” Kelsey asked as she carefully picked up speed. She’d stuck to the frontage road to keep moonlight on the path ahead of them so they could see without lights, but she’d kept the speed down for safety’s sake.

  “I can unhook the brake lights, if you want?” Ryker’s voice cut through the tension in the front. He must have woken up because of the tension in the car. It wasn’t something Margie could cover, no matter how much she whispered.

  Whipping her head toward him, Margie nodded tightly. “It’s a good idea, but we can’t stop.” She furrowed her brow. Was that even possible? Didn’t cars have like a governor switch or something where they wouldn’t work if things were broken? “How would you do that anyway?”

  “It’s an old car. You can do almost anything with these classics.” His smile was hard to see in the dim lighting but was easy to hear in his confidence. “It’s easy. Hold on.” He unclicked his seatbelt and turned on the seat to kneel facing backwards. He moved things around in the back, placing some of them on the seat beside him and even handing one to Margie to hold. Some clicking and a jerk of his arm and then suddenly it went completely dark in the back.

  Ryker appeared between Kelsey and Margie’s seats, his face glowing in the slim light from the dashboard. “If you twist the headlight knob, you should be able to dim the dash lights. We can go stealth without being high tech.”

  Kelsey reached up and fumbled around until the dashboard lights grew dimmer and dimmer. Gripping the steering wheel, she dropped her jaw. “I’ve had this car almost twenty years and I had no idea it did that.”

  “We need to get off the main road.” Margie looked in the side mirror. Flashing closer, the light suggested the vehicle had sped up. The driver must be confused as to where Kelsey’s car had disappeared to.

  In less than a second, Kelsey turned the wheel, pressing Ryker and Margie against the right side of the car. Margie reached out, gripping the dash for something to hold onto with one hand and clutching the strangling chest seatbelt with the other.

  The car bumped along the dirt road Kelsey had somehow found in the dark. She stopped abruptly and Margie and Ryker jerked forward, unseating Ryker with his seatbelt removed.

  Kelsey turned off the car, and they all turned in their seats. Would they get to watch the car pass by or would they be under attack any second?

  The red lights slowed but continued moving out of sight. They couldn’t tell if it was a car or a truck, but whatever or whoever it was, they were definitely following Kelsey’s driving route.

  “We need to lie low for a while. We can’t drive anywhere at night. There’s no way to see what we’re facing.” The constant need to wait until daylight seemed to be Kelsey’s mantra.

  This time, though, Margie could see logic in the recommendation. She nodded, her breathing uneven and hitched. “Where do you suggest we hunker down?” Margie couldn’t see anything but the trees climbing into the dark star-sprinkled sky above.

  “Just here. I don’t want to open the doors and turn on the dome light. I’m not sure which way the switch goes to turn it off. If we guess wrong, it could give away our position again. Let’s just stay here until morning. Then we can use some of the gas in that container and find somewhere to load up on food and more gas.” Kelsey’s tone was relieved.

  Margie felt bad. Of course, Kelsey was relieved. She’d had to drive in the dark, unable to see much with a lot of pressure with too passengers in the car and someone following them. For once, Margie had to agree with Kelsey’s plan. “Okay, everyone get comfortable. Ryker, can you hand me one of the pillows, please?”

  They had to hunker down for the night. The least she could do was try to get comfortable.

  If only she could avoid the images of David and his accusing eyes in her sleep.

  Chapter 10

  Cady

  How many nights and days had passed since Cady had quarantined herself in her room? Sunlight had been too bright to handle and moonlight had given way to clouds and a migraine that ran the whole of her head without localization.

  Cady gripped the tangled edge of her sheet and blankets. Her hands were weak, but she could feel something besides pain and itching. The burning had subsided. How long had she lain there with sticky and sweaty skin?

  She blinked with caution. Moving her head too fast would increase her headache’s reach, maybe send it down her neck and into her back. Had her rash materialized? Did it pox yet? What lay beyond this wave of lucidity?

  Cautiously, Cady reached up to tentatively search her skin for the spiky rash. Bumps greeted her search, but there were no pointy sections. Did that mean her pox hadn’t come in yet? She didn’t know how much longer she could handle the bouts of pain and occasional nausea when the pain was so intense.

  The familiar scent of helichrysum came off her fingers when she pulled back. Bailey had kept up on the oils. That comforted her. When her shingles hit, those oils soothed the pain and itchiness of the sores to the point that Cady carried a roll-on applicator everywhere with her. She’d had one bout of them that had run along her lower right breast, right where the underwire had been, and she’d applied that oil almost every hour.

  She wouldn’t be surprised, if that’s what it took to help minimize the pain from the virus.

  Touching her forehead, Cady marveled at the clammy sensation. She breathed in deep. It didn’t hurt as she stretched her diaphragm. Of course, it was sore, but there was no stabbing pain. Her eyes hurt, but it wasn’t a pain like being burned with acid.

  How much time had passed?

  Slowly pushing herself up to a sitting position, Cady waited for the dizziness to pass. She needed water. A cottony sensation had taken root in her mouth and she worked her tongue to unstick it from its settled place.

  Even as she was wrapped up in the present state of her condition, the physical discomfor
t didn’t matter. Could she feel so stable while in the middle of the disease? Had she made it? How was that possible?

  Scott had died. Had he died? He must have from the way Bailey and Jason were carrying on the other night – whenever that had been. Pressing her fingers to her forehead, Cady couldn’t help wondering if she was delusional. She could swear she could hear Scott’s voice as the pounding in her head pulsed with determination.

  Wait, the pounding worked with her heart beat. Her headache must be attached to being dehydrated. She needed some water.

  Bailey’s voice broke through the pain in her head as well. What were the odds that she could hear Bailey and Scott at the same time? If Scott was dead, how could she hear Bailey with him? Did that mean Bailey was dead, too?

  Her breath caught. No. Not her daughter.

  It was enough of a concern to make her try to move, investigate. She’d collapse afterward.

  Cady scooted to the end of her mattress and slowly pulled herself off the mattress. Her feet ached, but didn’t hurt with a stabbing pain like she’d expected. In fact, nothing hurt like she’d expected, like she’d grown to accept since she’d fallen into her bed, too weak to move.

  Could she move around and walk? How much was going to be too much? She had so many questions but no way to find out except by trial.

  Each step was forced, but doable. If she steadied herself by holding onto things, she could do it. She really just felt like she’d been down with an excruciating flu.

  On shaky legs, Cady found herself at the door and slowly opened it. Sunlight streamed through the skylight and even though the power was off, the spring sun fully lit up the house. Time had passed, but how much?

  She slid to the top of the stairs, leaning her head against the wall. She’d made it that far. Bailey murmured and Scott’s voice answered.

  Those were real. They weren’t fake. Cady’s chest loosened. Scott had lived. Bailey was okay. If Scott had lived, then that meant the possibility that Cady could, too, was high.