23 Hours: A Vengeful Vampire Tale(43)

“When faced with eternity in a more perfect form, is not a little time of waiting acceptable? Yes, Augusta. It will come soon enough.”





22.

Laura Caxton was completely lost.

It didn’t surprise her. She’d never seen a map of the prison—prisoners weren’t typically allowed that kind of information. Every time she’d moved around the facility the COs had been there to guide her. She knew in a general way that she was on the western side of the prison. She knew that the main gate was on the eastern side.

There had to be other gates, though. Other ways out.

Her big plan, so far, was to escape. To get out of the prison and find someone in authority and tell them what was going on. If they wanted her to go back and hunt down Malvern, with proper weapons and backup, then fine. If they wanted to return her to custody and take care of the problem themselves, she wouldn’t put up a fight.

The trick, of course, would be breaking out of a maximum-security prison. With no good tools, no guards she could bribe. And in the dark. Malvern had shut off most of the prison’s lights. Maybe she just wanted to conserve electricity—or maybe she knew that Caxton was loose, and wanted to make things difficult for her. Here and there an emergency lighting unit was still blazing away, but Caxton knew those would only last an hour or so before their batteries died. And then she would be trapped in complete darkness, without so much as a window to let in starlight.

“I knew I could count on you, Caxton. I just knew when I saw you, we were going to be buds. I’m your road bitch now, right? The one you get together with even when we’re out of here,” Gert said. “I mean, I guess I have to be, because we’re going to break out together, right? You’re going to need me out there. And I’m going to be so useful to you. This is my big chance. If I can get out now, I’ll still be young enough to have more babies of my own. I knew I could count on you.”

Caxton nodded but didn’t say anything. She wasn’t sure who was listening. She knew exactly who was watching. There were video cameras everywhere in the prison, watching every corner, every hallway, every reinforced door. She had no doubt they had night-vision capability. She knew she had to move quickly, that if she lingered too long in one place it would be easy for Malvern to get a squad of half-deads together and send them her way.

So far she’d been lucky. Beyond the door of the SHU had been a long, featureless corridor that led to a hub area, a place where three hallways crossed each other. It was the perfect place to put a guard detail, and in fact the prison’s designers had built a defensive post in the middle of the hub, a guard post with narrow windows and gun ports and thick cinder-block walls. It had been empty when Caxton arrived. Maybe, she thought, Malvern just didn’t have enough half-deads to cover the entire prison.

She’d learned a long time ago that hoping for anything like that, anything that would make her life easier, was a trap. You had to expect the absolute worst, and capitalize on what little bits of luck you found, but never depend on them.

Of the three hallways she could explore, two had been sealed off with barred gates. The gates could be opened remotely or with an actual key. Harelip hadn’t possessed such a key, she knew—she’d searched the dead CO’s body—and the remote controls were, she was certain, heavily guarded. She’d tried the third hallway. There was a big fire door at the end of that one, but it opened easily when she pushed on it.

“This feels bad,” Caxton said, out loud, when she looked at the empty corridor that lay beyond. It was lined with doors, normal doors with doorknobs and everything. No one was guarding that hallway. There weren’t any guard posts watching the place where the hall turned a corner. “There is one door that’s open, and it’s completely unguarded. It feels like a trap.”

“Don’t be such a *,” Gert said, pushing past Caxton to head down the darkened hallway. “I thought you were the big tough vampire killer, who never waited for backup, who went into vampire lairs with guns blazing—”

“That’s when I had decent guns,” Caxton explained. “You know, assault rifles with cross-point bullets. One stupid move right now and both of us are dead. And you might have just made a stupid move.”

Gert looked down at her feet as if expecting to find the floor littered with bear traps. “Nope, don’t look like it.” She marched over to the nearest door and, before Caxton could stop her, turned the knob and stepped through.