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Holman Prison
Atmore, Alabama
Monday, July 15; 8:05 a.m.
The gray prison walls loomed behind Clint Austin as he moved forward, his steps hindered by the manacles connecting his wrists and ankles with lengths of chain designed to impede movement. The shackles had been one last humiliation.For old times’ sake,the warden had said. The guards on either side of Clint had snickered and snorted as they carried out that final order. Clint had simply stood there and allowed the bastards to do what they would.
For more than ten years his choices had not been his own. Accepting that reality had equated to survival.
No more.
The early-morning sun drew his gaze to the sky. Clint closed his eyes a moment to relish the welcome warmth. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been allowed to come outside. It had been months, at least.
The law said he got one hour a day in the fresh air, but that privilege had been cut long ago with a sham of an excuse. The guards liked putting pressure on inmates, amping up their anxiety level. They especially liked doing it to Clint. Just another attempt at causing him to screw up.
Clint hadn’t let the bastards get to him. He’d taken the punishments, the beatings for no apparent reason, the forgotten meals, all of it ... without so much as a word in argument or the slightest effort in retaliation.
He’d played by every single rule. Now his freedom was so close he could taste it ... smell it. There was nothing anyone could do to stop him from walking away.
As if to deny that certainty, fear, bone cold and irrational, trickled inside him.
A muscle in his jaw jerked with the pressure of holding back the questions about what happened next that he suddenly wanted to ask. His conviction had been overturned. He was free. The guards, the warden, no one here could prevent Clint from leaving. The affirmation rang hollow inside him.
The command was given and the twelve-foot-high gate topped with its concertina wire yawned open, creaking and groaning as if it, too, was reluctant to permit his long-awaited departure. Thebottom,the pits of hell called Holman Prison, didn’t like vomiting back up the men it devoured. At least not until they were properly punished as God and the warden saw fit.
That trickle of fear widened into a stream of pure panic, knotting Clint’s gut, clamping around his chest like unyielding arms. He’d waited for this moment for so long. The blood rushed to his brain and exploded there in a burst of sheer terror, urging him to go back ... to seek the security and sanctuary of that five-by-eight cell—the only place he’d felt the least bit safe for so damned long.
Fighting the impulse, he aimed his attention on the hope that open gate presented. His hands clenched into fists as the muscles in his legs cramped with the compulsion to run, but the shackles and the fear kept him paralyzed. Sweat squeezed from his pores as the air sawed in and out of his lungs. He ordered himself to be still. To focus. No sudden moves. The remembered pain from far too many reminders of that hard-earned lesson stung through his body.
The guard on Clint’s right unlocked the cuffs around his wrists, then gave him the key. He bent down, his hands shaking, and released the steel bands circling his ankles. As he straightened, he handed the key back; then he froze.
What now? He’d been given no specific exodus orders, no directions on how to proceed. Reason had deserted him, leaving his already raw senses cluttered with confusion and doubt.
“What the hell you waitin’ for, Austin?” The guard on Clint’s left nudged him in the spleen with his baton. “Get the hell outta here before we decide to keep your sorry ass.”
Clint’s heart rammed against his chest, urging him to act. Another prod from the baton ignited his long-slumbering fury, fueling the courage that had betrayed him this morning. He stepped away from the impotent shackles, resisted the temptation to break loose and run without ever looking back.
The guards would be watching, hoping he would make a move of aggression ... itching to use the weapons stationed at their hips. The snipers in the towers would be clocking his every move through the scopes of their high-powered rifles, praying for the opportunity to rid the planet of one more worthless piece of shit. It didn’t matter that he was unarmed; they would have a story to cover up whatever played out this morning.
Not going to happen. He was out of here.
Clint took the four paces necessary to put him beyond the boundary of the fence that surrounded what had been his home for an eternity; then he stopped stone still. He turned around slowly, his hands hanging loosely at his sides in the expected submissive stance. His gaze met the warden’s where he stood shielded by the guards, and Clint felt himself smile for the first time in over a decade.
He didn’t say a word, didn’t bother with any dramatic offensive gestures, no matter how deserved; he simply stared at the man, forced him to face the cold, hard truth ... he had lost this battle. Those three or four brief seconds almost made the years of pain and suffering worth it.
Almost.
Turning his back, Clint walked, his steps measured and deliberate, toward the visitor’s entrance where his ride out of here waited.
The feel of unwashed denim and stiff polyester chafed his skin. His toes were stuffed into the cheap shoes that had no doubt been ordered a size or two too small for the sole purpose of ensuring his discomfort. It was one of the perks of surviving an Alabama prison. When and if you were released, you left wearing new clothes and in possession of whatever personal items you’d surrendered upon arrival. In Clint’s case it wasn’t much. His wallet that contained an expired driver’s license and twenty bucks.
There wouldn’t be much in the way of financial assets waiting for him back home. But he would have full access to the one thing that he wanted nearly more than his next breath ...
The people who had stolen his life.
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