41
Julia, was it her cell?” Paul grabbed her arms, frantic.
“I think so,” Julia reeled, tears filling her eyes.
Her heart thudded in her chest. Her gut twisted.
She felt sickened by what she had seen in the empty cell.
She never wanted to have a vision, ever again.
She didn’t want any psychic powers. She didn’t want to know anything she wasn’t supposed to know, anything that humans weren’t supposed to know.
“Was it her blood? Was she injured? Is she alive?”
Suddenly everything went dark in the prison, and they all fell silent, stunned.
The monitors blinked off. Julia couldn’t see anything.
The security room went pitch black. The hallway was completely dark.
There were no windows anywhere, so not even ambient light.
Shouting intensified outside the room. Radios chattered and sirens screamed.
Julia gasped. “It’s a power outage! What do we do?”
Paul let Julia go. “Would they have a generator?”
“Yes, they—” Just then was an electrical crackling, then a droning whine. Emergency lights blinked on in the hallway, but they were dim and red. C.O.s and cops in the hallways became reddish silhouettes. Suddenly a C.O. materialized at their door, unlocked it, and hustled them into the hallway.
“You have to evacuate! This way!”
“My wife’s in Temporary Holding!” Paul shouted over the din, but the cops ignored him, rushed them down the hall toward the exit, then to the sally ports.
A C.O. unlocked the doors, then two more C.O.s hustled them through the waiting room and from the prison, closing the exit doors behind them and locking them out with a heavy set of keys.
“Go to your vehicle!” another C.O. shouted, pressing their IDs and car keys on them and closing the glass door.
“My wife’s in Temporary Holding!” Paul pounded on the door. “I have to get in!”
Bennie stood with him. “I need to know about my client Courtney Horan!”
The C.O. shouted back, “Go to your vehicle or I’ll arrest you both!”
The scene outside the prison horrified Julia. Firetrucks barreled toward the prison entrance, followed by ambulances. Police cruisers idled everywhere, their sirens screaming and red-and-white lightbars flashing. Emergency lights pulsed across the night sky.
Paul whirled around, stricken. “Julia, is Courtney okay? Was she injured?”
“I don’t know!” Julia cried, distraught.
“Look, over there!” Bennie pointed, and they turned to see an ambulance racing from the back of the prison toward the exit road. Julia realized the ambulance was coming from the area where Temporary Holding must be located, and Paul was already in motion, running down the steps.
Julia ran behind him, followed by Bennie. The three of them streaked toward the ambulance, which had to stop for a firetruck, giving Paul time to flag them down.
“Stop! I wanna see if that’s my wife! Stop!”
The EMT slid down the window. “Your wife?”
“Yes! Let me in back!”
“Okay!” The EMT jumped out of the cab as Paul bolted to the back of the ambulance. The EMT twisted open the back doors, and Paul climbed inside just as Julia and Bennie arrived, looking in the ambulance.
Julia gasped. A young biracial woman lay unconscious on the gurney, hooked up to IV fluids, but she wasn’t Courtney. She had short hair and blonde tips. Blood drenched her chest.
“That’s not my wife! Where’s my wife?”
Julia whirled around, reeling. She didn’t know what was going on. She’d seen blood in the cell. She’d seen Courtney’s hair in the blood. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe the vision had been wrong. Maybe she’d misinterpreted it.
Julia turned to the sudden blare of another ambulance that appeared from behind the prison, coming at them.
“That has to be her!” Paul jumped out of the first ambulance and ran to the second, waving his hands. “Stop, Stop!”
Julia felt a bolt of knowing, a dread deep within her. Whoever was inside was no longer alive. She felt it in her chest, a deep, dark void, a soul departing in agony and fear, having died a horrible death.
Julia couldn’t move a step. She didn’t know if she could even stand anymore. She fell to her knees, breaking down. She found herself looking up into the night sky, and she remembered that tonight was the lunar eclipse of the Blood Moon, a cataclysm of upheaval and tumult.
Bennie reached her side. “Julia, are you okay?”
Julia shook her head, unable to speak. She could feel a soul crying from its very depths, being yanked from this life and resisting its rupture, too young to pass. She looked over to see Paul standing behind the ambulance, his anguished expression illuminated by the bright light from inside.
The EMT closed the doors, and Paul turned away in mute shock and walked stiffly toward them.
“Paul?” Bennie straightened, shaking her head. “Is it Courtney—”
“No, it’s Alex,” Paul answered hoarsely. “He’s dead.”