Hell Released (Hell Happened Book 3) Read Online Free PDF Page A

wondering what to do about money before their next paycheck in two weeks. Chuck had a rent payment due.
    Mason reached into the glove box and pulled out a small cap pistol. The orange cap on the end had been painted black and on quick inspection it looked real. “I know where we can get us some easy cash.” Chuck had enough beers in him to think it was a good idea.
    The robbery hadn’t gone as planned. They’d parked two alleys away and covered their faces with handkerchiefs, but the owner of the shop-and-go had a real gun. When he pulled it out, Mason fought him for it. Mason won and the owner was mortally wounded.
    Their escape plan lacked forethought and the cops had the two in cuffs within 20 minutes. The judge sentenced them both to life without parole.
    Chuck was three years into his life sentence at the state pen when he got into a fight in the yard with one of the ABs (Arian Brotherhood) who’d been pushing him around. He’d suffered a superficial stab wound, but the thug from the Arians had lost most of his front teeth before the guards got things under control.
    That was why Chuck had been in solitary when people started dying.
    Now he was in the exercise area and possibly the only one left alive in the prison.
    Chuck had missed breakfast, so the first thing he did was go through his food. It wasn’t much, a large piece of baloney, a loaf of bread and two containers of potato salad. There were also three milk jugs filled with water. Manny had given him enough for a week if he stretched it.
    There were also the pills the C.O. had told him about. Chuck read the label but didn’t know what the name meant or what the pills were for. There was a warning label and admonitions against driving equipment while taking them. It was a bottle of about 100 little blue pills. There was also a blanket and a pillow without a pillow case, just like good ole Manny had said.
    Chuck ate all the potato salad as it would spoil within a day in the California heat. He was just finishing the second container and the two baloney sandwiches he slapped together when all the lights switched off and the emergency lighting came on. It was the second time Chuck had seen the prison lose power. The first time had lasted seven minutes and was due to a substation catching fire during a storm.
    This time, the power to the prison stayed off. Chuck set his groceries to the far end of the cage, under the corrugated sheet steel covering, and out of the sun. He pissed through the gate, wondering what he’d do if he had to take a shit.
    The prison was oddly silent. Chuck paced his cage, wondering if there was anything he had that’d get him over the 12-foot-fence and three rows of razor wire. He looked at Lake’s body in the next cage. The flesh on his hands had been ripped to the bone. The wire had also cut into his face and neck. He must have slipped at some point because the wire had cut through most of his neck. He bled out four feet from Chuck’s cage and was still hanging, head down and eyes open.
    Chuck didn’t know what bothered him more, the open eyes of Lake, the silence in the prison or the sound of dripping blood.
    The shadows grew long across the yard. Chuck started thinking about how much time he had left before the plague finally took him. He had heard dozens of prisoners die in their cells over the past two weeks. It was the one time he was glad he was in solitary. Those in the general population would wake up with a dead man in one of the other bunks and invariably start screaming.
    Two guards had died while on duty at the prison and that’s when most stopped showing up for work. Chuck called out. He wondered if any of those prisoners released to the yard had stayed around. No one returned his call. Without guards, keeping a convict in the yard was like using a sieve to hold back water.
    Chuck called several more times hearing only his echo in return.
    This early in the year, it had been warm inside the prison walls, but the