Kindling
Copyright© 2025 by Gibigabi
Chapter 4
At 4 AM, everything went to shit.
Gabriela was already awake. She hadn’t been able to go to sleep that night, at least not for more than an hour at a time. The memory of Drake’s chapped lips on hers, the walk back to her cell after, the disappointed looks the guards had given her, played on her mind on loop. Then there were the earlier memories: her placing the bomb behind the poncho rack, the vacant, tipsy look in Linda Brian’s eyes, anchors talking on the news the day after about what she had done.
There was a loud thump, then a flash of light.
For a second, she thought she’d hallucinated it. She’d never seen a real explosion. She’d been long gone by the time the bomb she’d planted went off. She’d only seen pictures of the aftermath the next day— wreckage where his perfect house once was, and, in the zoomed out photos, the neighbors’ mansions still shiny and untouched beside it.
The lights in the hallways flickered. The smoke detectors went off first, then the evacuation alarm. May I have your attention please, the voice droned, there is an emergency situation. Proceed calmly to Stairwell B. Do not use elevators. Do not run. Move away from the immediate area.
The locks clicked open.
Gabriela stepped out of her cell. There were guards everywhere, herding prisoners towards the stairwell. One of them grabbed her by the shoulder.
“Rodriguez. This way.” She didn’t bother to resist. The guard’s attention turned away to another prisoner, a woman having an episode of some sort. There were three guards in the hallway, all clustered around her. The rest of the inmates on her floor were already making their way to the exit. Nobody was watching Gabriela. Nobody at all.
She didn’t run. She just walked as quickly and quietly as she could in the opposite direction. There was some debris in the hallway, but nothing that would block her. The cells hadn’t been blown completely open, they were made of steel and concrete, but she saw new fractures snaking through the walls. A fine layer of dust covered the floor.
Once the guards were well behind her, she broke into a jog, then a sprint. Her heart was working overtime in her chest, but she felt strangely calm. The pounding of her feet against the concrete floor and the evacuation alarm, still speaking on loop, created the sensation of an out of body experience. May I have your attention, it said for the umpteenth time as she skidded and rounded the corner.
Drake was lying on the floor.
She was in the men’s wing, now, she must’ve been. The realization lodged itself somewhere in the back of her mind. It was empty. Empty except for the small body lying in front of her.
His mess of dark hair fanned out beneath him. There was rubble in this cell block, more than the women’s wing. Had something hit him on the head? There was blood trickling down his forehead. His eyes were closed, full lips fixed open. His limbs sprawled, pale and thin, against the dusty floor.
Gabriela stepped over him and kept going. She had no time to stop for strange, perverted pretty boys who kissed girls through fences and lit things on fire for fun. In fact, she wouldn’t have been surprised if this whole mess was his fault to begin with. It wasn’t her problem what happened to him. Not even close.
She didn’t even make it to the end of the hallway before she turned around.
It wasn’t that she cared about him— no, that wasn’t it. But he looked so small, crumpled ragdoll-like on the prison ground. Looking at him then, he didn’t seem dangerous. Hell, he could’ve been dead. He just looked cold, and pale, and young.
She crouched by his side and gathered him into her arms. He weighed nothing in them. She could feel his pulse, slow and thready, against her. Not dead, then. Maybe close. He probably had a head injury, at the very least. She almost smiled. He was going to feel like shit in the morning.
“Convict! Get away from the body! I repeat, get away from the body!” Well, fuck. Her luck had run out.
Gabriela threw Drake over her shoulder and ran. There were two guards behind her— a man and a woman. The woman was already reaching for her gun. Gabriela reached the stairway at the end of the hallway and vaulted over the railing.
She landed in a crouch, absorbing the impact as best she could. It hurt like a bitch. She was still gripping Drake with one arm over her shoulder. He was knocked out, dark hair hanging over his face in a curtain. She could already hear the guards’ boots on the stairs, their voices barking into their radios. Potentially fractured ankle or not, there was no time to waste. She kept running.
The corridor she was in was grey and featureless. A seemingly endless array of doors lined the walls, all of them labeled with meaningless numbers. Drake groaned softly on her back and she tightened her hold on him. “Don’t you dare wake up,” she muttered. She wasn’t sure if she was talking to him or herself.
She tried each of the doors. Locked. Locked. Locked— then one swung open.
Through it was a wide, cavernous space. The alarm was muffled here, warped by concrete and distance. The garage was filled with machinery, trucks and emergency vehicles idling, pulling in, pulling out. Guards and EMTs swarmed from one side of the garage to the other. A truck lurched forward. Someone yelled for it to stop; someone else yelled for it to go faster.
She hitched Drake higher on her shoulder and slowed to a walk. There was no use running— she would only draw attention to herself. She could see stars through the open bay door.
“Hey! What are you doing here?” She found herself face to face with a man in a helmet. He was young, with a reddish face and dark bags beneath his eyes. He looked like he wanted someone else to be in charge.
Gabriela jerked her chin towards the boy on her shoulder. “He cracked his head open. Someone said to bring him down here.”
The young man blinked. He scrunched his eyes and looked her up and down for a long moment. “Right, well ... go over there, I guess.” He gestured vaguely towards one of the ambulances. She gave him her most winning smile and brushed past him.
She kept walking.
She passed the ambulance, a group of EMTs huddled around an inmate on a stretcher, a truck, and a guard eating an egg sandwich. At each moment, she changed her direction to seem like she was heading towards a different ambulance that just so happened to be on the other side of the prison yard.
Gabriela didn’t register freedom until the noise faded. Here, in the small forest outside Marion County Jail, the ground was soft beneath her feet. There was no more alarm, no more yelling, no more guards. There was only the wind through trees and Drake’s gentle breathing.