Chapter 2: Bring 'Em Out
Fulcrum State Prison,
18 miles north of Pimento, San Andreas; 285 miles northeast of Los Santos
Sweet Johnson
Sweet slammed the phone on the receiver and scowled at the sound of his hard-won change dropping. "Shit, where the fuck is this nigga?"
"Yo, you still ain't reached your brother yet?" Augustus asked.
Sweet's scowl focused on Augustus. The short, dark-skinned, muscled up gangbanger from Liberty City leaned against the sky blue brick wall of the Fulcrum State Prison dining hall. Augustus looked as casual as he possibly could in his orange cotton jumpsuit, but Sweet was aware of his cellmate's dark eyes roaming the prison's mess hall. If any of the Vagos, Ballas, or mafiosos who made up 80% of Fulcrum's population tried to come at Sweet, Augustus had his back.
Since their first day as cellmates, Augustus had watched out for Sweet. Augustus was a high-ranking member of a Liberty City Jamaican gang that had begun to stretch its fingers into San Andreas. Like Sweet, there weren't enough members of his own set to protect him inside the walls of Fulcrum. He had dropped the most obvious sign of his difference, his accent, long before arriving in prison. Thanks to Augustus' protection, Sweet had survived one attack in the prison's laundry already. He knew who to trust.
"Hell naw. That little bitch probably ran away again." Sweet shook his head. He was so angry, it made his head throb. "Just when I thought I could count on this little motherfucker."
"What you needed him for?"
"CJ was supposed to fix some shit on the outside for me." Sweet looked around and lowered his voice to a whisper. "You know, handle some bidness on the outside."
"Personal or financial?" Augustus whispered back.
"A little bit of both: We got these niggas who used to rep the Grove, but they turned over for the pigs in Los Santos. And it wouldn't hurt to have a little paper in here. Problem now is, that motherfucker ain't answered his phone for three days now, and I still gotta check on the rest of the family."
"Maybe your little brother is dead, my nigga."
"Aye, don't say that bullshit to me, ever again!"
Augustus folded his arms. Sweet easily towered over the Jamaican gangsta, but Augustus showed no sign of backing down. "Look, I'm being as real as I can. Your brother might not be alive right now. He might have gone on to be with Jah, you know?"
"CJ might be a lot of things. But dead ain't one of them."
A buzzer sounded through the mess hall. "Damn, and that's the end of the lunch hour. I ain't even get to make my phone call."
"There's always tomorrow, nigga. Don't sweat it."
They moved to the main entrance of the mess hall. Two tall White guards armed with twelve-gauge pump action shotguns walked in and stood on either side of the double doors leading from the mess hall. "Let's go, you useless pieces of shit!" one of the guards barked to the prisoners.
Sweet walked away from the phone and joined the stream of prisoners filing in a single line from the mess hall. "You mean to tell me that with all your connections on the outside, none of those motherfuckers can handle this shit instead?"
"This sounds personal, just between you and your brother, a family situation. "
The Grove Street king wasn't listening. He studied the guards flanking the doors. They were both blond and tall, but the younger-looking one on Sweet's right looked more afraid than the grizzled one on Sweet's left. 'This nigga's probably brand new on the job. Don't even know how to hold a motherfuckin' gun right yet.' As he passed the guards, he lunged at the one on his right and yelled, "Boo!"
It happened quickly: The guard flinched slightly but his grip on the gun slipped; he dropped the shotgun; Sweet caught it.
A more perfect opportunity never had existed in Sweet's lifetime. He turned the gun around and smashed its butt into the guard's face.
Chaos erupted in a moment. Prisoners broke their plodding pace and ran as the older guard raised his shotgun to shoot at Sweet. The guard's shot caught another prisoner in the side of the man's head, drenching Sweet's face and uniform in the non-culpable prisoner's blood. When the older guard winced, Sweet aimed his shotgun and blasted a crater from the guard's stomach. He glanced over his shoulder. "Aye, King! Get that motherfucker's gun!"
The mess hall emptied quickly. Sirens pealed throughout the prison. Augustus grabbed the gun as Sweet took up the guard's position beside the door. He spotted four guards running down the main hall of the prison, each armed with shotguns. With his peripheral vision, Sweet spotted three more guards approaching from the kitchen. Sweet crouched down and checked the dying guard's body for extra ammunition. 'It's either us or these motherfuckers. They ain't about to let us go free, not after killing a guard.'
Sweet loaded up shells into his shotgun. He took a quick deep breath and closed his eyes for a moment, listening to the sound of the guards' racing footsteps in the hall and their instructions to each other from the kitchen on his left. 'It's either us or these motherfuckers.' Sweet's eyes snapped open. "King, get 'em on the left!"
He stood up. Augustus covered Sweet's vulnerable left side. Sweet loaded a round, started running into the hall, and dropped into a crouch as the first guard fired a bullet where Sweet's heart had been a millisecond earlier. Sweet's shot caught the prison guard in the stomach.
'Motherfucking racist pigs, all y'all motherfuckers deserve to die!' He strafed to his right, confusing a second guard for a moment. That moment was all Sweet needed to shoot the second guard dead-center in the guard's chest. The second guard gushed blood from the wound and sagged to the ground. 'Y'all beat down homies just because we black and y'all skin white as snow.' Sweet pumped another shell into the chamber as the last two guards dropped into crouches because there was nowhere to take cover. 'Y'all motherfuckers must be some real badassses to beat down an unarmed nigga with y'all's nightsticks and shit because he won't run drugs through his ass for y'all. I got somethin' for y'all. This shit is for my homies in the Grove.'
Both remaining guards fired on Sweet. The prison guards aimed a lot differently than gangbangers in South Central or East Los Santos. Between the two of them, they had children and spouses; they had reasons to be cautious and live. Since he had been locked up, Sweet had no girlfriend, no wife, and no children on the outside. The prison guards shot chunks from the brick wall to Sweet's right and left. One round grazed the left side of Sweet's head so thoroughly it left a scorching trail through his low-cut hair. By contrast, Sweet aimed to kill and didn't care if it meant his death too. One round ripped through a guard's ribcage, liver, and right kidney. The final guard fell to the ground with a round that shattered his sternum and obliterated his heart.
"King, let's go!" Sweet yelled into the mess hall. Augustus sprinted into the corridor and caught up. The Grove Street don led the way to a T-shaped corridor and pointed with his gun to the left side of the hall. "Ok, if I'm right, we should be able to get out through this door on the right."
"Sweet, how long you been planning to break outta jail?"
"Planning? Nah, nigga, I ain't plan this shit! It just happened!"
More guards poured into the corridor and blocked Sweet's path of escape. They were armed with shotguns. Augustus and Sweet took shelter behind a corner. 'There's gotta be thirty of these guards in my way. I've faced worse odds; I'm from South Central LS, motherfuckers.'
"Shit, Sweet, there's no way in hell we're gonna get through these motherfuckers, even with a hundred rounds of ammo!"
"Don't let it stop you from tryin', nigga! These fishbelly motherfuckers done held us down too long in this prison!"
Augustus and Sweet turned into the hallway and went on a slaughtering spree. Using the incremental niches in the walls along the hall, they dodged the advancing line of fire while showering the guards with a furious volley of bullets. Sweet gunned down four guards. Augustus took down six with a hasty shots fired from his post behind the jutting out wall.
They stopped to reload. Sweet hurried to load his shells. "You good, King, or you need some extra?"
"I got it, my brother!"
"You dumbass jailbirds, give up now, or we'll be forced to annihilate you!" yelled one guard. Sweet heard him creeping down the hall. He turned and fired a round that caught the guard in the neck. The guard doubled over backwards and choked to death on his own blood. Another guard tried to flee the corridor. Sweet shot him in the upper right thigh. Blood gushed out and the guard collapsed, sobbing like a newborn child.
Augustus turned and started firing on the guards too. "Look at that, my brother! You almost caught up with me!" He shot three guards in their faces. "Well, not no more!"
"Stop talkin' trash, nigga, and figure out a way for us to get out this motherfuckin' mess!" Sweet yelled.
"I got an idea!" Augustus fired a warning shot then darted across the hall to Sweet's side. He leaned close enough to Sweet that he was like a second skin to the Grove Street don.
"Here's the plan: We goin' make our way out through this window. It's right on the exercise yard, brother!" Augustus shot out the glass window. When the window shattered, Augustus used the butt of his shotgun to batter the securely bolted iron grill until it caved in.
A guard sprinted around the corner. Sweet barely had time to shoot the guard in his head before diving out the ground floor window. Augustus leaped out after him, and the two Black gangbangers sprinted across the yard. Even though he was shorter, Augustus ran faster in a zigzag pattern across the yard. Sweet ran in a straight line. "What the fuck you runnin' like that for?" Sweet panted.
He heard the ping of a sniper's bullet striking the ground behind him. "Shit, the guards done spotted us!"
"Why you think I'm running like I'm crazy, brother?"
The air siren echoed through the yard. Sweet practically felt the snipers in the towers around the prison aiming at his head and firing. Another bullet impacted the ground to the right of Sweet's right foot. He immediately began running in a zigzag pattern with a broad sweep. "Any idea how we gonna get outta here?"
"Yeah, through the underground electric closet over there!" Augustus aimed his shotgun at the twin doors of the padlocked entrance, and fired even while running. The padlock snapped off. Augustus kept running, reached the doors, and yanked them open. Augustus tossed his shotgun to the side and dropped down into the hole with a yell. Three more sniper bullets dug into the dirt around him before Sweet dropped into the murky abyss, still cradling his gun.
He splashed into something watery, which broke his fall. The tunnel had only one source of light, and that came from the entrance Sweet and Augustus had used. But there was a bigger problem. "Shit, nigga, this electric closet stinks!"
"It's not really an electric closet. It's a sewer," Augustus corrected nonchalantly. From the sound of his voice, he had walked through the sewer to a point far ahead of Sweet. The Grove Street don struggled to keep up. On top of the smell, the further they got from the entrance, the darker and tighter the tunnel became.
"What the fuck? Why you ain't say it was the sewer, nigga?"
"Would you want to get in the sewer, my brother? Come on. We got to crawl at this point."
Sweet could feel the tunnel closing more tightly around him, and reluctantly crouched down into the mucky water. Something soft pressed against his hand. The smell was unavoidable. Sweet's stomach lurched into his throat, and even though he resisted the reflex, he retched violently into the sewer water. 'What the fuck is this crazy Jamaican nigga thinking? I better not die in this tunnel, swimming in everybody's shit and my own fucking throw up.'
They crawled and crawled for what seemed to be hours. Because the tunnel was so constricted, there was no room to talk. Sweet threw up again before he smelled much needed fresh air. Augustus disappeared just as the tunnel became lighter and wider. Sweet reached the end of the tunnel. He stuck his head out for his first taste of fresh air and gazed at his new surroundings.
Fulcrum State's sewer tunnel was embedded into a concrete wall in an even more elaborate sewer system. There wasn't much more space or light, but there was enough space inside the larger sewer tunnel for Sweet to crouch instead of crawl. Augustus stood only a few feet away, hunched over in even more muck. "Where the fuck we at, nigga?" Sweet asked.
"It's the Pimento County sewer system," Augustus explained. He started walking through the tunnel. Sweet crawled out and followed. "When San Andreas built Fulcrum State, those politicians decided to save money by connecting the prison sewer to Pimento County sewer. If we follow this tunnel all the way through, it'll take us to just outside Pimento."
"What the fuck for? So we can get arrested in some fuckin' piece of shit town?" Sweet gagged and held back another round of vomit.
"No, brother, you gonna see when we get there." Augustus' Jamaican Patois dialect was beginning to break through again.
"I just crawled through three miles of shit, piss, vomit, and other trash. Now you want me to walk my ass through three more miles of shit?" 'And probably listen to your ass talk in all that Jamaican bullshit y'all talk in?'
"We didn't walk through no three miles of sewer. That just crazy, brother. We walk through five hundred metres of it. Now we walk through three miles of sewer," Augustus nearly laughed.
"Augustus, you fuckin' crazy nigga, you betta stop right now because I ain't walkin' my Black ass through three miles of this garbage."
"Look, brother, maybe you don't want your freedom like I want my freedom."
"Fuck that. Stop talking so I don't have to throw up again, nigga." For the remainder of the distance to their destination, Sweet didn't say anything else to Augustus, and Augustus didn't speak either. "Hey brother, this where we climb up," Augustus announced when they reached a large sewer grate opening. He scaled the built-in ladder first, followed by Sweet, and pushed open the grate.
Sunlight struck Sweet across the face as soon as he ascended the ladder. He crawled up, closed his eyes, sprawled on the ground, and inhaled deeply of the thick, pungent aroma of pine trees in the afternoon sun. After a few minutes, Sweet opened his eyes and looked around. Augustus was a few feet away, stripping off his filthy prison jumpsuit and shoes to change clothes. "Come on. I got clothes for you too. And we gotta hurry."
Sweet started stripping off his jumpsuit down to his white boxers without another moment's hesitation. He kicked off his shoes and reached into the duffel bag Augustus pointed at. There was a white tank, plaid shirt, blue jeans, and red boots inside. Sweet changed into the clothes, even though his skin still reeked of the sewer. "Aye, nigga, so how we gettin' out this forest?"
Augustus pulled a Rockstar sweater over his head. He threw his jumpsuit and Sweet's jumpsuit into the black duffel bag, and headed deeper into the woods. Sweet noticed that the duffel bag remained behind. "Our ride is over here, brother. Come on."
They walked a short distance through the trees to a gray Huntley. Climbing in, Sweet could appreciate the luxurious interior with wood grain dashboard, warm leather seats, and clean carpets. "How long you been planning this shit?" Sweet asked.
Augustus climbed into the driver's seat. "Since I got locked up. Let's go."
Author's Note: Thanks go out to the guest reviewer and to viciosodiego for following and favoriting this story. As with all my GTA stories, here is a brief explanation of references used in this chapter.
Fulcrum State Prison is an allusion to Folsom State Prison, made famous by the country singer Johnny Cash and brought to my attention by the biopic Walk the Line.Joaquin Phoenix deserved an Oscar for that role. Pimento is a parody of California's state capitol, Sacramento. "Jamaican gang from Liberty City" is a reference to the Yardies mentioned in GTA IIIand Liberty City Stories, and Augustus is a reference to King Courtney, the main Yardies character from those games. I didn't make it clear enough in the previous story, but that was always my intent. "Give up now or we'll be forced to annihilate you" is an allusion to the line that always came from the police helicopter in GTA: San Andreas when CJ went on a long enough rampage. The scene of Sweet and Augustus crawling through the sewer tunnel is an allusion to one of my favorite movies, The Shawshank Redemption, when Andy Dufresne crawled to his freedom.