Atomic Lobster by Tim Dorsey Read Free Book Online Page B

between the flea markets in Lawtey and Waldo where U.S. 301 slices down the state from Jacksonville. God’s country. Only a single industry to speak of. But they never closed.
    The lights burned bright at one of the franchises. It was just before sunrise, though still quite dark from a blanket of anvil thunderheadsdrifting across the rolling farmland. No rain yet. One of those violent, nervous skies that just waited.
    The lights, more specifically, were floodlights, perched on tall poles around the perimeter, pointing down inside the property like a backwoods high school football field. Sometimes they even played a little sports at this place, except right now all the athletes were locked in their cells. Union Correctional maximum-security prison. But everyone called it Raiford.
    The stillness broke. Motion in the yard. A tight formation of guards moved toward the front gate. They entered a narrow walkway of Cyclone fence and razor wire. In the middle, one head stood above the others. Ankle chains shuffled. The prisoner wore a fresh, cheap suit with too-short pants; the jacket creased from where wrist manacles attached to the waist restraint. A hockey mask covered the face because of his classification as a biter.
    Normally an inmate wasn’t restrained upon being released. And there weren’t half as many guards. But this was Tex McGraw, the biggest, meanest, nastiest in a long, tainted bloodline of infamous McGraws. Tex hadn’t seen freedom since the early nineties, wrapping up a stretch for extremely aggravated battery. Much had happened in the meantime, including the notorious McGraw Brothers home invasion in Tampa, foiled by an unassuming family man on Triggerfish Lane. Tex was helpless in his cell when he learned of his cousins’ demise. Now, approaching the prison’s front gate, there was but one all-consuming thought on his mind. The guards continued anxiously. The one in back carried a cardboard box of the prisoner’s meager possessions.
    It began to rain.
    Correctional work was the unimaginable. Getting hit with feces, blood, urine; at any turn, the chance of your arm being yanked through metal bars and sliced sixty stitches wide with the melted point of a toothbrush. The guards coped by mentally compartmentalizing the nightmare and leaving it at the gate on the way home. But this was one day they were glad to be locked inside. Someone out there was going to end up dead.
    Florida had no choice. New laws required inmates to serve aminimum 85 percent of their sentence. McGraw had just completed 130, including time added for bad behavior. Every last day gone. Not even the possibility of supervised parole.
    The guards reached the front of the yard. The tower opened the gate. Rain became a deluge. Half the team held Tex’s limbs fast; the rest quickly undid locks and buckles. They finished the last cuff and shoved him out of the prison. Tex turned around.
    “Boo.”
    The guards jumped and slammed the gate shut. The safest place in the state was now inside Raiford. The officer with Tex’s belongings heaved the box over the top of the fence. It broke open in the mud, scattering toiletries, amphetamine-laced candy bars, a Bible with a shank in the spine and dozens of ten-year-old newspaper articles about a reluctant hero named Jim Davenport.
    Tex left it all in the puddles and began trudging south.
    The guards watched intently as the ex-prisoner’s outline faded into the driving rain. They began to untense. Suddenly, a maniacal roar echoed across the open field. Lightning crashed, momentarily illuminating a distant, hulking figure with fists and face raised straight up at the storm.
    And he was gone.
    The guards went back inside. They passed the thick, shatterproof glass of the processing office, where other personnel handled paperwork on inmates, both coming and going. One officer tapped a keyboard, dispatching release reports for local law enforcement to notify victims.
    Tap, tap, tap. “Uh-oh…Hey, Stan, my