Or was he asleep. Pinching herself to awaken further, she listened and caught the sound of a snore coming from behind the closed door. It was only then, with a sudden surge of panic and hope that she fully realized that all of her captors were asleep at the same time.
Stealthily, she swung her legs off the soiled bare mattress and put her feet on the floor. Pop snorted, coughed, and turned on his side before resuming his baritone harmony of snores. It took two attempts to get to her feet; the first time her wobbly knees and wearily trembling legs failed to support her. With the cunning born of the trapped animal, she knew exactly what she would say if someone awakened and discovered her standing upright. She would tell them she had to go to the toilet. The naked young girl was halfway across the room before she remembered her tattered clothes. For a moment she deliberated about just leaving them, but from somewhere summoning up courage she didn't realize still existed, she padded over to the corner, stepped across Cash's nakedly sleeping figure, and grabbed her clothes.
At the door, she paused and looked behind her to make sure they were still sleeping. Satisfied, she went to the stair landing and quickly put on her ripped and tattered tee shirt and tight, hip-hugging jeans. It was only then she realized she had left her sandals behind… something she dismissed as being unimportant. No force in the world could get her back into that foul loft with those sex-crazed criminals.
All of her instincts screamed at her to run down the stairs, but some rational voice in her mind made her tred lightly on each stair and to tred well off center. In spite of her precautions, the stairs creaked so loudly that she was sure the men couldn't help but be awakened; in her mind's eye she could see them stirring, could almost hear them shouting warnings at each other.
At the bottom of the stairs it was pitch-black and she had to whip her mind to remember the details of the ground floor. Even so the terrified young girl bumped into the pickup truck and then felt her way like a blind woman toward the door.
"Dear God," she prayed silently, "please, please don't let there be a padlock on the door."
Her hand brushed across the rough wood of the inside of the garage door and encountered just a latch, which she quickly lifted.
The door, when she opened it, creaked so loudly that even the frogs outside were momentarily silenced. Ellen no longer cared about the noise. It was the hour before the dawn and the moon had long since set. The night was coal black and the dirt road leading to the abandoned warehouse was only a barely perceptible glow in the darkness. There was no doubt in her mind that escape was not only possible, but very probable.
She began running down the dirt path as fast as her long legs could carry her, expecting at any moment to hear the shouts and the sudden sound of pursuit behind her.
By the time the terrified young girl reached the gravel road leading back to the highway, she was already panting for breath and her side felt as though it had been caught in a vise. The sharp rocks on the gravelled roadway cut into the tender soles of her unshod feet, and within seconds she was bleeding from a multitude of painful cuts.
As Ellen ran, she welcomed the pain; that was her punishment for the betrayal of her body – for the lewd things she had done, for the mindless, whore-like enthusiasm she had shown for Cash and Pop once she had realized the pleasure their long hard maledom could bring a woman.
She ran in the darkness with the brittle stars a crown above her head and the lights of the far-off city shining like the promise of Camelot. Ellen didn't mind that she left behind a trail of blood from her feet, that her heart was pounding so rapidly it seemed about to burst into a million pieces, that a hot poker was in her side. She mentally embraced the pain, and thought wonderingly about the almost erotic, masochistic pleasure she was deriving from running barefoot in gravel. It was with something akin to regret that the young girl reached the relatively smooth surface of the concrete main highway. She stopped, her breath coming in great rasping gulps. Obviously, if pursuit started, they would assume she would head to the left toward the city lights some five or six miles away. Although her escape had been successful up to this point, she really didn't believe that she had another hour – and it would take that long to reach the city. Besides, the eastern horizon was already becoming a dirty gray color as the sun raced toward a Florida dawn. It would be light in another twenty or thirty minutes.
And so, with the wisdom of the hunted, she turned away from the protection of the lights still far-off and began running toward the right and the uncertain darkness.
The girl hadn't taken two steps before she heard the angry shouting behind her and the faint sound of running footsteps in the gravel. At a distance, she saw the warehouse where she had been held captive, fully lighted now and the lights of what was obviously the pickup truck pulling out of the garage.
Fear lent wings to her feet and she began running as though she were in an Olympics try-out, her bleeding feet completely ignored. As she fled, she rejected the suggestion from her brain that she hide. There were only sand dunes here… and they were out of the question because her footsteps would be plainly visible when the sun came up shortly.
Ellen paused for a second, her chest rising and falling painfully as she sought to get breath into her tortured lungs, and turned around to make a reconnaissance of her pursuers. As she watched, the lights of the pickup truck swung wildly off the gravel road, turned left, and began heading toward the lights of the city. She watched it, rejoicing, wanting to cry with relief, but then her mind took over and told her that these men were smart in the ways of the hunter and the hunted. It would take them only a very short time to realize that they had missed her – that she was either hiding or had gone in the opposite direction.
Quickly, then, she began running again. She ran for about three or four minutes, then paused for breath at the top of a small rise in the road. Then horror descended. Above her pained gasping she heard it.
The sound of running footsteps behind her!
They were still at least a quarter of a mile away, but the young girl was running into the blackness. It would be only a matter of three or four minutes before whoever it was that was chasing her was able to catch up. With the exception of Pop, all of the convicts were in top physical shape; she could never expect to outdistance them – conditioned as they were to years of hard labor on the chain gang.
Panicked, she stood still… agonizing over the question of whether to attempt to hide or continue running until they finally ran her to the ground like a poor defenseless rabbit before the hounds.
Then, as though the heavens had answered her prayers and mute questioning, she saw the lights of a car – still far away – on the highway ahead of her.
Now she began running as though there was no tomorrow – which, of course, there wouldn't be if she fell captive to the convicts again. With superhuman powers of strength she never had drawn on before, she began sprinting toward the approaching lights… knowing even as she did so that the relentless pursuing footsteps had drawn even closer during her few seconds of indecision.
It was obvious that her pursuer knew she was in front of him and that he had only a few moments to recapture her, for his pace had increased alarmingly. Still, though, the terrified young girl would die before going back again, and so she exerted previously untapped powers of physical energy.
The lights grew closer… the unknown pursuing convict grew closer!
Then Ellen was running up a small incline. The lights had momentarily disappeared. Even before she reached the top, she realized that the running man behind her had dropped into the gully and was now only a couple of hundred yards away.
When she topped the hill, she saw the car coming toward her, and with a sudden sob of joy she knew that it was even closer than the escaped convict behind her. At once she began waving her arms frantically and ran out toward the center of the highway so the car could not swerve around her.