Never… Winston Churchill started to say.
Yeah, yeah, yeah! I said back to him. I’m moving, I’m moving.
And I did move, a ragged cry squeezing out between my gritted teeth as the pain surged through me again.
I twisted around in the upside-down cab and started squirming my way out the open window. I felt as if my muscles were on fire, but even though it made me cry out again, I kept going. I got my hand through the window- got it out onto the earth outside. I dug my fingers into the dirt and pulled myself farther.
Grunting and coughing, I crawled halfway out of the truck. I turned onto my back. Drew up my legs. The rest of me came clear and I rolled over, tumbling away onto my face. As I did that, something fell off me. I heard it land with a soft thud on the grass and looked for it. It was the gun-the pistol the driver had tried to pull on me. I grabbed it. Quickly shoved it into my waistband. Then I was working my way off the ground, up onto my knees.
I looked over the meadow toward the onrushing guards. They were still far away, still too far to get a good shot at me. All I had to do was stand. All I had to do was run. With a little luck, I might just make it into the darkness and protection of the forest.
I was about to give it a try when an idea came to me. I paused, reached back into the truck. I grabbed the keys dangling from the ignition. This was the only vehicle I’d seen in the compound. If they couldn’t drive it, they would have to chase me on foot. I’d have a better chance.
I pulled the keys out. I noticed the keychain was one of those black plastic things with the push-button flashlight in it. That might come in handy too. I shoved it into my pocket.
Now it was time. I gritted my teeth again. I had grabbed hold of the side of the truck. I used it to pull myself to my feet, almost sobbing now from the pain. I glanced back at the guards. They had slowed down for a second. I think they were startled to see me moving. They actually stared at me and pointed.
But not for long. Soon they were running toward me again. Now I could hear them shouting to one another, shouting at me: “Stop! Hold it right there!” They were getting close fast. They were leveling their weapons at me.
There was no more time. I had to go. I had to run. No matter how much it hurt, I had to run as fast as I could for that tree line.
Never give in.
I let go of the truck and took off.
It was a strange thing. I knew I’d been tortured, beaten, maybe burned. I knew I’d been roughed up fighting with the driver and knocked around inside the truck as it rolled. The pain all through my body was terrible, and I knew it should’ve been crippling. I shouldn’t have been able to do more than limp a few steps and then fall exhausted to the ground. And at first, it was bad. Worse than bad. It was awful. At first, it felt as if my limbs and my torso were encased in some kind of spiked suit, some kind of torture suit that held me back and stabbed into me every time I tried to move.
Then, though-then-with every new step-the suit somehow seemed to get lighter. Somehow, the faster I went, the lighter it got, until bit by bit, step by step, I was flying over the grass, racing as fast as I could for the trees, and the pain was leaving me as if the torture suit were breaking up and falling off, the pieces of it flying away behind me.
Never, never…
All right, Winston Churchill, all right already, do I look like I’m giving in?
I ran. I stuck to the dirt road and ran as hard as I could, racing toward the trailhead and the woods. The wall of trees rose up over me as I got closer. Huge maples and oaks and towering evergreens: the closer I got, the higher they seemed to rise, the more they seemed to block out the sky and the sun that was sinking behind them. Another step and the warm sun was gone, blocked out by the trees completely so that I was running in cool shadow.
I glanced back over my shoulder. The guards were almost at the truck now. One of them had dropped to his knees. He steadied his AK and started shooting at me. The deadly sputter of the gun-that heart-stopping sound-reached me across the meadow and made my stomach turn over with fear. The guard was still too far away to get a clean shot, but that didn’t make me feel any better. He didn’t need a clean shot. He only needed a lucky one. Every moment, I kept waiting for the bullets to hit me and bring me down.
The fear gave me another burst of energy. I stopped looking back and ran even faster. Now there was nothing in front of me but the trunks of the trees and the deep depth of tangled green darkness that was the forest interior.
Then I felt an earthy cool, and the trees closed over me. The trail turned sharply and I tore along it. I looked back. The guards were lost to view-that meant they couldn’t see me either anymore, couldn’t get a shot at me at all.
But I didn’t slow down for a second. I just kept running. Running on the trail fast as I could. Leaping over holes and roots and rocks. Running deeper and deeper into the welcoming shadows of the forest. Running through the pain. Running for my life.
Never give in.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Woods I don’t know how long I ran like that. A long, long time, it seemed like. The woods got thicker and thicker around me, darker and darker as they shut out the sun. I strained my eyes, looking for a sign of civilization. A house, a cabin, a ranger station, anything. But as far as I could see, the woods went on forever, an endless, mysterious pattern of vines and branches, massive tree trunks and low shrub.
For a while, I stuck to the trail. It was broad and flat- more like a fire road than a hiking trail-so I could move along it quickly. I figured that was the best way to put some distance between me and the guards. In here, see, in the forest, their weapons were useless at long range. There was no way they could even see me for any distance, let alone get a shot at me through the trees. So they’d have to catch up to me first. They might be able to do that if they could push a vehicle through here. But if I was right about that truck-if it was the only vehicle in the compound-or even if they had to go back to the compound to get another truck-then I had time to cover some territory before they could begin to close the gap.
So I ran along the trail as fast as I could go, deeper and deeper into the woods. But it was tough going. I was already unsteady, battered, hurt. Soon enough, I began to feel my legs start to weaken and my lungs start to give out. Not to mention, I needed a drink of water-a lot. I didn’t know how long it’d been since I’d had a drink, but I was starting to feel the need in a big way-not just in my dusty mouth and my parched throat, but in the wooziness that was seeping into my brain like fog and the weakness that was spreading from the core of me out to my limbs.
Finally, I was staggering. The trail was no good to me now. I couldn’t travel quickly anymore anyway. So I left it and plunged into the depths of the brush and trees. There was no running here, not for long. After just a few steps, the undergrowth got so thick that I had to tear it away with my hands to make any progress at all. On the plus side, the trail was soon invisible behind me, which made me suspect I was probably more or less invisible from the trail as well. Even if the guards caught up to me, they wouldn’t be able to see me. They might well miss me and run right past.
But if the way had been hard before, it was even harder now. Pushing through the brush, tearing through the hanging vines. Now that I wasn’t running anymore, the pain-that spiky torture suit of pain-seemed to close over my body again. I ached and burned. Branches scratched my face and arms. Vines and tangled bushes wrapped themselves around my legs like hands trying to hold onto me. I yanked myself free of them. I shoved myself on. With every step, my thirst got worse. I got dizzier. The weakness at my center spread steadily into my legs and arms.
Then, suddenly, I was down. I didn’t even remember falling. All at once, I was just lying on the forest floor with my face in the dirt and half my body caught in a tangle of thorny underbrush. I lay there, gasping, barely conscious at all. I tried to listen for voices, for footsteps, for gunfire-to hear if the guards were closing in on me. All I could hear, though, was the harsh, rasping sound of my own breathing and the hammering rhythm of the pulse in the side of my head.