Read Deadly Journey for Free Online Page A

were bound to be other farms or houses near to a water
source. Keeping as low a profile as possible, I moved like an ape from cover to
cover away from the house. Behind a row of bushes, I peeked out and my jaw
almost hit the ground. An eight-foot-high wall stood there, an insurmountable
obstacle, with huge, wrought-iron gates. A guard sat on a stool nursing an
automatic rifle and smoking. My eye-line followed the wall, which connected the
farmhouse to the cellblock, and beyond. Behind me, I detected the sound of
vehicles and looked around. The headlights were moving toward the farm.
Whatever I decided to do, it had to be quick.
    Using the cover of a row of bushes, I moved
swiftly along the back of the cellblock and then crawled across and behind a
small guard shed at the entrance. The smell of cigar smoke hung in the air and
hit the back of my throat. They had left a guard behind. Thank God for his
iPod; his head was swaying to a beat, and there were telltale wires running
from his ears.
    I had to think carefully before my next
move. The vehicles were no more than ten minutes away. There was no way past
the guard without him seeing me. It was one of those all or nothing decisions,
as I wrapped my arm around the guard’s head. My biceps pressed firmly on the
artery in his neck. Using the leverage of my head pressed against his and with
hands clasped, I counted. One... two... three... four... five. His body
went limp and I lowered him to the ground. It was enough to knock him out cold
by starving his brain of oxygen, but not enough to kill him. He didn’t look a
day over sixteen, so his mom would be pleased that I hadn’t gone for those few
extra seconds, or snapped his neck. I dragged him into the shed, slung the
strap of his rifle over my shoulder, and headed outside and through the gate to
freedom.
    The terrain was flat and the horizon was
devoid of any lighting indicating habitation. Thinking back to the search pattern
of the vehicles, going straight ahead would be inviting them to find me, so I
turned left down a dirt road. Running would lead to exhaustion, so I tried
speed-walking. I’d always thought speed-walkers looked ridiculous when I
watched them on television, but the ground I covered made up for my feeling
stupid. Around four hundred yards and it felt like I was walking on hot coals.
    Trying to concentrate on something to
distract myself from the pain, I tried to remember how many yards there were in
a mile, which was about the stride I was generating. Seventeen hundred and
sixty came to mind, drilled into me by my old math teacher at middle school. I
started counting from four hundred. At nine hundred and twenty, I felt dizzy.
My footsteps were spaced about a foot per stride and then reduced to a
stumbling shuffle. The mattress material had long since stopped acting as a
sole and was flapping around my ankles, whipping and stinging my calf muscles.
There was no alternative; I had to stop to remove the rags from around my
ankles.
    Having travelled over half a mile, I looked
down the road. The hedgerow hid the farm from view, but over on the left, I
could see multiple headlights in the distance, probably searching for me. They
must have found the guard. It was a mistake to have sat down. What with the way
I had been trussed up on the journey into captivity, and the beatings I had
taken, plus the fact that my feet were lacerated and the muscles in my legs had
seized up, I was a mess. Not even Scott would have made it to the Pole in that
condition. The only thing I could do, under the circumstances, was to crawl
through a gap in the hedgerow and rest.
    Whatever insects might be crawling around
me, I had no idea, nor did I care; it just felt good to lie on the ground and
gaze up at the sky. I had a soft moment. Maybe it was relief at being free.
Below the moon and stars, I felt humble... privileged and yet insignificant. If
only I’d learned about astronomy, I could have worked out which way was north
and home. My