Chapter 1

The outlines of the men were hard to see and with the blizzard getting worse and worse by the second, it was soon impossible to make them out altogether. Before long it wasn't clear what lay more than 5ft outside. I backed away from the window and sat next to Emma, the silence lingering in the air.

"Got any bright ideas on how were getting out of here?" I asked eventually, even though the doors and windows were closed I was still shivering from the cold.

"I thought you were the one with the bright ideas," she snapped back, her tone was arrogant and from her facial expression it was evident that she couldn't care less.

"Come on, we're in a situation where we're faced with life or death, don't get bitchy with me now."

"Bitchy!? You're the one that got us into this mess! I have no responsibility for this; you should be the one-" She was cut off as the door opened and an old man entered the room.

"Shut it the both of ye and eat." He spoke very proudly but had a very strong Scottish accent in his voice. He put down the two trays on the floor and nudged them through the tiny gap underneath the cell door with his foot. He gave us a very dirty look before leaving the room and slamming the door behind him.

Emma and I caught each other's stare, our plan was in motion and the blizzard gave us perfect cover for escape. Picking up the knife and fork from the tray I went to the cell door and put my hands around the other side of the door to reach the lock. I entered the blade of the knife into the top of the lock and the handle of the fork in the bottom; I fiddled around with the lock for a few seconds and then the lock on the door retracted and the door opened a few inches.

"We need to find our gear that they stole from us," Emma said almost reading my mind.

"I thought they put it the storeroom over the hall," I said, specifically remembering the time when we were thrown into the cell.

Opening the door, we peaked out, looking for any sorts of movement. There were none. The wooden floor outside creaked with every step until we reached the door. We were amazed with what we saw on the other side; guns, ammo, medication, the lot. Our back packs had been emptied and thrown to the side, retrieving them we packed as much as we needed, a few pistols and a couple of clips of ammo, and a few bottles of antibiotics, it was needless to overload ourselves to the point where we couldn't travel more than a mile without wearing ourselves out. Emma began reloading a pistol of her own; I put my hand on the top of it and shook my head from side to side.

I whispered, "Not now." She nodded but I could see that she was eager to use a firearm again.
Opening the door to the outside world was like a slap in the face, the wind nearly knocked me off balance and the snow immediately began to rush in. It was cold, very cold. The words of the men could be heard slightly as the constant howling of the wind seemed to drown out their voices. Diving behind boxes and anything else we could find we were eager to escape, this place might as well had a banner saying "Promised Death Here" because these people had no mercy for others, they killed others unless they had some sort of use to them. This place was sickening, I never noticed the piles of corpses that lay on top of each other and left to decay, now to be honest I wish I didn't notice it.
We were almost there; everything was going good so far. The exit of the camp was in sight, just a few more meters and we'd be out. The only disadvantage the blizzard gave us however was the inability to see others around us until it was too late.

"Hey! They're escaping!" Someone shouted from behind us, shouts from other people started to come alive as they became alert to our escape.

"Shit!" Emma growled under her breath.

"We need to move. Now!" I screamed. I was not going back into that bloody cell again.
We started to run, the forest outside gave us the best cover to escape, it wasn't perfect but it would do, for now. Running through the snow was slowing us down a lot but the cover from the canopies of the trees above caught most of the falling snow so it wasn't too deep yet. But we hadn't lost our captors just yet; their shouts didn't linger far behind. Then gunfire went off. Bullets started to lodge themselves into trees and others went past their target, us. Sprinting on, desperate to get away, we tried to find some way of losing our pursuers. There was nothing, nothing here to help us do that. Emma was a lot faster than I was and was at least about 10ft further than me. She suddenly came to a halt and soon I saw why…