Chapter Twenty: Escape
Time couldn't have gone slower. Dinner time seemed to take days to arrive, and when it was I could barely contain my excitement. Daniel and I grabbed our trays, sitting to eat as usual but not actually consuming anything. I grinned as people began to eat, they should've been more excited! They were being cleansed, going to a better place! Granted, we didn't tell anyone, so that's probably why. I looked at Daniel, lightly bouncing in my seat,
"Are you as excited to help everyone as I am?"
He laughed, and I was glad to see he really had forgiven me.
"Well, probably not. It is only your first time, and I've done this before."
"Oh, yeah that makes sense." I jumped as the first person fell out of their chair, landing on the floor with a loud thud as they choked on their own blood. It didn't take much long for others to do the same, including some guards whom had even had the lunch served here. We sat, Daniel grinning as I looked around at the people.
"They… don't look like they're… like they're going somewhere better…."
"Don't worry Finn, that's just the purification process. A lot of these people are very unclean."
"Oh, that makes sense…" I looked down at the table, I didn't want to see them anymore.
"Fall on the ground now, be like them."
I did as he told me, and he fell next to me. People lay all around me, choking. I heard screams. This doesn't seem safer. We laid on the ground until things quieted, taking the brief window between after everyone stopped moving and before more guards showed up to run outside, out the front door into the dense clump of trees. The only stop we made was where they held personal items that weren't allowed in the hospital.
We got to the bottom of the fence, and I worriedly looked at Daniel. "How are we going to get on the other side?"
"This way." He led me to a large hole in the ground leading under the fence, with a large rock next to it. "Crawl through, I'll see you on the other side."