13 – The Escape Committee

My heart sunk when I got back to my barrack and saw that Cammie was gone. Thirteen down, seven to go. I was pretty bummed, since she had always been so sweet and likeable, but I would have to save feeling bad about it for later. I had been running Vera's information through my head over and over as I did my cleaning, repeating it until I knew the details inside and out, and so the only thing left to do was start hatching my escape plan.

It must have been a full hour that I spent sitting silently in my bunk, going over everything I'd seen and learned in the past three-plus weeks in an attempt to generate ideas on how to break out. I had a few tactics kicking around in my brain, but I needed to factor in Vera's information and figure out how I would get supplies I needed to pull my plan off. I could find a bunch of stuff while I was out cleaning, I reckoned. Most of the cupboards were securely locked, but maybe room 142, which already had a locked door, had some accessible supplies that I could use.

I ran with that train of thought for a long while, but it wasn't too long before I hit a mental block. I had my basic idea template, which gave me a general direction to go with, but I was still coming up a bit short in the finer details department. Finally I decided that I couldn't figure this out alone; I needed some additional input. Maybe the outside opinions would provide a helpful new perspective to things.

Almost everyone was too sick and miserable in bed to be of any real help, but I gathered together the handful of us that was still functioning semi-normally. Despite the slim pickings, I was still pleased with my little group: Kendra, Heidi, Cara-Louise, and Erin were all strong, smart, and reliable, so I was confident we'd be able to come up with something together.

First I explained the situation and relayed everything I had learned from Vera, using games of "Patty Cake" and other such games to make our cross-legged huddle less suspicious—the noise of the two girls playing helped mask my words from the guards as the other two listened carefully. I laid out the ideas I'd come up with and made sure that they all memorized all the information I'd gathered up to that point, that way if something happened to me (death, mutation, debilitating illness, etc.) the others might still have a chance if they knew what I knew. That took a while to go over, but once they were all fully briefed I started discussing strategy.

"I think the first thing we need to do is make contact with the other prisoners," I explained quietly to Erin and Kendra, as Cara-Louise and Heidi clapped hands and chanted rhymes, "We need to get the other girls in on the plan if this is going to work. But how?"

"Maybe if we slip them a piece of paper through the fence?" Erin suggested, "If we got the angle right, it might land in the other barrack."

I shook my head. "There's at least a two inch space between our barrack and the next one over, and the guard is more likely to see it than the girls. Besides, if we touch the fence we'll get zapped."

"And where will we get paper, or something to write with?" Kendra pointed out.

"We have toilet paper," I reminded her, "and we have the paper towel for puke clean-up, that could also be used."

"And a pen?"

"There's one in the Scrabble box, for keeping score. Ah, the score sheet! That's another possible paper source! Though most of that paper's already been used up..."

"Alright," Erin said, "but back to the problem: how do we pass notes to the other girls?"

Just then I glanced over at the corner of the room, where the end bunks were pushed up against the wall. The thick plastic partition separating us from the other barracks was fastened to the original factory wall, but I wanted to see what was keeping it in place. "I'm going to go check that wall," I told them, "hang on a sec."

I dashed over to the room's left corner and climbed into the bottom end bunk, so I could get an up close look at the seam between the plastic and the iron. My brow wrinkled with interest as I assessed the set-up. The plastic paneling was fastened into place with metal brackets, but it looked as if there was still a tiny gap between the original wall and the partition, which they had filled in with some sort of rubbery glue substance. I prodded at the glue, and noted how soft and crumbly it felt. I wonder... I jumped off the bunk and ran over to the right corner of the room, where our bathroom facilities were. The showerhead we all shared was fixed in the corner and they hadn't installed an actual shower wall. Because of this, I noticed, the glue was water warped and it was starting to come loose. I ripped a piece of it out from the gap, about half an inch thick and two inches long, and I realized that if we could pry all the way through we could slip paper through the spaces between the partitions.

I returned to the huddle, and told them, "There's a gap in both of the corners that they sealed over, but if we had something to pick at it we could open it up and slip a piece of paper through. What do we have that could be used for picking at the glue?"

"The pen?" Erin offered.

"No," Kendra shook her head, "It might break or something. We should save it for writing."

"Keep your eyes peeled for any long, sharp objects, then," I told them, "I can steal something tomorrow if we don't."

Just then Bailey, who was lying on the bunk behind us, spoke up, "You'll need a distraction to escape, probably," she pointed out, "whenever someone gets sick and starts making a fuss, everyone goes running to where the noise is. That would distract like two guards, at least."

"Good point," I told her, "If we could get one of the farther away barracks to cause a disruption, like if one of them faked being sick or they all started fighting or something, the guards wouldn't be paying attention while we fiddled with the gate."

Cara-Louise got Kendra to switch out and continue the distraction with Heidi, and then suggested, "Could you get rubber gloves or something? The gloves might not hold up very long if you keep touching the fence, but it's still one more layer between you and the electricity."

"How will we get the gate open?" Erin asked.

"I don't know..." I rubbed my temples, "The only knob is on the outside, and we have no way of kicking it or beating the door open or anything." We discussed several different tactics, all to no avail. Finally I gave up, and decided to re-cap what we'd already determined.

"Alright, so here's our plan so far: we get the other barracks onboard, get one of the far groups to cause a distraction, then while the guard is preoccupied we break out and free as many girls as possible."

"Then what?" Cara-Louise prompted.

"We..." I trailed off, "I'm not sure. We could just start running for it, but even if we avoided the staff and found an exit we'd have nowhere to go, since we're on an island. Even if we did find an escape boat, someone would probably radio for help and they'd be waiting for us when we got to shore." The burst of confidence I'd gotten when we'd begun forming this plan was quickly deflating.

Then Bailey spoke again. "I think know where the room with the radio equipment is," she recalled quietly, "I was getting my shots a couple days ago when my doctor got news that one of his guy patients had gone into cardiac arrest or whatever. He didn't want to leave me alone in the medical room, so he dragged me along with him. Right before we turned into the hallway with the boys' barracks, we passed an open room with a bunch of wires and electronic equipment and stuff. There was some guy in there, speaking into a microphone." She sighed, "It's pretty far away from here, though; the scientists would probably get there before you did."

"So the communications room is right near the boys," I muttered, pondering this for a few moments. A new idea was slowly beginning to form in my head. "If you had to guess, how many guys did you see that looked well enough to move around and stuff?"

"There were a lot more of them than us," Bailey recalled, "I only got a good look at the barrack where the dying kid was... there were about eight boys crowded around him, and then some on the bunks."

"How old were they?"

"Somewhere between sixteen and eighteen, maybe?"

Wheels were turning in my head. The boys are stronger, closer to the communications room, and there are more of them... "Then the solution is simple," I declared, a sly smile crossing my face, "We're not going to break out of this dump. The boys are."