The Failed Escape

From behind a clump of cacti he woke up, still shivering, and patted the sand off his back. The eight am sun wasn’t strong enough yet although he could feel it warming his skin. When he looked at the tiny holes in his arm, he saw once again the needles and coloured things they’d fed into his blood stream, and the nauseating sensation it left him with after each treatment.

Then he remembered why he’d slept by the cacti clump. He stood up unsteadily and looked down the slope, trying to detect any movement among the desert bushes. He breathed in the refreshingly chilly early morning air, despite his aching bones and dry throat. He needed to find water and food soon, before it got too hot. Having decided to continue down the slope, hoping to find the stream he’d seen in the map the previous night, he took a step and stopped. Something glinted in the distance. Belatedly he lowered himself, using the cactus clump as cover and scanned the open slope. There it was again. Was it the reflection off a binocular glass? There was movement. He waited, now undecided. He couldn’t turn back and go up the slope. That’s where he’d come from. He didn’t want to return there. And now in front, he could clearly make out figures moving, spreading out. Dressed in dark clothes, several of them leading dogs, carrying weapons. Sweeping the valley floor, moving upwards. Searching.

Had they gone to the bottom of the valley, and begun to search upwards from the river? That was cruel. And clever. They’d not taken the chance of giving him the opportunity to make a dash overnight for the river. If he’d managed it, he’d have a pretty good shot at getting away. This way, they’d spread the net out to gradually reel him in, in no particular hurry, not giving him the pleasure of even a faint hope of escape.

He sat back behind the cacti and thought furiously. What could he do?

Sideways? Too open. They’d pick him out in no time just by waiting where they were. Or back up? Along the hidden bed of the dry river, back towards where he’d come from? That was do-able, except it would mean heading back in the direction of the compound.

A couple of hours later, near the highest point of the valley, hidden in the shadows thrown by the edges of the dried riverbed, he raised his dust-caked head and peered downwards. Although still far away, he could see that more figures had appeared, like the weighted ends of a massive fishing net, moving steadily, at varying speeds, uphill. They’d passed the cacti clump he’d slept by.

There would be fencing beyond which the compound with its blocks would be visible. The sentinels would have seen him by now, especially those placed in the watchtowers at each point of the compass.

With the sun almost overhead, the mixture of dust and sweat, commingling with his fear, made him feel utterly vulnerable. His lips and throat felt like sandpaper and he knew that, unless he found water soon, he would collapse long before they came anywhere near to finding him.

He clawed his way upwards and gaining the plateau, found the denser vegetation a welcome shelter from the heat. He stumbled among the brambles, acacia-like trees and eucalyptus, tripped over stones and made his way forward and downwards, expecting to run into guard dogs or men with weapons any minute.

His judgement was gone and he was too weak to argue with himself. He kept moving by a combination of stumbling and staggering forwards. When he fell for a final time, telling himself that he did not need to get up, he had fallen in a clearing. There would be fencing beyond which the compound with its primary coloured blocks would be visible. The sentinels would have seen him by now, especially those placed in the watchtowers at each point of the compass. Half conscious, ready to surrender, his mind spoke up suddenly. Something isn’t right. There was no alarm raised as yet. No sounds. There was no barking of the dogs that regularly patrolled the perimeter of the compound.

In response to the aberration his mind had noticed, with the last vestiges of his strength, he raised his head to look. How did he get here? Then he remembered the injections. The coloured things they’d put in him. And it made sense even as he felt parts of his head swim dangerously out to deep waters before blacking out.

There was no fence before him. No compound. No watchtowers. No ferocious dogs straining on their leashes. No weapons in his face. Only an empty road that ran in both directions as far as the eyes could see. Beyond the road, rose walls of eucalyptus and beyond that, were the imposing towers, communications antennae, glass windows and chimneys of a great city.

photo from unsplash.com by David Sola