A small smile teased at the edge of the undamaged side of her mouth. “Obviously.”
“I’ve got a plan. But you have to do everything I tell you to do. Everything. Without question. Can you promise me you’ll do that?”
“I promise.”
“Good. We’re in this together now. I’ve got your back, and you’ve got mine. Deal?”
*
“Deal.” She latched onto his words and chose to believe he was right.
She pulled another sweater over her head, then stepped into a pair of long johns. She rummaged through the drawer until she found a pair of pajama pants and slipped those on, tying the waist.
“The only way they’ll get the hatch open is with explosives, so that buys us a bit of time.” From underneath his desk he grabbed a fat backpack and wrapped a rope around his ankle, securing the pack to his foot. He shoved the desk over to reveal a wooden door two feet in diameter. He unlatched the lock and swung it open.
The tunnel looked too small for a human being to fit inside, but she understood without him speaking that they were going to crawl through there.
She took a step back and ran into the nightstand. “Where’s that go?”
“Half a mile into the woods. Everyone will be focused here, not searching the woods. At least not yet. Thank God, Grandpa was the paranoid sort. He was forever fretting that the Commies were going to invade.”
“His paranoia is our escape, I hope.” She couldn’t take her eyes off the too-tiny tunnel.
James nodded his head. “You can do this.” He sounded so sure of himself, so sure of her.
She sucked in a breath, squared her shoulders, and forced herself to move toward the tunnel entrance.
“One more thing, then we’re ready.” He sat down at his computer and began typing.
On the wall-mounted screen, she watched the men outside. The grainy image distorted and wavered. One man beat the ground violently, rage in his every movement. Was that Gill? If he was doing that to the ground, what would he do to her? He’d kill her. A shiver passed over her shoulders.
The screen went blank. A few keystrokes from James, and a quiet pffft sounded. A swirl of smoke whispered up from the computer. James stepped away from the machine and led her to the hole. They knelt, facing each other.
“Do you want to go first, or do you want me to go first?” he asked.
“You.”
“Okay. You’ll reach forward with your arms and pull yourself.” He demonstrated what looked like a chin-up. “Use your toes to help push you. As soon as my feet go in, you follow. We stick together. No matter what.”
She nodded, but her head felt heavy with fear.
“Everything is going to be all right. I’ll keep you safe.” He stroked her cheek with his knuckle. It was a tiny gesture, but it had the same potency as a hug from a dear friend.
He bent down, and his head, his shoulders, his torso, his legs, his feet all disappeared into the tunnel.
Oh God. She reached into the dark hole. The movement strained her sore breast and pressed it to the ground. It felt like a knife to the nipple, but she would endure. For him. For everything he was sacrificing on her behalf.
She shimmied, slithered, and crawled into the tunnel. The earth closed around her. Pressed against her stomach, her sides. She lifted herself and found only an inch or two of clearance above her.
Her toes no longer touched cool, smooth concrete, but instead dug into hard-packed earth. She reached forward, grasped a slight hump in the ground, and pulled with her hands and pushed with her toes.
The space got blacker and blacker. The darkness blinded her. The tunnel tightened around her. Breath squeezed out of her. Loud whooshing gasps escaped her mouth. The air itself wasn’t air, but a combination of dirt and roots and oxygen that was a solid, not a gas like her lungs were used to. She choked on something, maybe her own spit, started coughing and coughing and coughing.
James called her name, worry in his voice.
“Imallright,” she gasped in the brief space between coughs. “Somethinginmythroat.” It’d be a miracle if he understood her. It’d be a miracle if she didn’t need the Heimlich.
“In my pack. In the outside zipper pocket is a bottle of water. You have to come to me. I can’t go backward.”
Disco lights of oxygen deprivation danced in front of her eyes, but she managed to crawl forward while coughing until she ran into the pack. She fumbled around, blindly searching for the zipper, then groping inside for the familiar shape of a bottle of water. She tore the cap off and slugged the liquid down her throat, swallowing what felt like a dry mouthful of dirt. At least the coughing had stopped.
Sweat rained from her pores, rolling down her forehead and burning her eyes. She wasn’t going to be able to do this.
“We need to keep moving. Reach.”
She heard the movement of fabric from in front of her.
“Pull.”
She heard his body scraping against the ground, the sound raw to her ears.
“Reach with me.”
She did.
“Pull.”
She did.
Everything in the world narrowed down to this moment where all that existed was the cadence of James’s voice. Reach. Pull. She began speaking the words with him, her body moving in a rhythm. Reach. Pull. Almost a melody. An endless melody. One that went on and on and on, until she was certain two eternities had passed.
“Just a few more feet. You’re almost there.”
It took a few moments for her to understand the meaning behind these new and different words. The oppressive blackness lightened. Relief eased the weight of the earth over the top of her. The end. She’d made it.
“Okay, I’m out. Reach out to me. I’ll pull you the rest of the way.” His voice was clear and fresh, not the muffled, muted tones of being in the earth.