Nada's Escape: Fighters' lies

1.3 Capture

I force myself to focus on the rest of the plan. We need something to help us haul the ladder up to the top. I start ripping off pieces of my t-shirt. The fabric sears into my bruised fingertips but it parts eventually, forming ragged ropes in my hands. I pass them down to Fern as she nears the top.

"Tie these to the top there."

Fern nods seriously and ties the fabric strips to the top rung of the ladder. Then she heaves herself up beside me and Josie begins to climb.

Above the sound of both of our breathing a whisper of wind tickles the hair at my neck. The ladder makes a scratching sound as it shifts imperceptibly on the wall. Josie, though, is solemnly quiet as she climbs. Dry foliage crunches on the wrong side of the wall. I whip my head in that direction instead, searching the garden for any sign of movement. But the shadows are inky amorphous shapes, too small to hide a human. A possum or a fox then, I wonder?

White light slashes across my retinas and I freeze. I try not to breath, not to blink even as my eyes sting from the assault. It stabs my eyes a second time, fixing on me and I know we've been found. The light turns away and I squint away the coloured dots in my vision, hearing the crunching footsteps accelerate into a run.

"All up!" I call down to the other girls, praying for just a little more time. I imagine their panic at having to come up one after the other. I barely held on when I had all the time in the world.

I watch our finder zig-zag back through the gardens, their progress highlighted by a torch beam catching on tree and shrub. They reach the first small houses and dash along the lane to the intersection, slipping into the front yard of the bungalow on the corner. I lose sight of them behind the foliage there and tap my fingers against the sandstone in trepidation.

"Can we still make it?" Fern asks over my shoulder. I frown at the ladder below, shrouded in darkness. I can only make out the suggestion of movement, still many metres below.

"I don't know," I start in despair. "Maybe."

We've come so far.

I check the progress of our finder and he's emerging from the shadows with another figure. They're walking slowly and haltingly, like they don't want to part. I keep tapping my fingers, glaring at them to stay put even as one of the figures points up towards me.

They split off in different directions suddenly and my hand clenches into fist. How lucky, I think sarcastically, I can watch the circumstances of my own recapture. I shift aside so that Fern can pull Josie up but my eyes are glued to the tableau before me.

The original figure, still with a torch in hand rushes along the main curving street away from us. The second figure, their shape hidden by a long flapping robe rushes across the street to another, bigger house. I smile as they stand at the doorway, illuminated by a streetlamp, and no one comes running. I imagine that I can hear their frantic knocking from here.

"How far are the others?" I whisper to Fern and Josie, the latter hugging the top of the wall tightly behind Fern.

"A minute or so," Fern shrugs, "If we kneel on the ropes, I'll pull up Laura and you grab Amy right after." I nod in agreement.

I shift my eyes back to the first figure who has cut off the main street and is running faster and faster. They have curved around the walls of Seven and are now heading for the gate. This realisation has me tapping my impatient fingers again. I turn my eyes back to the second figure just as the door she's standing in front of opens. I squint to try and make out this new silhouette but with no luck.

"Nada," hisses Fern and I switch tasks, leaning over the knotted rope and down the sandstone wall. My hands are clumsy when it's my turn to haul up Amy and I must force her to graze her knee on the lip.

Shouting at the gatehouse tells me we're out of time. The wardens of Camp Seven will be rounding the school room any second.

I seize both ropes and clench into a sit up position, legs parallel with the wall. I am the last in this line of fighters, arranged like a rowing team along the top of the wall. I haul on the ropes, Amy helping me hand over hand until I can snatch the petrified wood of the ladder. My muscles protest loudly as I lift it higher, tilting one side up into Amy's waiting arm.

Hand after hand we bring the ladder up to meet us, parallel to the top of the wall. Then Fern counts us down and we launch it over our heads. We repeat the strange dance on the other side, releasing the ladder hand over hand to the ground outside the wall.

I gaze with triumph at the path straight down to escape. But a beam of torchlight intersects our ladder and I hiss. A Huntsman runs through the gardens towards us, his bulk crunching the gravel beneath his feet. My heart sinks as I take in the torch beams clattering through the streets behind him. It might take a few minutes before we are surrounded by more Huntsmen, but that's how long it will take us climb down.

"Go Nada," hisses Amy, "You get down there fast, you take that bastard out and if they're closing in too fast you run like Boreas."

That last word hits my chest like a slug full of lead, our code-word drenching me in gravity.

If someone's lost, leave them. If you get the chance, run. That's what Boreas means.

I don't want to accept it but that promise means something. It doesn't matter who gives the order or that the plan has gone to shit. All that matters is who can make it, and who you've got to leave behind.

It's a wicked rule for an unfair world. In another plan it might be Amy or Josie or Fern but tonight its me. I'm closest to the ladder, the biggest fighter and have the best chance right now. The slimmest chance.

So I start down the sketchy wood, forgetting for a moment the height and the danger, just appreciating the responsibility thrust upon me.