Sam and Colby: The Penitentiary

67

I stashed enough food and water over the course of lunch and dinner preparations for us to be okay. Not as much as I would have liked, but we'd be able to stay alive, awake, and alert enough to pull this off.

There was also a book in the shit library about the history of Petros. The map inside of it was faded and tinged brown with what I assumed to be a coffee stain, but it was essentially just a straight shot East. It wouldn't be hard to stay on track.

I read as fast as I could to Theo, starting as soon as we were both in the room every day and not stopping until everyone had left and Porter told us to finish up. After free time on the tenth, I'd managed to finish the book. I didn't have time to explain all of the pictures and diagrams, but I hoped that what I'd read had been explanation enough.

Escape day came again. We made our way out to the yard, PVC pipes stashed in our uniforms again, and made our way over to the area in between the 7th and 8th guard towers. We hadn't bribed the guard with an extra paper this time and there were different people staging the fight for this escape, but that was all we'd managed to be able to do in the four short days we'd had to plan this whole thing.

We'd all argued over the order of us leaving again, but decided that I'd leave first, then Ray, Corey, Sam, Jake, and Colby.

I took a deep breath and we all waited anxiously by the gate until Ray finally gave the signal to a guy named Slash.

"Let's move," Ray whispered. Slash started shouting on the other side of the yard, then approached someone and started to initiate the fight with some more yelling and shoving.

We all quickly ripped the pipes out of our clothes again and got to building, having to move a little bit faster this time since we were one person short. Jake and Corey hoisted me up onto the third rung and I scrambled over the top coil of razor wire and threw myself down on the other side, managing not to get hurt once again. I ran over behind the eighth tower once we hit the ground and I snatched the bag of food from behind the kitchen before I turned and waited to start our run.

"HEY!" a man screamed. I barreled around the eighth post, slipping out of my hiding spot, to see the guard in the seventh tower shouting. He fumbled with a whistle in his hands and blew it loudly. Immediately the prison alarms started to blare and the lights at the guard towers began to flash.

"Fuck! Go!" Ray growled from his spot on the ground. Jake and Colby were still climbing, not yet on the ground. Jake scrambled up the ladder and went to make the jump, but he got snagged on the razor wire.

"Shit!" yelled Jake.

"We need to go! Now!" Ray screamed. He turned and started running toward the woods, grabbing my hand to pull me with him.

"No! Not without them!" I screamed back, jerking my arm away from his grasp. I ran back over to the other guys. Colby reached up and pulled off Jake's boot, allowing him to finish his hop over the fence.

Other whistles suddenly started to blow and I saw Jinx running toward the fence, his hand diving toward his guard belt. Toward the gun.

"Colby! Let's go!" Sam yelled. Colby scrambled up the ladder and leaped over, landing on the ground with a soft thud before hopping onto his feet.

We started the run once again, except we weren't the only ones running right now. I could already hear guard footsteps behind ours, clouds of shouting behind us as we made our way into the forest.