To Steal a March (Surviving the Fall 11)

“What do I do then?”

“You wait for the opportune moment and seize it. Seize it and don’t let go of it.”

Jane took in a long, slow breath and grimaced. “This smell is awful.”

“No kidding.” Another long silence. “You ready?”

“Nope.”

Chapter 11

Ellisville, VA

“…damned briars.”

“Language, Jason!”

“Tina, the boy’s watched people die. Pretty sure he’s not going to be harmed by—”

“Guys! Seriously! Do you want them to hear us?”

Tina and Jason stared at Mark, who was looking at them both with wide eyes from which metaphorical daggers were being fired. Tina elbowed Jason in the side and continued walking forward through the woods, clinging to trees and branches as she went along to keep her footing on the steep slope.

With everything on the opposite side of the road being open land with nary a single object to mask their approach, Mark, Jason and Tina had been forced up the slope on the left side of the road which was thickly wooded and overgrown despite losing its foliage to the winter season. The trees and brush were thick and never traversed, which made the walking slow, painful and cumbersome. The only good part about their path was that they could walk along without fear of being spotted by anyone.

As they came to a small clearing in the woods, Tina stopped to catch her breath and waited for Mark and Jason to catch up. They both came stumbling out through the trees, both of them tripping and almost falling over the same exposed root that Tina had deftly avoided. She ignored their mumbled groans and pointed down the hill, across and up the road just a little bit farther.

“We’re nearly across from the community center. And, as a bonus, the hill’s starting to flatten out. Should make for a lot easier and less noisy approach.”

Mark bobbed his head in all directions, trying to find an unobstructed view through the dense branches and brown vines. “How are we supposed to see them from here? It’s too thick.”

Jason slowly dropped down to one knee, then sank back into a sitting position. “We’ll have to move forward, closer to the edge of the trees.”

“Then what?” Tina leaned against a nearby trunk for support. “It’s wide open all around the building, including the front.”

“We’ll have to wait for an opportunity to present itself.” Jason took another sip of water and began checking the straps on his pack.

“Or we can just spread out and open fire on them.” Mark looked through the trees at the obscured building. “Surely with the element of surprise we could—”

“No. We’re three poorly-armed people against a large group that’s heavily armed.” Jason shook his head. “No, we have to be smart about this. We do have to be ready to jump on any opportunity that comes along, though.”

“Agreed.” Tina nodded and picked up her backpack. “Looks like the ditch is deep enough we can hide in it without being seen.”

“Once we’re down there,” Jason slowly pushed himself back into a standing position, “we need to stay still and quiet. Whispers only, no moving around unless absolutely necessary. If they spot us, then we’ll open fire and move in opposite directions down the ditch to maximize the effectiveness of our firepower by spreading out.”

“Well?” Mark shuffled his feet anxiously. “Let’s go, already!”

***

Set back a few hundred feet from the road, the old community center and baseball fields were far enough away that no one inside the compound noticed three figures sliding through the trees and rolling into the ditch. The guards out in front of the community center were too busy talking with each other to pay attention so they wouldn’t have noticed regardless.

There were a total of three men out in front of the building standing around the cluster of vehicles parked there, with others scattered around the sides and interior of the structure. A generator sitting beneath an awning out behind the center coughed and sputtered as one of the men tried to get it working. In between the building and the baseball fields stood another cluster of men, each paying close attention to the prisoners that were shackled to each other.

Thick chains bound the feet of Dianne, Sarah, Jacob and Josie, keeping them together so that they couldn’t easily run off. A padlock and a long chain connected their shackles to those of the three other people who had been taken prisoner. Dianne’s group had only been at the center for a few hours, but it was already clear that things were being handled much differently than they had at the gas station.

In addition to being bound with shackles and tied together, no one was allowed to speak to each other. Dianne had to resort to hand gestures with Jacob and Josie, trying her best to shield them from the wrath of the guards by giving them stern looks and shaking her head when they started to speak. The labor was almost more intense than she had seen when overlooking the gas station compound. The group of three prisoners—whose names Dianne didn’t even know—had been tasked with digging soil from one of the fields and transporting it over to Dianne’s group by wheelbarrow.

Dianne, Sarah, Jacob and Josie were given twine and large burlap sacks which they filled with soil, tied off and stacked along marked sect