John Gilstrap - Threat warning

As he lay on his back on this elevated bed of nails, staring at the sky, he paused to collect himself. The dark, negative part of him waited for the sound of gunshots to rip the night, but the rest of him pushed those thoughts away. What was going to happen was going to happen. All he could do was his best; and if his best wasn’t good enough, he’d never know it because he’d be dead.

It was time to finish the job.

He rolled to his right, this time clutching his crotch as his belt buckle and parts south passed again through the danger zone. Still in the Y, he was able to get his feet under him enough to duck into a low crouch. He wasn’t good with distances, but to his eye, he was ten or twelve feet off the ground-too far just to launch himself into the night.

He turned his hands so they were fingers down, thumbs in, and he carefully nestled his palms into another dead space between the spikes. From there, he pressed his belly against the wire and doubled over, allowing the momentum of his head and upper body to propel him into a somersault that left him dangling by his hands, his shoes maybe five feet off the ground. From there, he let go and dropped to freedom on the far side. He tried to remain limp as he hit the ground, allowing his knees to fold at the impact, and he forced a shoulder roll that left him on his stomach, flat against the ground.

Jesus, he’d made a lot of noise.

Without even thinking, he scrambled for traction with his hands and feet and he darted for the cover of the bushes on his side of the fence. He was still half a stride away when someone yelled, “Who’s there?” The voice came from the direction of Brother Samuel, but Ryan couldn’t tell for sure that it was his voice.

Powerful flashlights clicked on, and he heard the sound of running feet as the lights bounced in the air and converged at roughly the spot where Ryan had climbed the fence.

He pressed himself flat against the ground, and tried to control his breath, conscious of the telltale cloud he made with every exhalation. His heart pounded hard enough behind his breastbone to actually hurt.

“What’s wrong?” Brother James yelled. Ryan recognized that voice.

“Didn’t you hear it?”

“Hear what?”

“The fence moved.”

“It moved? How would it do that?”

“I mean it moved.” The night filled with the sound of rattling chain link. “Like that.”

The darkness around him lightened as flashlight beams scoured the ground.

“I didn’t hear a thing,” Brother James said. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure I heard something.”

“Did you see anything?”

“ No.”

The flashlight beams scoured the ground some more. “I don’t see anything out there, either, do you?”

Brother Samuel didn’t answer as the lights played on and on.

Ryan didn’t know how much longer he could control his breathing. He lungs were screaming. He opened his eyes long enough to see that the lights were near him but not on him, and dared to cover his mouth with his hand and exhale, oh so slowly.

“There’s nothing there, Brother Samuel. Maybe it was a deer.”

“Maybe we should check with Brother Stephen and have him look in on the prisoners.”

Ryan’s heart nearly stopped.

“Right,” Brother James mocked. “They overpowered him though a locked door.”

“I’m just saying that I heard something.”

“And I’m just saying that there’s nothing out there.”

A light swung away from Ryan’s woods, and played into the woods on the other side-the area he’d just left.

“What’s wrong with you?” Brother James said.

“Maybe it was someone climbing in. We’re at war now, after all.”

“And who would do that?”

“The cops? The FBI? The army? How would I know? But if they found out-”

“Nobody’s finding out,” Brother James said. Ryan could hear the frustration in his voice. “This is just more of that same problem as before. You have no faith.”

“Not true.”

“It is true. I’m not going to report you-at least not yet-but you’re getting paranoid, and the paranoia is making you question all the unquestionables.”

“I am not! Maybe I’m a little jumpy-”

“You’re a lot jumpy,” Brother James accused. “Do you or don’t you have faith in Brother Michael and his plan?”

“Of course I do. But-”

“No, stop. No buts. If you have faith, there’s no room for buts.”

The lights returned to Ryan’s side of the fence. “I know what I heard,” Brother Samuel said.

“I’m not saying you didn’t hear anything. Just that you didn’t hear an invader. Or an escapee. You heard a deer. Or the wind.” One of the lights went out. “Now, turn that thing off before your night vision is ruined for hours.”

The light stayed right where it was. Ryan wondered if Brother Samuel was just making a point by defying the order to turn it off. Finally, darkness returned. The boys-Ryan had come to think of them as teenagers, though he didn’t know why-said some parting words, and then the night became quiet again.

Ryan lay frozen on the ground-in every sense of the word. Were they really gone, or were they sandbagging, pretending to be gone, and just waiting for him to show himself by moving? If he were them-particularly if he were Brother Samuel, who not only felt sure that he’d heard something, but had something to prove to Brother James-he’d stand there and set a trap for a while. He’d read somewhere, or maybe seen on television, that that was how snipers and countersnipers used to wait each other out during World War I and World War II. The one who lost patience first died.

With his hand cupped to his nose and mouth to disperse the clouds of breath, he forced himself to lie completely still, hoping that the hammering of his heart wasn’t audible ten or fifteen yards away.

But how long was long enough? He decided to count to five hundred, metering the rhythm in his head as one one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand, and on to the end. That would keep him from going too fast.

As he got to a hundred twenty-three one-thousand, he heard Brother James say, “So, can we just say that I was right?”

The sound of his voice made Ryan gasp and his skin nearly stripped itself from his skeleton. Jesus, they had been waiting.

“I guess,” Brother Samuel said. “I was just so sure.”

“Happens sometimes. In ninety minutes, we get relieved, and you can get some sleep.”

“Right,” Brother Samuel said. “Sorry for the alarm.”

This time, Ryan actually heard the footsteps as they walked away. He sent up another prayer of thanks that God had made him so paranoid.

When he could no longer hear the footsteps of the guards, he did a push-up on his frozen hands and brought himself to his knees, his back bent low. They were gone.

But they were also nervous. Brother Samuel in particular would be on a hair trigger, waiting to detect things in the night and shoot them. And Ryan was upwind now, so he needed to be that much more careful about making noise.

He needed to get the hell out of here. Distance was his only weapon.

As Ryan stood and turned his back to the compound, the starlight revealed a lighter strip along the black ground that he presumed to be the extension of the road that he’d been following all along-the road that he hoped was the same one that had brought them here.

It was time to run. It was, after all, the only thing in school that he was any good at. He needed to find the houses he saw on the way in that had electricity burning in the windows. Where there was electricity, there had to be a phone, right? And where there was a phone, help was only a police-car ride away.

Ryan took off at a jog, a thousand-meter pace, as if he were back on the track team-fast enough to outrun just about anyone if they were going for the distance, but about half the speed of the sprint he was capable of for a short spurt. The cold air filled his lungs and dried him out, making him want to cough, but he knew better than that. No sudden noises.