Adrian McKinty - Dead I Well May Be

I gritted my teeth and, drawing some reserve of anger, I attempted to pull myself and Scotchy up through the hole. It was almost impossible, but I managed it. When my thighs were through, I lay almost flat on the roof and crawled with straight legs towards the edge of the cell block, Scotchy hanging on the whole time. It was difficult, but gradually I was making it, using the roof as a lever and going slow. I felt Scotchy’s hands let go of my ankles and grab the sides of the hole. I turned round and grabbed him by the remains of his shirt and tugged the bastard, and he was up.

We were through the roof and hadn’t been seen. We crouched there for a moment, elated. Breathing hard. The searchlight beams were tracking lazily and indiscriminately on the far side of the cell block. Only two out of the three were working and they weren’t particularly powerful.

That was easy, Scotchy said.

I grinned at him. Aye, easy for you, I whispered.

We looked down the other side of the cell block. We weren’t going the way of the courtyard and the front gate; it was the fence or nothing.

The only thing for it now would be to get down. I could see that the drop was about fifteen feet. Higher than the ceiling, much higher. The concrete floor of our cell was clearly raised above the ground, probably because of thick foundations. It was a good job we hadn’t decided to tunnel.

We had to jump, but if we went for it, there was no way we could climb back into the prison again. If we jumped, we were committed. We couldn’t scout the fence and go another night. It was tonight or nothing.

Scotchy, look, I whispered, it’s a big drop. If we go now we’re not getting back in.

Why the fuck would we want back in?

I don’t know.

Just go, you big girl.

I turned and crawled away from the hole towards the edge of the cell block. I looked over and then turned round and began lowering myself down as far as I could by the arms. When I was holding on only by my fingers, I tensed and dropped. I hit the ground and rolled to the side and I was ok. I’d stuffed straw down my trousers and T-shirt to help with the razor wire, and as I rolled, it helped cushion the blow a little. Nothing was broken, and I got up. I started walking backwards to give Scotchy space to jump. After about three yards I discovered perhaps why the other prisoners hadn’t availed themselves of our brilliant method of escape. My feet went suddenly into sucking marsh up to my knees. I looked and it all became obvious: nearly the entire prison was surrounded by a swamp. In an instant, I could see the whole thing clearly. The prison was built on a peninsula of hard rock, with layers of concrete on top. The area at the gatehouse and the road were also on good land, but within ten feet of the east, west, and north walls it became a bog. It could be that they designed it that way as an extra precaution against escape, but I doubted it. The whole countryside seemed swampy, and more than likely they’d built the prison on the best bit of hard ground they could find and the swamp was an added bonus. Once you put a wire up, it would be impossible to get through. The only way in and out of the prison was along the road and through the gate. The only bit of solid ground was at the gate and, of course, the gate was crawling with guards. For a third-world country it was all pretty ingenious, and I would have been impressed had I not been so completely gutted as I stood there, horrified and amazed.

As far as I could tell, the only way out would be to make your way round to the gatehouse and climb back over into the courtyard and then try and get out over the front gate where there was solid ground. I couldn’t believe Fergal, in all his long observations, hadn’t realized this was a bog, an impassable, quicksandy fucking swamp. He thought it was fucking grass. The idiot. The bloody stupid no-brained bastard.

Scotchy landed awkwardly in front of me. He grunted and came to his feet.

Are you ok? I asked.

Aye.

Scotchy, bad news, I said.

What?

It’s a bog. All this over here isn’t grass, it’s bog all the way to the wire. The fence is on pile drives. None of it’s solid ground at all.

I’d tried to keep the panic out of my voice. Scotchy, similarly, was not to be perturbed.

We’ll just wade through it, Brucey boy, he said, breezily.

It’ll take a long time, if we don’t get stuck or drowned. They’ll pick us up on the lights, I said. Can’t do it.

What fucking choice do we have? We can’t go back, can we? Scotchy said, furiously.

I shook my head, but of course he was right. We couldn’t get back in. If we walked round to the gatehouse they’d see us for sure. We had no other options. Scotchy went first. The swamp was thick with mossy grass on top, but your weight immediately broke the surface. Scotchy sank to his waist and for a second I thought he was going to be sucked all the way down. He was a country boy, though, and maybe he knew a bit about bog walking. At first, however, it seemed not. His arms flailed, and he fell back and sank up to his elbows. Then he flung himself forward and he began to float a little, but as soon as he tried to move, he went under. Farther out from the prison, it seemed that it became more watery and less boggy. Scotchy scrambled onto the floating grasses and tried to swim, but still it was too thick. His head kept ducking under, and now he looked as if he was going to drown.

The whole thing was a fiasco, but I went in after him anyway. I waded up to my waist to see how deep it got and when it was neck height I tried to swim too. It wasn’t quite quicksand, but it was still pretty thick stuff. Swimming was utterly impossible: your legs were so buoyant, your body buckled up and your head kept sinking. Your arms were too weak and coated to help you anyway. Everywhere in suspension were grains of sand and silt and thick muck. The only thing like it I’d experienced was when I’d swum in a quarry sinkhole as a kid, garbage and cars and mud and reeds making it all a potential death trap. But this was worse. Even dog-paddling was impossible; you kept going underneath the surface and bobbing up under the grass, swallowing the thick, grainy water. I tried the crawl and breaststroke, but always the same problem, I would sink rather than swim, my legs coming out of the water and my shoulders and head going underneath it. Again and again, water went into my lungs, and I scrambled for the surface. Finally, I turned round and started clawing my way back to the cell block. There was no way I could get through twenty or thirty yards of this to the wire. I turned slowly and pointed myself towards the prison, but Scotchy saw and stopped me and whispered loudly:

On your back, on your back, Bruce, on your back.

I looked over to discover that he was doing a sort of backstroke through the swamp and he was actually making good progress. His head and arms were cutting the mossy surface like an icebreaker and his legs were kicking and giving him momentum. He was evenly buoyant and he wasn’t sinking. I couldn’t quite figure out why this worked and not the breaststroke or the crawl, but it did. I rolled over on my back and began gently moving backwards, following in the trail that Good King Scotchylass was making. The surface was thick and closed in behind us when we got through it, but we were getting through it, slowly, but we were doing it. The spotlight beam was tracking along the swamp, but this time it was going so sluggishly, it was easy for us to duck under when it was a few feet away and then come up again. It probably wouldn’t be back now for a while.

We swam and pushed our way through and then waded a little backwards until we got to the fence. Thank God, Scotchy had had the patience to get our wrists unchained too; we would have failed otherwise.