The Escape by Joanne Roach

The Escape by Joanne Roach

Author:Joanne Roach [Roach, Joanne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-06-03T00:00:00+00:00


CHAPTER FIFTY

A cold sweat covered Jack from head to toe as his eyes shot open and he instinctively reached down the side of the flat as a pancake mattress that passed for his bed nowadays and wrapped his fingers around the small metal pipe he had hidden there. Pricking up his ears and listening intently for any sound that might indicate that he was in danger.

It took no more than a minute or two of staring out into the darkness of his sleeping area to reassure himself that the anxiety that he felt, the sweat dripping down his spine and his pumping heart rate were nothing more than remnants of the dream he had been having just a few minutes ago.

Catching even a few measly hours of sleep in his so-called prison felt nearly impossible to Jack most nights. Between the fighting that often broke out among the rival gangs that seemed to be the most authoritative figures in the camp jostling for control, to the screams piercing the night sky from those who perhaps, like himself, were plagued by constant nightmares, peace and quiet was something that was rarely found.

Four days. How was it possible that he had only been in this hellscape for four days? It felt like a lifetime had already passed in the dank, overcrowded camp. As he had promised, the man that Jack had met shortly after he first arrived had taken him to meet Big Mike, who more than lived up to his name. Towering at least a foot and a half over Jack and half as wide as he was tall, the man was intimidating to say the least.

Jack had been unsure at first if it was wise to engage with such a man. To entangle himself in the system the various gangs in the camp had set up. He would have preferred to have kept himself to himself, laid low and stayed quiet in a corner somewhere until his trial date. However, Big Mike had other ideas.

Despite his size and intimidating appearance, Big Mike had actually turned out to be a fair man. He had offered Jack a bed in one of the rundown buildings that littered the very back of the place that the CEA laughingly called a prison. Sure, the bed turned out to be no more than a thin mattress on a concrete floor, but it was something. Jack had a roof over his head, even a door he could close at night and somewhere that he could keep his belongings. Well, he could have done it if he had any, that is, other than the clothes on his back, the pipe, and a threadbare blanket, Jack had nothing to his name.

There was a charred area on the floor in one corner of his small room where someone had previously lit a fire. Whether to keep warm in the winter months or to cook food, Jack wasn’t sure but he was careful to never step on the blackened wood just in case it was no longer stable.



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