Escaping a Nightmare

Anna woke to a loud thunk. She didn’t open her eyes right away – she had been in this camp for months now and was quickly growing accustomed to the multitude of sounds reverberating through it. 

“Alright, time to get moving Delta!” a voice screeched from the walls.  

Delta. That was her barrack. No one bothered to explain how the camp was organized when she first arrived, but it didn’t take long to catch on that she lived in Delta. The camp consisted of a half dozen scattered buildings, each building with three rooms – the sleeping quarters, a large room jam packed with thirty or forty cots; the mess hall, where no food was served, just a glass of some sort of solution to give the females just enough sustenance to get through the physical labor they toiled with each day; and the guard office, which each girl only went in twice: the day they arrived and the day they are taken. Anna had no idea what happened to the girls that were taken, and she had no intention of finding out what her fate might be when it was her turn.

She kept her eyes closed while she listened to the soft rustling of the others as they tore themselves from the too-thin cots, a creak with each movement. She took a breath, inhaling the stale, muggy scent of the dozens of bodies that shared this room and let her mind perform her daily assessment that had become her morning ritual. She scanned down her body starting from the crown of her head and ending at the tips of her toes. A couple more bruises on her arms and legs than she had yesterday – nothing she couldn’t bear. Her whole body was stiff and sore, the feeding solution she received three times a day was not enough to help build muscles from the months of daily labor, and did little to alleviate the ache of hunger that she constantly felt. What she wouldn’t do to have some solid food – a cheeseburger or even just a single potato chip. The hunger was enough to drive a person mad; that’s what she feared awaited her future – a day where it was too much to bear and the tenuous thread that she held onto her sanity with would snap. She tried not to think about it. After all, that’s what happened to the others – their sanity breaking away, leaving them a shell of a person with only their own muttering to soothe them – they would eventually stop rising from their cots to drink their solution. When the day came that they lost the will to even consume the miniscule amount of nourishment that was available, they were taken.

As she heard more of her barrack mates moving about, Anna peeked through her eyelids at the crowded bunks, taking stock and spying Merini sitting at the edge of her cot. Merini looked at her and quickly diverted her gaze, eyes staring pointedly at the woman still asleep in the cot in front of her – a newcomer. Then today was the day. About time, Anna thought to herself.

As Anna gently slid herself off of her cot, and got into line with the other females, she did nothing to hide her gaze at this new woman, nobody did. The woman was obviously still under the influence of whatever drugs were coursing through her veins to keep her unconscious – she was lying face down, red hair draped over the small amount of her face that peeked out, wearing the same gray tunic and trouser set that each of the women showed up in. 

A sudden, loud intake of breath. The newcomer was waking up.

All of the other occupants of Delta suddenly shifted their gazes ahead, not wanting to be caught gawking at the new woman if she awoke while everyone was still in the room. Anna’s eyes were on Merini as the group of women shuffled out into the mess hall, leaving the sleeping woman to wake to an empty dormitory. 

As the door was closing behind the last woman in line, Anna heard the groan of the springs in the newcomer’s cot, as if she were finally waking and sitting up. 

“WHAT THE FU…” the curse not quite finishing as the woman took in her surroundings, and the door clicked shut. 

The routine of each newcomer was roughly the same – a short breakdown upon finding yourself in alien surroundings with no answers to be had, then quiet contemplation thinking that this is a nightmare or a joke being played, and just when the newcomer was starting to work up the courage to start yelling or crying again, the door on the other side of the dormitory would open up, beckoning the woman to come into the guard office. There would be no other person in the guard office – there never was. But the disembodied voice that erupted out of the walls explained that your life before was gone now, that the people you loved were gone, that each person in the camp had been saved and spared from the same fate of those loved ones and you were now expected to work this land until you no longer were able, and if you chose not to work, you would be punished. All it took was one or two punishments, and most of the females in the camp found themselves compliant. That initial punishment always came days after arrival though – never on the first day. She assumed that the guards were giving the women a chance to become accustomed to their new… circumstances.

Anna could never figure out how they did it, it was like magic. There were no guards that she had ever seen, but she knew they were watching out of the cameras positioned all throughout the camp. If one of them stepped out of line or did something to offend the people watching on the other side of those cameras, they were punished. The punishment was unlike any pain she had ever felt. One moment, she would be in perfect health, no pain, and then suddenly, as if there were a spell cast upon her, it was as though every cell in her body were individually set on fire, ripped to shreds and then those shreds were dragged over a road of rocks and swords. She shivered in fear thinking about it. Anna had been put through that torturous punishment four times in her tenure here – all in her first weeks when she was testing the boundaries of the invisible guards. Never again, not after tonight. 

Soon, the newcomer would be released from the guard office to be accustomed to her new life. She’d be angry and act out, but her poor behavior and refusal to work would go unpunished on that first day 

Merini had a plan. If she were wrong, it would be deadly, but they couldn’t keep waiting to be taken. 

Anna stood in line with her fellow Delta inhabitants, waiting for her turn to grab a cup of her morning solution to sustain her body until midday. Despite the hunger, and the small bit of reprieve that solution would give her, she abstained from drinking it this morning, opting to put it to her mouth and let little by little drizzle down to the dirt floor of the mess hall. She looked around and spotted a handful of other women doing the same.

Merini had a theory that she shared with Anna and a small number of the others – that their punishments weren’t some form of magic, but that the secret somehow lay in their feeding solutions. That something in the solution helped the unseen guards inflict pain on the women, but since it was their only form of nutrition, they couldn’t just stop taking it until they knew it was time to escape, and with a newcomer to be used as a distraction, today was that day. 

Anna kept her eyes down staring at her ragged bare feet, determined not to show the spark of hope in her eyes – not today. She only dared to lift her eyes when she heard a click, as the door on the far side of the room leading to the dormitory unlocked and swung open revealing the red-haired newcomer. Her arms were open wide, muscles taut, steeling herself against the door frame, her brown eyes were distant and filled with fire, somehow both taking in her surroundings but not focusing on anything in particular. 

Soon, the doors to go outside would open, signaling the women to start their work. Anna had never been able to figure out what they were doing out in this abandoned wasteland. The landscape was vast and barren, with only dirt and rocks as far as the eye could see. The work that the guards had them do consisted of digging trenches, moving rocks, and clearing specific area of all debris. None of the women had a solid idea of what the purpose of the work was, and after the first couple of months, Anna stopped caring. The only thing keeping them in this destitute camp was an eight-foot-tall fence, pulsing with electricity. She wondered how Merini was planning on getting past that fence – she had told Anna to just be ready and follow her lead. So that is exactly what Anna planned to do.

Anna was lost in her thoughts when the front door swung open. The new woman looked at all of the frozen faces in the room and then glance toward the open door. She ran towards it. Merini sprinted out after her, and as Anna started toward the door, she spied several other of the women sprinting for the door.

Outside, the sun was rising. Their work boots and shovels in the same piles they were left in outside the door each night. Anna spotted Merini – a shovel in one hand and her boots in another hand, sprinting toward the fleeing newcomer. Some of the other women noticed this too, and grabbed a shovel and boots and started sprinting full speed toward the two women, so that’s what Anna did too. 

Some of the women from other barracks joined in the fray, and within just a few minutes, the whole camp was in chaos. There were screams coming from some of the women who were under the influence of the punishment, yells of hope and excitement at the prospect of overthrowing the camp, and several bangs and pops of women trying to create as much destruction as they could. 

Anna caught up to Merini, standing at the fence with four other women that Anna couldn’t place. There was a sudden flash of light in front of Merini and a loud POP that was so startling that it almost caused Anna to trip over herself as she ran towards the women. Once she picked up her pace and made it to the fence with the others, she said “what the hell was that?” Merini didn’t look at her as she gestured to the shovel in her hand “Seeing how strong the voltage is… It doesn’t look great.” 

Merini looked around at the women in her group, it had grown to about thirty at this point, then bent down, picked up her boots, and started shoving her hands into the openings. The group quickly started doing the same. Merini started for the fence, boot covered hands outstretched and tensed as the rubber soles touched the fence, but recovered quickly as she yelled “WE PUSH!” Within seconds, all had their boots on their hands and were pushing the fence. 

When Anna touched the fence with her booted hands, she felt a slight shock, causing her hands to numb slightly as she jump back –it was nothing she couldn’t handle. They pushed as a group. They pushed as hard as they could. The fence was loosening from the ground, and they started pushing in tandem. After an eternity, the fence came down. As it fell, Merini stepped back, yanking the boots off of her hands, throwing them to the ground and shoved her feet into the now empty boots. Anna followed her lead and did the same. She was finishing lacing up her left boot when Merini went running over the downed fence, women were scattering in every direction, but Anna knew that Merini was the one with the plan, and silently hope she knew what she was doing. 

There were sirens sounding from inside the camp, Anna realized they must have been going off since they started pushing on the fence. She sprinted alongside Merini and two of the other women. She rode the adrenaline high for what seemed like hours, until Merini slowed them to a walk. She didn’t know how long they had been running, but Anna realized that she no longer heard the sirens from the camp. She turned around to look behind her and only saw flat earth, the camp nowhere in sight. 

They walked and ran interchangeably for hours, until the sun was setting and the stars started to come out, they didn’t see another person – no other women who had fled the camp, and thankfully no guards. When Anna was almost depleted of energy, she saw something in the distance – it looked to be a village of fifty small shack buildings. 

They were still 100 feet outside of the small village when they heard a soft creak, followed by a muffled thump. With only the moon to see by, Anna spied a door that had opened in the ground mere feet from where they walked. Merini waved her hand to the other women, indicating that they follow her as she put one foot inside the hole in the ground, finding a rung and climbing down what appeared to be a ladder leading into a tunnel. Once all four women were in the tunnel, Merini climbed back up the ladder to close the door entombing them in darkness. Anna heard Merini climb back down and step on the soft earth of the tunnel. And then she heard a voice that didn’t belong to any of the women present, it whispered “You’re from the camp, right?” The silence was a good enough confirmation for the stranger “I’m here to help, I have friends that are here to help – we got you all the information needed to get out. Now just stay quiet and follow this tunnel, it will lead us somewhere safe.” Anna heard one pair of footsteps retreat into the darkness, and then heard Merini say “Come on.” And they followed the stranger through the pitch-black tunnel.

Fatigue threatened at every muscle in Anna’s body, she was too tired to be worried. She didn’t want to think about what awaited them at the end of this tunnel, so she kept her mind occupied by counting their steps as her hands grazed the dirt wall of the tunnel. Two-hundred and seven. That’s how many steps they took before they heard the strange voice say in a voice barely louder than a whisper “Stop. I’m going to go up and check, just wait here for me to give you the all clear.” A light tap on wood, and two heartbeats later, a creak similar to the one they heard just a few minutes ago, and light quickly illuminated the tunnel they were in, only briefly enough for Anna to see a figure climbing out of the door that had just opened. What seemed like hours later, that creak sounded again, and the tunnel filled with light, allowing them to see the rope ladder that shot straight up at least ten feet into an opening to a bright room. The stranger’s voice coming down from the room “It’s clear, you may climb up now.”

Merini went up first, then the other two women, and Anna climbed the ladder last. She emerged into a dingy run-down room with a dozen sleeping bags, a table, and a few chairs. She didn’t turn around as the stranger pulled the ladder out of the tunnel, closed the trap door, and bolted it shut. She took a few steps before collapsing into one of the chairs at the table before looking at their savior – an older woman, she appeared to be in her early seventies, with dark gray hair and a kind disposition, she was talking quietly with a second stranger that Anna hadn’t noticed about entering the room – the red-haired newcomer that arrived at the camp today. Before she could form a coherent thought about this situation, the older woman broke away from her conversation, and came over to the four exhausted women and said “I know you all probably have a lot of questions, and I hope to answer all of them in due time. For now, please know that you are safe here. You’ve had a long journey and you need to eat some real food and rest – Alaina will get you some food.” Anna’s mind was simply too tired to realize that Alaina must be the newcomer – the woman with rage and fire in her eyes that went running off to unknowingly be their distraction. 

Anna must have dozed off in that chair, because suddenly she had jolted awake to the thuds of several plates of food being set down on the table she sat at. The other women stood from where they sat collapsed to come join Anna at the table. Alaina was there too – the other woman was no longer in the room though.

“I’ll do my best to explain what I can, but first we need to eat.” Alaina said to the women, as she took a bite of the bland chicken and rice that was in front of them. 

For the first time in months, Anna let herself feel safe as she sat, surrounded by these women she barely knew, eating a solid meal for the first time in months.