Ascension Day Read Free Page B

if his movement was making any noise or not. Unconsciously, he’d been holding his breath, and as he came to the final yard of the corridor stretch, he started to ease it loose – then suddenly sucked it sharply back up again. And froze.
    Footsteps. Boots on steel . Shuffling to a stop almost directly beneath him. Larry wondered if they’d heard him, were at that moment looking up, appraising. Trying to pinpoint exactly where they’d heard sounds coming from.
    His chest ached with the effort of keeping his breath held, his heartbeat rapid as if it wanted to burst through. So loud that surely that alone could be heard by the guard below. Larry stayed deathly still.
    Another set of footsteps, the muffled sound of voices. Oh Jesus. All he needed. They could be there half the night talking about the latest Saints game and sorting out the world.
    Tally wouldn’t waste time; Roddy’s throat would be slit within the first minutes of reaching the boiler room.
    The seconds dragged in time with the heavy pounding of his heart. Indecision now freezing his mind along with his body, afraid to move, breath held, for what seemed a lifetime – though was probably no more than ninety seconds – before the footsteps finally started moving away, the voices receding.
    Larry scrambled hurriedly on, letting out his breath in a burst as soon as he was a couple of yards into the turn behind the cells and felt he was out of earshot of the guards.
    Just what was awaiting him in the boiler room dawned on him. Tally wouldn’t do something like this without back-up, never did. Two men, maybe three. Then the couple of guards who’d helped get Roddy out of his cell.
    Larry had been good in his day, one of the best, but even then taking out four or five at once would have been a tall order. And unlike Tally and his crew, he didn’t spend every day in the muscle yard training up. The hopelessness of what he was attempting weighed heavy on him, telling in the ache in his limbs as he dragged himself through the narrow shaft.
    As he came to the junction with the main shaft rising up from the boiler room, the warm air wafting through intensified. He scrambled forward faster, more desperately, not sure whether it was to get away from the intense heat or to ensure that he got to Roddy in time. He’d given up caring whether he was making a noise or not, the thud of his elbows and knees against steel a repetitive, penetrating echo.
    He stopped abruptly as he came to the grill by the upper part of the boiler room, hurriedly unscrewed its bolts, and yanked it aside. Still on his hands and knees he kept still, his breathing shallow, taking stock. No sounds or voices that he could pick out.
    Though something else reached him in that moment that made him have doubts again: the soft lap and sway of the Achalaya river echoing up through the waste pipe a yard to his side, beckoning, taunting. Elusive freedom . Yet suddenly so tangible, real, that he felt he could reach out and touch it.
    Probably his last and only chance. He’d long ago decided that he couldn’t face another day inside, so a commute to life imprisonment held nothing for him. And his chances of a complete reprieve were practically nil – so his only real hope of freedom lay in what he could hear now with the gentle lapping of the Achalaya river. Make the break and find out what was happening with Joshua, hold him in your arms again… stay back and save Roddy… make the break…
    Or head back to his cell and they all make the break together in three weeks when the tide would be right, as they’d all originally planned. He wasn’t going to be able to save Roddy in any case. One against four or five, he didn’t stand a chance. Maybe he should…
    His thoughts were broken. He could hear voices from the far end of the boiler room.

 
     
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    Lawrence Tyler Durrant, born May 8th 1962 in Knoxville, Tennessee, the second child (there’s an elder sister) of Nathan Joseph and Myrie-Jane