The Open Road

Chapter 10

Bob

Flashback

I pretended to have a shut-eye as the guards made their last rounds before swapping their shifts. This was it; this was the night I was going to have a taste of freedom. I could almost feel the sun rays tingling my skin. A picture of a smiling Sue sprinting towards me flashed in my mind. That was enough motivation to set my ploy in motion. After the usual guard waved his torch around to view our cells and scurried away, I fluttered my eyes open, ready for action. It had taken a year of careful and delicate orchestrating, attempts and failures, to get me to this exact point. I wasn't going to back out now. I shook Jere awake; he had slept like an overfed hog even after specifically instructing him to feign being asleep.

"Wake up!"

This command came out in a loud whisper.  Instinctively, I rotated my head to see whether my slip-up had garnered unwanted attention. Jere made groggy noises as if he was waking up, only for him to turn on his side. A few seconds later, he resumed his snoring. I couldn't help the chuckle that escaped my throat. The man I was waking up happened to be the most dangerous and widely connected thug in prison. If it weren't for him, my chances of actually pulling this off would have been slim close to null. I shoved him again, suddenly growing impatient. He woke up with a start holding me by my throat, his manic eyes venomous, ready to kill. As I said, he was dangerous. His sharp reflexes and taut build demanded that respect, even awe. Frankly, Jere was the most intimidating man I had ever come across.

"Relax, man, it’s just me."

I calmly said these words though my limbs were beginning to go limp from the tight grip on my throat. I choked on my saliva upon release while straining to regain my composure.

"You could not just call out my name like a noemal person?."

When Jere attempted to apologize, you accepted it without any compromise; this was the closest I would ever come to getting an apology from Jere. He rose from his thin mattress and joined me at the edge of my bed. We shared a brief look, then slowly lifted it revealing a large tunnel, my road to freedom. After months of research, otherwise known as buying information in prison, I discovered that my cell was on top of the sewers. Wherever there was a sewage tunnel, there was a sewage exit; all we had to do was dig a tunnel, and viola! It hadn't been easy digging that tunnel, and it was a miracle that it got completed at all. Jere and I worked on it every night when the guards swapped because the next shift was always delayed by thirty-five minutes. That observation came in handy, and as for today, their slackness was going to get me my life back.

"The moment you reach the other side, go see Tom Wafula; he is my dealer. He will give you all you need to lay low and help prove your innocence. But he will not do that until you deliver my package."

Jere always wore a stern face, impassive, emotionless. But as he parted with that "package", a whirlwind of emotions rampaged his eyes. I nodded in understanding while giving him my hand to shake. He momentarily stared at it before pulling me into a man-to-man hug. Jere was the brother I never had, or rather I wished I had. The minute I stepped into that tunnel, Jere lifted my bed, covering the escapade, leaving me in total darkness. I had done a test run before, so my eyes adjusted quickly to the darkness. It took less than twenty minutes to clear off prison grounds, and when I reached a ladder at the end of the tunnel, I hobbled up those steps knocking the lid off with every ounce of my strength.

I was a free man.