I wanted to get a little sleep that night, before our breakout, but slumber fled from me. I heard Thalia’s even breaths, and marveled at her unmatched feeling of security. I laid on my itchy cot for hours, until around 1:15, when I woke Thalia up. She unlocked and opened the door as quietly as possible.
I followed her to the janitor’s closet; our designated meeting place. At this time of night, the hallways were thinly populated by sleepy guards. We easily went down the halls without disturbance. Indie and Torrin were already there, so we waited for Taylor and Cassidy. Finni didn’t have to be here; she waited at Torrin’s apartment for us.
None of us said much. I think we all were terrified something had gone wrong - I know I was. They arrived shortly after 1:30, to everyone’s relief. “Sorry,” Taylor apologized. “A guard kept lingering in front of our cells for the longest time.”
“It’s okay,” Torrin said. He’d already finished his cleaning, so that no one would suspect him of being involved with us. I still couldn’t take him seriously in his goofy getup. “Everyone ready?”
We all nodded.
“Everyone knows their jobs?”
Everyone affirmed except me: “Jobs? I didn’t know we had jobs during the breakout.”
“No one told you?”
“Nah, Taylor pretty much ignored me. Thalia, did you know?”
“Yeah, I didn’t tell you because I thought you knew.”
“Oh. So, what’s my job?”
“You’re the lookout. Thalia will drive the laundry van, I’ll be sneaking all you guys out in a laundry cart, Indie and Cassidy will take care of any guards along the way, and Taylor will guide everyone.”
“So Taylor has to be the leader, all the time?” I bitterly asked. “She makes the plan, she calls the shots, she leads the rebel organization?”
Taylor snarled at me and fired back several insults. I insulted her similarly. Cassidy stepped between us. “Cool it, you two! We’ve come this far - don’t ruin it all now!”
I refused to look at Taylor, hating that she did the same. Torrin talked a little more, and the five of us climbed into his hamper cart thing. I curled into a ball, with my side to the coarse fabric. Indie pretty much sat on my knees, and Cassidy sat across from us. I felt squished, but I could handle it for ten minutes. Torrin piled a bunch of dirty jumpsuits on top, reminded us not to move or talk, and strenuously pushed us out of the building.
It smelled like sweat, dirt, and bleach in there. I heard Torrin flash his employee ID card at the door guard. “Just helpin’ out the laundry department,” he explained.
Torrin pushed us to the van, said a few indiscernible words to the driver. The driver thanked him and went inside the building to get more laundry, leaving the keys in the ignition. Torrin loaded us in, and Thalia climbed into the front.
We drove off, jubilant inside, quaking in fear of being caught outside. Hopefully, the wall guards thought Torrin had gone back inside, and the real driver had driven off. I dared not peek out the back window, and instead laid still. The van was reminiscent of vans in my dimension. I think the glass and metal were thicker, to withstand animal attacks.
I heard something grind, and the gates started to close with a whine. They knew! The guards inside must have communicated with the outside guards that the laundry man wasn’t in his vehicle! Thalia stepped on the gas, and the four of us in the back slid toward the doors. I glimpsed out the front windshield, the tall chain-link-topped-with-barbed-wire gate inching closed. We sped toward it. If we didn’t make it through, we would crash right into it.
After one final burst of speed, we scraped through. I heard paint peeling and a sizable crunch on the side of the van, then we were out on the street. The thicker outer wall of the van worked to our advantage. Already, I heard sirens blaring from the nearby police station. Thalia put her foot to the floor, and we in the back could feel it. Torrin gave her directions every so often, and we ended up in an alleyway on the opposite side of town from Torrin’s apartment. We heard the police cars screaming down the street, but they were further away now.
A minivan, parked there by Torrin, was our next ride. Taylor drove us, so as not to arouse suspicion, to Torrin’s apartment, where I collapsed on the couch, exhausted. The adrenaline pumping through my body tired me, and my racing heart did nothing to help.
My fear of being followed here dissuaded when I heard the sirens fade away, into a different part of town. I fell asleep before the clock in the hallway rang two o’clock.
The next morning, I woke up later than everyone else. I could hear them whisper, and when they saw me stretch, they stopped. Thalia looked guilty as she glanced at me.
“What is it? Why are you whispering about me?”
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“We weren’t whispering about you,” Taylor said.
“Then why’d you stop talking when I woke up?”
“Sorry, Byrd, but we were talking about you. Some of us, I regret to say, are a little too cowardly to say so.” Thalia said sheepishly. Go Thalia! She has completely changed since I first met her.
“Well, what were you saying?”
“You were so against this plan, and look at where we are now.”
“A cheap apartment that needs vacuuming?” I teased Torrin a little.
“No. We’re safe and sound, and we aren’t in the facility any more. Everyone feels like you wanted to stay there so that you didn’t have to face Zoe again.”
“What?! That’s not true! I wanted to get out of here just as bad as the rest of you. I just knew that Dean Massingale thought we would use the laundry, and we would have a lesser chance of escaping. I’m glad we didn’t have to go in the garbage truck, but I just wanted to be sure.”
Taylor argued with me, pointing out scenes where I did, in fact, show fear of facing her again. I argued back: “I spent a week in solitary confinement! Sure, I don’t really want to have a showdown with Zoe, I just want her in her dimension, but I’ll do whatever it takes to get her there. I’m not scared of her.” Seeing that no one agreed, and that I was starting to sound a little whiny, I changed the subject. “What’s our plan to get to the portal in your house, Taylor?”
“We haven’t come up with one. We might need your help for it.” I could tell she loathed to ask for my help.
“Okay, are there any soldiers there?”
“Probably so, since they found out that we escaped.”
I imagined Massingale’s face when she found out that four prisoners left with her daughter. I bet she’d burst a blood vessel or something, and then pretended not to care about her daughter. “Where’s Finni?”
“She had to go to the facility to work, so as to avoid anyone thinking she’s involved with us,” Cassidy explained. “She’ll also be our source of news from there.”
“That’s good. Since we’re about an hour and a half from our town, no one will suspect us. Let’s wait until after either Finni or Torrin have quit, and then we can drive there and put me through the portal.”
“So you’re the leader now?” Taylor mocked me.
“No, but you’re the one who asked for my opinion, and I gave it to you. I’m done talking now.” I changed into a spare jumpsuit after taking a shower in the bathroom. We’d earlier planned to dump our prison suits in a Dumpster in a city far from ours, and I stuffed my old jumpsuit into a grocery bag. It felt so good to be clean after so long in that dingy cell. When I arrived in the living room, I found the four of them watching TV. “That’s it? You’re just going to watch TV? Where’s your fighting spirit? Come on, guys! We escaped from a correctional facility!”
Thalia shrugged. “There’s nothing else to do. And we can’t have a fighting spirit; we’re supposed to lie low for a while.”
I sighed, but agreed silently. I sat on the floor and watched all the 9 o’clock news with them. Then the bleach-blonde newscaster looked right at the camera (it seemed she could see me) and reported, “In other news, four people escaped yesterday from Morita Women’s Correctional Facility, using the laundry shuttle. The staff are being questioned as we speak to determine their level of involvement. Authorities believe the women who escaped are at large in Chehalis or surrounding towns.”
“At least that’s all they know,” Indie said.
Our pictures showed up on the screen - I looked terrible. “If you see these women, please call the police right away. They are dangerous criminals on the loose.”
“Wow. I’ll definitely be keeping a lookout,” the fake-tanned male anchor said, smiling with his blinding white teeth.
“I know, right?” The woman replied, shuffling papers. She started talking about some “wonderful story that gives us hope for the future.” Apparently, the government had realized, ‘Hey, these animals are intelligent. Let’s see what we can learn from talking to them and negotiating a peace treaty.’ APE was way ahead of the feds.
“What will this mean for us?” Thalia said.
“None of you will leave the apartment, and will spend a lot of time staying still to pretend no one is here when Finni and I are gone. All of us will have to be careful.” Torrin answered thoughtfully.
“Could we venture out with disguises?” Taylor said.
“I doubt it. Everyone who saw this will be looking for the four of you. We need to get out of Chehalis as soon as possible. I’ll send in my two week’s notice probably tomorrow. I might tell them that one of my parents are deathly ill, and I need to be with them - something believable. Finni can stay on for a little while, if nothing is revealed in her interrogation today.”
I’d never thought of Torrin having parents. Obviously, he did, but he’d never mentioned them. “What happened to your parents, Torrin?” I asked, somewhat without tact.
“Died when I was little. My older brother and I got put in foster care, I turned 18, found out about APE, and here I am.” He didn’t seem too attached to them, nor bothered by my thoughtlessness.
“Does your brother know about APE?”
“Yeah. He’s a traveling recruiter, like Taylor’s dad.”
“Cool. I didn’t know that.”
“Do you have any siblings?” Thalia asked me.
I stumbled at his question. Torrin and Taylor knew I was from another dimension. Indie, Cassidy, and Thalia did not. I would have to think fast. “Yes, I have one younger sister and one younger brother - they’re twins. Ruthie and Colin. They’re so cute. Of course, when they’re five years old, tantrums are pretty much every day, but otherwise they’re great.”
The two who knew looked at me quizzically, but I brushed it off. Thalia kept asking questions, and I answered them as best as I could without contradicting myself.