If We Survive

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

We had come so far, gotten so close—and all at once our chance of escape was gone. More guards came pushing past Franco out the door, guns lifted and at the ready. Guards who were already in the courtyard started to turn our way. In a moment, we were surrounded with no way out. We had no choice but to surrender.

Palmer opened fire.

I jumped at the noise. I thought it was the guards shooting at us. But no, I turned and saw Palmer. He had grabbed Mendoza by the collar. He was holding him in front of him like a shield with one hand. With his other hand, he was gripping his machine gun and letting loose short bursts of lead, first in one direction, then the next.

It did the trick. The guards scattered. They had recklessly come running out into the open to get us. Palmer had a clear shot at them—and they couldn’t shoot back without hitting Mendoza.

So they ran. And Palmer kept firing. And I started firing. I kept Jim and Nicki and Meredith behind me, shielding them with my body. I imitated Palmer, loosing a burst in one direction, then a burst in another.

One of the running guards screamed and clutched his leg and fell. Another threw up his hands, dropped his gun, and pitched face-forward to the ground. The others were ducking for cover behind anything they could find—trash cans, old barrels, open doors, a couple of jeeps on the courtyard’s far side.

I kept firing, trying to keep them all pinned down.

But Palmer shouted, “Kid!”

I turned. Palmer let go of Mendoza and tossed the truck keys at me.

I snatched the keys out of the air. But even as I did, Mendoza seized his chance. He started running toward where Franco stood in the prison doorway.

Palmer trained his gun on Mendoza but he never had the chance to take a shot. Because as soon as Mendoza was out of the way, the other guards started firing at us from behind their shelters.

The earth around me erupted as bullets flew into the dirt right in front of me. I caught sight of a guard peeking out from behind a barrel, aiming my way. I shot wildly in his direction and he disappeared, ducking down under cover.

“The truck!” Palmer shouted at us. “Get in the truck!”

I glanced over my shoulder and saw Jim and Nicki and Meredith already running as fast as they could toward the pickup.

But I kept myself turned toward the courtyard. I backed slowly toward the truck. I kept firing—first at one guard, then at another—trying to keep them pinned down, trying to keep them from getting off a good shot at us. The guards would pop out from behind their cover—a jeep, a trash can, a barrel… They would take a wild shot and I would force them down again. It flashed through my mind that they were like characters in a video shooting gallery. But I knew now that this was no game. I knew it was life or death, them or us.

A guard poked his head out from behind a door. Pointed his gun my way, pulled the trigger. I heard the rat-tat-tat and in the same instant, I heard bullets singing by my ear.

I fired back. The guard ducked away again. Another guard popped up from behind a barrel. I fired at him, forcing him down.

I kept firing—and Palmer kept firing beside me—as we both backed away toward the truck.

I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye. I turned. It was the two great gates of the prison. They were slowly swinging shut.

I knew what that meant: we had only seconds to get out of there. Once those doors closed, there would be no way out.

“Palmer! The doors!” I shouted.

He didn’t look. He didn’t have to. He already knew.

“Go!” he shouted back.

The guards kept popping up, kept firing. I swept my gun over them, pulled the trigger, forcing them down. And then the gun went still and silent in my hand. The magazine was empty. I was out of bullets.

I didn’t hesitate. I turned and ran.

I was only steps from the truck now. I saw Nicki and Meredith and Jim in the bed, crouched down behind the metal walls. I leapt to the cab, pulled open the door. As I did, I heard a blast behind me and a hole appeared in the inside of the door about three inches away from me. With a shout of fear, I jumped into the cab.

My hand was shaking crazily, but somehow I managed to get the key in the ignition, managed to switch on the engine. It roared to life.

The passenger door flew open and Palmer jumped in.

“Drive!” he said.

I put the car in gear. But there was no one left outside to hold the guards off, and I heard Nicki scream in the truck bed as the gunmen in the courtyard broke cover and set off a fresh barrage. Palmer stuck his weapon out the window and fired back.

I hit the gas.

The pickup jerked backward. I swung the wheel. Slapped the gear stick. Hit the gas again—and the truck jolted forward. Again, I wrenched the wheel. Gunfire sounded over the engine’s roar. The window by my ear cracked as a bullet shot through it, lanced past my face, and embedded itself in the dashboard. Palmer let off another long burst of fire out his window. Then he dropped back inside.

“Out of bullets!” he said.

Now I had the pickup’s front fender pointed at the prison gates. The gates were still swinging toward each other, swinging closed. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to fit the truck through the gap—and every second the gap was getting smaller.

I jammed my foot down on the gas, pressing it all the way to the floor, pinning it down.

The truck was already accelerating, but now it blasted forward, hurling me back against the seat. Outside, I heard the gunfire get heavier, faster. The guards must have realized we were out of bullets, realized we couldn’t pin them down anymore. They must have raced out into the open after us, firing as they came. I heard a series of slugs pound into the pickup’s body. I felt a stutter go through the truck’s racing frame.

And now, even worse, the guards in the high towers started firing down at us too. Palmer gave an angry shout as a bullet came straight through the roof into the seat-well beside him. I prayed wildly for the lives of the girls and Jim in the open bed behind me.

All of this took no more than a few seconds. And up ahead I saw the gates, the closing gates, filling the windshield, growing larger and larger as the opening between them grew smaller and smaller. On the other side of the gates, outside the prison, I glimpsed the palm-lined avenue, the shacks of the slums. But already it seemed to me that the outside world was barred to us, that the truck couldn’t possibly make the passage, that it was just going to slam into the edges of the closing gates.

A sort of wildfire of emotion gripped me. I understood that everything would be decided in the next several seconds: freedom or capture, escape or imprisonment, torture, and death. My life—my friends’ lives—so much at stake— everything at stake on a single chance, our last chance. It was sort of like that moment before the firing squad, that moment when I thought I was going to die: in those final seconds before we reached the gates, everything seemed brighter, more precious, more real.

The world raced by the windows. The gunfire grew so steady it seemed like one long blast, answering the blast of the engine. The truck raced toward the closing gates. The gap between the gates grew narrower.

Palmer started shouting—no words, just the wild emotion coming out of him in a roar. I was shouting too. I couldn’t help myself. The gap between the gates was all I could see out the windshield. And I could see it was far too narrow now. We were going to crash for sure.

And then: impact. The edges of the closing gates ripped into the sides of the truck. There was a brutal jolt and the sound of tearing metal as both side mirrors snapped off and flew away.

But while the truck shuddered, it never stopped. It burst through the narrow passage into the avenue beyond.

We were out of the prison.

At that moment, a deafening siren went off. A prison alarm. The whole city must have heard it. I knew at once that rebel gunmen from every section of town would soon be heading our way.

And over the siren: Gunfire. The engine. My own shouting. Palmer’s shouts.

Then suddenly, a man…

There was a man—a hunched old man walking in the street in front of me! He froze, turning his head toward me, staring at me. I saw his eyes wide with terror, his mouth wide with surprise as the truck barreled toward him.

“Watch out!” Palmer yelled.

I swung the wheel. The truck’s fender went wide of the old man—but now a palm tree loomed in front of me, yards from my face. I swung the wheel again. I saw bullets hitting the pavement, bursts of dust and gravel flying into the air.

Palmer shouted: “Turn! Turn!”

I didn’t see any place to turn, but I did what he said, hauling the wheel over as far as I could. The tree was gone. A shed appeared in the windshield. A woman clutching her baby was huddled under the tin roof, staring at me, staring at the oncoming truck. She didn’t even have time to cry out in fear.

But the truck kept wheeling round, wheeled past her—and then I saw what Palmer saw: there was a narrow alley right beside her shed.

I muscled the wheel over even farther. The shed and the screaming woman went by the window as the truck bounced over a pile of garbage and charged into the passage between two buildings.

The alley wasn’t wide. I felt the buildings pressing close on either side of me. I kept my eyes glued to the road, fighting to keep the truck centered so we wouldn’t sideswipe the walls.

Palmer was shouting over the siren: “Left! Left! Left!”

We burst out the other side of the alley onto another street, a narrow street with crumbling apartment buildings crowding close. I swung the wheel left.

The truck came around the corner at unbelievable speed, two tires threatening to lift into the air so that I thought we might flip over and come crashing to the earth.

But the truck righted. I pointed it down the road. I had no idea where to go or what was happening. All I could do was drive and hope that Palmer had a plan.

But Palmer let loose a cry of fury and frustration.

And I looked up ahead, down the street, and saw the troop truck rushing toward us. The siren had brought reinforcements. They were racing to the prison. The street was too narrow to get around them.

There was no way past.