Dai Stihó

We draw straws to determine who plays what role: who creates the diversion, who acts as the sentry, and most importantly, who will be the one to scramble over the fence for the moments that it's not guarded. The group — the eight of us — walk forward, one at a time, and they take a straw from my fist, each one staring at it, hiding it from the others until we're all done, until there's only one left in my hand.

And then we all open our hands, our calloused, bloody, scarred hands, and we see who has the short straws: Harrison's going to be diversion, and likely go under the lash for his transgressions, Jones will scale the fence, running the risk of being shot, and I — I'll be overwatch, the one responsible for alerting the others, though if I'm too obvious about it, I will no doubt suffer for it as well. Everyone else has a part to play, but they have plausible deniability — we three alone do not.

So perhaps it is no surprise that it is the three of us that find each other later on that night, the three of us that hold a meeting after the general meeting, the three of us that look at each other and voice truths that we would not otherwise say in the open, in the group of confederates that we've established to try and break out of this jail.

"I don't trust Toby," Harrison starts, squinting out at the fence that surrounds the camp, his eyes constantly moving, darting around, evaluating the circumstances.

"Nor I," Jones agrees, as he spits a piece of chewed spice onto the ground. He had to have traded a week's worth of labor for a wad as big as that, but if it all went well, it wouldn't make a difference — and if it didn't, he'd might be too far gone to pay up. Smart one, Jones.

"They'll fall into place," I say quietly. "They know that this is the best hope for them to not rot in this place, that when you reach the other side, you'll come back for us. There are, after all, a couple of colonels and whatnot in here — once they know for sure where they are, they wouldn't leave us here."

"Though," Harrison adds speculatively, "maybe they just shoot the lot of us once someone makes it out."

I shrug at that, a weary shrug that acknowledges all of the parade of horribles that could happen. Jones says it for me.

"But we have to try, no?" And he spits out another wad of the spice, and we watch as it flashes a few times in the open air before going dark.


The day of the breakout, we are as every bit our normal selves, with nary a sign of the nervous energy that I'm sure is flowing through all our veins. That energy, that easy sign that something is up — it's been trained out of us through years in the military, but also through more than a few attempts where our jailors noticed and preemptively put everyone on double, and then triple shifts, whipping each man if they flagged for even a second.

So we are our normal, haggard, laggard selves, bargaining with the jailors for an extra bit of sleep, another cigarette, an easier work shift, and getting the usual curses, threats, and cuffs in return.

It's just after noon when Harrison starts his part of the plan — he walks from table to table in the mess, telling us to stand up, to fight, to never forget our homelands and our families and the reasons that we fight. He does so subtly, a word here, a phrase there, and moves from table to table until all eyes are on him. He's trying to incite the crowd — albeit subtlety — and slowly stoke a fire that needs to blaze hot and fast but not quite yet, and it looks like it's working. The guards are used to some movement, and don't stop him right away, and he has an easy five or ten minutes before someone finally realizes that we're not really eating, and that someone is going around saying something that people are paying attention to. The guard calls it in, of course, and it isn't long before he draws out a response, as the base commandant tells him, directly, to stop.

That's when he puts on the theatrics, full stop, as he bars the mess doors and stands before them, and starts shouting at us to rise up, rise up and not forget our homelands, and though not everyone stands, enough do that the rest — the cowards, the traitors, the ones that would rather lie low — must stand as well, and the guards that are trying to reach Harrison are suitably delayed.

A door opens from the kitchen, propped open by a single carrot, and Jones and I and a few others that are in on the plan see the sign and make our way out. As I leave, I hear the general alarm sound, see the pounding against the outside of the door, and I see Harrison's face curled in a wicked smile, one that stays on as gunfire sounds, as the guards realize that this is no ordinary uprising.

"They'll be looking towards the fences," I mutter as we run, a beeline away from the attention that's drawn, "if they have any sense at all."

Jones pauses for a moment, and then licks his lips and looks at me with those grey eyes. "Then we'll have to be quick, won't we?"

And I nod and we split, him going towards the fence with a couple of fellow prisoners to boost him and be captured in his stead, me to the roof where I'll be able to warn him to cut or run. I watch as he powers forward, head down through the base, as his fellow prisoners push guards to the side and take punches and slowly his entourage shrinks but Jones doesn't pause in his sprint, a dead lilt towards the twenty foot fence. He starts scaling and I see that the guard towers are still focused on the melee that's by the mess hall, that none of the snipers are looking this way yet, and I grow increasingly certain that he'll make it, that he'll scale the wall, be free, and disappear into the other side.

That Jones will make it out into the wilderness, and for a moment, I see something that can't be, a vision that comes to me of Jones making it back behind friendly lines, of him lighting up a cigar and sitting on a plush chair and smiling at his wife, reaching up to caress her face, and the phrase that comes out of his mouth:

"Well, we couldn't save them, unfortunately, but I'm glad to be able to see you again."

I snap back to reality and the present as I hear a shout, a shout that alerts a guard in a nearby tower, a shout that causes him to look towards the fence, towards the man climbing. It's a shout that gets him to raise his rifle, look through the scope, and take a shot that he's been training to take, one that he is commanded to make when prisoners are at danger of fleeing.

The shot rings across the courtyard and enters the back of a prisoner that has just made it over the fence, a prisoner named Jones that was once a major, a puppet now that topples over the top and collapses in a heap on the other side, along with our hopes and dreams of escape.

Then, and only then, do I realize that the shout came from me.


"What happened?" Harrison asks me, later, a week later, when we can finally talk about it in private, when the beatings have been doled out, when the security is relaxed again.

When my guilt has stopped threatening to consume me.

I shrug, and then look down, and look out. "Someone saw him," I say. "One of the prisoners in the courtyard not in it — they must not have wanted him to get out. They weren't thinking of the greater good, only of what would've happened to Jones, I guess. They were jealous. People break in prison, you know that."

He nods, and then sighs. "Jones didn't die, you know," he says, slowly. "They've been treating him. He'll be back in the general populace, I think, in a month."

I keep my face clear and my voice calm. "Then there will be hell to pay if we find out who it was that alerted the sentry, won't there?"

"Yes, I suppose there will," Harrison says, and I hold my breath as the guilt eats me alive.