We had gotten all the way through no man's land when the siren went off. It wasn’t until we were in the woods when we heard the shirl whistle and barking of dogs. K looked at me and I could see the fear in his eyes but only for a moment. “We have to keep moving.”
We kept running through the deep brush, under branches, and past bramble bushes that caught onto our clothes and dug into our skin. I was behind K the whole time. It was dark, but I could still see his striped uniform and scarred shaved head. My chest was burning, heart thumping in my ears. Sweat beading down my temples and nose. But my feet kept moving. As we ran, the barking of the dogs became more distant. My heart leaped.
“K, I think we lost them-” My left foot caught on something, causing me to fall. No. I hit the ground hard, tasting blood in my mouth and felt the instant pain in my ankle. K turned around and saw me on the ground. “V!” He ran to my side. “What happened, are you hurt?”
“My ankle.” K looked down at my foot which was caught in the roots of a tree. We tried hecticly to untangle my foot from the thick roots. Then we heard the whistle again. This time it was closer. The dogs began to bark and I looked at K disheartenedly. “Go.”
“-What?”
“Leave me. Go.”
K shook his head, “No, I’m not leaving you. We’re in this together, remember?” He grabbed the back of my head and pressed his forehead to mine. “But they’ll kill us--”
“I’m not leaving you, V. I’m going to get you out of here, okay? I’m going to get us out of here.”
K lifted me up and I winced at the pain in my now throbbing foot. “Can you walk?”
“Yea, I think so.”
We began to move again, more slowly this time. I was only slowing him down. But K was determined. The guards' shouts and whistles were getting louder. The flashlights through the brush and trees were getting closer. “Over here!” One of the guards yelled. I tried to move faster, but my foot hurt too much. Every step we took I suppressed a yelp in pain.
“Keep moving, V.”
After a few more steps I couldn’t take it anymore. The pain was too much. I fell to the ground on my hands and knees. We’re not going to make it. K bent down and tried to pick me up again. “V, we have to keep moving. We’re almost there.”
“I can’t.” I replied, defeated and in pain. We were silent, understanding that we might die. The dogs were getting closer, we could hear their collars jangling. K looked around desperately for an escape, until his eyes fell upon the muddy swamp under the large roots of the trees. “I know how we can lose them.”
We began to crawl to the swamp, avoiding the lights of the guards and the sound of the dogs' collars. K motioned for me to get in the mud, and I did, until my whole body was fully submerged. K was right behind me, until we were facing each other more than neck deep. He suddenly started covering me with it. On my shaved head and on my face after he did the same to himself and put his finger to his lips as the dogs that were chasing us emerged from the brush and began sniffing the area that we just were crawling through. I held my hand to my mouth, to keep my teeth from chattering due to freezing mud. K pushed my head more under until our eyes were the only thing above the mud. The guards flashed their lights at the swamp, but we were too deep inside to be spotted. We continued to watch the dogs sniff us out, the guards with their flashlights followed them earnestly out of sight. After a few moments until we were sure they were gone, we emerged from the mud and K helped me walk the rest of the woods until we got to the main road.
“Do you think they’ll help us?” I asked K, as we spotted a small farmhouse a few miles down the road. “They’ll have no choice.”
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