Chapter Nineteen

The examination that had caused Billie so much grief and trepidation haunted her, demanding she devise a plan of escape. The next exam could prove to be her one chance at freedom.

She waited on her mattress for the camera light to go off. As soon as the menacing red eye blinked several times in succession signaling “lights out” and the onset of total darkness in her prison, she sat up and looked around, giving her eyes time to reset to nothingness. It would take a few moments for them to adjust, but she had noticed how she could see better after fifty-two days here; she had spent another week in captivity, marked by Exodus chapter eight and hours spent in night-time extreme exercising and strength training.

The totality of black gradually changed to shadows, and she felt more and more like a bat in a cave as she clung to her natural climbing wall, forcing herself to go higher each night, putting fear of falling behind her. Trembling at the thought of reaching higher on her rock wall with no rope, harness, or partner for belaying and security, she forced herself to think of a worse horror—the panic in Lisa’s voice. This was all it took to make her stretch her body, her feet grasping for ledges remembered from her handholds of minutes before. Callouses had formed on the balls of her feet and on her fingertips from all the hard training, but this made her climbing easier.

Tonight, I’ll reach the top.

She made the vow to herself, to her baby, and to Johnny.

The muscles in her arms and legs bulged as she strained to reach her goal. She was surprised at the strength she had gained since beginning her night-time routine. But reaching the top of the high rock wall was not her main goal. She was determined to escape.

The next day, as every day, she practiced yoga, but with a much deeper concentration than she had been taught in the classes she took at her local health gym. More than concentration was needed if she was to pull her plan off. She would have to put herself into a trancelike state where she could undergo the examination without flinching and without any display of consciousness. She had to make the two people with the masks think she was unconscious so she could implement her plan of escape. She still had to figure out a way to get rid of the drugged food without the Keeper knowing. In her subconscious, she again heard her Grammar.

Be careful, Billie. Be patient and wait. The answer will come.

Billie prayed and devoured the Bible, no longer just a means of counting days in captivity but a resource to give her the courage and the faith to save her life and the life of her baby. She began another of her long, private devotions, hoping to receive a “burning bush,” a sign from God that assured her freedom would come.

She flipped through the Bible with her eyes closed tightly, seeking heavenly guidance, part of her daily ritual now, along with reading a chapter a day to keep up with days in captivity. Stopping on a page, she ran her finger down, and with her eyes still closed, allowed her finger to stop. Before opening her eyes, she begged God for an answer. Then she read the random passage in a whisper and smiled. She now knew she was doing the right thing and would escape.

The verses where her finger had stopped were numbers three and four in the thirty-fifth chapter of Isaiah.

“Strengthen ye the weak hands, and confirm the feeble knees. Say to them that are of a fearful heart, be strong, fear not; behold, your God will come with vengeance, even God with a recompense; he will come and save you.”

As she read the passage to herself with only her lips moving, she felt something strange, the flutter of life in her newly protruding stomach.

It’s a sign!

Billie cried and laughed at the same time, becoming louder with the recognition of the baby she was going to bring into the world. Her excitement was obvious; she was unabashed and unafraid. She refused to allow her captor to take away the joy of this moment.

The Keeper, who had been spying on her, questioned her excitement and laughter through his synthesized voice. Billie told him she had felt her baby move for the first time, and she continued to caress her stomach.

He berated her again, as if her excitement was a sin in itself, and blasted the scripture about whoredom and worldliness at her, but he could not stop her joy. He punished her by shutting off the lights early, leaving her in darkness for two extra hours during what should have been her late-afternoon daylight hours, daylight meaning the fluorescent lights in the ceiling.

Billie thought about using the punishment as an advantage and starting her exercise regiment early, but she was afraid the Keeper would change his mind and turn the lights back on and catch her climbing up the wall. Instead, she would get extra sleep and awaken later to train.

As she lay in the darkness, unable to sleep, she thought she heard a scratching sound coming from the wall behind her mattress. She eased her way toward the sound, being as stealthy and quiet as possible, looking like an animal stalking its prey as she crawled on her knees, her hands out in front for balance, her head and body low, no more than a foot above her mattress. She stopped and listened, turning her ears like radar so her sensitized hearing could zero in on the target.

Again she heard the sound, rock against rock, and then it stopped. Someone had opened a hole in the rocks. Billie was so close she could hear the person’s breath coming in short, clipped spurts of air as if he or she had been holding it in.

Billie saw nothing, but she began feeling up the wall in the direction of the sound. Then she felt the edge of the hole where a small stone had been removed. She traced the edges of the hole on her side, keeping clear of the actual hole for fear of touching unknown eyes and scaring off her possible rescuer. The breach was about two inches in diameter. Her adrenaline was on high alert with the thought that someone who was not the Keeper knew she was here. With her face to the side of the hole, she whispered.

“Help me! Please help me!” Billie begged the eyes behind the hole. She heard noise, footsteps backing away from the hole, and she put her mouth directly over the hole whispering louder.

“Don’t go!” Her voice cracked as she softly pleaded. “Please don’t leave me here to die!” Her plea turned to sobbing as she realized the peeper was gone. Crawling back to her mattress, she hugged herself and rocked and cried and rocked and cried.

But the intruder had not left the other side of the hole. Hearing a delicate sound emanating from the hole again, Billie forced herself to stop crying.

Be still and listen! Grammar admonished.

This time, she did not move toward the hole, but waited to see what would happen next. Then she heard it.

Plop!

Something had been pushed through the hole and had fallen onto the mattress at the end by the wall. Billie got onto her hands and knees and began feeling around under the hole. Her hand touched a small object, and she picked it up, passing it from her left hand to her right, tightening her fingers around it. In the dark, Billie smiled.

A knife! It’s a pocketknife!

Quickly, she returned to the hole and put her mouth as close to it as she could.

“Thank you! Please don’t leave me!”

But there was no reply. Then she heard the faint grating noise, and she knew the stone had been placed back in the hole. Billie clutched the pocketknife to her chest, holding it with both hands like the greatest treasure she had ever been given.

Be strong; fear not! God will save you!