THE SLAVES IN THE DESERT

Chapter eight

An Escape

It was early in the morning when Clarissa was taken out to start her long series of punishments, beginning by being whipped by five of her fellow prisoners. The temperature was already high in the nineties and the guard had assured her that a record one hundred and twenty eight degrees were expected by mid afternoon.

"You'll be well cooked by the time you've been out here a few days and then it's the stinking cell! We've all been shitting in it this last week to make it nice and smelly for you!"

They tied her to a whipping post right in the centre of the compound where she would be in the sun all day long. The first girl to whip her was to be Miranda. Megan would be next, followed by Stella and Debbie and a fifth girl she hardly knew except by her name of Gertrude. Gertrude was the biggest of all her floggers and she was flexing her incredible muscles as Clarissa was dragged out to be secured.

Miranda said. "Sorry about this, old girl! It was nice knowing you, but I'll find another playmate soon enough. Enjoy it in the punishment cell! See you when they let you out for a whipping! Not that you'll see me, of course with that bandage over your eyes!"

Warden Kane gave the order to commence Clarissa's punishment and Miranda raised her arm. Clarissa could see the shadow as the whip was raised by the one she loved most in all the world and then the leather cut into her back, opening her up from hip to shoulder and her heart melted inside her and she knew she was about to die.

Then she woke up and saw that she was still in the Warden's quarters recovering from her extreme dehydration of the previous week! She was covered in sweat and the sheet was lying on the floor. It was still not light and she turned over and went back to sleep. This time she did not have that horrible dream, which had visited her for two nights now. When she woke again it was light and Wanda was standing over her.
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“You’re looking better today, Clarissa. You don’t have much time left before they take you to be whipped. You must get away from here very soon or it will be too late. I’m driving the truck today and tomorrow. I’ll leave the keys in the ignition tonight and I won’t lock it. All you need do is get out of the widow to the ground. I suggest you make a rope out of the bed sheets. The gate will be closed, but don’t worry. Drive straight for it and it will give. It’s not too strong and one good push is all it will need to smash it. I’ll try to fix the telephone line so they can’t let the police know you’ve got away. After that, it’s up to you. Think you will be up to it?”

“I’ll have to be! I suppose you couldn’t arrange some clothes for me to face the world in? Thought not! Why are you doing this?”

“Because I feel ashamed. I saw how you refused to whip that poor girl in the cage and helped your friend Stella. And your reward for being a decent human being is to be punished. I hope you will put in a good word for me when you get to the Federal authorities.”

“When I get there! If I get there, more like!”

“No! You’ll make it, Clarissa! I don’t know how, but you’ll find a way, just as long as you get out of the prison.”

“I hope they keep me here another day!” said Clarissa. “Quite honestly, I feel fine now. Fully recovered. I hope you can convince them I need another day to be quite ready!”

“I hope so too!” said Wanda. “Your poor back is marked enough after the last time. I hope those people pay for all the misery they’ve caused so many innocent young women!”

“I don’t mind my existing marks too much.” replied Clarissa. “I feel they were deserved because of my forgetting about poor Megan in my lust for Miranda. And the only thing that matters is that  Miranda still loves me, even if I don’t any longer have a flawless skin!”

Wanda left after this to drive the prisoners to the work-site and Clarissa concentrated on appearing wan and weak, despite having never felt better in her life!

She had a couple of visits from the warden, who enlarged on her plans for Clarissa’s long term future. She was to be given one hundred lashes and kept tied to the whipping post for one week. Then she would be placed in one of the punishment cells, chained to the floor with enough play on the chain to reach the door where her food and drink would be pushed through to her. The other women would be brought to see her, standing in her own filth, and when her skin had finally lost all trace of its suntan she would be brought out, blindfolded and in chains, to be whipped again and left in the sun for a week. This routine would be maintained for the duration of her thirty year sentence.

It was not difficult to look pale when listening to all this. She asked the Warden how long she thought she would last in such conditions.

“I’ll be dead inside two years, never mind thirty. And you’re doing all this to an innocent visitor to your country, who committed no crime and whose only offence was to refuse to whip a girl and to help a friend who was ill. I pity you!”

She regretted this outburst later on when the women had returned from work and Miranda was brought into the room. The Warden was with her.

“Say farewell to each other. You are fully recovered, despite looking a little pale after being out of the sun for a few days. Your whipping is tomorrow and Miranda will be one of the five women who will whip you. I will leave you alone for two minutes.”

“Sorry about this, darling.” said Miranda as soon as they were together, holding Clarissa tightly. “I will refuse to do it if you agree”

“No! We can’t have you suffering the same fate as me! Try not to hurt me too much and afterwards just concentrate on escaping and then we’ll all be free. How’s Megan?”

“OK but very upset about you. The guards have been keeping us posted on what has been happening. She feels she has failed to look after you, as she promised. If she had not driven the hired car into the pothole she says you would both be safe and well at home again. I try to tell her not to blame herself, but she’s very low in spirits right now. And Stella is upset at all the things she said about you.”

“You’d better go now, darling! It won’t do any good if you stay any longer. I love you more than I ever thought it possible to love another person, and I always will!”

The two kissed one last time and Clarissa was left alone to spend her final night in comparative luxury before starting out on a life of utter misery. She doubted that her friends would ever make it without her and if she was to avoid her fate she must do something tonight!

As soon as it was dark, she went over to the window. Only one of the watchtowers had a view of the Warden’s accommodation and a searchlight  beam moved across the window every fifty seconds. She had been disturbed by this in the early days of her recuperation but was used to it by this time. The truck was fifty yards away, silent and waiting to transport the women to the rock-breaking next day. She tried opening the window and found that it was extremely stiff, but she managed to lift it high enough to get through without making a noise. Looking down, she saw that it was indeed too far for her to jump. She would need to use the two sheets to form a makeshift rope long enough to reach near enough to the ground for her to be able safely to jump the final few feet .

Needing the sheets for a rope, she would have to abandon her idea of wrapping herself in one of them. Once on the ground she would have no time to waste untying one, even if she could reach high enough. Slowly and with extreme care, she dragged the heavy bed across to the widow. It was heavy work and she was covered in sweat long before she was finished. Then she went to the en-suite bathroom and stuck her head under the tap and drank as much as her stomach could hold. She turned on the shower, cooled herself off and then made for the window and her desperate bid for freedom.

She waited until the searchlight beam had passed the windows and quickly climbed down the improvised rope. As she had feared, it was impossible to untie one of the sheets in the time she had left, so she ran, still naked, for the truck and climbed into the driving seat. She almost lost valuable seconds by making initially for the wrong side, forgetting for a second that she was in one of those countries where they drive on the right!

It took her a couple of seconds to work out how to switch on the headlights, and then she started the engine and drove straight for the gate. As Wanda had predicted, the flimsy construction gave way, shattering into many fragments of pulverised wood. It was a mercy that this was not a real prison, she thought, but some relic of the past used by the mad Elders as a place to house wayward and sinful women!

While lying on her bed, planning her strategy once out of the compound, Clarissa had decided on trying to drive the truck back to the road she and Megan had been travelling along and going back to the last town they had stopped at. If she ran into the patrol car, she would try to ram it!  All seemed to be going well at first. She reached the road after three hours and, by the time it was beginning to become light, was within thirty miles of the town. Then she saw the blood!

In the excitement of her escape she had not felt the pain as a bullet fired from the watchtower struck her upper arm. The bullet had passed straight through, missing the bone, but she was bleeding badly all the same. Looking down at her feet she saw that she had lost quite a bit of blood already. The sooner she got medical attention the better!

She was now only twenty miles away from the town when the truck’s engine showed signs of distress. After another two miles it gave up the ghost altogether and a weary Clarissa climbed out to see if she could fix the fault, whatever it was. Although she had never had to do anything like this before, she had some mechanical knowledge. But it was no use. The fuel tank had been nicked by one of the bullets and was now empty. Becoming fainter by the second in the heat and with the bleeding showing no sign of stopping, she found a can of fuel in the driver’s cab and emptied it into the tank. Another five miles and the engine stopped again.

 A passing motorist - a true Good Samaritan - saw the naked blonde weakly signalling for him to stop. This was a lonely stretch of road where there was ample cover among all the rocks for accomplices to lie in wait. Others had already driven past, thinking that Clarissa was an obvious decoy, and she was becoming increasing desperate.

“Gee, what happened to you, honey?” he asked, taking in her condition at a glance. “We’ll get you do a doctor, fast!”

“Phone the F.B.I. as well! I’ve been kidnapped and escaped. There are many other women also being held.”

Then she passed out.

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“How are you, Stella?” asked Miranda.

Miranda, Megan, and Stella were lying, staked out in the prison compound. Megan  had lost her clothes on her first day and now Miranda and Stella were also naked and had been told they would stay this way, even when and if they were freed. It was dark at last and the temperature was almost bearable by now. The three had just been fed on their diet of bread and water. It was five days since Clarissa’s noisy and dramatic exit and still there was no sign of a rescue. All three were beginning to fear that something bad had happened to their friend.

“She must have been wounded and bled to death.” sobbed Megan. “I’m sure I heard shots when that truck was bursting through the gates. If she’d got help we’d be free by this time.”

“She might have been hurt and too ill to speak. When she gets better she will tell them about us. Try to look on the bright side, Megan.” replied Miranda who felt almost as tearful herself.

Stella said nothing. Of the three, she was faring least well and the other two were getting worried about her.

As soon as the prisoners had been mustered, the day after Clarissa’s escape, her cell mates had been accused of complicity in her breakout and immediately Miranda and Stella had been stripped (none too gently) and all three stretched out and pegged to the ground in the blazing heat with no food or drink all day.

“You’d think those pea brains would realise none of us three could have been involved in this! As if we could have cut the telephone wires for a start!”  said Megan. “I think we can all guess who was Clarissa’s helper!”

“When the Warden finally wakes up, it’s going to be a hard time for poor old Wanda - that’s for sure!” said Stella. “And maybe she’ll let us three go.”

“She won’t free me!” said Miranda. “I was the last person to speak to Clarissa before her getaway. But I sure hope they let you two go!”

These words of Miranda were shown to be true in the morning as Stella and Megan were untied and allowed to rejoin the work party in their march to the work-site. Now that the truck had been stolen, there was no transport other than a couple of small trucks.

“You stay here!” snarled the grinning guard. “A few more weeks in the sun will be good for you!”

Minutes later Wanda, also stripped, was dragged out and secured next to Miranda, where Megan had been lying until just recently. One way and another, the compound was getting to look a veritable scene of human suffering by this time. The girl escapee still languished in the cage and now that Wanda, the only guard who let her out at night once in a while, was herself a prisoner she would stay cooped there twenty four hours a day until taken to the cell. And her friend was still tied down on the other side of the compound to where Miranda was. Wherever the women looked, there were signs of the terrible fate that awaited any one stupid enough to be thinking of leaving!