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I stopped when Drusilla stopped; I looked to and from Drusilla and the bat-wielding man, my heart in my throat.
“Let me pass,” Drusilla told the man calmly, but not with as much confidence as I would have liked. “You owe me this favor. Consider us even.”
The man’s eyes fell on me momentarily; he looked at Drusilla again, contemplating. After a moment, he stepped aside, motioned the bat at the door and let us pass without a word.
“Atticus!” I whispered in the darkness as we went down a slim aisle with cages lined on both sides. “Atticus, where are you?”
I jumped back and swallowed down a startled yelp when one cage I’d walked too closely to, rattled vociferously, and a hand shot out at me through a hole in the links. The man behind the chain-link door wound his fingers around the links, shaking it with all his strength. He growled and spit and gnashed his teeth like a feral dog.
Drusilla grabbed my elbow and pulled me along, both of us keeping to the center of the aisle.
“Where is he?” Drusilla asked, keeping her voice low. “We need to find him now—there’s no time.”
We made it past fourteen cages—seven on each side—me peering into each one as we went by, until finally, in the eighth cage on my right, I found him, lying on his side.
“Atticus!” I grabbed the cage and shook it, but he did not move. “He’s in here!”
Gripping the bolt-cutters in both hands, Drusilla positioned the blades on the padlock, and with a lot of effort and my help, the lock snapped in two; it fell onto the cement floor, and the door swung open.
“Hey, let me out of here!” a man in a cage across from Atticus’ shouted. “Please, you’ve gotta help me!”
I ran into the cage. “Atticus, you have to wake up!” I smacked his cheek, trying to rouse him, but got no response. “Atticus, if there’s any part of you awake, you have to get up!”
Finally, Atticus stirred.
Hope flooded me, and I could barely hear Drusilla hissing behind me to hurry my heartbeat was so loud.
Atticus moaned, his face strained against the pain, but he tried desperately to get up.
I fell into a squat, braced one arm behind his back, and with difficulty I lifted his heavy body into a wobbly stand.
Drusilla rushed around to Atticus’ other side and draped his arm over her shoulder.
“Let us out of here!” the other prisoners shouted.
“You can’t leave us in here like this!”
“HEY! OPEN MY FUCKIN’ CAGE NOW!”
“Please help me….please,” said another.
But amid all the demanding and pleading and threatening and the rattling of the cages, Drusilla and I passed them all by and led Atticus, barely able to walk and only half-conscious, out the back door.
“We’re even!” the man with the bat called out to Drusilla as we rushed past him. “I’m not helping you anymore!”
Drusilla led me and Atticus away from the buildings.
“Where are we going?” I asked, out of breath, as we struggled to keep Atticus on his feet.
(My breathing was labored, and although only half-aware of what was going on, I could feel the pain from my stab wounds, and my battered face, and my broken fingers, and my dislocated elbow and it was crippling me all the more. Thais’ voice sounded far-off in my ears. Was I hearing her? Was Thais helping me escape? Or was it all just a dream?)
“There’s a carriage waiting for you,” Drusilla said. “It will take you as far as the Mississippi River. From there you’ll be on your own.”
I had many questions, but trying to hold Atticus’ heavy body up was all I could focus on.
“We can’t stop, not even for a minute,” Drusilla warned when Atticus tried to sit down. “I know you’re in pain, but if you miss this carriage, there won’t be another one.”
I held onto Atticus’ waist more firmly, using strength that didn’t belong to me—just seconds ago I thought I would drop him because I could no longer feel my own arm. I gritted my teeth. “Come on, Atticus, just a little ways more.” I hoped it truly was just a little ways more.
