Read Online The Escape Diaries by Juliet Rosetti - Free Book Online Page B

weapon.
                “Stop
her!” he bellowed at the cops, but he might as well have yelled Columbine! The cops, in an act of stupendous courage or courageous stupidity, launched
themselves at him. The last I saw they were going at it hand-to-hand, writhing
around on the blacktop, all of them cursing at the tops of their lungs.
                Swerving
around the patrol car, I took off running. The trouble with this town was its
size. I ran out of Vonnerjohn in about thirty seconds and found myself on its
designer golf course, Whistling Creek. Once—back in my other
life—Kip and I had played nine holes here. The greens fee had been three
hundred dollars plus one kidney per person—but of course that had
included the cart rental. I plunged onto the course. The blood from my cut
dribbled down onto the manicured grass, laying out a nice, easy trail for the
bloodhounds to follow.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Escape tip #7:
    Corn: it’s not just
    for flakes anymore.
     

     

     
                You
know the scene in North by Northwest where Cary Grant ducks into a cornfield
to avoid getting machine-gunned by the guys chasing him in an airplane? As it
turned out, cornfields do make excellent cover. The tasseled-out corn,
ten feet tall, closed over me like a rain forest canopy. Even someone in a
helicopter hovering two feet over the field couldn’t have spotted me beneath
the lattice of leaves.
                I
figured I had a small window of time before the cops realized they’d let the
notorious murderess slip through their fingers. After that it would be open
season on Mazie Maguire. In the meantime, I was using every precious second,pounding through the cornfields that bordered the village, trying not to
shriek when I crashed through the sticky webs strung up between rows by fat
spiders.
                  The corn rows ran ruler-straight for
miles. When I ran out of corn I commando-crawled through fields or duckwalked
through pastures. I slogged on through the blistering heat of midday. I walked
until my lungs felt as though they’d been skewered with barbecue forks and my
feet felt like they’d been pressed to hot coals. I waded through streams
because that was how Cool Hand Luke had thrown the bloodhounds off his trail.
So far I hadn’t actually heard any dogs, but there were helicopters, two of the
pesky things buzzing back and forth, sometimes flying so low I could feel the
wash of their rotors.
                I
drank stream water, too thirsty to worry about any malign organisms lurking in
it. I wrenched off a cob of corn and gnawed on the kernels, but they sat like
sharp-edged pebbles in my stomach and I was soon nostalgic for the Kronenwetter
jelly beans. I worked generally south, detouring if I came out on a road and
spotted patrol cars with gimlet-eyed cops raking the ground with binoculars.
Miraculously, I wasn’t spotted.
                When
it got dark, the helicopters went away. I kept walking, wondering how far I’d
come. What felt like a trip to the south pole was probably only about seven or
eight miles. My legs cramped. I had bugs on my teeth. My face felt radioactive
with sunburn. My stomach bitched and moaned. The corn that had been my friendly
protector by day turned menacing by night, the leaves rustling as though they
were telling secrets. The spiderwebs between the rows, now damp with dew, felt
even creepier. I kept whirling around, certain I heard stealthy footsteps
behind me. Somehow I’d wandered into Stephen King territory. I didn’t want to
be out here in the dark, feeling alone and unloved.
    Why didn’t I just
give myself up? All I’d accomplished was to make myself miserable. I had bug
bites the size of gopher mounds and E. coli bacteria in my guts. What was the
point? Eventually I’d be caught anyway.
    I’m confident
my team and I will have her in custody by the end of the day.
    Irving