I woke to a cracking sound and the scream of nails pulling free of wood. For a moment, I flashed back and thought I was in my bedroom in Cedar Falls, hurtling across the room as the house collapsed. I curled into a tighter ball and put my hands over the back of my neck.
A diesel engine growled from very close by. The hut suddenly began to lift around me. The concrete foundation of two of the posts came up with them, scraggly lumps of rock poised above my head. I desperately scrambled away, clawing in the snow to escape the doom above my head. Then the whole hut toppled backward, landing on its side in the snow behind me with a surprisingly soft thump.
There was a bulldozer blade above my head. I heard Darla scream, “Get up! Go!” I rolled over, out from under the blade, and pushed myself upright. She was sitting in the dozer’s cab. I climbed up onto the track and from there into the cab. She wore different clothing-fatigues and combat boots, like the guards. Her shirtsleeves were rolled up at her wrists, and the boots looked like clown feet on her.
There was only one seat in the cab, so I climbed onto the armrest beside her. I bumped a joystick as I was getting situated, and the dozer lurched forward, crushing the punishment hut under its treads.
“Stay off the throttle!” Darla screamed.
She grabbed the joystick and slammed it over to one side, sending the dozer into a slow turn. She straightened it out and drove straight toward the camp.
“Um… where are we going?” I croaked.
“I’ve got a plan.”
We rolled toward the fence around the refugee yard. Darla steered straight into one of the posts. It broke with a low, metallic pong.
Darla turned the dozer and drove directly over the fence line. She revved it to the max so that every second or so we were hitting another metal fencepost. Pong! Pong! Pong! The chain link and razor wire disappeared steadily under our treads as if the dozer were eating them. Within a few seconds, we’d left the punishment huts behind.
We weren’t going very fast, but there was still a breeze on my face. I leaned into it, tasting freedom on my tongue. I was tired, sore, and starving, but despite my maladies, I laughed.
It was too dark to see much beyond the dozer’s running lights. A few lights had popped on in the direction of the vehicle depot. I heard shouts over the roar of the diesel engine. The commotion was waking up the refugees. A few groups of them ran across the crushed fence behind us. Pretty soon the trickle of people increased to a flood-hundreds running in our wake to escape the camp. I finally clued in to Darla’s plan: All the fleeing refugees would block anyone trying to chase us.
“Will it go any faster?” If I hadn’t been so weak, I could have easily outrun the bulldozer.
“Not much, and only in reverse.”
“Not good.”
“Duck!” Darla yelled and slammed her hand onto a lever to her right. The dozer blade began to rise. I spotted two guards ahead of us, raising their submachine guns. They must have been patrolling the fence. I ducked then heard the chatter of gunfire and the whang of bullets hitting metal. Darla raised the blade so its top edge partially shielded us.
“Raise it some more!” I clutched the dozer’s armrest in a death-grip. The vinyl under my hands was slick with sweat.
“That’s as high as it goes!”
We peeked over the top of the blade. The two guards were circling, running to try to get a side angle on us. Darla turned the dozer toward them, keeping the blade between us and the guns. They kept circling and getting closer.
“Stay low!” Darla reversed her turn, slowly spinning the dozer away from the guards. They raised their guns; for a moment they had a clear shot at Darla’s side through the cab window. She leaned all the way over in my lap, as close to flat as she could. I curled over her. Bullets slapped metal somewhere close by. Darla finished the turn. Now we were rumbling directly away from the guards. I hoped the metal at the back of the dozer’s cab was thick enough to stop bullets. We crashed back through the fence and into the camp.
“Watch out!” I screamed. “Get away! Get away!” People scattered from the front of the bulldozer. There were refugees running everywhere-the ruckus had woken the entire camp.
I didn’t hear any more gunshots. Maybe the guards weren’t willing to fire into the crowd. I hoped not, anyway.
I looked around; I didn’t see the guards now, only a never-ending flow of running people. Darla turned toward the eastern edge of camp. When we got there, she turned again, driving the bulldozer right over the fence, heading north and plowing the chain link under the treads. Crowds of refugees dashed through behind us, racing for freedom.
When we reached the corner of the camp, Darla kept going straight. She dropped the dozer blade a couple of feet so we could see better. The camp was built on a ridge top, so about fifty feet ahead of us the hillside yielded to a wooded ravine.
“Uh… you know there’s a cliff up there, right?” I said.
“I’m hoping it’s a steep slope, not a cliff. We’ve got to go somewhere it’ll be hard to follow. This thing is slower than a roadkill turtle, if you haven’t noticed.”
The front of the dozer nosed over the edge of the hill. We crushed a few saplings at the edge of the ravine and picked up speed.
“Hold on!” Darla screamed.
The bulldozer crashed down the hill. Darla’s hands twitched on the joystick, nudging us right and left, trying to avoid the biggest trees. We hit one of them despite her efforts. The shock threw me forward. The tree fell, and one of our tracks rolled up over it, so the dozer canted steeply to the right for a few terrifying seconds. Then we were free of it. The left tread thumped back to the ground, and we continued our headlong rush down the hillside.
Somehow Darla got us down the slope without running into anything that would stop the dozer. We plowed through a patch of soft ground and flattened some bushes. The front end of the dozer fell alarmingly, coming to rest halfway in a creek.
“Wow. What a ride.” My hands were trembling, and my breath came in gasps.
“Yeah.” Darla was looking ahead, trying to figure out where to go next, I thought.
I craned my head out the side of the cab, looking up the slope behind us. A Humvee was moving slowly about a quarter of the way down the hill. A second Humvee was just starting down the ridge.
“They’re coming!” I yelled.
The blade was down in the creek. Darla raised it and goosed the throttle. The dozer ground forward, and its back end landed with a splash. Now we could see the far side of the creek: a vertical wall of dirt about three feet high. The blade hit the bank and the tracks spun in the mud and water. We couldn’t climb out of the creek. There was no room to turn around, either.
We were stuck.