‘You’ll be out for at least fifteen or sixteen hours,’ she whispered to the unconscious boy. ‘And you’re going to feel like shit when you do eventually wake up. And God knowsh what that monshter is going to d-, do to you for allowing me to eshcape. I hope he doesn’t k-, kill you, I really do. I’m sorry kiddo, but I had to do thish. You were my only w-, way out of here. Goodbye, and thanksh for the help.’
Margaret looked around to make sure the coast was clear. It was, so she bent down, took one of Tesla’s thin arms in each hand and dragged the boy behind the shrub. After this she took his holster belt off, with its nine-millimetre pistol and its hunting knife; despite her loathing of weapons, she realised that she may well need them for the coming journey. She had to adjust the belt substantially for it to fit around her substantial waist, tailored as it currently was to the boy’s narrow hips, but fit it eventually did. She then used the hunting knife to cut some branches off the shrub, and with these she covered Tesla’s body. The sun would be high in the sky the next morning before anyone found him.
Now that Tesla had been taken care of, Margaret had one final hurdle to overcome, one last obstacle to scale – quite literally – before she was well and truly free.
‘Jesus Christ, oh Jesus, this is scary…’
She stared up at the rungs that went all the way up the six-metre wall and then up the side of the tower; the ascent was more than fifteen metres in total. And for this seemingly suicidal climb her only handholds and footholds were the bare-bones steel rungs, worn smooth and buckled slightly in their centres from the passage of too many feet over time. There was no safety cage around the ladder; one slip during the precarious ascent and she would plunge earthwards to her inevitable demise.
Now, however, she felt emboldened; the wine oozing through her veins heated her core with its magma of Dutch courage, and her desire to escape spurred an iron-braced determination into her weary, aching limbs. It would be a long climb, but a lot of the wall and tower was obscured by the thick foliage of the old trees growing nearby, so unless someone ventured right to the foot of the ladder, they likely would not see her going up. She knew that she could take her time, if she needed to – but she realised as well that every moment she spent lingering was a moment closer to getting caught.
‘It’sh time to do or die,’ she whispered to herself, stepping up to the wall and gripping the first rung.
She drew a deep breath of air into her lungs, and then put her right foot onto the lowest rung, and with a grunt she heaved herself up.
All right, all right, that wasn’t so bad. Now just about a hundred more of these to go and I’m all set.
She started ascending the ladder, doing her best to remain as calm and focused as she possibly could.
‘That’sh it Margaret,’ she muttered to herself as she made the ascent, edging ever up. ‘Don’t look up, don’t look down. Jusht keep on takin’ it one shtep at a time. One shtep, one shtep, that’sh it, one more sh, shtep. Sh-, shtare at the wall. Do not look down, do not look up – jusht shtraight ahead at the wall. That’sh it, that’sh it, one more sh-, shtep, one more shtep.’
The climb seemed to be taking forever, and she soon began to feel as if she was running out of breath. What was more, her arms were now aflame with an acute, burning pain, while her legs were starting to hurt as well. She had no idea how high up she was, as she was focused on staring only at the wall ahead of her. The temptation to shoot a glance either up or down the wall was overwhelming, but she knew that to do so would result in being overrun with vertigo – vertigo that may not only paralyse her with abject terror, but potentially cause her to slip and fall to her death.
She paused, with her gaze still locked onto the wall ahead of her. Now even her eyes were beginning to hurt; staring at the same close sight for so long was giving her blurry vision and bringing on a headache.
Jesus H. Christ, how much longer is it gonna be before I get to the top? I feel like I can hardly manage even one more step! Shit, I wonder if anyone is suspicious that Tesla and I haven’t come back yet … Well, that’s even more reason to keep going. Come on, one step at a time. One more step. Up!
She began ascending the ladder again, moving slowly and carefully, but taking care to maintain an even rhythm as she made steady upward progress. She did not slow down again, despite the fact that her lungs felt like they were on the verge of collapsing, and her legs and arms were leaden with exhaustion.
After what seemed like half an hour, her eyes were no longer staring uninterrupted at a flat wall of stone, twelve inches away; suddenly her vision crested the top of the tower wall and she found herself looking at a little platform of wood, anchored to the sloping tower roof by the most rickety of fixtures, it seemed. The
