Cole and Zach were standing in the dark, shovels in hand, staring at a dirt wall.
“I like the idea of lying better,” Cole said.
They had walked, it seemed like for miles, until they couldn’t walk anymore. The jail, Ollie had said, was beneath town hall, a few stories. “He said it wasn’t closely watched, mostly because they didn’t care about people in jail. And he thought it was weird since it was so close to town hall, he thought it’d actually be easier to monitor from there,” Zach had said. “Maybe it was at one point, but guess that faded over time.”
So now the two men stood stories below town hall, eyeing a wall they planned to dig through to reach Root and rescue him from jail.
“Yeah, but breaking into jail is something not a lot of people can say they’ve done.” Zach smiled and slammed his blade into the dirt. “And I have no idea how long this is gonna take, but we better get started.”
“Yeah,” Cole sighed. He swung his shovel at the wall, tearing away a chunk of soil.
“Didn’t you know the jail was here, if they led you out?”
“I had a lot on my mind. Honestly, I was just trying to figure out what was going on.”
“Yeah, that makes sense.”
They shoveled a few more inches off the wall in silence until Zach spoke up.
“And you think they won’t notice?”
“Oh the people being held there will, for sure. But the guards, probably not.” He threw a pile of dirt behind him. “They rolled out some food every now and then, but other than that, they might as well not have been there.”
“Sounds like a great place.”
Cole guffawed. “I’m just not sure how we’re going to deal with the rush of people. Once we break through, floodgates will open, so to speak.”
“Well, there’s not much we can do about that. Harder to free one man from jail this way, right?” He swung his blade at the wall. “Best we can hope for is that in the mad scramble, nobody sees us, and it will have all been a mysterious wall collapse or something.” He exchanged looks with Cole.
“I guess.”
With everything else going on in town, Cole was only hoping this wasn’t going to be the top priority. He was hoping the elders and security were worried about whatever was going on with the old barracks being taken over, and the new areas, that their last worry would be a bunch of towns people suddenly being free. It could be a good distraction, too. If there was a big focus on tracking down escaped prisoners, it may give them cover to find the top room, or escape, or do whatever they decided to do in the heat of the moment. Cole knew he had to bring freedom, but he didn’t know what that meant. Was it just for him, was it for everybody, was there something else he was supposed to do? Root had seemed like the kind of guy to think about this stuff, so he was hoping that beyond this wall, there were more answers with the man they were rescuing.
As if on cue, Zach’s shovel struck the wall, and when the dirt fell away, revealed a small crack. They peaked through and saw the crowded jail.