The Hourglass by Casey Donaldson Read Free Book Online

and was nearly six feet tall, although still gangly. The guard ignored the
outburst and moved over to him, preparing to go through the same motions. The
boy wasn’t having any of it. He backed away and then turned and ran,
sidestepping around another guard in the process.
    “Stop!” yelled
one of the guards. “Stop now!”
    The boy ignored
him and continued to run. He was fast and was making a beeline for the trees.
Sarah glanced around. Everyone else was paying attention to the boy. She could
probably slip away now and nobody would notice. But where would she go? There
wasn’t another building in miles, just this endless, uninterrupted scrub. Her
attention was brought back to the action as the boy let out a shriek. They had
fired a shot of electricity at him. His whole body convulsed twice on the
ground before becoming still. One of the guards walked over to him, his gun
trained the whole time. He reached the prone body and nudged it with his boot.
The boy didn’t move. He brought out a pair of handcuffs and snapped them onto the
boy’s wrist, then used them to drag the boy back to the group. Every now and
then the boy’s head would hit the ground with a horrible thud as he was dragged
over the uneven ground. Sarah felt sick. Finn was looking pale. Some of the other
prisoners were watching it coolly, whereas others, like Marland, were trying to
focus on anything but what was happening. The guard finally reached them and
dropped the boy’s arms none too gently. The guard with the ID device walked
over and burnt a barcode into the boy’s wrist. He then stood up and moved to
the next prisoner. It was Marland. She was pale as a ghost and stood shaking
slightly, but she didn’t resist when he grabbed her wrist. She only winced when
they burnt the barcode in. Finn was before Sarah. He didn’t resist either, but
he stared at the guard the whole time, not blinking. A muscle in his cheek
twitched when the code was burnt into his flesh, but that was all. Sarah looked
away and tried to think of something else when it was her turn. She didn’t want
to remember the guard’s face, or any of this. She just wanted to serve out her
time as quickly as possible and get the hell out of there. It was quicker than
she thought, but it hurt like hell. And it smelt. That was probably the worst
of it. She could smell her own burning flesh. The guard moved on and she examined
her arm tentatively. The barcode was about two by four centimetres, the lines
fine and delicate, but they were burning an angry red. She gently placed her
other hand over it, wincing at the pain but appreciating for the first time how
cold the wind had made her hand. She glanced around. Most of the others had
done the same, except for Finn. He had wrenched his sleeve back down, covering
the burn completely. It must have hurt more for it.
    “Ok, let’s
move,” ordered one of the guards. She gestured with her rifle towards the door
of the warehouse. They walked over to it. The unconscious boy was lifted over
the shoulder of one of the guards in a fireman’s lift.
    Sarah shivered
with appreciation as soon as they entered the building. It was warm and they
were out of the wind. The warehouse consisted of one large open space inside. There
were a number of cubicles situated near their end of the room. The half of the
building furthest away from them appeared to be mostly for storage, containing
large shipping containers and boxes of various sizes and shapes stacked up in
piles. A few of the people in the cubicles glanced up as they passed, but not
all of them. They were ushered straight through to the far side, where there
was another door. One of the guards advanced and wrenched it open. Sarah
gasped. There was a pier leading straight off from the doorway, and at the end
of it sat a thirty metre long enclosed boat. It looked dull but fast. Yet this
wasn’t what had caught her attention. Everywhere she looked there was water.
She had never seen the sea before. She