Free Twisted Times: Son of Man (Twisted Times Trilogy Book 1) by Vincent de Paul Page B

the burial in person to reconnoitre. When the time came for our mission, Arnold and I boarded the Nakuru–Ndudori matatu while Jack and Dick drove in our getaway car, a Mazda marqué pick-up that Pius, the guy who modified our stolen cars, had given to us promising that he had done a very good job on it.
    The guards were beaten to their game for they did not have a vehicle. In a matter of minutes we emerged on the Nakuru-Ndudori road. The main gate of the military training college seemed deserted. There was no sign of life. As Dick drove off I could not help thinking that I had seen one of the guards pull off something like a walkie-talkie… stop being paranoid.
    Our journey was to culminate in Nairobi.
    We encountered police on patrol in the general area of Mbaruk and that’s where I thought that our fortieth day had ultimately come. I was damn sure Dick was hitting 200kph from the wind that was hitting us at the back, and no doubt this could send some message to anyone that if we were not fleeing from something we were definitely avoiding something. The police on patrol hailed us to stop, but Dick did not. He panicked or so I thought. Perhaps he thought that the police had been alerted. This prompted a chase. It was a late night Hollywood showdown on the Nakuru to Nairobi highway.
    Our car was too much for the police’s to keep up with. When the police lacked speed they supplemented that with their weapons. They deflated all our tires and within no time we could not drive any further.
    I did not know how I was left alone. I just found myself alone in the back. Jack was nowhere. I had to act fast before the police caught me. That’s when I did something I had never dreamt of in my life.
    I opened the coffin, got in and lay inside as though I was dead. I could hear them talking as they circled the car cocking their guns, orders being issued and the scampering of heavy shoes. When they opened the coffin, my heart was pounding so hard against my rib cage that I thought it would explode and kill us all.
    “It’s a dead man. I don’t know where they were taking the corpse… but I am sure it was not being legally transported,” one officer said in Swahili.
    “Maybe rituals… that is common in Naivasha.”
    “What kind of rituals?”
    “Don’t you read the papers?”
    I started feeling antsy, especially from hearing discussions about me as though I was already a morgue case. It was barely five minutes when they came to a conclusion on what to do with the body. They would take it back to Nakuru, they decided. “Kinyua, bring our car. We will tow this thing first thing in the morning.”
    I heard shuffling of something I did not know.
    I assumed that they had moved away from the pickup to wait for their car. I slowly opened the coffin and checked around. Their car was parked some twenty metres from our immobilized truck. One of the officers was standing about five metres from the back of the pickup, probably the one who had sent Kinyua. I had to move with the gracefulness of a deer, careful.
    Coming out of the coffin as noiselessly as I could I jumped off the pickup from the sides and darted to the nearby bush at the side of the road. As I snaked in the blurry night I heard heavy footsteps right behind me. It couldn’t get any worse. They were hitting the earth’s crust so hard, scurrying behind me, too close. It was evident the police had heard me get off the pickup and decided to chase after me. Didn’t they give up? I began to run.
    Don’t give up. Don’t make that mistake. Keep running. I ran towards the direction I deduced was Nairobi; east or west, home is best.
    When I was no longer hearing any footstep behind me I took a rest. I did not know how long I had been running. I was just getting away, putting distance between me and the police.
    At a distance of about a kilometre I saw some light as though there were some shops there. A quarter an hour later I was there and to my relief it was a shopping centre.