He could hear the sirens... as he ran across the fields, and the sounds of dogs barking in the distance. Whether they had his scent already or not he wasn’t sure. He’d done that old trick of entering the stream when he came to it and wading along with it for several yards to disguise where he came out. Dogs it seemed could not track scent across water, nothing for the tiny particles of aroma to cling too. He knew that the first 30 minutes of any escape was critical. If you could survive that first 30 minutes your odds went up dramatically. The guys in H block had been clear about that. Old mike even suggested peeing in the opposite direction to the one you wanted to go because that would drive the dogs mad.
No one had even escaped of course. Security was tight. The warden made sure of it. The swamp around the fences deterred most attempts ...that and the alligators. But he didn’t fear alligators. He’d grown up in the swamp, with the bayou people.
[Excercise to write in just 5 minutes a piece with the opening line 'He could hear the sirens...' by Sue Cooper at York Uni]
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