I Took A Walk Episode Eleven The Zig-Zag Path

Earning this bonus could cost Jimmy his life

Jimmy saw late evening daylight sooner than he expected.

No one was there.

Nor was it a cliff, but a steepish hillside, and first his head came out. He kept walking until all of him was out, and it looked as if he was standing on the ground.

He spotted the soldiers, more than three football fields away, getting into their trucks.

Those trucks headed for him across rugged terrain.

On arriving, a soldier with sergeant stripes on is shoulder that  he had never seen before exited one of the trucks with a whiteboard and marker and began writing while most of the rest surrounded him

You have drifted to your left. Keep in mind your tendency to drift that way, but don’t try to compensate when going from basement to basement. If you miss one, knowing that gives you a place to start from.

He erased it and wrote more.

My men are laying your new line, but we will escort you until you need to go underground again. You walk a straight line. We will have to go around things.

Jimmy looked and saw two men tying a string between two stakes. They stood and one made a hand gesture indicating to walk that line.

Only a few steps into that walk, he saw a landmark he recognized. He drove the highway next to this neighborhood every day on his way to work. Spirits now high, he continued his walk with growing confidence that he would live.

His route had dips and rises to it. It got as high as his thighs, and he got three yards above the ground before it started rising again. He even walked through someone’s shed. At a house, he stopped and turned to the man carrying the whiteboard.

It is empty. While not all houses are in the neighborhood, every one you need to pass through is, including those with basements you will pass through.

It struck him that he hadn’t seen a civilian since leaving the hillside. What had they told everyone?

He noticed the helmet cams. They were recording everything he did, to analyze. Was that why they wanted him walking through buildings? He did as they wanted.

Not long after, he followed a group of soldiers into the drainage ditch next to the road he drove to work every day on. He stood a hand span off the ground at that point. The ground was up to his knees by the time they came to the men next to the line painted on the ground and the big X on the concrete ditch wall. One man there held a whiteboard.

90 feet

Good luck

He made that ninety feet easily, coming out with the top of his helmet in the ceiling. Two men waited. One held up a whiteboard.

Turn around and look. The yellow tape is where we expected you to come out. We are marking with red tape where you did. We will do that the whole way for you.

He turned. There was a five-foot difference between the gold and the red one. Five feet of drift in ninety feet wasn’t good. He needed to do better.

When he turned back, the man had written something else.

Follow me.

Two rooms down was a line painted on the floor and an X on the wall. 103’ was written next to that X.

That was the pattern for the next eight basements, though his feet were closer to the floor in each.

In basement nine, 137 feet from basement eight, he came out in a running shower occupied by a young woman. It was anyone’s guess who was more surprised.

She ran out the door.

He slipped and fell.

On getting up and looking around, he found himself in a small basement apartment.

Before he could decide what to do next, two soldiers came in.

You are in the wrong building. We didn’t clear this one.