Going Barefoot - E. D. James

Olivia lay in the dark until the red numerals on the clock next to her bunk read 3:00. She had feared that might actually fall asleep and miss her opportunity, but she didn’t want to set the alarm on the chance someone might hear and remember it. The precise hour was not so important, but she liked to have a schedule that felt rigid. She’d asked a bit about how the watch on deck was carried out and learned that this time was the dead middle of the shift for the night crew. They came on at ten p.m. and worked until eight in the morning. Around three a.m. was their lunch break. This should be the time when she would have the best chance of slipping off the ship unnoticed. She needed to be able to investigate the gulag graveyard without anyone watching her. The fact that one of the crew had been following her every day when she headed out into the field made her nervous to collect the samples she needed. She feared that the Russians would cover up anything she found. She wanted to have the data and make her case before they had a chance to cover up the horror that she believed remained in the earth.

She sat up as quietly as possible, gently swinging her legs over the side of the bunk and setting her bare feet on the cool linoleum. She stood and picked up her pack with the sampling equipment, maps, and food she’d put together the night before and slug it over her shoulders. She picked up her boots in her left hand by the shoe laces she’d tied together to make it easy to carry them until she made it onto the dock. She didn’t want to make any more noise than necessary as she walked the passageways and the ladders. She gently turned the handle and swung the door in, stepping over the steel threshold and onto the textured vinyl of the passageway. She could feel the bumps on the bottom of her feet. She pulled the door shut, twisting the handle so the latch wouldn’t click, then turned and headed towards the ladder.