18. 19. 20…

        The shape of each digit flicked to the next, and the next. 

        Cecilia tried not to let the numbers on the face of the watch impact her accretion of each heartbeat. She pushed her fingers harder against her neck to remind herself of what she was meant to be counting. 

        31. 32. 33–

        The watch reached the 30-second mark and Cecilia withdrew her fingers, doubling her count. She picked up a pencil and pad of paper from the coarse scarlet carpet at her side, scrawling her sum at the base of a column of similar numbers, each accompanied by a date and time.

        66.

        She studied the column for a moment, struggling to retain enough cohesive thought to remember what all of it meant as the midday heat sapped her of all inclination to do anything but nothing at all. She resigned herself to apathy and set down the notepad once more, her eyes wandering to the sight beyond the rusted cast iron railing. 

        A bustling street severed this building from the one ahead. It was packed from curb to curb with people headed in every direction, clad in either extreme of worn, dull workwear or brightly-colored dresses and wrappings. Cecilia allowed her gaze to linger on one figure at a time, wondering who they were, where they had come from, or where they were headed.

        A Tanzanian in a neatly pressed suit called out a greeting to a man in coveralls pushing a wheelbarrow piled high with burlap sacks. The businessman bravely cut across the busy street just to have a further word with his friend–causing an approaching dala dala to lay on its horn as it rumbled around him. They shook hands and continued their conversation gaily as if narrowly avoiding catastrophe was nothing to give pause to. A woman passing the pair was in the thick of chastising her boy for dashing out into the street and now pulled him along firmly by his wrist. A peddler just across the street offered strands of flowers to passersby, the fragrance of the blooms wafting upwards to where Cecilia sat.

        She had dreamt of her mother last night.

        Her heat-stricken mind drifted like a petal in the breeze, carried by the sweet scent of hibiscus to the place where she held her most cherished memories.

        Perhaps it was this far-flung corner of the world she now found herself in–though the continent once, long ago, been home to her–or perhaps it was her mind preparing her for the inevitable… but the dream had stuck with Cecilia all morning. She recalled little more than the fleeting vision of her mother reaching out to her, bathed in milky moonlight. I’m waiting, she seemed to say.

        Cecilia had forgotten what her own mother looked like.

        Her parents had been conservationists–her father a member of an anti-poaching unit that traveled all across southern Africa. The two plucky Americans lived and breathed the quintessential Victorian stereotype of a jolly old African expedition… to the extent that when Cecilia was born, they expressed no hesitation at the idea of bringing her up in the bush. Her school was the mountain of books her parents traveled with, her playground the sweeping savanna. Ah, the sixties. She wouldn’t have traded her barefooted childhood for anything, as short and as sweet as it was. 

        It had all changed in an instant when they died. Bits and pieces of that day often found themselves rising to the forefront of her mind when she was idle, bursting all at once into the shrapnel of once-forgotten memories and reminding her of the horror that had swiftly ended that era of wonder and magic.

        She swallowed, wincing–her throat still hot and raw–and turned her attention outward once more.

        Cecilia’s shaded perch was a balcony that doubled as an awning for the shop below. The owner, Moses, sold maize flour and imported refreshments–and dabbled in the distribution of newspapers on the side. It was lucrative enough of a business to support his wife, Neema, and their daughter, all of whom lived comfortably in the humble apartment above the store. The Makoyes had been her hosts since she had come to them three days prior.

        There was little she could recall of what had happened at Caela Plant Mischa after the generators failed, other than the immediate moments before she succumbed to a terrible, feverish sleep in the pitch blackness of the jungle, having barely dragged herself–and Davy–from the river. She had run the events of that night through her mind over and over for the purpose of recording as accurate a timeline of events as she could, scribbling out her tattered memories on the worn pages of her notepad. The more she recounted everything, the more fantastical it had seemed. Reality had become intertwined with lingering hallucinations–tainting her trust in her memory–and she had spent the last few days trying to separate the two.

        She remembered the cool, smooth touch of the river rocks below her as they dug into her hands and knees, and she remembered holding fast to the thick strap of Davy’s water-laden chest rig as if it were their lifeline, pulling with strength she didn’t know she had. Her hands had been warm and wet with blood.

        That was real.

        She remembered hearing him finally cough and gasp for air, just once, before her strength failed and she blacked out. That, too, was real.

        The extent of her confidence in her memory ended there. Meager recollections. All else was nothing more than swirls of terrifying visions, the threads of hallucinations spun by her frayed mind.

        That thing she had seen towering above the smoldering remains of the facility… Unequivocally not real. She had categorized it as such quickly, but the image of it still tugged at her attention. How had her mind conjured something so bizarre, so nightmarish, on its own accord?

        No. It was just that–a nightmare. Nothing more.

        Cecilia and Davy owed their rescue from the gnarled depths of the jungle to a farmer, Nchimbi. Cecilia had not been conscious when he had happened upon them, but Nchimbi had eagerly recounted the miraculous tale at least ten times over after she had finally come to.

        The Tanzanian had been passing through on his way to deliver a truckful of crops to a nearby town when he had found them–or Davy, rather–walking alongside a seldom-used road a dozen or so miles from his village. Davy had been carrying Cecilia over his shoulders, on the verge of collapse, following the road. Davy, who had shed everything other than a dark t-shirt, his trousers, and his boots, had apparently told Nchimbi that they were missionaries and had become lost. Cecilia wished he had come up with something more creative; it was quickly revealed that Nchimbi happened to be quite the Christian, and from the moment Cecilia had regained consciousness, he questioned her incessantly about biblical stories that she knew very little of to begin with. Cecilia, in her half-cognizant state and under a near-constant threatening stare from Davy, may have imparted a wildly incorrect fact or two. The farmer had kindly offered to take them to his home in the village for food and water, and then to his cousin Moses in Moshi a few hours further down the road so that they could make arrangements to return to whichever town they had come from.

        Cecilia breathed in deeply, allowing the hot, humid air to soothe the dull ache in the root of her lungs. She pressed her hand against her sternum, feeling her chest slowly sink as she exhaled. 

        She had been monitoring her health closely to avoid worry on behalf of Neema, who had fussed over Cecilia–a complete stranger–as though she were family over the course of the past three days. Cecilia had been running a high-grade fever when she arrived, which Neema tenderly treated as a result of her night spent cold and wet in the jungle–rather than the caela radiation sickness it really was. 

        Cecilia knew better than to grow hopeful in the seemingly rapid improvement of her condition. She was well aware that the latent stage of her exposure was nothing but borrowed time. She could have days, weeks… There was no way to measure the severity of cell death or her lymphocyte count to be certain, so she did the best she could by simply keeping an eye on her resting heart rate. Neema did the rest for her by shoving a thermometer under her tongue several times a day, reading the output with either a disappointed “tsk” or a satisfied smile. Cecilia did what she could with this data.

        Another blare of a horn from the street pulled her out of her contemplative state. She peered over the edge of the balcony to see Davy emerge from the masses, his head low and his pace brisk. His efforts did little to dissuade the honks and lively calls of “Hey, mzungu!” that followed him across the street.

        She closed her notepad, marking the page with her pencil, and sat up straighter. The voice of Moses greeting Davy bellowed from below, followed by the sound of footsteps on the stairs. The Makoye child was down for her nap, and Cecilia silently implored Davy to meet their host’s hospitality with the bare minimum of proper social graces by not disturbing the peace of the quiet apartment upon his entrance. 

        Through the glass sliding door, Cecilia heard the muffled voice of Neema ushering him in. The two exchanged a few brief words that Cecilia couldn’t make out before the balcony door slid open and Davy emerged. He closed the door behind him and acknowledged Cecilia’s presence with nothing more than a glance in her direction. Exhaling deeply, he approached the railing, folding his arms over the top and leaning against it.

        A few loose, wet strands of hair curled over his brow, which had been constantly beaded with sweat for what seemed like the entirety of their time in Moshi. He sported a fashionable–if not somewhat outdated–polyester shirt and pants. The shirt, too, had been most often accompanied by a ring of sweat around the collar. It was an almost comical sight, seeing someone of his stature in such an ensemble, but he was overall strikingly convincing in his attempt to emulate an ordinary Westerner. 

        He glanced at his watch, then out over the landscape beyond the city. Barely visible beyond the trees and rooftops was the peak of Kilimanjaro, much closer than it had been the night they had flown in. A tuft of white clouds skirted the mountain, shrouding the greenery at its base in roving shadows. 

        He reached into the front pocket of his shirt and withdrew a cigarette, most likely obtained from Moses, who, despite his wife’s wishes for his health, often took the opportunity to light one up when Neema wasn’t around. Davy produced a scratched metal lighter from his back pocket and proceeded to flick the spark wheel, breaking the silence with a series of clicks. A small flame finally leaped up and he brought the lighter to the end of his cigarette. 

        They had shared barely more than a word over the course of the past three days, which should have been suspicious to the Makoyes if not for the fact that Davy had hardly been around at all, often disappearing into the dark streets in the dead of night or the middle of the day and returning hours later for a meal and a few pleasantries with their hosts before departing once more.

        Cecilia hadn’t yet tried to press him for his account of that night’s events. True, it would have been the most efficient method of separating her own fact from fiction, but she knew that the last thing he would be was truthful. After all, it was he who had sabotaged her project, causing this mess in the first place. 

        Regardless of the rage she felt toward him, though, she couldn’t make an enemy out of him. Not yet. She needed him–if he still had any intention of helping her.

        “Have you been feeling strange at all?” Cecilia said finally.

        The crook of Davy’s eyebrow twitched upward slightly, but he kept his attention directed towards the street.

        “No,” he said, the curtness of his word sending a puff of smoke over the edge of the balcony. The dried red flecks on his collar said otherwise. 

        She wasn’t sure why she had asked. The man had been exposed to at least half the radiation that she had–not enough to be a death sentence, but enough to make his life a living hell later on down the road. Death would finally pity him in twenty years or so, finding him childless and sick, cursing God for allowing him to think he had gotten away.

        He probably deserves it.

        Cecilia cleared her throat, seizing her opportunity–now that he seemed to be aware of the concept of conversation. “I was talking to Neema today. There’s a bus that can take us straight to Dar es Sal–”

“We’re not going to Dar es Salaam.”

        Cecilia found herself considerably annoyed by his interruption. Her head lolled back against the breezeblocks behind her as she tilted it upwards, watching as the smoke was pulled in circles above their heads by a lazily-spinning fan. “Where are we going, then? Because…” She trailed off, the heat and her general sense of malaise stealing her desire to challenge him any further. She set her elbow against her knee and propped her chin up with her hand, looking out over the rooftops to her side with half-lidded eyes.

        “Let’s say we go to Dar,” Davy said, exhaling a long wisp of smoke and turning his head in her direction, “and walk straight into the embassy. What would you tell them?” 

        Cecilia didn’t move from her defeated slant. His malign prodding did nothing more than to drive home the realization she had come to quite early on in their stay–that she was now a fugitive. 

        Out of spite, though, she decided to humor him.

        “I’d tell them everything.”

        “Hm.” He took a long pull from the cigarette, nodding his head. “Everything.”

        The familiar gnawing of hopelessness hollowed her chest. Who else did she have left to turn to? Kaneshiro, the only person she could trust, had hung her out to dry. She was stranded in the no-man’s-land between the East and the West, but neither side would come to save her. Not after all that she had caused.

        “I just… want to go home.” She slid her hands over her face, trying to rub away the vision of the monstrous being that haunted her every time she closed her eyes.

        He said nothing. She could sense him shifting his weight, however, and she removed her hands from her eyes to see him stepping away from the railing. He backed himself against the opposite wall and slowly slid down it into a seated position, extending a leg outward as he reclined against the brick. He appeared quite unfazed as he continued to puff away on his cigarette.

        She hardly had the opportunity until now to fully digest his countenance. Recently-formed dark circles under his eyes made him appear older, but Cecilia figured him to be in his thirties. His coarse mustache was accompanied now by an unkempt growth of stubble on his jaw and chin, and the longest strands of his brown hair curled against the back of his collar. From the light that penetrated his irises from the side, they appeared to not be as dark as she had previously thought–more of a shade of green. They bore into her from across the balcony.

        “You were ordered to do something, weren’t you–to the generators.” The words Cecilia had been fighting back for three days finally tumbled from her mouth. “We wouldn’t be here if–”

        “Listen,” Davy said tiredly, flicking the remainder of his cigarette through the railing. He lowered his chin and shot a cautionary look at her. “Think about your future–whatever’s left of it. You’re going to want to come out of this as clean as you can, yeah?” He emphasized his question by raising his eyebrows. “Because it’s not looking too good for you, as far as your association with the Soviets goes.”

        “I wasn’t associating with the Soviets–”

        “No?” Davy checked his watch again and leaned forward. “Your correspondence with Abramov and his staff over the past two years. Welsh, your old professor–a member of the communist party. All of those confidential Soviet reports and documents at your disposal, courtesy of SNOW–Who do you think smuggled every single one of those papers out of Russia?”

        Cecilia shrank down into herself, blinking slowly. 

        Davy continued. “The Soviets insisting that you be the one to meet with Abramov–It doesn’t sound so good on paper, does it?”

        “I’m not–I’m not some sort of.. spy–”

        “Don’t antagonize me,” he said with finality, ignoring her interjection. He leaned back against the wall once more, signifying the end of the longest arrangement of words she had ever heard him string together. 

        He slid his hand into his back pocket again and withdrew his lighter, sliding it across the carpet towards her. Cecilia leaned forward and collected it, confused. Davy nodded toward the notepad at her side. 

        “Burn it.” With the demand, he rose, reaching for the handle of the sliding door. “Say your goodbyes. We’re leaving.” 

        He disappeared inside, leaving Cecilia holding her precious summation of resurfaced memories in one hand and its imminent destruction in the other.

        Leaving?

        She gathered her feet under herself and stood. No longer protected by the waning sliver of shade, the sun beat down on her, exacerbating the feverish heat that already afflicted her. She flipped to the page on which she had detailed all she could remember from that night, her eyes trailing down the lines filled with scratched-out sentences and question marks. Arrows weaving across the page indicated where she had mistakenly placed events and later changed their order as more memories came to her.

        Cecilia began to tear out the page, then stopped. Perhaps he was right. 

        She summoned a flame from the lighter and held it to the corner of the thin pad of paper. The flame caught quickly, peeling upwards and slowly swallowing up the breadth of it. The blackened edges curled inwards, claiming the fading graphite markings forever. As the hungry flame approached the corner of the binding she held, she blew it out. 

        Cecilia held it for a moment as it smoldered, then smoked. 

        She felt suddenly queasy, not from her ill health, but rather from the prospect that she was now terribly alone in her plight. 

        She tossed the singed corner of binding out onto the street below, watching as it cartwheeled for a moment, then was swiftly ground into the dirt under the wheels of a passing dala dala.

        She slid open the door and stepped into the cool darkness of the apartment. Neema appeared from the small kitchenette carrying a plate of steaming ugali. She was a tall Maasai woman with strikingly high cheekbones and closely-cropped hair.

        “You are leaving so soon, Si-si?” Neema sighed, beaming in Cecilia’s direction as she set down the plate in front of Moses, who said a hasty “tuombe” and eagerly began to tuck in to the midday meal. She moved around the small table to help the toddler up onto her chair.

        Moses was a good half-head shorter than his wife, but such a difference was truly only noticeable when he sat still; he was an animated, spirited man who commanded just as much of a presence with how much he enjoyed talking up himself and his escapades to anyone willing to lend an ear.

        “I’m afraid so,” Cecilia said, eyeing the cramped entryway where Davy waited. “Thank you enough for your hospitality.”

        “Karibu sana, sister. You have brought joy into our home.” Neema approached Cecilia with outstretched arms, pulling her into a tight embrace. Cecilia smiled against her shoulder.

        “I wish I had something to give you in return,” Cecilia said quietly, feeling tears welling in her eyes. She had spoken so little truth to these good people in the past few days, but this she meant. “You’ve been so kind to us.”

        “Tutakutana tena, mwanangu. You owe us nothing but the promise of a safe return to your family.” She pulled away and gave Cecilia’s shoulders a squeeze, grinning widely. “Know that you are always welcome in our home.”

        Cecilia smiled. “Thank you as well, Moses,” she said, leaning to direct her gratitude in his direction. 

        “Karibu sana,” he said, distracted, his mouth half-full of food. “We will miss you, Si-si.”

        Cecilia begrudgingly made her way to the door, crouching to pull on the battered old sneakers that Neema had given her. She took her time lacing them up, waiting for the tears to clear from her eyes. Part of her wanted to remain here, in the cozy haven of the Makoye home, because it had been far too long since anyone had treated her like family.

        Davy opened the door and stepped out into the stairwell. As Cecilia turned her attention to the other shoe, she felt a light pull on her sleeve. She turned her head to the side and came face-to-face with the Makoye girl, who had somehow quietly liberated herself from her spot at the table. 

        “Hey,” Cecilia said, giving her a warm smile.

        “Bah bah sississi.” She opened and closed her fists excitedly, holding them out to Cecilia.

        “Bye-bye, Ira.” Cecilia took one of her little fists and planted a kiss on it. The girl giggled quietly as she turned around to toddle back into the kitchen. Cecilia straightened up. 

        She wanted to linger for a moment, but Davy was already halfway down the stairs and seemed to have no intention of waiting. She followed suit and descended, arriving on the ground level–Moses’ shop. They weaved around the displays, passing the gaudy–yet comfortingly familiar–soft drink and snack logos that only served to remind her of a country she feared she would never be able to return to. The strung-up newspapers against the wall still mentioned nothing of the terrible events that had transpired on that lone, cursed hilltop, and Cecilia began to wonder which world power was behind the damage control efforts. 

        Whoever was covering it up was doing a hell of a job.

        Davy paused at the entrance of the shop. He had shrugged on a worn leather jacket and held out an old military-style hat and a button-up shirt.

        “Hide your hair.”

        Cecilia took the clothing and shrugged the shirt over the one she was wearing, then followed with the cap. She tucked her loose strands of hair up under the band, turning to face Davy expectantly. He tugged at the shoulders of the shirt, then pulled the visor of her hat down lower with somewhat excessive force, causing her to buckle slightly and wobble backward. Before she could regain her balance he was off again, leaving her to jog after him as he stepped off of the curb to cross the busy street.

        “Where are we going?” she called, dodging other pedestrians and coming up alongside him once more. She looked back to take one last glance at the balcony of the Makoyes’ home. She longed to at least stay for another meal with them, to revel in their warmth one last time before venturing back out into the unknown.

        She was pulled out of her silent, bittersweet goodbye by a momentum-halting yank on the collar of her shirt. She spun her head around and stumbled back a pace just as a car whizzed past mere inches from her feet. 

        “Pay attention,” Davy growled, releasing his hold as they continued across the street.

        “Sorry,” she mumbled and matched her pace to his. 

        As they walked, the alleys and streets grew less heavily populated and more run down as they passed between districts. Lines tacked with clothing were strung between the buildings overhead, sending flickers of shadows over them as they moved. Davy reached into the band of his trousers and withdrew a handgun.

        Cecilia’s heart raced. Did he anticipate trouble?

        In a single, smooth movement Davy released the magazine, checking it diligently and clicking it back into place. He slid the gun under his waistband again, pulling the bottom of his jacket over the protruding grip. 

        A flash of scarlet caught her eye as her gaze traveled up his arm.

        Neema had kept him supplied with fresh bandages for his wound, which he had incessantly denied her help in dressing. Cecilia knew that a bullet wound would have quite literally blown a hole through their cover story, but she wished that Davy had been a little more amiable toward their hosts. 

        Suddenly Davy slowed, scanned the street, and turned into an open doorway a step up from the sidewalk.

        Cecilia followed and suddenly found herself in what seemed to be a grimy, smoke-filled bar. It was surprisingly busy for it only being the early afternoon, but there was enough open space still for her to properly take in her surroundings. 

        There were a handful of hookah pipes allotted to three raised seating areas opposite the bar. Groups of men sat on the cracked cushions that semi-circled them as they discussed whatever business it was that brought them to such a location at such a time of day.

        Cecilia hung back, unsure if Davy expected her to follow him further in. She was already garnering stares from a few patrons, so she kept her head low as she waited close to the door. An out-of-place, dark-haired man sat at the bar, his nose buried in a newspaper as he sipped the foam from a pint of vaguely urine-colored beer. He wore a khaki racer jacket with a pair of sunglasses tucked into the front pocket–He seemed quite at ease in this environment, despite his manicured appearance.

        Cecilia watched as Davy approached the man, then directed a word or two at him. The man looked up, a smile pulling at his laugh lines. The two clasped hands and pulled their shoulders together, then Davy leaned against the bar, his back to Cecilia.

        Who is this–A friend of Davy’s?

        She strained to make out the stranger’s expression as he and Davy shared a brief exchange. Davy turned to look at her over his shoulder, and almost simultaneously the man leaned over the bar to get a clearer look as well. Davy directed a nod to her, and Cecilia started moving around the handfuls of clientele, all drunk to varying degrees.

        As she neared, the stranger’s curious expression softened. He bared a set of brilliant white teeth in a wide grin.

        “Name’s Kai,” the man said, extending a calloused hand. He was unquestionably American, and his breath reeked of alcohol.

        Cecilia hoped he wasn’t going to be driving them anywhere.

        She took his hand and he methodically snapped it up and down just once, obviously a well-practiced formality for him.

        “Now,” he said as he discarded Cecilias hand, addressing Davy once more. “This is gonna be a little different than what we discussed. They made a few changes to the arrangements.”

        Davy inhaled, pressing his fingers down either side of his mustache and pulling them to his chin as he leaned over the bar top.

        “What changes?” he hissed.

        What arrangements?

        The man seemed to have anticipated Davy’s reaction and held his hand up reassuringly, his eyebrows raised. “Ah-ah. This is a good thing. You’ve got those other guys turning the town upside down lookin’ for you. You never woulda made it out if it were just the three of us.” Confident that he had convinced Davy, he continued. “First of all, I’m no longer the one driving you outta here.”

        Thank god.

        This didn’t appear to assuage Davy. He pursed his lips and straightened up, scanning the patrons of the bar. “Kai…” he cautioned, his jaw clenched.

        “My hands are tied, man, I’m sorry–Listen, the only way I was able to get out here at all was by doing this shit on their terms. It’s still good, alright? You’re still good with them.”

        “Who?” Cecilia stuttered.

        “Tell me how this is going to go down, Kai, right now,” Davy said, leaning in close to his contact’s face.

        Kai’s eyes flickered toward the door for a moment. “Hey, speak 'a the devil–”

        Davy and Cecilia turned to look in unison. Three more exceedingly out-of-place Caucasian men had just entered and began looking around as if they were taking mental note of every drunk in the building. One of them was dressed in a clean white business shirt and slacks, his sandy-colored hair neatly combed back as if he were an investor strolling down Wall Street. The man to his left wore the uniform of a sanitation worker, and the other wore a tourist's outfit even more unforgivable than Davy’s.

        Business said something to Sanitation, and the small circus crossed the floor in Davy and Cecilia’s direction, drawing stares as they went.

        “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Davy breathed, turning back to Kai. His hand hovered above the band of his jacket.

        “Easy, easy. They’re with us. They’re cool,” Kai said.

        The trio came up alongside them at the bar, with Business taking his place close behind Cecilia while Sanitation and Tourist circled around Davy and Kai. By this point, the other patrons seemed to have lost interest in the spectacle and turned their attention once more to their glasses and pipes.

        “Just in time for a pint, fellas,” Kai joked, chuckling and rapping his knuckle on the bar top. The newcomers didn’t seem to share his knack for joviality. 

        Tourist reached around Davy and quickly frisked him, and almost simultaneously Cecilia felt Business’ hands do the same. Davy was visibly agitated by the action and scoffed as Tourist pulled the gun from his waistband and set it on the bar with a heavy, metallic thud. Business quickly reached forward and took it, sliding it into the back of his pants.

        “Right,” Tourist said with finality. “We’re going to walk outside. You and you,” he directed at Cecilia and Davy, “are going to get in the back seat of the white car. You,” he said to Kai, “will be in the sanitation truck. Let’s go.”

        Cecilia’s eyes widened in confusion as Business took hold of her arm and began to direct her back toward the door. 

        “Davy…?” She looked over her shoulder. He was also being pushed along and seemed less than pleased about it. He muttered something unintelligible–but scathing, by the intonation of it–towards Kai.

        They exited the bar and stepped back out into the blazing heat. Cecilia squinted as her eyes readjusted. At the curb was a white sanitation truck, and behind it was a similarly-colored sedan. As she was led towards the car she noticed that three Tanzanian policemen toting compact rifles were loitering in the rear of the truck. They sat upon the rear bumper, cigarettes teetering upon their lips as they watched the group pass. 

Business reached ahead and opened the rear door of the car, placing his hand on top of Cecilia’s head and pushing her inside. Davy slid in next to her. The door was shut behind him, and Tourist took the wheel while Business took his seat on the passenger side, ahead of Davy.

        Cecilia watched through the windshield as the policemen on the sanitation truck ahead extinguished their cigarettes and took hold of the handles on the back. The rest of the entourage finished filing into the cab of the truck, and with a rumble, it lurched forward. The car sputtered to life and followed.

        A metallic clicking sound called Cecilia’s attention to the passenger seat, where Business had somehow produced a shotgun and was now feeding shotshells into it. He noticed her expression of apprehension. 

        “You’ll want to keep your head down if I have to use this, love,” he said, his words rounded in the unmistakable mark of an English accent.

        Davy turned in his seat with some difficulty, peering out the rear window. “Are you expecting to be followed?”

        “Well,” Business said as he planted the stock of the gun between his outermost leg and the car door, “we have a decoy crew en route to the airport. It sounds like they’ve gotten the attention of most of the riff-raff, so we should have a straight, clean shot to a smaller military airfield just east of the city.” He paused for a moment and glanced down the adjacent road as they continued through an intersection. “But, we’ve got to be prepared for anything with these guys–” he stopped himself and grinned, turning to face Davy. “Your guys, I should say.”

        Davy didn’t seem to be put at ease, but he softened any worry in his expression when he noticed Cecilia watching his reaction for any reason to be concerned. She sank lower in her seat and closed her eyes as the sun beat down on her from the window to her right. The heat trapped within the car only exacerbated the stench of body odor that seemed to be infused in the cushions, and her stomach churned as the car rounded a corner sharply. Sweat was beginning to dot her forehead under her hat and she swallowed forcefully, willing herself not to be sick.

        From her lower perspective, she could only barely see the clipped roofs of buildings on either side of the road as they sped onwards. Ahead, the policemen bobbed on the back of the sanitation truck, tossing a few nonchalant remarks back and forth amongst each other as though they weren’t perched precariously on the back of a moving vehicle with another following close behind. 

        The car began to slow, and a handheld radio squawked to life from the center console.

        “Got a policeman directing traffic at the intersection ahead. He’s one of ours and will let us through. Just sit tight.”