“A few minutes” turned into ten, then fifteen, then twenty. Sasha began to worry again. That was when she really started to miss her deck. Normally she’d have been able to catch up on the latest news from Zion, read one of her favorite issues of Revelator, and maybe even touch base with Alexander. Without it, she only had the throbbing pain in her head to keep her occupied. Sasha’s mind wandered to the rolling mountains on the horizon. She’d never spent so much as a night out camping before. The wildest animal she’d ever seen was a squirrel.

And there are bears out there.

That scared her more than the prospect of being arrested, or even the fear of what might happen to her nearer to the fighting. Dying in a drone strike or from a sniper’s bullet would be quick and expected, given where she was going. She’d spent a lot of time thinking about dying from sudden violence. It had acquired a patina of romance in her mind’s eye. But dying on some mountain, to a slavering monster from another age?

Sasha shuddered, seized by a chill entirely at odds with the extreme heat of this August day. It was 109, at least. Sasha rooted through her bag and pulled out a small leather-bound Bible she’d received as a Christmas gift from her dad two years ago. She opened it at random and found herself in the book of Jonah: “In my distress I called to the Lord, and he answered me. From deep in the realm of the dead I called for help, and you listened to my cry.”

She read on through the rest of Jonah’s cries, to the whale vomiting him up onto the shores near Nineveh. The word of God calmed her. She grew so engrossed in her scripture that she was taken completely by surprise when the coyote found her on the park bench.

“Miss Marion?” A man’s voice, weathered and gravelly, said from behind her. “You’d serve us both well by putting that book away. This is not a safe place.”

She looked up at the coyote. He was older than she’d expected, in his mid-forties at least. He had a mop of greasy blond hair, a round face, kind blue eyes, and a slight paunch that spoke more to his age than inactivity. He had thick biceps and forearms that bulged with corded muscle. His thighs were large, too. He had the look of a man who spent a lot of time on his feet.

“Mister…?” she asked.

“Jonah,” he said. “You can call me Jonah.”