When sleep comes, it envelopes him like a glove, and he fall into a dark recess of heat. Walking through some unknown cavern of life. Seeing Carlos’s kids kicking a flat soccer ball. The air glows like purple mist. He yells for them, but they run. Bugs blink fluorescent in the night air, hovering and humming by his face. A woman’s hand reaches for the children. “No!” Jack yells. “No!”

She smiles. Taking the kids’ hands, leading them away with her.

“No!” Jack yells again.

He has to save those kids. They walk faster. He huffs. His weight is getting to him. He is old and out of shape. The jungle opens up into an area of shacks thrown together from odds and ends of lumber and corrugated metal. Some are the color of rust, others various shades of despair. From a distance, the kids giggle and laugh. Jack hurries his steps. Every movement is laborious and taxing on his body. His lungs hurt. His hand reaches for the makeshift door that is hinged with belt leather nailed to the wood. There is no knob, only a round peephole cut through the slab of lumber. He two-fingers the hole and jabs a splinter into his finger. Pulls the door toward him, his fingers wet with the drop of blood. Inside sit kids, who turn to him. The girl standing in the center turns to look at him, and it is his daughter.

Then come the screams. Lifting his body from the bed, Jack is dreaming. Hands are shaking him, Matías standing over him. “Men are raiding the village.”

Placing his feet on the ground, Jack peeks out through the cracks of the wall, then turns to the panicked faces of Carlos and his family.

Matías says, “We have to run.”

“What about Carlos? His family?” Jack asks.

“What about them? We stay, we risk death. Those are either soldiers or FARC guerrillas.”

Outside the shack, a woman screams. Children cry. Male voices bark loudly. “Orders.” Matías whispers. “They’re giving orders.” Arguing in Spanish. Jack feels his insides shiver and quake. Matías stands staring at him. If they run, they risk being shot. And even to be seen escaping can bring risk to Carlos and his family.

Jack has a decision to make, and no time to deliberate.

ANNE

ANNE

Inside the Louisiana line, they catch out just as the train leaves the yard, evading a bull. Dredd gets on at the last minute, angry. Something boiling and brewing. Stowing away on an open boxcar. Jamming the door in its track with a rusted spike. Inside the car, wooden floor splintered and pocked by whatever it has borne over the decades. The walls are scrawled with graffiti—initials, symbols, and dates of passage.