The new squad was more prone to walking the perimeter of the roof. The tension of it had me feeling nauseous, because some of them liked to shine their flashlights down. I had to maintain a state of combat readiness. Anticipating the next person, then making a mental note of any habits or things to look out for. By the time I was done that, the next person was on the approach.

The squad that was up on the roof now had ten people, but only seven walked the rooftop. Two more smoked up a storm, and a third fiddled with a boom box or something, the volume barely audible. When they had everything balanced right, it played a sports match, which didn’t seem to make a lot of sense given where we were, or when the teams were listed as Brazil or South Africa. A recording of a game from years ago, possibly. I halfways suspected the interest was in fixing the machine and the recorded match was just to be a constant source of sound that told them if it was working or not.

From the snippets of conversation I caught, one of the smokers was the squad leader, the other his friend. The guy who fiddled with the machine had been injured in a combat a while back, so he didn’t patrol.

Much of the conversation came from two soldiers who walked as a pair. Constant complaining. Eins and Zwei, as I thought of them. Their chatter was usually a good advance warning.

Then there was Drei, a woman who smoked, who scared the shit out of me every time she shone her flashlight around. The smoke and the light of the constant beam flicking around the corner of the building and onto the ground at the base were the closest things I had to a warning to get Rain and I down and into a position by the base of the wall where empty cans of fuel for the generator were stacked. Sometimes the wind didn’t let me smell the cigarette, or she wasn’t smoking, I couldn’t be sure which. Sometimes she didn’t aim the flashlight down until she was at our section of roof. Usually one of the two things was true. Still spooky, because the flashlight was mounted on her gun, and there would be a mere instant between the second we were illuminated and when she pulled the trigger. Would I manage? Maybe. Would Rain? Probably not.

Four and five—I’d wracked my brain for Chinese numerals, to change it up and serve as a mnemonic, then settled on the English ones instead. They were a pair who were mostly engaged in a back and forth, the English speaker was an ex-gang member, based on things he’d said, and half the time he’d be rattling off words in one language, while his Chinese buddy answered in another, or vice versa.