“But hey, at least you beat the commies, right?” Louis said, handing his friend another beer.

Ivan laughed heartily as he shook his head, an awkward smile on his face. He leaned forward to grab the can. That sense of humor missed the mark way more often than it didn’t, but that laugh was definitely one he needed that early on a Sunday.

“I guess I did, didn’t I?” he said with a shy smile. Louis dug back inside the portable cooler and produced a second beer, this time for himself. Raising his can like a young freedom fighter celebrating the end of the war at some musty frontier tavern, he proclaimed:

“A toast. To my favorite unsung hero of democracy.”

Ivan raised his can back at him, nodding once with feigned reverence. He cracked it open, loud and messy, and Louis followed suit. The foamy taste of victory was followed by two long gulps from each. Weather-chilled cans of Huxley before twelve o’clock; truly, the breakfast of champions.

That morning so far had been a load off his back, he decided. Weather was warmer for the first time since the end of summer, and it was a good change of pace from the usual gray, chilly afternoons he and Louis would spend with their hands in their jacket pockets, trying their hardest to enjoy their weekly meet-up by the time winter was already on its way back.

The two were sitting on their usual lawn chairs, with their backs toward the house as they faced the lake. Anabelle was inside cooking her signature bland pasta dish for the monthly parents and teachers association meeting in just a few hours, and had basically locked the boys outside to prevent them from ruining everything by pretending to help. It was a morning too good to be wasted by trying to pretend you’re useful, the two had agreed anyway, and they were glad to be outside enjoying their choice brand of cheap beer. The air was usually way fresher in Lou and Belle’s little hideaway, especially in mornings like those, which was one of the reasons Ivan enjoyed saving the date. The other, as his tired smile denounced, was his best friend’s company.

They were quiet for a short while, listening to the sounds of nature and staring at the shades of autumn beyond the opposite lakeshore. Louis had the habit of keeping conversation in good spirits whenever he could tell his friend had gone through a rough week, which was sorely frequent, but he knew how to keep a few moments of quiet introspection in between their usual banter for good measure.

“I just wish having beat Ilya’s people would’ve paid for my renovations, at least.”

“Hey”, said Louis, pointing a loose finger at him. “You got a medal.”

“I don’t want medals, I want new roofing.”

“Dismantling a coup d’etát will only get you medals. You want a new house, help them win one next time.”

Ivan smiled and shook his head, once again. He was easy to annoy, but strangely enough he was never bothered by his friend’s casual humor about the duress he was under during the days of the civil war. In a sense, he knew that was the best way to rationalize it. If nothing else, it was pretty much the only one left. Old Lou was just yanking his chain, sure, but deep inside he did feel this stoic sense of accomplishment from his service.

“Medals are okay, I guess”, Ivan mumbled. “Except you can’t eat them. Believe me, I tried.”

Lou snorted. Ivan liked to crack jokes about it, but his friend knew better. For unremarkable working class people such as Ivan, or at least as he always saw himself, having the chance of being part of history was as big of a deal as a long-lasting marriage, or raising healthy children. Except in a strange, collective sense, which he never quite knew how to put into words. It’s not like he ever saw the need to, considering how much of a good job the eggheads at the Praetorian Front propaganda division had done in his place, mostly so he could focus on the shooting.

“Sometimes I wonder if they shouldn’t have won”, he said in a somber, almost deadpan tone.

Looking enviably comfortable in his seat compared to Ivan’s trademark stiffness, Louis just side-eyed his friend with skepticism as he catched that sentence in the middle of a particularly long swig.

“There’s nothing to ‘wonder’ here, comrade”, he said finally, sounding like the sort of expert in speculative history any man in his forties becomes after his third beer before noon. “It would be exactly the same.”

Ivan didn’t laugh. He wasn’t sure if that was one of Lou’s jokes or not.

“Except we’d probably still be at the munitions factory”, Louis quickly added. “Fueling local conflicts until compulsory retirement. And our boss would be Kravchenko’s drunken nephew or something.”

“You mean we’d have dodged Karlsson as our taskmaster?” Ivan asked, this time unable to contain a smile.

“His stingy ass would be put to the firing squad. In front of the whole contingent, to boost morale.”

Ivan didn’t resist and let out a hearty, sincere laughter.

“If they ever did that I would’ve walked into that assembly line every single morning with my hand on my chest, singing ‘O men of valor, from to the marshlands to the sea, gift your mother, Old Preatoria, one last glimpse of her children free’”, Ivan chanted, straightening his back and widening his shoulders, closed fist over his chest, his voice mimicking the baritone of the old socialist hymns of their youth. Louis cackled like a teenager trying to signal how much he just understood some adult’s dirty joke at the dinner table.

“Don’t let the neighbours hear you, I don’t wanna get arrested.”

“There’s no one in half a mile.”

“I know, but shut up anyway.”

Snatching a heartfelt laugh out of the class clown felt good for a change, but it didn’t last. He knew Louis was right. It might’ve been just a throwaway joke about how their old enemy would have been their boss while their actual old boss would’ve been dead, but there was nothing funny about how things did end up. Ivan wanted to believe that having lost to the sworn enemies of the republic would’ve been ten times worse, but he knew better. He did wonder, sometimes, if they shouldn’t have won.

Staring into the distance, he felt the sounds of nature now seeming disorienting, cluttered over one another. An aggressive mass of noise that surrounded him like the pressure of the sea during a deep dive. He felt the freshness of the outdoors slowly melting into a sense of danger, the sort one shouldn’t be able to find within civilization, but at the same time felt like what civilization had become in its essence.

His thoughts were swooped in half by the ominous sight of a large raven flying by, the dense blackness of its shape massive and jarring against the brightness of daylight. Ivan could feel his mind drifting back into the sinkhole from which he struggled daily to rope it out, sometimes to no avail. Suddenly, it wasn’t such a beautiful morning anymore.

“I lost the appeal”, he could hear his voice say as he stared into nothing.

Louis froze for a second, his eyes widening as he turned his head like a startled prey.

“You what?”

“You heard me.”

“Say you’re joking.”

“I wish.”

He sat in silence for a few seconds, looking away, pretending he did not intend to go into detail. But the cards were already on the table. He had laid them himself.

“Judge says the Committee is in their right to deny me any further prescriptions, as well as consultation”, he continued, trying to mask his denial. “Apparently my case was filed under the bill that took the brunt of the budget cuts, so it falls under the new regulations.”

“Wait, you mean the public health one?” Louis asked, genuinely puzzled. “But I thought the treatment program for veterans was under the Reparations Act.”

“Yeah, me too, but as it turns out they filed my case outside of the program to make it easier for them to screw me over first chance they got, and now they have it”, Ivan spat out. He could feel the cynicism building up inside him. “How’s that for reparations?”

Louis had a sour taste in his mouth. That court appeal was possibly Ivan’s last chance of sustaining his injuries without having to pay for the medication. Gone in the stroke of a pen.

“But what about the army…?” he asked Ivan, running out of ideas.

“They can’t do shit. It’s not their money.”

“This is ridiculous, they should be putting a motion in your favor or something, you’re their guy.”

Ivan laughed. And then he laughed some more. His laugh sounded and looked how most animals must perceive a spitting cobra defending itself.

“‘A motion.’”

He crushed the empty can on his hand and hurled it inside the trash bag. Leaning over the cooler to fish for another one, he just looked Louis square in the eye and said:

“Be for fucking real, Lou. Those assholes want me gone.”

Leaning back, he cracked it open and continued:

“I made them look like a bunch of clowns. Not like they needed any help with that, anyway.”

Down the hatch. Even needing to approach that subject made him thirsty. Louis, on the other hand, was starting to consider going back into the house and asking Belle if she had already thrown out the morning coffee.

“You’re a war hero, for fuck’s sake” was all he could say. The stink eye Ivan directed at him made his mind drift once again toward reptiles and venom glands.

“What the hell do you think this is?” Ivan asked, gripping his beer can like the armrest of a tyrant’s throne. “Some mushy dandyboy afternoon flick like those you’d take Belle to pretend to watch? Like a hundred years ago, when we were all dumb kids and someone still had any hope for this shithole?”

Louis said nothing. He just stared at his friend with genuine concern. Maybe a slight hint of frustration, but that was it.

“There are no war heroes, pal” Ivan continued, already setting his sights back into the distance. “Just disabled morons like me, who can’t even apply for a day job without having their pensions revoked. And then having it revoked anyway, because the government we bled for decided we are dead weight.”

It rattled inside his ears like the cackling of boiling oil, of the fire that consumes. The quiet alienation of hearing your own voice and thinking it’s someone else speaking through you.

“‘War hero’. What a riot”, he continued, the anger slowly giving place to the usual brand of cynicism. “You need to stop watching that foreign propaganda they clutter daytime television with and maybe go for a stroll downtown during business hours. See for yourself how us ‘war heroes’ are doing.”

To Louis, that man sitting on a lawn chair a few feet away, downing a lukewarm can of Huxley while half pretending to enjoy a sunny afternoon, was a complete stranger. He was, for all intents and purposes, his best friend. But at that moment, Ivan looked less like himself than he looked like a nightmare about someone he hoped he’d never become.

“Yeah, fuck it”, Ivan said finally, sensing his friend’s discomfort. “I’m not even mad at any of this. Not anymore, at least.”

His voice was a searing monotone at this point, unfazed and bled dry. Louis had known him for a lifetime worth of bad times, it wasn’t hard to tell when he had something bottled up for a while. As it was, it may as well have spilled by accident.

“Okay, but how did– How did any of this even–”, Louis tried to articulate, desperate to say something. He just took a deep breath and settled for a simple “When?”

“Last time I was there. Last week or so”, Ivan said, still not looking back at him, trying his best to look dismissive. So far, it hadn’t been his best effort.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Didn’t want you losing sleep over it, I guess”, he said, still looking away, hinting at a half-hearted shrug. That did sound sincere, Louis had decided.

The stretches of silence between the short exchanges were starting to appear longer than they actually were. Not only to his deeply concerned friend, but to Ivan as well.

“Besides, what’s the point?”, he continued. “It’s done.”

“You should have told me, Ivan”, he replied, more frustrated than worried.

“Yeah, I guess I should’ve”, Ivan agreed, starting to sound almost bored. “It’s not like there was anything you could’ve done, though. So… Yeah.”

Louis couldn’t do much at that moment besides getting a long, hard look at his best friend’s approach to rock bottom. Ivan wasn’t going to return the look. He wished he was anywhere else.

“So what’s next?” he finally asked Ivan, his gaze drifting away.

“Apparently I need to get some papers signed so I can reapply for the treatment”, Ivan explained. He didn’t sound hopeful about the prospect by any visible stretch.

“Can you actually do that after being denied a second time?”

“Not really”, he said. “At least not officially, from what I reckon. I dunno. I guess we’ll see.”

Ivan didn’t let on nearly as much as he should, but dealing with the pains of his injury was a daily struggle he couldn’t bear the brunt of on his own. Louis could see just how dire the news were, but at that point he was gonna take anything he could get.

“Are you going there again?” he asked Ivan.

“Yeah. Next Wednesday, on my usual schedule.”

“So you’re telling me there’s still a way to make this work.”

“I guess you could put it that way.”

“And do you think it’s gonna work?”

Ivan didn’t answer for what was barely ten seconds, but still felt like almost a minute.

“I don’t even know what I think anymore, to be honest”, he said finally.

That answer wasn’t good enough for Louis. The need to say something to make his friend feel better was ringing inside his ears. Desperation was starting to spread between them like blood on water, and he could already feel the murkiness taking hold of his sight.

“You know if you need anything—”

“I know”, Ivan said promptly.

“I’m just saying, if you need help finding a private clinic—”

“I got this.”

“My cousin could help us out.”

“I said I got this. Don’t worry.”

He suddenly didn’t know what else to say. He just kept trying.

“Look, all I’m saying is, if you need anything, anything at all, even if it’s just someone to talk to…”

“It’s okay Lou, I appreciate it.”

“Me and Belle will always be here for you, I just need you to know that.”

“I know that, and I need you to know that I mean it.”

“Okay”, said Louis. “Okay. Thank you for letting me know.”

Maybe he had no idea how to respond, but Ivan knew that was enough sitting and moping for a whole weekend. He stood up with a groan and threw out the empty can he had been holding for what seemed like half an hour. As he grabbed two fresh ones, Louis stared back at him and reached for his as if he didn’t know what it was for.

“I really need to stretch my legs for a bit”, Ivan said as he walked toward the lake. “My back is about to murder me for the third time today.”

Louis gazed at his friend marching out as he cracked open a beer. After a few steps, Ivan turned around and just stared back, gesturing toward the lake with a slight tilt of his head. He walked along the coast as if only half expecting his friend to join him. Louis finally stood up, realizing his stiffness wasn’t that far removed from that of his friend, who at least in his own mind had always been the stiffer of the two.

Catching up with Ivan, he could see how absent-minded he looked, almost as if pretending to be distracted. As he picked up the pace, Louis said:

“Okay, but about this whole thing…”

“What about it?”, he snapped back. Something in the passive aggressiveness of Ivan’s tone caught Louis off-guard.

“How are you holding up?”

“About as well as you’d expect”, Ivan said, walking slightly faster as his friend closed in. “What’d you want me to say?”

“I want you to be upfront with me.”

Ivan snickered.

“I don’t think you do, buddy.”

Louis stood still for a second before saying:

“Try me.”

Ivan came to a halt. He looked at the lake briefly, then at his feet. He then looked his best friend in the eye and let out a dry chuckle as he shook his head.

“I swear to God I’m this close.”

“Shut up.”

“See?” he said as he immediately turned his back and started walking away.

“Don’t say that shit to my face”, Louis protested, pressing on as he did his best to keep up.

“I mean it.”

“I don’t care. Don’t say it.”

Ivan felt his day getting significantly worse after this brief exchange. It dawned on him like a shroud of shame. Opening up was never easy for him, mainly because he had nothing reassuring to show whenever he did. He could feel a sense of regret settling in, the looming feeling that he had ruined his and his best friend’s only day together by trying to talk about his problems, something he had no one else to help him process.

A few steps ahead, he slowly stopped walking once again and started saying:

“You don’t get it. It’s been tough”, he said as he slowly stopped walking. “Tougher than usual, I mean.”

His voice sounded almost feeble, something that disturbed Louis in a way he couldn’t quite place.

“It’s been getting worse for a while now, but lately it’s like I’m reaching… I dunno, this whole new stage or something. Like I didn’t even know it could get this bad.”

“What the hell are you even talking about, Ivan?” Louis asked, frustrated with so much vagueness. “Is something going on? Something else, I mean.”

Ivan thought long and hard before answering.

“The other day”, he heard his voice letting out. “Like a week ago, or so. I can’t remember now.”

“What happened?”

“I completely lost it. I don’t know what it was, but I just had this weird bout of insomnia. Some sort of panic attack in the middle of the night. Woke up at three in the morning and couldn’t go back to sleep.”

“Did the pain wake you up?”

“No. It was something else.”

“The nightmares, then.”

Ivan said nothing.

“I don’t even know for sure. I mean, I can’t remember. Must’ve been that.”

Louis had a thick coat of skepticism over his expression as he heard that answer.

“You sure it wasn’t something else?”

“Like what?” Ivan asked, hinting at a certain annoyance.

“Like, I dunno. You’re the guy who won’t move out of Weaver Parish Road. You tell me.”

“I already told you there’s nothing there”, Ivan replied, insisting on the annoyance. “It’s just a bunch of trees, same as anywhere else.”

“I can take you to that real estate agent my cousin told me about, I’m just sayin’…”

“Can we just not have this conversation again?” Ivan said, visibly frustrated.

“You could get a nice place downtown with the cash. I mean, the house is pretty big, in decent shape, five minute walk from the creek…”

“The house is not even mine, what the fuck are you talking about?”

“Bill would be happy to sell it if you found a buyer, just think about it.”

“What the hell is this, all of a sudden?” he asked, walking up to his friend’s face. “I’m trying to talk about the shit I’m going through and you wanna peddle that real estate talk again? Today? Of all days?”

“Look, I’m just saying, okay?” Louis replied, raising his beer can on one side of his face and an open palm on another, looking sideways as he dodged Ivan.

“You live in a dangerous place”, he continued as he kept walking. “Things are gonna get tougher to keep in check, now that we don’t know what’s gonna happen to the treatment and all… Just some things I guess you should be taking into account.”

Ivan circled back and got on his face again, this time talking awkwardly close.

“I’m starting to lose my shit here, dealing with chronic pains, the fucking nightmares are coming back—”

“Ivan.”

“And you’re trying to convince me it’s the house I live in?”

“It’s not the house.”

“That if I move into some shithole in the crate-piling district it’s just gonna magically solve everything, am I hearing this right?”

“Ivan.”

“What.”

“I’m sorry, okay? You’re right, you’re going through a lot right now. I get it.”

Still visibly shaken, he kept staring at Louis in silence.

“You’re in a rough spot, and it’s about to get a lot rougher”, he continued, tapping his friend on the shoulder and circling around him like he was a stranger he almost bumped into by accident. “We should focus on that.”

Louis walked along the lakeshore by himself. The dismissiveness in his body language reminded Ivan of his own before he flipped.

“I’m sorry I shit talked your pet spookhouse and the neck of the woods it sits on”, Louis said over his shoulder, approaching the rocky ground of a bank. “By all means, keep them.”

He walked toward the water and sat on an old stump, drinking his beer in silence. Ivan stood still for a while longer. “What a fucking asshole”, he thought to himself.

As he approached the stump, the familiar instinct to keep dragging pointless arguments whenever you’re with your best friend had overcome him entirely. He could hear his voice rattling the bars of the cage his mind had become. “You think I LIKE living in that shithole? That I LIKE those woods?” None of it even made it out of his lips, however. There was something else bugging him, by now.

Standing right behind the stump, he fired:

“I need to know why you’re telling me this.”

Still looking dismissive, Louis took a long swig and rested his elbow on his knee, not looking quite over his shoulder but not straight ahead, either.

“Been hearing some stories”, he said finally. “Stuff that had me worried.”

“How is this even news?”

“I’m serious, Ivan.”

“Well”, he shrugged. “I’m listening.”

Louis seemed reluctant for a second, but as he started verbalizing it Ivan could tell how much he felt like he needed it.

“Remember Juan Carlos?” he asked Ivan. “From the factory days. Used to hang around the bar.”

“Juan?” Ivan said, a bit surprised by the mention. “Yeah, I know which one. Tall guy, dark hair. What about him?”

“He’s been seeing some weird shit lately.”

The somber tone in Louis’ voice was a good indication of where that conversation was heading, but it was too late by then. Ivan had to humor it somehow. Unsure of what to say, he just asked:

“Weird how?”

“He saw some people on his property, a few weeks back. He says it’s them.”

Ivan frowned at that statement, shaking his head.

“How does he know, though? Did he actually see anyone, or…?”

“He did. He says so, at least. Peeked out of his window and there they were, right next to his house.”

“Just standing there?”

“Apparently.”

Ivan shook his head again, raising his hand to his brow. It was clear why Louis had been so quick to jump at the opportunity of hogging him about the property. “Not this again”, were his exact thoughts.

“Since when do you and him still talk?” he asked, unsure of any better way to change the subject.

“You know that dive bar I always tell you about? Where me and some of the boys at the company play pool sometimes, after late shifts?”

“Yeah, what about it?”

“He started showing up a few months back, usually late at night. Apparently he got a job at that new delivery company upstate.”

Louis couldn’t help himself from betraying a warm smile.

“Even started renting this old sixteen wheeler from his cousin, and all. Says he’s looking into buying it. Guy’s gung ho about the whole thing, you should see him.”

“Yeah, sure, but”, Ivan said, not worried about hiding his impatience. “Did he even say what he saw?”

Louis was silent for a moment. That was enough of an answer for Ivan to pick up from where he left.

“Or is it just the usual ‘I don’t know what it was, but I know I saw something’ people around here try to peddle when they forget their kitchen door unlocked or whatever?”

“Look man, I’m just saying what I was told, okay?” Louis replied, sounding more annoyed than defensive. “You asked.”

“Did he even go to the cops?” Ivan pressed on, trying to gauge something out of that story that wasn’t just hearsay. “Or did he just decide to jump to conclusions?”

“He did, apparently”, said Louis, stopping himself before another sip just to add: “Go to the cops, I mean.”

“And what did they say?”

“What do you think? Told him to get in touch with the zoo first.”

“What a joke”, Ivan scoffed. “Did they even go there?”

“Are you fucking twelve?” Louis snapped back. “Do you even know what cops are allowed to do if there’s a risk of a sighting?”

“Sit down on a chair circle and stroke each other’s cocks, would be my first guess”, Ivan answered, unamused.

“Very funny, man. Thanks for answering my first question.”

The two of them were in silence for a few seconds. Ivan stood next to the stump, facing the lake as well. It was obvious to him how frustrated Louis was by his dismissiveness of that particular subject.

“Cops won’t go anywhere before getting a memo that confirms containment measures are in place”, Louis continued, almost to himself. “What do you think they’re gonna do? Shoot the creeps on sight, like they do with humans? Bag ‘em and tag ‘em?”

Ivan just sighed before Louis was even done talking. For a moment he could feel his mind drift back to the days of political persecution, when investigations were taken seriously and quotas didn’t take precedence to solid evidence. Ideally, at least.

“Do cops even arrest people anymore?”

Louis just shrugged, drinking as he pretended to enjoy the view instead of overthinking procedures he had no bearing on.

“So did he?” Ivan asked.

“Did he what?”

“Call the zoo.”

Louis chuckled before drinking some more.

“As if. Fella’s scared shitless”, he said finally.

Ivan wasn’t amused. He was ashamed to realize he had completely forgotten about Juan. They had always lived close by, but his tendency for self-imposed isolation never did his friendships any favors. The two of them were never exactly close, but they did hang out on a number of occasions, back when Louis, Hank and Viktor were always up for a drink or a dozen after they left the assembly line.

Juan Carlos was shy and mild-mannered, but had a way of letting loose whenever he felt he was among friends. Him and Ivan didn’t have much in common, especially when it came to politics, but they always focused on their few common interests whenever they had a one-on-one. Maybe these interactions hadn’t been as meaningful to Ivan’s formative years as the more politically-charged ones, but they were cherished memories nonetheless.

Now, years later, these memories took on a whole new meaning now that he learned skinny old Juan, with his messy head of hair and his dumb smile, was just another middle-aged blue collar worker whose friends had forgotten about. Not only that, but also possibly in danger in a way he didn’t even fully understand. The irony in how similar all of that sounded to Ivan’s own situation wasn’t lost on him, which made it all the more bitter.

“I mean”, he’d say after a long silence. “Can you even blame the guy?”

Louis just raised an eyebrow as he stared at him.

“For what?” he asked finally. “Not trusting the authorities?”

“Between the cops and containment people, what are these ‘authorities’ even planning to do for him?”

“Not much”, Louis scoffed, “if he doesn’t report anything.”

“How is this even safer? What if they decide he’s part of the problem?”

“Sure, that’s a risk—”

“‘A risk’? They do that every single time.”

“But if he did report what he saw, there’s at least a non-zero chance that they can actually offer some help.”

Ivan tried to laugh but it didn’t come out quite right. He was too angry to be cynical about any of it.

“Can you listen to yourself, for a minute? ‘Non-zero chance’? The guy’s a fucking citizen of the country we went to war to protect. He works, he pays taxes. ‘Non-zero’ is not gonna cut it.”

“Okay, comrade”, said Louis, starting to sound like the grumpier of the two. “So what is he supposed to do? Just sit at home with his drapes closed until the scary people go loiter somewhere else?”

“Stop acting like the issue here is me not coming up with solutions for the imaginary problems your bougie ass keeps inventing in your free time.”

This time it was Louis who laughed, and it came out just as smoothly. It was like the barrel of cynicism Ivan carried around everywhere had toppled over and spilled on both of them, covering the two from head to toe like it was boiling tar.

“Sure man, let’s just ignore the fact people are disappearing every other week.”

“That is not the issue.”

“Then by all means, explain to me what happens to be the issue”, said Louis, sounding progressively more insulted by the level of absurdity that conversation was beginning to approach. “Because I don’t see anything more serious than that taking place inside the Triangle right now.”

“Damn buddy, I don’t know?” Ivan said, feigning confusion. “People seeing shit that isn’t there, maybe?”

“Okay, so that’s what you think this is. People making stuff up because they’re bored yokels with too much free time. Apparently that’s my case, too.”

“That’s how they keep you under control.”

Louis let out another loud, ugly bootleg of a sincere laugh. Ivan was unfazed by it, doing his best to cling to any scrap of dignity he believed he still had left in that exchange.

“You don’t sound the least bit crazy right now, buddy”, said Louis, not looking at his friend as he brought his beer closer. “Nah, not by a country mile. Absolutely sane and level-headed.”

“Sure, let’s both act like I’m the asshole, that’ll do it” Ivan said, pretending to agree as he stared at the first direction in which Louis wasn’t in his field of view. “Juan’s gonna fuck himself over as soon as he picks up that phone, I can promise you that.”

“That’s his only choice.”

“He’s not even in danger.”

“He lives in Weaver Parish Road, Ivan”, said Louis, outraged to the point he was actually looking at his friend once again. “Do you even read the reports anymore?”

“There’s nothing there.”

Ivan’s voice was firm and dry in its conviction. He did not look back at Louis as each word came out.

“They still haven’t found those kids.”

“It’s just a bunch of trees.”