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You check the time—10:45 am.

As you pass by the window, you hear a loud moan close to the front of your house. You find a gap between the boards covering the glass and look outside. Across the road stumbles a man wearing the tan-and-white camouflage of the National Guard. He grips a pistol in one hand, and the other holds a bloody cloth to his neck. As he moves onto the curb outside your home, he looks over his shoulder, and you read fear on his face. Suddenly, he trips on the knotted root of a tree jutting through the cracked pavement, then he tumbles and lands on your lawn. A moment later, he rolls onto his back with a subdued moan, and his hands fall to his side. From thirty feet away, you eye the wound on his neck, but it's so covered in blood, all you can see is red. You study him as he lies there and notice the bulging pockets on his uniform.

You scan the street and see no other movement, save for some trash blowing in the wind and a blackbird coasting between telephone poles.

You…