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but saw neither. Thinking that she’d call Mark and tell him about her interesting day, she flipped up the side flap on her purse and reached for her cell phone. The battery symbol on front was black. After being on for the entire camping trip, it had a nearly dead battery. She walked to her car and hooked it up to the charger, figuring that she’d call Mark from her desk when she got back.
    Before she shut the car door, she heard it ring. She leaned back in and looked at the incoming number. Mark.
    She sat in the driver’s seat and answered. “Hi...”
    “The Guard called. They want me to come in this afternoon.”
    “That sucks. So much for a little more R & R before—”
    “I’m not going.”
    “What? You have to.”
    “Come home.”
    “I can’t. I’m working. I—”
    “Come home, now.”
    “Mark. What’s—”
    “This is big, Cheryl. It’s not just some little flu going around. I think we need to get prepared for the worst.”
    “Fine. We’ll talk about it when I get home tonight. Right now, I’m starving, and I can’t even think straight. You would not believe what just happened here. Remember that guy, Paul , I told you about the other day?”
    There was silence on the other end.
    “Mark?”
    Nothing.
    “Hey…if you can hear me…I’ve got to go. Mr. Schrumer just gave us a break before our meeting resumes.”
    She looked at the phone. It was dead. She’d lost him.
    She set it down and looked at her watch then got out of the car. She figured she had just about forty-five minutes before Schrumer returned to his normal ‘Type A’ personality and got back down to business, expecting everyone to return to the conference room and pretend like it was a normal day.
    As she walked back towards the sidewalk on her way to the row of shops that lined the street, she heard shouting in the park. Through the line of pine trees, she saw two police officers struggling to get cuffs on a man lying on the ground. A third one held a gun to the man’s head.
    The man was shirtless, wearing cutoff jean shorts and no shoes. His hair was a mass of wild dark curls that bounced around like springs as he resisted the arrest. Even from this distance she could tell that his eyes were bloodshot, and his skin had the same gray pallor as Paul’s had. His mouth kept opening and closing like he was trying to say something, but just couldn’t get the words out. She wondered why they were treating a sick person like a criminal. Shouldn’t they be strapping him on a gurney to get him to the hospital, instead of trying to haul him off to jail?
    Sympathy was not forthcoming as the officer with the gun put his boot on the man’s head. Despite the constraint, the man continued to squirm and writhe, hindering the other officers from keeping his wrists together long enough to clamp on the second cuff.
    The man’s mouth kept moving like he was trying to gulp mouthfuls of grass. He stretched his chin out towards a small brown lump nearby, snapping his teeth. Then she noticed a scattering of feathers a few inches away. He wasn’t trying to speak or eat grass—he was after the brown lump. It was the carcass of a bird…a headless sparrow.
    Tearing herself away from the odd scene and moving forward, she gave up on trying to understand anything today. She had been so transfixed on the commotion that she almost forgot her mission—procure a sandwich to feed her stomach that was now feeling a bit disturbed. Even if she was feeling a little queasy at the moment, she figured that she ought to pick up lunch anyway, because she was feeling lightheaded from low blood sugar. She could always save it for later…
    Unfortunately, it seemed that food was not going to be forthcoming. At the end of the block, she found herself stalled at a crowd of people blocking the sidewalk. Somewhere ahead of them there was the flash of blue and red lights from a police car. She figured it had something to do with the man in the park.
    She walked up to a