For the past two weeks I have been flying trips to and from the airport, dropping people off in safe zones; evacuating them,” Jessica finished her story and sat back down. During its telling, several people had stirred and sat, listening intently to every word she uttered. Paul said nothing. He wrote feverishly, scribbling as many of the details as he could remember. Even as he listened to Jessica’s story, the verbal narration of her history, he began to pose questions – forever the journalist, it would seem – which he scribbled in the margins. Everything he wrote was in his own form of shorthand; utter nonsense to anybody but himself. “There’s nothing else?” he asked. “You’ve been flying these evacuation flights for the past two weeks. Have you not heard something, anything about what has happened since? What started it, why did it spread so quickly?” Paul flicked through his notes. He was certain that Jessica was hiding something from him.
