Allen bolted up, a nightmare clinging to him like a bedsheet. He gulped for air even as the fear faded into his subconscious. For an instant he thought the warm moisture drenching his hair, streaking his chest, was blood, then he realized it was perspiration, lots of it.
The sound of another breath caused him to freeze.
He jerked around and recognized the van's interior. Stephen was reposed in the driver's chair, which was collapsed into a sort of narrow bed. Faint light coming in through the windshield caught the tips of his whiskers and hair, giving his head a fuzzy, surreal quality. But his soft, bass snore was real enough, and Allen found some comfort in that. He became aware of a rhythmic patter echoing through the van. It took him a moment to identify it as light rain falling on the roof. He shifted his gaze and made out Julia's head between the passenger door and seat. He thought he could hear her shallow breathing. In all, he found the sounds soothing.
The army blanket that had covered the mattress when he crawled back to it was now bunched up in a corner. He shifted to slide the makeshift curtain away from one of the square back windows and smelled the stale odor of uric ammonia. The former owner had mentioned having small children, and Allen envisioned stains the ragged shape of countries on the bare, pinstriped mattress beneath him. It gave him a token appreciation for the dark.
Stephen had parked at the far end of a shopping center's parking lot. A twenty-four-hour grocery store in the middle of the strip dwarfed the peddlers of videos, liquor, stationery, coffee, electronic components, and other assorted luxuries of modern life. Allen spied a pickup truck and a dilapidated VW bug a few slots and one row over. Because the cars were too far from the grocery to belong to shoppers, he assumed their owners were store employees. A regular pattern of lampposts poured pools of rain-hazed light onto the vast asphalt. One such lamppost rose out of sight just to the right of the van's rear window but returned no light. He scanned the pavement below for broken glass, saw none. He doubted Stephen would have thought to shatter the bulb, but Julia would not have hesitated.
He eased down on the mattress and gazed through the window at the clouds. Beyond, stars twinkled as raindrops passed over them. He wondered how long until the sun came up and the others woke. Then he drifted off again. When his eyes fluttered open, it was daylight and the van was moving. Stephen and Julia talked quietly in the front seats. To orient himself, he turned back to the rear window. The sun stung his eyes.
"Good morning." It was Julia, looking much more refreshed than he felt. She had spun her chair around and was ducking under the table that held her computer equipment. She positioned herself in the bucket behind Stephen.
"Is it?"
"We're alive," Stephen called back. "I'd say that makes it a good morning."
"I suppose." Allen groaned and swung his legs off the mattress. He tugged at his shirt to align the buttons with the center of his chest and asked, "Where we going?"
"McDonald's," Stephen chimed. "Hungry?"
"I don't know yet, but I sure could use a mug of Java." His mouth tasted like something had died in it; probably smelled like it too. Julia was massaging her neck, and he remembered the awkward position she had slept in. He felt a little guilty that he'd hogged the only bed, but only a little. He lined up the toe seam of a sock and pulled it up. He looked up to find her smiling at him.
"What?"
"Nothing," she said, shaking her head slightly.
That smile. She really could break hearts without any trouble.
"It's just that I've never seen your hair mussed up before."
His hands flew to his head as if she'd said his hair was on fire, and he began combing it with his fingers. Her smile broadened, and as much as he could have bathed in her charms all day, he was irked to realize that he was the cause of her amusement. He noticed the laptop lid was closed. When he'd decided to check out the mattress, it had been open and still receiving the decrypted data from Julia's friend.
"Did you get the data?"
She grinned and nodded. "It took even longer than the program had calculated. It was still downloading when we parked and fell asleep. When I checked this morning, it said file transfer complete. I almost opened the directory, but I figured you two would want to be part of it." She was almost giddy.
"Doesn't matter to me who checks it out." Allen shrugged. "As long as it's something we can turn over to someone else and get back to our lives."
The van stopped, and Stephen killed the engine. Through the windshield, a pair of men in paint-stained coveralls pushed through a glass door marked with golden arches.
Stephen turned to face them. "So what's say we stoke up on some greasy fast food and do some good today?"
