Free The Fallen by Jack Ziebell

find a boat!” said Marius, just as the girl wriggled free and ran back into the swirling smog.  “Stop her!” Marius yelled but she had already run past Brian and was lost from view.  Brian ran back into the smoke but knew instantly it was hopeless; even if she could find her way back to the hospital he doubted he could, and he did not want to think what would happen to her if she did make it back. 
    He felt a hand on his shoulder; it was Marius.  “Forget it Brian, she’s gone.”
    “She’s not gone Marius! She’s in there somewhere; we should go and try to find her.” But he knew he was fooling himself as he said it.
    Marius looked at him and clenched his shoulder so he felt it.  “If you go back in there you will most likely die.”
    Brian broke down and started to cry. “Fuck!” The tears drew clean lines in the grime on his cheeks.  “What the fuck are we going to do, what the fuck are we going to do?”
     
     
     

Chapter 18
     
     
    “Look out snake!”
    Tim heard Asefa in just enough time to swerve around the twelve-foot long black mamba squirming in the centre of road.  He’d been too busy looking for danger in the bush to watch the way ahead.  Oddly the snake didn’t lunge at him or chase him.  He’d heard plenty of stories from NGO workers and locals alike about mambas that could move as fast as a racehorse; that were as aggressive as a lion; hunting a man down, following him into his house and cornering him in the dark; they would supposedly rise up to eye height and strike you repeatedly in the face or heart, when just a scratch from its fang was enough to kill you.  He looked back, the creature was still writhing and he thought he saw it biting itself. 
    He redoubled his effort with the pedals.  “We must go quickly Asefa.”
    Before the snake, they had seen two more bodies of armed tribesmen lying by the side of the road, but this time they did not stop to help.  They had probably gone forty miles by that point, far enough away that toxic gas shouldn’t have been an issue? He had to find out how far this thing had spread. 
    Sarah.  He hadn’t been there for her once before.  Well, he hadn’t been there in a sense that did any good.  Five years earlier, their postings had briefly overlapped in Nairobi; Nai-robbery she had jokingly called it before that night.  She had insisted they went out for dinner at some cute Tunisian place on the other side of the city.  He’d tried to talk her out of it, suggesting they went to the Nando’s in one of the safely gated shopping malls.  She’d said, ‘Don’t be a pussy, Nando’s is SO boring and we’ve been there ten times already!’  He should have protested more, or come up with a better option, there had to be a better place than Nando’s?  But that’s what he’d suggested, hoping she’d take the hint and make a counter offer.  An hour later they were in a run-down taxi driving to a run-down part of town.  Tim was as concerned that they might both go down with dysentery as he was of the risk of crime.  Crime in Nairobi was high, stories of muggings were a daily occurrence and up to this point they’d both been lucky.  The muggings there were also particularly violent, the kind of robbery where without hesitation they would chop your arm off with a machete, then ask you to pick it up and give them your watch.  He wasn’t just being paranoid, there were good reasons to be cautious and was Nando’s really that bad anyway as an alternative? 
    To top it off, Sarah didn’t really know where the place was and nor did the taxi driver who spoke little English.  Tim had tried to make her give up and go back, but by this point it had become a point of principle and she was being stubborn, as she often could be.  ‘No we’re getting out here – I know it’s around here somewhere; they said just-past-the-old-colonial-bit before you get to the Umoja district,’ she’d said, and before he could stop her she’d