A Place for No One — James A. Rozhon

Antonio Duran and Annette Borjon have been feeling the unrest for weeks. Duran is a teacher and Borjon works in a grocery store. Both live in El Paso, Texas. For Duran, it starts when the school is attacked by men with grenade launchers. In a class that started the year with twenty-three students, his class that Monday morning numbered nine. Such is the stress in El Paso. For Borjon, it starts when she sees a phalanx of those same men marching in the street, their weapons free for anyone to see. For them, that's how The Second American Civil War starts. Duran and his nine students escape the school before the building that held his classroom is destroyed by RPGs and gunfire. One of the students is Borjon's thirteen year-old son, Ronaldo. They meet up in the warehouse of a local and nearby business and begin the process that will be earmarked by deaths in both of their families and in those of many of his students, all nine of which escape with him. Borjon's escape from her place of work takes her to the same warehouse. It is from that warehouse that their journey begins. Together they will return as many students to their parents as they can. However, it is during this process that Duran finds a critically wounded man whose name he learns is Roy Livingston. They will learn that he is one of the people who planned this uprising and will even learn why he did it. It is only at that point where real healing can begin. For both sides.