Remember the Future by Bryant Delafosse

“There’s at least twenty grand cash in that bag.  Give it to your boss and tell him to call off the dogs.  You understand me?”
    Rudy doesn’t react.  He wiped at his nose, blinking in disbelief at the blood on his knuckles.
    Sticking his head back in through the window, Grant called out to Rudy above the noise of the cars around them.  “Hang on.  We’re going to get you some help.”
    “Get out of here,” Rudy mumbled, shaking his head in frustration and laying his head back down against the wheel.  “Goddamn boy scout.”
    Maddy cut around the back of the car and into the high-weeds of the shoulder, hauling Grant behind her by his arm.  She swung one leg over the guardrail then looked down the slope of hill stretching out below them.
    Acres of above-ground crypts stretched out as far as the eye could see. A city of the dead.
    “What about all the other people that were in the accident?” Grant sputtered, giving her his hand and helping her over the guardrail, but still looking back over his shoulder at the mess on the highway they were leaving behind.  In the distance, he could hear an ambulance.
    “Listen, help is on its way,” Maddy told him.  “You’re not running away.”
    “That’s exactly what I’m doing,” he protested, following her over the railing.
    “How are you going to spend the last hours of your life?” she snapped.  “I don’t plan to waste one minute filling out paperwork with a traffic cop.”  That being said, Maddy began the descent down the sharp grassy incline toward the cemetery, carefully avoiding the discarded items of trash and broken bottles that lay like hidden mines throughout the tall weeds.
    Grant gave her a look as if registering for the first time his position relative to the man that remained behind in the Mercedes—the man whose sole purpose was to deliver him to a gangster who would see him dead.  Giving one final look back at the Mercedes, Grant started the forty-five degree march down.  He quickly lost his balance, dropped to his bottom, and sailed past Maddy on the seat of his pants—half-sliding, half-rolling to the foot of a chain-link fence bordering a gravel-lined railroad track and came to an abrupt stop.
    Maddy dashed the last few steps down the incline and offered him a hand, hiding a smirk.
    Ignoring her, Grant rose to his feet and looked grimly at the fence and the railroad track on the other side.
    “They’re coming,” Maddy exclaimed, looking with wide-eyes back over her shoulder.
    Following her line-of-sight, Grant could barely see the tops of the cars from his position, but he trusted her observation regardless.  Before them was a foot-trail, obviously made by ambitious young explorers (or possibly the homeless).
    “C’mon,” Grant said, taking Maddy by the hand and pulling her along behind him down the dirt trail.
    “What are we looking for?”
    “How the locals get through,” Grant replied.  Rushing forward, he found a gap in the fence, and held the frayed ends open for Maddy to squeeze through.  He quickly followed.
    They scrambled over the empty railroad tracks and headed toward the seven and a half foot graffiti-covered wall, razor-wire lining the top.  Taking her hand, Grant tugged her down the dirt trail between the track and the wall.
    Maddy gave their interlocked hands brief contemplation before looking ahead toward the patch of wall Grant was angling toward.  Coming to a stop, Grant released her hand and examined the wall.  About five and a half feet up was a wide two foot by two foot square of missing bricks covered from view on the inside of the wall by a large tree.  At their feet lay remnants of a wooden pallet, all that was left of the method the explorers had gained access to the cemetery.
    While Grant ran his fingers along the edge of the opening and attempted to see inside, Maddy crouched beside the wall and studied its base.  Finding an un-mortared brick a few feet from the ground, she worked it