Manny almost laughed at the irony in her admitting that to him. But he kept his mouth shut and just nodded. Sasha took a long sip of her coffee. He felt a little bad for staring. She was very pretty. But she was also pretty young. And of course she’d volunteered to join a theocratic murder-state. That was probably another reason he shouldn’t get too attached.

“So, anyway,” Sasha explained, “I’ve run into some men I don’t like very much. And they keep finding me when I get off from my shift at the hospital. I’m sure they’re waiting outside the House of…where I’m staying, right now. I don’t want to deal with that yet.”

“Well,” Manny smiled his most charming smile, “I’m happy to help you wait them out. I’ve got another hour at least before the buses take us back to the barracks.”

And so, for a while, they just talked. She told him about her work in the hospital and he tried to say as little as possible about his two shitty days as a Martyr. Sasha didn’t seem to mind that he didn’t have much to say about himself. Manny got the feeling she was just happy to have someone to talk with. Most of her words passed over him until she mentioned something about a prisoner.

“She’s from one of road people, from some moving city with an obscene name. And she’s pregnant. So I’ll be seeing her again tomorrow, probably, to do a more thorough examination. I feel weird about it. She was so strange, so different from anyone I’ve met. But I really don’t like–”

“Wait, a prisoner? Is this at the hospital?”

Sasha seemed confused by that question, and Manny worried he might have overplayed his hand.

“Why do you–”

The rest of her question was cut off by the sound of a bullhorn outside. Manny couldn’t make out most of what was being said, until he heard, “prisoners” and “SDF” in an electronically distorted southern drawl.

“Oh no…” Sasha moaned.

“What? What are they talking about?”

“It’s another execution.”

Manny stood up and stepped toward the door. He had to see who it was. Even before he got there, a terrible feeling had started to boil up in the pit of his gut. He pushed the door open, jogged toward the gallows and pushed his way through the crowd. He could see Roland, standing twenty feet off to the left from the wooden platform. But Manny’s eyes were focused on the four men and two women in shackles at the foot of the gallows. Five of them were strangers.

The sixth was Mr. Peron.

Chapter 17

Roland.

Roland smelled the execution before it started.

There’d been a lot of strong smells in downtown Plano when he arrived. Gunpowder and sour fear-sweat, the acrid stink of anxiety and the warm, wet odors of grief and confusion. He’d smelled the stale reek of military rations, the sharp pang of anemia and the boiling hot testosterone that wafted from the Martyrs like a jet stream.