“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.

But, a half hour into his time downtown, something else had drifted over the packed masses of refugees and pilgrims and militiamen. It was hard to define: a bit of tension, and a bit of anticipation. The odor was faint enough to suggest something unconscious, a collective emotion. The aggregate scent of a crowd of people who weren’t consciously aware of how they felt. There was no neurotransmitter, no pheromone he could identify in particular. This scent was more elusive. He was only able to lock it down through the memory fragments it triggered.

Coal gray sky. A biting chill in the air. Hundreds of men and women bundled up, clustered around barrel fires. Everyone talking. Excitement in their voices. Anxiety on the air, mingled with gun-oil and anticipation. Something was about to happen.

A few seconds later, the scent of anxious anticipation started to rise. Roland heard the deep bouncing thrum of heavy rubber wheels on pavement. His hindbrain tied the sound to a particular species of obsolete armored personnel carrier, originally manufactured in Bulgaria. After following its route for several seconds his hindbrain guessed the APC was bound for the main square.