Had Alexander’s actions truly been righteous? Sasha knew that, if she searched the Bible, she could find scriptural justifications for everything Alexander had done. That’s why she’d come out here in the first place, wasn’t it? The Heavenly Kingdom was finally going back to the letter of the Bible, the word of God. Only now that she’d seen what that looked like, Sasha had found she could not abide it.

Am I still a Christian? She couldn’t say. Her faith had been such a part of her identity. It had been everything. And now it felt like a lie. What am I, if not a righteous servant of the Lord? Where do I go from here?

“Hey, Sash’? Little problem here.”

Roland’s voice jerked her out of her contemplation. She looked back at the man and her mind recoiled in horror. His skin had been shredded by gunfire; it hung in pale tatters down his face and arms. His clothing had been largely shot away, and the rags that remained were so drenched in blood that they clung to him. He looked almost as if he was clad in a single giant scab. One of his eyes was unfocused, dislocated, and something had happened to his left arm. It looked as if an enormous straight razor had burst out of the forearm.

“Where did you get that?” she asked. Sasha was surprised, and a bit disturbed, by her curiosity. Roland seemed surprised too.

“This?” he looked at the blade. “I really don’t know. I’d sort of forgotten it was in there.” He lifted up his arm and its blood-soaked blade, and looked at it like a child opening a prized gift on Christmas morning.

Then he flicked his arm down, toward the ground, and the blade slid back into the meat of his forearm with a wet thwack.

“Look,” he said, “we’ve got more pressing shit to deal with right now. You hear all those sirens?”

She actually couldn’t. Her hearing had begun to recover from the gunfight, but Roland was just barely audible. A loud tinnitus hum still rang through her ears. Sasha was pretty sure she’d suffered permanent damage.

“I can’t hear much right now,” she said. “The gunfire, you know.”

“Oh,” he frowned. “I forgot that can happen to you folks. Well, ah, there’s a shitload of cops or martyrs or militia, whatever, a bunch of them are coming. Probably two or three hundred. They got tanks and drones and shit.”

“God almighty…” Sasha felt fear rise up in her heart again.

“Yeah, listen, God’s not really the dude to worry about right now. Manny’s all fucked up. I stopped his bleeding, but you’re going to need to get him out of here.”