Manny! She’d forgotten all about him. Sasha realized with a start that she’d blotted the rest of the room from her mind. She looked around and took it all in. Manny was still lying where she’d left him, nursing a gunshot wound to the belly. He was pale, sweaty, and he looked to be in terrible pain. But he was conscious and alive. That was more than she could say for Marigold.

The poor woman had been shredded by shotgun fire. Sasha couldn’t bring herself to look too closely at the shattered, steaming remains. But Marigold’s friends were alive. The young man, Rick, was unconscious and drenched in blood. But most of that blood didn’t seem to be his own. His head was in Tule’s lap. She’d been wounded in the buttocks, and bled quite a lot, but the wound seemed to have clotted. There were tears, and a haunted, pained look in her eyes.

“Oh my God,” Sasha said once her mind started to process the visual stimuli. “Oh Lord in Heaven no, no, no…” That poor woman. That unborn child. How could this happen? How could this BE?

“SASHA!” Roland shouted. “This is a very bad time for you to have emotions. Try killing those for a little while.”

“How…”

“Just think about the fact that everyone but me will die if you don’t get your shit together. And then get your shit together.”

Her initial reaction was anger and frustration. Is he that disconnected from humanity? Does he think people can just turn their empathy off? But then she stopped herself, listened to him, and tried. She imagined herself putting on a heavy jacket, something that blocked out pain and horror rather than the cold.

It worked.

“OK,” she said, “what do I need to do?”

“You need to take Manny. And, ah, whats-her-name. And whats-his-face.”

“Tule. And Rick.”

“Right, take the not-dead people, run down and out the back door, and find me a car, then you need to–”

“A car?”

He stopped sifting through the dead men’s firearms to roll his eyes at her.

“Yes, a car. I’m not going to carry all you lame-bloods out of here on my fucking shoulders. We’ll need a getaway vehicle.”

“I can’t drive,” she said. “All the cars in the AmFed are autonomous…”

He shrugged. “You’ll figure it out.”

Manny moaned just then, almost as if it was in response to Roland’s suggestion. Sasha knew it was more likely she’d just been too focused on the big post-human to notice Manny’s pained moans the whole time.

“Can he drive?” Sasha asked.

“Sure!” Roland said with sudden cheer. “He’s only lost, what, two quarts of blood? I gave him a little of mine. I’m sure he’ll be right as rain soon.”