Manny looked mortified. Tule looked angry. Rick, bless him, was too deep in shock to react.

“Yes,” Tule said in a toneless voice that somehow still implied deep disappointment.

“OK then,” Sasha said. “When I find the car, I assume you’ll know how to hot wire it?”

Tule laughed. It wasn’t a nice laugh.

“If you’re hiding a real nice deck somewhere in that silly head of yours, or you find a car that’s older than my dad, maybe. Otherwise we’re going to need something with keys in it.”

“What… So I’m supposed to just carjack someone?”

Tule stared dead-eyed at her. Manny gave a pained, helpful smile.

“I mean, you’ve got a gun…” he said.

Sasha felt the heat rise in her again. Why not? I’ve given up every other principle I have today. I might as well commit armed robbery. The guilt stung her guts, but not as badly as it should have. Perhaps she was still numb from watching Dr. Brandt and Marigold die. Or maybe it’s because I killed Alexander. Maybe I’m evil now, and this is what that feels like.

There was no time to mull the possibilities. Sasha left Manny and the others to catch their breath and darted down an alley toward a larger street that sounded like it might have traffic. She passed two parked cars and looked inside with the vain hope that, just maybe, someone might have left their keys behind.

It was to no avail. Sasha soon found herself on the cracked and shell-pocked asphalt of Alma Road. The buildings on either side of this stretch of street had taken significant damage during the Heavenly Kingdom’s birth pains. There were no people out on the sidewalks, or visible in the windows. Anyone alive had probably hunkered down to avoid the shooting. There was still traffic on the road though. Three trucks and a dented, fume-spewing white Sedan shot by her at the speed of wartime traffic.

Sasha drew her gun, looked at it, and then hurriedly stashed it inside her blouse again when she realized how dumb that had been. Godly women do not carry guns. A series of four loud booms sounded in the distance. Sasha didn’t know enough about weaponry to guess what those had been, but she knew they had something to do with Roland. People are dying so I can find us a car and get everyone to safety.

She started walking down the street, face pointed toward oncoming traffic, hands waving above her head in the international gesture for “Oh God, please help me!” Two more cars zoomed past without even slowing to check on her. It was odd how that shocked her after everything else she’d seen in the Heavenly Kingdom. “The faithful protect and support each other,” Pastor Mike had claimed. But not, it seemed, when a half-human monster was on a rampage through their city.