“You don’t like the look of God’s new creatures, do you?” he says, so close his spittle hits my face. “Well, you listen to me, missy. This is how it’s going to be now. You all had your chance and you blew it. Literally. We’re the ones who own the earth now. And that means you gotta work for us.”

“You’re making us slaves?” I say.

The man stands at last and puts his hood back on. “God said that he put the animals on the earth for us to use. And that’s what y’all are to us, nothing more than animals. So we’re going to use y’all, just like He said we’re meant to. We’re going to work y’all to death.”

The people who’d brought in the buckets begin hauling prisoners up to their feet, locking them into a row with chains. Ryan gets yanked up and cries out in pain. I can see now that his shoulder has been dislocated, probably from the crash.

I watch helplessly as people are dragged to their feet and added to the chain. Charlie, despite his young age, is shown no mercy, and neither is Bree, who only wakes up, finally, once she’s shaken roughly to her feet. I try to get her attention, to calm her down, but she’s so frantic she doesn’t see me. I can’t imagine how frightened she must be feeling to have woken up to this horror.

Finally, I’m added to the row, right at the front. A heavy metal collar is placed around my neck. The chains weigh so much it’s hard to even stand upright.

“This way,” the hooded man says to me.

When I don’t move he gestures to one of the other robed men, who then pulls a long whip from his belt and strikes me with it. The pain is so sharp I’m momentarily winded. I gasp and feel tears spring to my eyes.

“I said, ‘this way,’ missy,” the leader snarls.

I don’t argue again. I begin to trudge through the cell, following his lead out of the prison cell, along the corridor, then finally out the cell block and into the bright sunshine.

It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust. When they do, I gasp in horror. As far as the eye can see are groups of slaves, other people like me, chained together, moving heavy blocks and stones to make buildings. They’re all painfully thin and barely clothed. Many of them are bright red, sunburned from the harsh glare of the sun. I can see why our captors wear the robes now, to protect their skin from the UV glare. Black-robed slavers ride about on motorbikes, making clouds of dust fly into the air. They whip the prisoners as they go, seemingly at random.