Dozens of Hosts moved through the aisles like the guards in some awful death camp. Most of them distributed white plastic coffee mugs from the church kitchen. I sourced the whining noise to an industrial meat grinder at the edge of the altar. Wearing his smeared butcher’s apron, Ken Everston fed the grinder, grabbing items piled at his feet. Corncobs. Raw meat. Dog food. A whole turkey still in the plastic wrapper. A constant stream of beige sludge emerged from the machine, the other Hosts passing the white mugs beneath it, filling them for the children.

They were fattening them up? Or just keeping them alive? To what end?

My gorge reared up, pressing at the back of my throat.

What made it even more scary was how organized it all was. The Hosts—or whoever was controlling them—kept moving pieces around the chessboard, executing a grand plan we couldn’t keep up with. They’d temporarily abandoned their roles to carry out various tasks. They’d done this before, of course, like when they’d melted down the guns and taken out the power lines, but I hadn’t seen this many working with such machinelike precision in one place before. It was as though their programming had been rewritten all at once, putting them in service of a new goal. Seeing them in action was as awe-inspiring as it was fearsome.

There were way too many Hosts in the church for us to launch some kind of rescue mission. We’d be overpowered immediately.

Beside me Alex stiffened. In a tiny voice, she said, “Dad?”

There he was. Sheriff Blanton, patrolling the church like a foreman. The other Hosts stepped aside before him, falling into line, making clear who was in charge.

He walked over to the basement door and swung it open. A moment later Afa Similai emerged from below, his dreadlocks swaying around his empty eye sockets. His muscles protruded as if carved from granite; Afa lifted the battery cage holding Blake. Blake slid to one end of the cage, crying out. Afa thundered to the front of the church and exited, returning a moment later to grab another crated kid.

We watched this for a time, doing our best to remember to breathe. After Afa had retrieved five kids, he didn’t come back from the front of the church. We waited nervously for him to reappear, but that door stayed shut.

Alex’s gaze stayed locked on her father. Sheriff Blanton led several Hosts up to the meat grinder, each of them carrying food—a pineapple, dry pasta, a jar of pickles. It would all go into the gruel. He patrolled around the church, passing right in front of our window. As his boots thumped past us, Alex pressed her hand to her mouth, tears spilling over the bumps of her knuckles. His shadow rolled across her face and then was gone.