Chapter 9.

Sasha

They unloaded her in Plano.

The porters who cracked open her crate, two men in dirty jumpsuits, seemed disappointed that she wasn't food.

One of the men was tall and balding, the other shorter and still fairly young.

They had white skin, burnt reddish by the sun, and neither of them looked

like they'd bathed in quite some time. Their faces were gaunt. Sasha didn't see any extra

fat on either of them. "'Ah, dang,' said the tall one. "'Welcome,' said the short one. "'I hope you're ready for what this is.'

They were not exactly the welcome crew she'd expected. Saul had told her a man

named David would be waiting. But neither of the porters knew who David was. They seemed much more

frustrated than joyous at her presence. The building wasn't what she'd expected either. It looked

like an old FedEx facility, with all the branding covered by red spray paint. There was trash everywhere, mostly food waste from crates of aid supplies that had been opened

too late. The spoiled food had been shoved into large piles and left to rot in one center

of the large room. Sasha guessed this had once been a loading dock, where delivery trucks

would have dropped off and received packages.

The room was filled with a mix of aid crates and miscellaneous boxes,

stacked into piles by a ragged army of tired-looking men. Like the two men who'd greeted her,

they all looked malnourished and skinny. The only people not dressed in blue jumpsuits were a pair of armed guards. They stood in the back of the room,

near a door that seemed to lead deeper into the facility. Both men had white paint crosses

daubed across the body armor on their chests. Both carried very large black rifles. One of them

ran over once he saw her emerge from the shipping crate. Welcome to the heavenly kingdom, ma'am, the boy drawled.

He looked young enough to have come from her own high school.

...