Chapter 17.

Roland.

Roland smelled the execution before it started.

There'd been a lot of strong smells in downtown Plano when he arrived.

Gunpowder and sour fear sweat, the acrid stink of anxiety, and the warm, wet odors of grief and confusion.

He'd smelled the stale reek of military rations, the sharp pang of anemia,

and the boiling hot testosterone that wafted off the martyrs like a jet stream. But a half hour

into his time downtown, something else had drifted over the packed masses of refugees and pilgrims

and militiamen. It was hard to define, a bit of tension, a bit of anticipation. The odor was faint enough to

suggest something unconscious, a collective emotion, the aggregate scent of a crowd of people who

weren't consciously aware of how they felt. There was no neurotransmitter, no phermone he could

identify in particular. This scent was more elusive. He was only able to lock it down

through the memory fragments that triggered.

Cold gray sky, a biting chill in the air, hundreds of men and women bundled up, clustered around barrel fires.

Everyone talking, excitement in their voices, anxiety on the air, mingled with the gun oil in anticipation.

Something was about to happen. A few seconds later, the scent of anxious anticipation started

to rise. Roland heard the deep bouncing thrum of heavy rubber wheels on pavement. His hindbrain

tied the sound to a particular species of obsolete armored personnel carrier, originally manufactured

in Bulgaria. After following its route for several seconds, his hind brain guessed the

APC was bound for the main square. Roland spent the next few minutes jockeying for a good position

close to the gallows. He wasn't sure that's where the convoy was headed. It seemed like a good

guess, though, and he was quickly proven right when the APC pulled up to a stop just a hundred

...