A long pause. “Sorry. I have a bad temper. I’m Katherine. But call me Kat. Kat like with a K, not a C.”
“Okay, Kat with a K. Shitty situation for us both, but it’s nice to meet you anyway. I’m Sasha.”
“Sasha? Don’t think I’ve heard that name before,” said Kat. “So what did you do?”
“Nothing, really. I…accidentally killed two officers.”
Kathryn mumbled the response back to herself. “Okay, I’m confused. How do you accidentally kill a person? Much less two people?”
“Trust me. It can be done.”
“Who were they? The officers, I mean. The ones you killed accidentally?”
Sasha rattled off the names as best she could from memory.
“Hmm. Doesn’t ring any bells. What did they do? Something bad, I bet. Had to be, for you to accidentally kill them.”
“No, not at all,” Sasha mused. “I accidentally kill people at random all the time. It’s become something of a hobby. It shoos away boredom.”
“You’re being sarcastic, aren’t you?”
Sasha pursed her busted lips in the dark. “No, it’s something else entirely.”
The voice in the darkness snorted. “You’re funny. And a little weird. But it’s nice to finally have somebody to talk to. It’s been really quiet in here…wherever here is. I don’t suppose you know, do you?”
Sasha coughed. “Yeah, I have a feeling I do, unfortunately.”
“Care to share? I haven’t had anyone to talk to since they took Mrs. G away.”
“Mrs. G?”
“Our pastor,” said Kat matter-of-factly.
“Oh, her. The one you’re on a last initial basis with.” Sasha sniggered. “Sorry, Kat. I don’t attend your church, so I’m failing to make the connection.”
“How long have you been here?”
“For about the past few minutes.”
“No…not here, here; in the camp, here,” Kat said, sounding perturbed.
“Apparently not long enough to know who Mrs. G is,” replied Sasha.
Kathryn groaned. “Ugh. Why must you be difficult?”
“It’s just the way I was groomed,” Sasha began. “I never took a guided tour or anything, but I’ve been to this camp before, as a visitor, before I became a prisoner. There’s this community of shipping containers in the southern neck. From what I’ve been told, they use them to house their…well, their death-row inmates, so to speak.”
“Death row?” Kat repeated. “Are you saying that’s where we are now?”
“It’s a damn good possibility.”
“So they’re planning to execute us?”
Sasha pursed her lips and nodded, though her companion couldn’t see. “Pretty much.”
“Pretty much? Either they are or they aren’t, and I truly pray you’re not serious. If that’s what they’re planning, that is seriously messed up. They never said anything about doing that when they brought us here.”
“Kat, I’m not trying to offend you or insult your intelligence, but if doing so was their intention, do you really think they’d tell you beforehand?”
Kat thought a moment. “No, I guess not. That wouldn’t make much sense, I guess.”
“You’re probably right…” Sasha whispered snidely.
“I mean, think about it. If they said something like that, people would freak out. It could start a riot or something.” Kathryn expelled a disconsolate sigh. “Oh, man. Everything has gone completely down the toilet. And it was going so well here at first. They gave us a new house of worship, Pastor Wigfield inducted Mrs. G into his flock, and the number of attendees was far exceeding expectations. Then, out of nowhere, it all just crumbled, you know?
“We found Pastor Wigfield dead. They killed him, for all we know. And they probably burned down the church, too. Then they came and separated everybody, relocated all of us to different places. Mrs. G wasn’t having it, though. She fought them, but not with her fists…with her words. And she has awesome words. When they didn’t like what she said, they brought her here to keep her quiet, I guess. Then they brought me here too because I told them Mrs. G wasn’t going anywhere without me. We both were here for a long time, until just a few days ago. They just came in and took her away.” A pause. “Oh, man…this isn’t good, is it?”
Sasha listened with only half her attention to Kat’s monologue. She wanted out of here, sure, but now she wanted that and a cigarette. “No, Kat. It doesn’t look good for you or me or anyone else caught up in this crap.” She sighed. “And I’m so done with all of it. I’m really, truly just done. I wish they would come in here, yank me away to wherever, and get whatever they intend to do over with. I’ve been waiting for my day to come. I’m ready for it.”
“Well, I’m not!” Kat barked. “You can give up if you want, but I’m not going to! I want out of this metal thing so I can fight! I want to kick some butt, find Mrs. G, and break out of this camp!”
“Kat…that’s admirable, but…”
“No! Sasha, listen to me. We can’t just give up!”
“I never said I planned to.”
“You didn’t?”
“No,” Sasha moaned. “It’s not in me to give up. Accept my fate? Accept what I know is coming to me? Sure, I’m no idiot. But give up? Kneel before a person calling himself my master and lick the boot? It’s not happening, not a goddamn chance. I will never go down without a fight.”
Kat sniffled, the conversation having brought her to tears. “Mrs. G would like you. She wouldn’t dig your blasphemes, but she would like you. You sound a lot like her, just cruder and less…grown up.”
“That’s sweet, Kat,” Sasha crooned. “Mrs. G sounds like a decent lady. I hope to meet her someday.”
Chapter 41
Several minutes into his account while evoking times past, Dave took a long, almost meditative pull from his coffee. “My first encounter with Janey materialized on her sixteenth birthday,” he said, setting the mug down and rubbing his chin whiskers. “Alan had signed her up for Point Blank’s Intermediate Operator Course, having pledged to us well beforehand that his daughter was no novice.” He chuckled slightly. “Of course, most of us had heard that line
