The men laughed at me. There was nothing I could do. I was a small woman in handcuffs, and Jason was driving a giant hydraulic machine with churning blades.

"Get back, Ashley!" Shawn yelled.

I collapsed in the field.

Jason maneuvered the swather around me, then steered directly toward the mass of people still going at it obliviously on the ground. Finally a few of the people, one guy and two women, got up and ran.

But the rangers shot them. They twisted to the ground like hunted geese, then the rangers shot them each again in the head.

Jason drove directly into the cluster of bodies who still hadn't run. There was a nightmarish sound of chopped flesh, and suddenly the scent of exposed bowels, as the swather churned into the cluster of writhing human beings. Most of the people didn't even stop doing it until the moment before they died. The swather deposited a trail of mangled limbs and viscera in its wake.

Shawn was smiling and nodding while the two other privates cheered triumphantly and slapped hands. Then the younger private suddenly threw up. The others laughed at him, including Shawn.

This was too much.

I'm sure I must have known at least some of these people before they'd contracted whatever hellishly bizarre plague was spreading through Muldoon.

I vomited. I stood and ran.

I sprinted as fast as I could through the stubble wearing handcuffs, then I tripped over a tangle of dried alfalfa, pitched forward, and fell. I got up and ran again. I was heading for the dairy barn, but it was at least a hundred yards away. I waited for a bullet to tear into my back. Any second now I would feel lead ripping through my flesh, I was sure of it. . .