“You move, old man.” The Mexican-looking guard who gave the order had three stripes on the left sleeve of his gray uniform tunic. “You move, or you be sorry.” He didn’t sound particularly mean. He just sounded like a man doing his job-and a man who would do it, whatever that took. Was it better that he didn’t seem to enjoy tormenting his captives? Or did that make it worse?

The guard sergeant (no, in a gray uniform he’d have some kind of silly Freedom Party rank) waited to see if Scipio would obey, or maybe if he could obey. His wife and daughter had already gone off to their line. Nothing held him here except exhaustion, thirst, and starvation.

“I goin’,” he said, and discovered his feet still worked after all. The Mexican guard nodded and went to prod another sufferer into moving.

Standing in line wasn’t easy. Several men begged for water. The guards ignored them. One of the Negroes fell over. A man in a gray uniform kicked him. When the Negro didn’t respond, the guard peeled back his eyelid, then felt for a pulse. The white straightened, wiping his hand on his thigh. “Son of a bitch is dead as belt leather,” he said. “Gotta haul his worthless carcass outa here.”

A skinny black man in ragged shirt and dungarees out at the knee dragged the corpse away by the feet. A crew of similar wraiths were pulling bodies out of the train cars. Once, one of them called, “This here fella ain’t dead.”

A guard stood over the live Negro and fired a burst from his submachine gun. “Sandbagging fucker is now,” he said. The man who’d announced the survival hauled away the body as if such things happened whenever a train came in. They probably did.

“Jesus God, you are the smelliest, most disgusting bunch of niggers I ever seen!” a guard officer shouted. What else could we be? Scipio thought. He knew how filthy he was. He knew he didn’t have any choice about it, either. None of the lurching unfortunates in the line had any choice. The officer went on, “Strip naked and we’ll hose you down, get the worst shit off you.”