Concrete floors made a long path down the center of the narrow room reaching the far end. Floor-to-ceiling metal cages lined the walls to either side and looked to be animal cages. I heard groans and murmurs at our arrival. My body went cold. Cloe stopped at the first cage. She slid a plate of mush into a narrow slit near the floor to a man inside. His filthy clothes hung loose on his rail-thin body, his face and cheeks hollow. Cloe took a metal cup and dipped it into a pail of water. She reached through the slit and poured it into a bowl on the floor of the man’s cage. Without so much as a hint of eye contact, the man slowly crawled to the bowl and slurped up the water like a broken animal. I thought I might throw up. Cloe looked at me and must’ve seen the disgust and sadness written all over my face. But she handed me a stack of plates as though my reaction had no effect on her. “Why don’t you start on the far end and we’ll meet in the middle? Okay?” I begrudgingly went about my duty, sliding plates into cages and watching the poor humans crawl to their food.
