Riders called it Trash Alley. It was a former superhighway jammed with the rusting ruins of thousands of old automobiles. Every lane of the old dead roadway was packed with cars, all of them, in every lane, facing in the same direction: west.

Bonner figured they must have been running away. Running away from a war that had somehow started in the east and was sweeping west. The scared citizenry had taken to the road, and in their panic they had trapped themselves there on the highway, a highway that ran nowhere, except to death.

Trash Alley was tough passage for Bonner, Starling, and the other riders that dared to go into the Slavestates, but it was the path they took because it was just about the only way in. South of them lay the firelands, the burning border of the Slavestates. The firelands were a continuous belt of fire that shielded most of the Slavers' western flank from attack. A few men, Bonner among them, knew their way through the firelands, but no one, not even Bonner, traveled willingly through that burning flame swamp—except Seth. He reveled in the smoky fire pits, traveling through them as easily as a rider on a wide-open stretch of desert highway in the Hotstates.

Bonner and Starling traveled slowly along the fifty dirty miles of the alley. They had to take it slow as they were guiding their vehicles between the rusty steel reefs that were the brokendown cars and trucks of drivers long dead. The alley always depressed Bonner, seeing in these decaying pieces of transport the whole scenario, the complete, violent picture of the death throes of the old world. Behind every wheel had been a panicked driver, a terrified family huddling by his side; a darkening sky, flat, unemotional instructions on the radio; incomprehension, disbelief, anger, fear turning to terror then giving way to mass hysteria.

Riding up swiftly behind them came terrible history, fate—the massive movements of mankind that would sweep these ordinary folks up into its grasp. Men who had once just worked and ate and slept and cast a bored eye on the events of the day at work's end were suddenly part of them. They were there on the road because of men and policies far away from their tiny lives. The distant events of history swept over them, suddenly, painfully. Death.

Starling was in the lead and keeping his head down. Stormers patrolled Trash Alley—they patrolled all of the Borderlands. When they couldn't be there in person, they left some very unpleasant calling cards: wire traps that would slice easily through a man's neck, explosive traps, powerful mines that were tripped by your front wheels but didn't explode until the middle of the vehicle, where the driver sat, passed overhead; spring guns that would blast a couple of pounds of shot into the rusty canyon, nail traps, gas traps, glass traps. Some of the Stormers could be quite resourceful when they turned their nasty little minds to it.

Starling moved cautiously. He was a veteran of a hundred rides through Trash Alley and he was an expert at spotting each different death nest that the Stormers had planted along the way. He was also expert at turning the traps against the men who had set them. Starling always carried a wire and wasn't above placing it where he knew a Stormer was likely to appear.

He started slowing down and Bonner tapped his brakes. Starling came to a complete stop in the narrow passage, the sound of the big pounding Harley engine bouncing off the high metal walls.

Starling swiveled in his seat and looked at Bonner. Bonner stared back. It was unlike Starling to stop in the alley for no reason.

"Bonner," called Starling over his shoulder, "there's something not right here."

Bonner stood up in the seat of his steel warhorse. "What's the problem?"

"That's the problem," said Starling. "There is no problem. There's nothing along here at all. Nothing. I'd swear that no Stormer patrol has been through here in days, weeks maybe. We passed two traps, a nail gun and a wire, and someone had taken them apart."

"A rider maybe," said Bonner. -

"That's what 1 figured, but who? Everyone is back in Chi-town."

"Now we don't know that for a fact," said Bonner.

Starling settled back down on the big saddle and gunned his engine. "No," he said, "I s'pose."

But Bonner could see in the hunch of the rider's shoulders that he was puzzled and alert to the possibilities of danger. The Mean Brothers sat behind Bonner, seemingly unaware of the danger that worried Starling or the cold, which was getting worse with the passing of each minute.

Night was falling as they eased out of the alley unscathed. Starling and Bonner changed positions, Bonner sliding into the lead. Attached to the prow of his narrow coffin of a car was a heavy theatrical spotlight. It could cut a path in the darkness several hundred yards long.

It was not long after night came that the temperature plunged and the snow came, first in feathery little squalls, then in ever-deepening waves of whiteness. It danced in front of the blast of light and spun crazily into his face. Twice they had to stop to put on clothing enough to withstand the bad weather. Bonner was wearing his goggles and heavy gauntlets and the rough fur coat that covered him from head to foot. But he was still cold. The Mean Brothers blinked away the snow and looked with bemused disgust at the frailties of their fellowman—if the Mean Brothers could be considered men. They were really more like creatures trapped between floors on the elevator of evolution. They knew that eventually they would feel the cold, but the first snows of winter mattered to them not at all.

"How much farther you wanna go?" asked Starling. The snow was really picking up now, approaching the force of a blizzard.

"Head on until we get to the place where we found Cooker." The last time out they had found the poor old gas hound trussed up like a chicken in the forecourt of an old motel. He had been captured by Stormers and Bonner and Starling had set him free.

"You remember where it was?"

"Think so," said Bonner.

As they stole on through the cold white night they found themselves slowing down to a crawl. Bonner was driving on instinct and memory. Although they were out of Trash Alley, the road was littered with broken masonry and junked cars. Bonner had cut his light; it was worse than useless. He could still hardly see anything.

Coming up ahead he could just make out the line of one of the few overpasses on the old highway that still stood. As they approached it Bonner saw, unmistakably, the orange and blue flame of a muzzle flash. A force, a small one, but a force nonetheless was dug in on the bridge above him. Bonner hit the gas.

"Hold on, Meanies," he yelled, and the big car lurched forward, the fat tires thrumming on the cracked asphalt. The big twin exhaust pipes opened up and the sound cut through the snowy night. He heard Starling push his big bike right up behind him. Together, side by side, they tore a wide gash in the white curtain of snow.

A rip of bullets streamed by Bonner's ear and he shot a glance over his shoulder. The overpass was lost in a swirl of snow, but he could tell exactly where the bridge was. It was picked out by a line of muzzle flashes, spewing bullets into the whiteness.

Bonner was steering blind, hoping that there was no old junked bus or a slab of bridge pillar lying in the road ahead. The mixture of snow and blackness played havoc with his sense of distance. He hunched over the wheel, squinting into the icy darkness. Then, relaxed, he slumped back in his seat. If it was going to happen, it was going to happen. He decided to worry about something he could do something about: the unknown men behind him who were definitely trying to kill him. That much he was sure of.

A bumpy, black five miles passed in a matter of seconds. Bonner hit the brakes. Starling glided up next to him.

"Who the fuck was that?" screamed Starling. Snow was matted on his leather jacket and in between the fingers of his gauntlets.

"Good question," said Bonner. "Shut down." They killed their engines and suddenly the night was quiet save for the low moan of the wind and the snow hissing on the hot engines. Bonner sat stock still, like a beast of prey sensing his quarry.

Through the night it came, like the howl of a wolf. A dark, cold chorus of engines .'. .

"Seven," said Starling.

"Yeah," said Bonner, "bikes."

In the snow-wrapped night they saw the first prob-ings of powerful spots.

"Who?" said Starling.

"No idea, but they're not very friendly."

"Stand or go?"

"Do you feel like chasing all over the place tonight."

"Nope."

"Me neither. Stand."

The sky behind the riders was lighting up as the headlights of their pursuers refracted off the swirling snow.

Bonner muscled his car up onto the shoulder of the highway. When the lights hit that part of the road he didn't want to be sitting there giving them any kind of target.

The two men moved quickly. Starling too had moved to the side of the road and carefully put his bike under the cover of a slab of pavement. Then he readied himself to do battle with the weapon he had mastered. Starling carried a gun like everybody else, but he carried it only to back up the firepower of his steel-shafted arrows, the tips packed with black powder primed to explode on impact. Starling knelt in the darkness, taking cover next to his bike. He waited.

Bonner took the ice-crusted canvas cover off the firing mechanism of his .50-caliber machine gun. He clipped a belt of ammunition into the auto-feed and leaned against the rollbar. The snow beat him about the head, catching in his hair.

The lights grew brighter. Big tough men, thought Bonner, bent low over their bikes, just like those raiders on the lake bed, riding hard, determined to prevail. What they didn't know was that they were doomed to failure. In a few seconds they were going to ride into a firestorm that would suddenly heat up a very cold night.

The engines were louder now. "Starling," yelled Bonner, "you start it off."

"Will do." They were closing, the lights splitting the snow, rushing toward doom. Bonner cocked the big gun.

The growl of the engines drowned out the snap of Starling's bow. The first arrow dashed into the center of the lights, hit something—man, machine—and blew. The sheets of falling snow turned a washed-out pink. A light went out. A man screamed, the tortured sound rising above howling, racing engines. The headlights shot off at a half-dozen crazy angles. Brakes wailed.

The long barrel of Bonner's gun started spitting flame. The attackers, whoever they were, were skid-ding and slipping on the road. The big bullets slammed into chilled flesh and hot blood spurted out onto the snowy road.

Another Starling special exploded in the midst of the tortured mass of men and metal. Bonner twitched the heavy machine gun across the downed riders, sending gouts of paving, blood, and flesh up into the curtains of snow.

The Mean Brothers jumped up, waving their crude weapons. They wanted their fun too.

But to Bonner it wasn't fun. It was part of the code he lived by: kill or be killed.

"Get down," Bonner ordered.

The Mean Brothers hunkered down in their seats, shoulders hunched like chastened dogs.

The big gun continued to chatter, its powerful kick jacking Bonner back and forth as he drew the smoking barrel across the bodies of the dead end dying for a final sweep. You could never be too careful, although it had ceased to be battle and had become instead merely slaughter.

"Think you got 'em," observed Starling.

Bonner stopped firing. Snowflakes drifted down onto the gun and melted.

"Now, let's find out who the fucks are," said Starling. He and Bonner, trailed by the Mean Brothers, advanced. Bonner held his Steyr ahead of him, ready. Starling's fist was filled with a huge Dan Wesson Magnum. Both were ready to start blasting again.

A groan broke from the shattered body of one of the riders. Bonner knelt by him and looked at the wide exit wound that stained the man's back. It was , as wide as a pie tin and the fibers of the man's heavy coat had knit themselves into his slashed flesh. Blood, thick as gravy, poured out onto the frozen road. Bonner figured he had about three minutes to live.

Starling kicked over a body and stared, not altogether sure he could believe his eyes. "You see  what I see?"

Bonner nodded. "I see it."

Starling wandered around and kicked over a few more bodies. "See? Every single one of them."

"Yep," said Bonner.

"I'm surprised they fought with lights in a snowstorm."

Experience had'taught Bonner that the best men could oftentimes be relied upon to do the wrong thing, to make the move that would lead to their being brought down.

"They're Lightning squadsmen from the Snow-states," said Bonner. "They only fight in the snow. They probably got cocky. They figured we were no-account raiders on the road too late in the season." "What is the squad doing in the Slavestates?" Bonner was silent a moment. Listening. On the edge of the snowy breeze came the sound of a lot of engines.

"It doesn't matter," said Bonner. "There are plenty of them out there."

Starling listened. "You know, you might be right." "Time to go," said Bonner. "Right again," said Starling.

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