They were still riding when the late dawn broke. The snow had redoubled in intensity and the pearly light of morning did little to improve visibility. Bonner felt fatigue cutting into his bones. Both he and Starling were worn out from the cold and the lack of food. The lightening sky suddenly made Bonner realize just how long he had been riding. He had no idea how much ground he had covered, but he felt as if he was welded to his steering column as he negotiated each twist and turn in the road without a thought. They were riding now on pure guts, instinct, and muscle.

To break the hypnotic spell of the road, Bonner slowed down. He wanted to continue, to put as much ground as he could between himself and the snowmen, but he knew that they had to stop soon. Unless he and Starling had a dose of hot food and at least a walk around to start their circulation again, they ran the risk of succumbing to fatigue and frostbite.

He brought his machine to a halt, the snow crackling under his tires. Starling coasted up next to him.

"Man," said Starling, "we gotta stop." His front was a mass of ice crystals and he crackled a little when he moved.

"Yeah. Drain a little gas and start a fire." 

Bonner pulled a few cans of stew from under the seat. "Throw these on." 

The only sound was the wind and that pleased Bonner. Maybe the squadsmen had given up on them. The Mean Brothers were covered in snow, asleep, leaning against one another. The sudden cessation of the car's motion woke them and they climbed out of their resting places, stretched stiffly, and fluffed the snow out of their hairy chests and off their massive arms. They wandered a few feet down the road they had already traveled.

"Don't stray, Meanies," shouted Starling. He had kicked together some odds and ends of debris and doused them with gasoline. The fire flamed up, took hold of the wet wood, more or less, and Bonner could feel the warmth on his cold, chapped face. It felt good. He started feeling better almost immediately.

Starling opened the old cans with a nicked and scarred knife and set them in the fire. Bonner squatted down next to him, sheltering in the lee of an old Toyota.

"I don't hear anything."

"Me neither," said Starling. "Think we lost 'em?"

"No. But they might have lost interest."

"I hope." Starling narrowed his eyes and looked out over the snow-swept landscape. He thought he could see the ruins of a town off in the distance, but he couldn't really tell. "Where are we?" If anyone knew, it would be Bonner.

"Western Penn," he said, "somewhere around a town they used to call Meadeville."

The old stew cans turned black in the flames and soon the ancient brown sludge started to bubble.

"Come on Means," shouted Starling into the mist, "time to eat."

The men-giants came lumbering out of the snow like trained bears. They eagerly hunched over the fire.

"Hungry?" asked Bonner. The Means nodded in unison, their eyes never leaving the smoldering stew. Bonner took two of the cans from the fire, holding the hot containers gingerly in his heavily gloved hands. "Here."

A Mean Brother seized the hot can in his bare hand, raised it to his lips and tossed off the near-boiling stew as if it was fruit punch. His brother aped his movements perfectly. They were finished eating before the two riders started.

"Do you s'pose these guys are human?" asked Starling.

"Does it matter?" "Only if they ain't on our side."

By way of punctuation one of the Mean Brothers belched a burp as loud as a pistol shot.

Bonner and Starling ate as fast as they could, taking strength from the brown and chunky liquid. It was so hot it burned their throats.

Suddenly Bonner tensed. He sensed it before he heard it. Through the snow the soft rumble intercut with the higher whine.

"Shit. Fuck," said Starling matter-of-factly.

"There are more of them than before."

"Shit. Fuck," reiterated Starling.

"And they're making good time."

"Why us? What do they want with a couple of good ole riders like you and me?"

Bonner looked down the road. The Lightning squad wore white. Their bikes—right down to the tires—

were painted white.

"We can't even see the motherfuckers when they get close," said Starling petulantly, as if the snowmen were taking advantage of his great good nature.

"We'll just have to change that." "What are we supposed to do, say, 'Hey, winter, go fuck yourself?"

"Something like that," said Bonner. "In the meantime it wouldn't hurt us any to do a little running."

"I'm with you there boss. Meanies, get into the car."

The Mean Brothers hopped onto their perches, looking hopefully over their shoulders at the approaching sound. They wanted to get caught. They wanted to do a little fighting.

Starling and Bonner set off at the same moment, running side by side. They were at speed in a matter of seconds. Starling marveled at the smooth cruise of his big bike. They knew what they were doing once upon a time. . . .

Bonner figured he had a five-mile head start but the Lightning squad was closing fast. He had to think of some way of fighting them on ground they couldn't use to advantage. If you can choose the field of battle yourself, you've given yourself a leg up toward victory. Allow the enemy to make the decision and you're working at beating yourself. A tiny seed of a plan started germinating in his mind. Slowly, it took root and grew.

Surprise them, he thought; he had to find a way to surprise them. Catch them unawares. It had to be in a place where the white-coated soldiers would stand out, where they couldn't blend into the snowy landscape.

Bonner ran over the hard facts. He was outnumbered. Eventually Starling and he would be caught. Well, they had been outnumbered before—they had been caught before—but this time they wouldn't have a chance if they couldn't get a clear shot at their enemy.

Bonner's mind roamed forward over the highway before him. Quickly but carefully, he unspooled the road ahead in his mind, thinking over every mile of it, wondering if there was somewhere that he could use to his advantage. Then it struck him. He smiled and sat back.

Out of the comer of his eye Starling saw Bonner uncoil behind the wheel. The tall rider laughed to himself. The man had a plan. Maybe they weren't saved but at least now they had a fighting chance. A lot of fighting and a lick of a chance.

Another ten miles of cold highway brought them to a major intersection. One road branched off to the north and Bonner held up a gauntleted hand and gestured to his left. Starling gave the thumbs-up sign, and the car and bike, side by side, swept up the snowy road to the north.

A few minutes later, just as the two sets of tire tracks etched in the snow vanished, the most advanced members of the Lightning squad arrived at the fork. They didn't hesitate, pushing their pounding bikes along the same path taken by Starling and Bonner. The rest of the force followed, swiftly vanishing into the clouds of snow.

Bonner heard the scream of the bikes as they made the sharp turn. The Lightning squad was famous for their speed—they moved much faster than the Storm-ers—and they were at their best when conditions were bad. They ran their bikes on studded tires that cut into the road, holding them steady. Tires—good ones—were the number-one commodity in the Snow-states, far more important there than in parts of the continent that spent a part of their year outside of the snowy season.

The Snowstates were almost always gripped by winter's cold claw. Bonner could never figure out why anyone—even a crazy man like Carey—would want to spill blood and waste ammo defending them.

And, of course, what was a big cadre of Snowstate Lightning squadsmen doing in the Slavestates' Borderlands? Bonner would probably never know.

He pushed his powerful engine on, the bald tires scrabbling madly to find a grip on the slick roads. Ahead of him on the horizon he could just make out his objective. Spread across the landscape was a dark patch, miles wide, that sat like a heavy beard on pasty-white bloodless flesh. With the passing of each cold mile the target became more and more distinct: it was a forest, a big one, but, more importantly, a dark one. The dim light within would swallow up Bonner and Starling, but show the white-suited snowmen in stark relief.

Bonner was ploughing into the built-up snow on the road, throwing up sheets of snow along the side of his vehicle like the wake of a boat. Snow flew down on him and coursed over the Mean Brothers. Starling cut his speed slightly and tucked himself behind Bonner, slip-streaming as Bonner tore a path in the snow.

A single green sign hung over the road, welcoming him to a state park the name of which he didn't catch. Bonner took a chance and floored the car, pushing all eight cylinders up to full power. They roared into the forest and it got dark, as if someone had snuffed out a single candle. The throaty engines echoed through the silent forest.

The aged pine trees hung over the road, their aged boughs heavy with snow. The road, under this ancient arboreal shroud, was wet and slick but almost free of snow. Bonner slammed on his brakes and annoyance. He thought of Lucky a thousand miles behind him. Lucky was always warning him about the brakes. But they caught this time and Bonner skidded to a stop on the slippery road. He was a good forty yards beyond the point at which he had applied the brakes and a thin, precious layer of rubber striped the roadway.

Starling was next to him. "Nice going," he said.

"We'll be able to start blasting as soon as they come through the snow."

"Time to put up a wire?" Starling cocked his head in the direction of the road. "Yeah, if we're lucky."

He pulled a coil of heavy wire from the deep saddlebags that hung on the rear fender of the Harley. "Here," he shouted to one of the Mean Brothers. "Lay hold of that and tie it round that tree trunk."

The Mean Brother padded across the wet cold road and wrapped the wire round a stout tree. A tiny eddy of snow swirled down onto his broad shoulders, dusting the matted reddish hair a silvery white.

Starling, on the other side of the road, pulled the wire taut, measuring it against his own height, placing it just at throat level. Then he lowered it a bit: the Lightning squadsmen would probably be slightly bent over their handlebars.

The engines were getting louder, pounding through the heavy white of the morning. Bonner set up behind his big gun and silently wished he had taught the Mean Brothers the basics of gunplay. He had no doubt that in the fight they would make their presence felt, but two more guns would have come in very handy.

Bonner looked down the barrel of his gun, his fingers resting lightly on the big triggers. Starling held his bow in front of him, an arrow fitted into the bowstring, but he had not yet pulled the bow double.

The snow appeared to get a little dirty. Imperceptible shapes were moving within the cold shroud.

"Bonner?"

"What?"

"There's no way we can take them all. There must be fifty of the fucks."

"I know that."

"So? What do we do?"

"Give them a few exciting minutes, then get the hell out of here."

Starling laughed. "Now that's strategy."

"When we go, stay away from the road. Go through the trees."

"Good thinking," he said. Starling glanced back at the roadway. "Here they come." And he let fly with the first arrow.

It must have plunged through the headlight and into the gas tank gripped between the lead rider's knees, because the white morning exploded suddenly in a sheet of blue and yellow flame. The Lightning squad formation scattered to the left and right but they continued their headlong charge into the woods.

They burst into the gloom and it seemed as if suddenly the dark woods was filled with the sound of a thousand thundering pistons. The sound bounced ¦ off the hanging boughs, compressing the noise. The ¦ great white riders were silhouetted against the dark woods. They were excellent targets. ¦ Bonner opened up, the big .50-caliber telegraphing its message—death—the weighty bullets slamming into the Lightning squadsmen with fearful accuracy.

The long white riding coats turned red.

A bike skidded across the road. An arrow exploded in the midst of a mass of men and machines. The first few bikes were doomed, and Bonner and Starling dispatched them quickly. But the snowmen were a disciplined group. The riders behind the leaders had slowed down and formed up behind their fallen brethren. They had no clear idea of where Starling and Bonner stood, but they fired back round after round into the almost tangible gloom.

The big 50-caliber reaped another harvest of bone and flesh. A rearward squadsman picked out Bonner's position and gunned his bike, careening down the corridor of death at high speed, one hand guiding the bike, the other clutching an M3 grease gun. He fired as he went. Bonner saw him coming and imagined that the man saw himself as something of a hero.

The wire was two inches into his neck before he realized what had happened. He didn't have a lot of, time to think about it. The sharp strand cut into the delicate fretwork of bone and muscle. A look of astonishment froze permanently on the snowman's features as the taut guillotine whipped the head right off the fearless, but foolish, rider's broad shoulders.

The headless body toppled from the bike, the white coat already drenched in blood to the waist. The heavy machine flipped over on its side, the engine racing, the rear wheel still churning in gear. The machine lay there and squealed throughout the firelight like a stuck pig. The man's head came down out of the trees, bounced once or twice on the road, then rolled to rest against the body of the first snowman to fall.

Bullets filled the air like bees, and Bonner did his best with his big artillery to force the snowmen to keep their heads down. The heavy slugs slapped into the broken bikes that lay littering the dark street, picking up twisted chunks of metal and gouging them into the bodies of the squadsmen.

When he had run through a belt of ammo, Bonner picked up the lighter Steyr and continued his fire. But the change of weapon, quick though it was, allowed the white-coated riders a moment to creep forward, to win a few paces of ground. Bent almost double, they ran a few steps forward, then threw themselves flat in the ditch by the side of the road, the muzzles of their guns flashing fire and steel.

Starling threw a glance to his left. Bonner was holding his ugly little gun tight against his forearm, cutting up a squadsman who had tried to make for the shelter of the ditch. His H and R rifle flew out of his hands as Bonner's bullets hammered him.

A spray of bullets jagged into the trees around Bonner, pitching slivers and snow into the air.

Starling's Steyr caught a snowman who was trying to creep through the woods, attempting to outflank the two rider warriors.

"They're coming through the trees," yelled Starling.

Bonner picked up two more crawling belly-flat in the snow. Four rounds whipped into them. At first the men just felt a little numb, as if they had knocked into a sharp comer and bruised themselves. Each was congratulating himself on the lucky escape when one caught sight of the other. Their backs were open from shoulder to waist. Each man thought the same thing: he don't look so good. Then they died.

"Time to go," said Bonner. "I was hoping you'd say that," yelled Starling.

Another couple of snowmen came through the trees. They fell under the weight of the Mean Brothers. The giants dropped unexpectedly from the low tree branches just above the squadsmen's heads. There was a dull flash of ax and shovel, and the snowmen's warm blood pumped on to the frozen ground, thawing it.

Bonner felt a shift in the balance of the battle. If they didn't pull out soon, they were going to get rushed. The squadsmen were building up on the road, like a logjam. ! He jammed a fresh clip into the Steyr. "Let's go."

"Good idea," said Starling, and he kick-started the bike with one powerful jump,

"Meanies," shouted Bonner, "it's go time!" The Mean Brothers tossed aside the mangled remains of the unfortunate snowmen and ran for Bonner's car. The big engine boomed into life; Bonner crunched it into gear and pushed it off the shoulder and into the underbrush.

The snowmen took a second or two to react to the sudden and unexpected flight of their tormentors, and in those precious moments Bonner and Starling dashed into the tangle of dead vegetation. Their churning tires threw up a wash of snow, bushes, and pine needles.

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