Bonner and Les Habs slid out onto the cold road just after dawn. The morning was bright and clear, a welcome relief from the bad weather they had been driving in almost since they set out on the road in Chicago. The engines sang in the fresh morning air and Bonner allowed himself to slip back in his seat and, for a moment, to enjoy the clean cold morning.

They were riding through country that was made up of tall hills and deep valleys, dusted with the new white of a fresh snowfall. The road was curved but open, almost completely free of hulks and wrecks although those ubiquitous rusting landmarks could be seen from time to time pushed over by the side of the highway. Periodically they passed through or around the ugly wound of an old mill town. The little convoy passed slowly through the rubble, their big engines echoing off the broken walls. There was nothing that Bonner had ever seen that was quite as dead as a dead town. They saw no slaves, they were still too far north.

But Bonner knew that they were sure to run into people soon. The further south they drove, the more likely they were to run into slaves and slaves meant tax men and tax men meant Stormers.

Each part of Leather's empire had been divided into sectors, each commanded by a tax general who was likely to live in the Cap. The tax general was in charge of seeing that his sector provided the quota of supplies that Leather and Jojo had decided it could produce. The figures were often impossibly high, and the tax generals were always worried about meeting their quota. Leather knew the value of his administrators, so if you missed your quota once or twice he would probably let it ride. If you missed it often enough, he gave a curt order to a handy Radlep and the 'lep blew your head off.

But a tax general could get rich if he worked at it. They said that the richest men in the Slavestates were the tax generals, one or two of them even rivaling Leather himself. Each general was allowed to take a cut of the goods his sector produced.

Executing the commands of tax generals were the tax soldiers. Each sector was divided into regions and each region was looked after by two tax men. The tax soldiers worked with the slaves, squeezing the slaves as hard as they could. It was up to them to make sure that the slaves worked eighteen hours a day in the fields and the  mines, tending livestock and foraging for the supplies that had been left over when the old world vanished in a cloud of fire and death. Like the tax generals, the tax soldiers were allowed to take a piece of the spoils, so they worked hard and they worked their hapless slaves harder. It was a job that demanded constant and absolute ruthlessness: you couldn't have a soft heart and make any money, that was a rule.

The tax men had to work hard to meet their quotas. Out of the stuff provided by their region, the tax soldiers had to ensure that there was enough food to support the slaves and the Stormer units that traveled the area, the Stormers in turn ensuring that the tax men could work at their rape and pillage of the land without interruption. Each sector paid for itself and tax men were not above cutting rations to the slaves to increase their quota and their own profits. Tax soldiers weren't popular men.

Bonner's force was heading south toward the ruins of an old mill town that sat deep in the mountains. At the old ruined railroad station a cracked sign read: ALTOONA. Bonner had agreed to meet Seth there, just to check in and compare notes.

From old Cooker's cackling information, they figured their goal was somewhere in that region. Of' course, they might be off by five hundred miles; maybe the old gas hound was simply telling a big lie, something to amuse the boys around the campfire.

Gas hounds weren't famous for being real stable mentally. But that was a risk you took when you went smuggling. They might go thrashing around in the snow for three long, cold weeks, ducking patrols, fighting, and still come up empty-handed. It was an uncertain way to make a living, a dangerous one too, but vastly preferable, or so thought Bonner and Starling and men like them, to taking orders from another man, to do another man's bidding.

Bonner was in the lead with Starling riding beside him. The heavy truck carrying Les Habitants rumbled along behind them. Bonner had been curiously moved by the simple laying to rest of the slain Habs. The Canadians had buried their comrades without any real ceremony, simply laying them in their cold holes in the frozen ground and covering them with dirt. The men then stood there a moment or two in silence, the dirty windblown snow whipping around them. Star ling and Bonner had stood away a bit, at a distance feeling a little awkward, as if they were unwelcome intruders at a private, family gathering. As Les Habitants dispersed, all of them had a tear or two in their eyes, but Bonner could also see that they now ha new resolve to fight on, to destroy their enemies an avenge their noble, fallen comrades.

Someone had pushed the old Hab truck over the graves, a rusty, but fitting memorial to the men whose bodies would decay and vanish, but who memories would live on in the minds and actions their comrades. As soon as the ceremony was over the remaining Habs decided quietly among them selves who would care for the families of the fallen. It touched Bonner. They lived together and fought together for the good of them all, for the good of a single tight-knit unit. They were good men and they lived by the gun, but they believed in virtue.

Watching the funeral, Bonner was reminded that he hadn't been able to bury Dara. . . .

The sunny freshness of the day contrasted starkly with the dark mood that had crept over Bonner. He toed the gas pedal a touch harder and silently prayed that Leatherman was out there somewhere.

They rode another twenty-five miles, and for every inch of it Bonner tried to drive his melancholy and his shame from his mind. He failed. So engrossed was he in his thoughts and his private musings that it was Starling who first saw that, up ahead on the highway, a rusting hulk of an old Datsun had been pushed lengthwise across the road. He cut speed immediately.

The sudden change of the engine note a few yards from Bonner's ear jerked him back to reality. He saw the car, realized the danger, and hit the brakes, swerving to a stop at the side of the road. The Habs threw on their brakes and pulled up slightly behind him. Starling was on the far side of the road.

"Bonner," shouted Starling.

"Yeah."

"What do you think?"

"I know a roadblock when I see one."

"Whose you s'pose it is?"

"Stormer, probably."

"So what do you want to do?"

"Take a closer look." Bonner unslung the Steyr and held his shotgun in the other hand. He stood up slowly and advanced cautiously toward the wreck. There was no movement behind or around it. Bonner doubted that there was a hornet's nest of Stormers crouched behind the old bumt-out shell of a car. More likely the hulk was a maze of booby traps and other assorted dangers.

"Hey Bonner," shouted Starling, "look out for mines."

Bonner's eyes swept the ground ahead of him. A few inches of snow covered the ground. He could see no sign of the white carpet having been disturbed. There were two telltale signs of mines: a rough bit of ground where a mine had been carelessly placed with no attempt to hide it and a spot where the ground¦ appeared to be unnaturally smooth—where the miner had been too careful, too meticulous in camouflaging his dirty work.

Bonner stepped carefully, placing his feet in the snow with caution, waiting to hear the telltale "chunk" that meant he had stepped onto a spring-loaded weight mine. If he tripped the spring, he had to resist the natural and involuntary impulse to step off immediately. While he held the spring down he was safe. As soon as he stepped off he would blow himself to pieces.

But no sound came. As he got closer to the wreck he paused, his two guns held out before him. Then he sprinted the last few yards and jumped up onto the rusty hood. He stood there a second looking over the hulk. Then, suddenly, a huge pair of arms swept up and grabbed him around the boots and pulled him down behind the car.

As soon as he vanished, the Mean Brothers were off and running, pounding across the snow, waving their weapons, their eyes set and blazing like bird dogs', not taking them from the spot where Bonner had disappeared. They didn't care about mines and their huge feet threw up large gouts of snow as they ran.

"Means!" screamed Starling. "No! No!." He expected to hear the chatter of murderous fire open up and cut down the big brothers. But there was no stopping them. And there was no gunfire either,

A few feet from the Datsun the Mean Brothers jumped, flying off the ground and going headfirst over the dented nose of the wreck.

Starling and the Habs stood dumbstruck for a moment and then started running toward the car. "What the fuck is going on?" yelled Starling.

With that came a sound that echoed from behind the car. It was a sound that Starling knew extremely well; he slowed down and put his hands disgustedly on his hips.

"Haw haw haw haw." A deep throaty laugh seemed to echo out of a deep granite crypt. With that signature laugh it could be no one else. Beck rose up from behind the car, one of his huge arms thrown across Bonner's shoulders. Beck's wide face was bright with amusement. Bonner smiled. Even the Mean Brothers looked pretty happy.

"Beck," screamed Starling, "are you fucking crazy?

We were fixin' to blow your dumb-shit, peckerwood, motherfucking head off. You dumb shit. We would have cut you into a million fucking pieces. You a

stupid shit! Goddamn!" Beck's deep voice: "Not in front of the children, !

Starling. Watch your fucking mouth." And he laughed some more: "Haw, haw, haw."

"The Mean Brothers would have taken you apart," screamed Starling.

"The hell they would," bellowed Beck. "These little tykes couldn't damage a fucking kitten."

Beck was a giant of a man, standing a good foot taller than the Mean Brothers. He was seven feet if he was an inch, and mostly muscle. He did have a big gut that hung down over his wide brass-buckled leather belt. He had four or five belts of heavy-caliber ammunition crossed on his massive barrel chest. Lank black hair fell to his broad shoulders. His thick legs were planted firmly on the ground, like bulky, knotty tree trunks. He had teeth the size of small tombstones and they were permanently stained brown. Everyone knew this because Beck laughed so much and always showed his ugly teeth when he did.

"Mon Dieu," said J.B. "This man would take plenty of killing, non?

"Nobody gonna kill me, buddy. I ain't going until I decide, and lemme tell you that time ain't come yet," bellowed Beck. "And who the hell are you anyway and why the fuck do you talk so strange. You picked up another bunch of freaks, Bonner?" "Jean Baptiste," said Bonner, "this is Beck."

"Big fucking deal. How come he talks funny?"

"I am from the north. If you were up there, it would be us, Les Habitants, that would be saying that you were the one who would be talking funny."

"Didn't understand a fucking word," said Beck. "All these guys, they with him?"

"Right," said Bonner. "Allow me to introduce the Habitants."

"The who?"

"Forget it. What you doing out here, Beck?"

"I was outbound for Chi. I was just doing a little late-in-the-season looking around, you know what I mean? Stormers all over the fucking place. 'Leps too. I took out a few small patrols, but the big ones, forget it. I'm none too popular in the Cap, you know. ..." Beck had been a latecomer to the raid on Washington that Bonner had commanded, but he had managed to take Leather for twenty thousand gold slates. He was almost as high as Bonner on Leather's hate list. "Why are you out?"

"Little hunting," said Bonner.

"Oh yeah? Hunting what?"

"Gas."

Beck smiled broadly. "Well," he said. "I'm all ears. Tell me about it Bonner."

Bonner turned to Starling and J.B. "We got room for one more?"

"Sure," said Starling with a shrug of his shoulders.

' 'Pourquoi pas?'' said J.B.

"Hey, no don't do me no favors, you pricks. You need me more than I need you."

"What means this?" said J.B.

"What means this, mister, is that I been down that road and I know where the 'leps and Stonners were and probably where they're going. You gotta gun me in for a lotta that gas."

"You get the same share as everybody else," said

Starling.

Beck grinned. "Awwwwww, Star, my man, I didn't say I wanted anything but a fair share. I'm just an old softy. Besides I want another crack at the Stormers. It ain't cold enough to hunker down in Chi town yet."

They drove without incident until nightfall. When they stopped for the night Bonner spoke to Beck privately.

"So you been down this road?" he asked quietly.

"That's right."

"Lots of Stonners?"

"Stonners, 'leps, convoys, patrols, you name it. It's a fucking doom-freak salad out there."

"Any sign of Leather?" Bonner asked casually.

Beck looked knowingly at Bonner, his eyes glittering in the dark. "Still got that splinter in your ass, huh Bonner?"

"Something like that."

"Well, this'll cheer you up. I heard he's out there."

"Good," said Bonner.

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