Leatherman traveled in style. Trailing behind his Radlep battalion were a half-dozen trucks, each filled to the backboards with food and liquor and girls, so that even when he was on the road, the president of the Slavestates managed to avoid roughing it. He figured that there was no point living in shit when he didn't have to: any damn-fool fuck-up could be uncomfortable. He was the Leatherman after all, and he had worked hard and done a lot of messy killing to get where he was today. And after having done all that hard work, he was going to make the most of it.

His huge convoy had camped down for the night in the parking lot of a big old shopping center somewhere on the outskirts of the old mill towns. Leather didn't really know the name of the place and he couldn't have cared less. The low dark ruins of the mall were just like a thousand others he had seen: they always looked as if they had been drenched in broken glass. A few cracked signs identified the old stores: Fayva, Pantry Pride, Radio Shack, Zaiduondo's Bakery De-Lites, Baskin Robbins . . . Leather didn't care about those places either.

As soon as the convoy stopped, servant slaves were put to work making up the campsite. A fire was started from wood cut from some stunted trees that had forced themselves up through the cracks in the asphalt, and it was fed with larger pieces of wood that the servants gathered from the roadside and the shell of the shattered shopping center. Once the blaze was going they began preparing the pig—pork was Leather's favorite meat—for roasting.

A second group of slaves set to work erecting Leather's tent. It was a large one, big enough for a fluffy double bed that was carried so that their leader could always sleep in comfort. Soon after the bed was made up a couple of slave women, carefully chosen from Leather's harem, would climb in and wait there until Leather was finished eating and drinking with his men around the campfire.

The Radleps didn't sleep under canvas, a lot of them didn't sleep at all: they were often kept awake through the night by the pain of their terrible disease. They would curl up next to their bikes, and if they could, they slept; if not, they ignored the bitter cold and the snow that whipped around their huddled forms. None of the Radleps slept heavily, not because of the discomfort but simply because alertness was part of their training. Leather had seen a Radlep squad leap out of bed as awake and taut as if they had done speed—all in a matter of seconds. Even so, a large number of the 'leps would be placed on watch. They would stand on the perimeter of the camp, their weapons at the ready, silent and attuned to every sound and every tiny movement in the icy night. They would wait and watch, ready at any moment to kill and die in defense of their evil leader. Unlike Stormers and other normal men, the Radleps didn't talk or laugh or stamp their feet to keep themselves warm or even quietly curse the cold. They just watched and brooded, silent as human tombstones. . . .

But before the battalion settled in for the long night there was a good deal of eating and drinking to do. Before too long the smell of roast pig quietly wafted through the snowy air and men licked their raw, torn lips and looked forward to the feast to come.

Leather always started these things off. A fat, overstuffed armchair, the kind that people used to have in their living rooms, would be brought from one of the supply trucks, and Leather would settle in it close to the fire. The rest of the company, squatting on the cold asphalt, 'leps and Stormers and other functionaries, made a circle around the fire.

Beyond the warmth of the roaring fire but just caught in the outermost rays of orange light lurked the servant slaves, a few of the Radleps' whores and the cook slaves, standing there nervously until summoned by their masters.

The business of eating would go on for hours. Radleps would eat their fill then steal away into the night to relieve their comrades that stood watch on the cold perimeter. There was little conversation, although occasionally Leather, comfortable in his armchair, a piece of pork impaled on the blade of his left hand, would make some observation with which everyone would agree or crack a joke at which everyone would laugh uproariously. Mostly, though, Leather just ate, quickly and noisily, cramming as much food into his mouth as it could take while clear rivers of pig fat smeared across his face and ran down his hairy arms. A slave girl would clean it off his body once he was asleep.

Leather's manners were good compared to the 'leps. Watching a group of them eat was enough to turn the stomach of a hardened, battle-weary Stormer. Food would get chewed up by brown teeth, then little bits of the mush would course from broken cheeks or out through bleeding lips. They grunted and chewed and held the greasy meat in scaly hands, unaware that they were pictures of grotesque disgust. Had they known, they wouldn't have cared. Leather never seemed to notice. But then, everybody knew he was crazy about his radiation lepers.

The meal was almost over when Carlos the Radlep commander limped to where Leather sat and interrupted his leader as he slurped up a piece of pig fat while absently fondling the breast of a slave girl who kneeled by the side of the armchair. Carlos whispered in Leatherman's ear.

"No shit," Leatherman said after hearing the message. "Bring the fuck here. Lemme see him."

A few Radleps looked up from their greasy dinners like dogs from the feeding bowl. What was up, they wondered.

With a short snap of his head, Carlos gestured toward someone in the darkness and out of the gloom came a Radlep clutching a terrified-looking slave on his large cracked hand. The force with which he held the man had caused the thin delicate burned skin of the Radlep's hand to part and tear, and thin watery blood flowed from the wide lesions. The liquid dribbled down onto the thin shift that the slave wore.

Leather stopped gnawing on a piece of meat that was stuck on one of his knife hands long enough to stare at his captive. He glanced at the man without interest. He was just another colorless, pale, thin, malnourished slave who didn't know it, but he didn't have much time to live. He was just a tiny piece in Leather's empire.

"So, who are you, you piece of shit?" Leather spoke as if the whole thing rather bored him.

"We found him out by the perimeter," wheezed Carlos. The 'lep commander's voice box was going, and speaking was difficult for him. Each breath he took, each word he spoke caused a little bit of his tortured throat to crack. He tasted blood in his mouth constantly. "What were you doing out there, dogshit?" rasped Carlos. "Tell the man."

Leather crammed some more food into his mouth and chewed noisily. The slave—it was the man who had escaped Beck's dangerous performance with the sub-machine gun—couldn't speak. In truth, it had been the sight of the fire and the tantalizing smell of roasting meat that had brought him so close to the camp. He had never smelled anything so delicious in his life. Sometimes in the past he had crept close to the tax soldiers' house in the town and smelled the cooking there, but even they had never had anything that had an odor so intoxicatingly wonderful. The slave's mouth opened and closed a few times and he stared at Leatherman, but fear and cold and hunger prevented him from managing a single coherent word.

Without really thinking about it, the Radlep who had caught the slave stuffed the butt of his M16 into the lower back of the slave. The sudden, short, painful blow sent the thin man to his knees. He knelt on the asphalt, skinning his knees as he fell, and retched and wheezed from the force of the blow.

"Speak when you're spoke to," ordered Carlos.

"Where you from?" asked Leather.

"Down the road," stuttered the slave, finally finding his tongue.

"Where down the road?"

"Al-al-Altoona ..."

"What's your name?"

"S-S-Stanley ..."

"Okay, Stanley my man," said Leather affably, "you know who I am?"

Stanley looked around at the Radleps, the women, the food, and then into Leather's single cruel blue eye. "Are you G-G-God?"

Leather threw his head back and laughed heartily. Because he laughed, his force laughed with him.

"Hey Stanley," said Leatherman, "you see that?" He gestured toward a big Beretta-686 shotgun clasped by a Radlep.

The slave nodded.

"You know what that is?"

Stanley nodded again. He sure knew what it was. He had seen a dozen slaves, maybe more, die by the gun. Not just at. Beck's hands; he had seen slaves killed by Stormers, and the tax men were always knocking off one or two just for the hell of it.

"Yeah," said Leather, "what is it?"

"A g-g-gun."

"You're right. That's God, Stanley. A gun makes you a god. And I got more guns than anybody else. So I guess you've guessed right. I am God." Leather roared with laughter again. He liked this little slave. He had never thought of things that way before. Sure, Leather thought, he had no problem at all thinking he was God. "Say, Carlos, how far are we from Altoona?"

"Not that far. Maybe twenty miles."

"That's pretty far for a slave, ain't it?"

"That's right."

"What you doing so far from home, Stanley?"

Stanley's heart sank. What could he say? That the slaves had had enough? That they had risen up against the tax men and killed and tortured them, the way they had beat, abused, raped, and killed the slaves all these years? And why didn't this man know already? Surely it was he who had sent the men with the guns. Surely this man was so powerful that he had a man so strong that he could kill all the slaves with one burst of fire.

Stanley was mute.

"So how 'bout it, Stanley?"

The Radlep behind him raised the stock of his weapon threateningly. Stanley knew that he couldn't take another blow.

"I ran away," he said in a very small voice.

"That's bad, Stanley," said Leather.

"I'm sorry," Stanley whimpered. "But everyone has been punished."

"Punished?" said Leather, puzzled. "Punished for what?"

"For the revolt."

Leather's body seemed to quiver suddenly with rage. His ugly face turned a livid red. "Revolt."

Stanley nodded. "But they are all dead now. You killed them all, except me."

"The fuck I did!" yelled Leather. "Who revolted? What happened? Who punished you?"

Slowly, haltingly, Stanley told the story of the revolt, of the death of the tax men, of the sudden arrival of the men that Stanley and the other slaves took to be Stormers.

"A man shot them?"

"That's right."

"They weren't Stormers, Stanley. Because if they had been Stormers, they would have done more than shoot you revolting motherfuckers. Man, they would have ..." Leather gasped for words. "Man, you woulda paid bad. Now tell me about the fuck that did the shooting."

Stanley had only caught a short glimpse of Beck but he told what he knew. He was the largest man he had ever seen and he had friends; they came in cars and trucks and one was on a bike. . . . Then a man had come on a ... He didn't know what to call Seth's locomotive but he described it as best he could. Leather listened, then spoke slowly, his teeth clenched: "Beck, Bonner, Starling, Seth . . . The same little crew that gave us headaches last time."

"And they're in Altoona," said Carlos.

"Or pretty damn close. Strike the camp. We're going now. Send the dog men out ahead. Now."

"Yes, boss," said Carlos, and he marched away, painfully bellowing orders as he went.

"Now you, Stanley, are lucky we ain't got much time. Cause if we had, I would have seen that you got all the pain that your dead friends didn't get. As it is, I'm pressed for time. Take him, Sammy."

Stanley was hustled away and given a quick piece of Radlep torture. He was strung up by the wrists, his thin body hoisted up into the air by means of a rope thrown over a tall yellow plastic arch that stood in front of a low glass and wood building in the middle of the shopping mall parking lot. A smashed sign stood off to one side: OVER 110 BILLION . . .

Stanley wailed with the pain and fear that pumped through his body and he arched his scrawny neck to look below his dangling feet. Servants and Radleps were building a fire underneath him. The dog men were leaving as the first wave of heat wafted up to his naked feet, singeing the hair on his frail legs.

By the time the camp was struck and the Radleps and their leader were moving off into the night, Stanley's skin had charred and flaked and the smell of his burned flesh mingled with the odor of the burned carcass of the pig that no one had thought to remove from the roasting fire.

The column left and Stanley's tortured screams tore through the empty night.

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