Vidor smiled his ugly smile and looked around him at the dirty but happy faces of his Stormers.

"Well, boys," he said, "we done it."

"Damn right!" bellowed Sickert, his second in command, "Damn right we did."

Secretly, Vidor couldn't quite believe that they had done it. He looked around at the gooney faces of his men and told himself that they were one dumb collection of Stormers. And what more everybody knew it. In the Cap they said that Vidor's troop was the sorriest outfit in the entire Stormer brigade, bar none, But they had done it.

Leather had sent them out weeks ago and they had spent most of their time blundering around in the snow, falling over other patrols and even lying low once when they saw that big snowman force coming.

That had been close.

They had run out of food twice and gas once and they had to raid some poor half-dead slaves to get something to eat. They had been forced to beg gas from another Stormer patrol. The other Stormers had looked down their noses at Vidor and his party, contempt showing plainly on their faces.

But those other jokers hadn't found it—Vidor and his skaggy men had. Now all they had to do was link up with the Leatherman and let him know of their find. Then they were home free—rich and heroes in the bargain. Vidor couldn't believe it.

"Men," he said, his voice cracking slightly, "I'm fuckin' proud of you. ..."

Not one of the twenty bike men could believe his good fortune. They looked around them at the rusty gray bulks of the giant fuel tanks. There must have been at least a dozen of the rusting giant pods, all of them huddled together in a dirty, fenced-in old industrial park that sat in the middle of a deep cleft, a valley that seemed to be filled with acre upon acre of dead old factories and mills. An oily stream wandered down the middle of the valley as if it was lost, the water black and sluggish. The banks were choked with ancient garbage, as if the factories were still churning out whatever had been made there once upon a time.

Vidor was already busy making up a story about how he had had a hunch about where to look for the place, but the truth of it was that he and his little band of not-so-tough guys had gotten all turned around in a snowstorm a couple of days back. They ended up wandering into their find because by mistake they took a ruined, rarely traveled road out of Johnstown (hell, Vidor wasn't even sure that pile of ruins had been Johnstown. They all looked the same to him) on the Bethlehem side of Altoona (he thought) and they found it there, waiting for the first riders that happened along.

The tanks towered above them like rusty, snub-headed mountain peaks. Each of them had a rickety rusty metal staircase running up the side, skirting four-foot-high letters that were still readable under years of corrosion and faded by exposure to the sun and the rain: EXXON.

But none of the Stormers could read, not even Vidor, so they stared uncomprehendingly at the letters.

"What do it say?" one of them asked.

"Gasoline," said Vidor confidently. And if it didn't, it oughta, he thought.

"Makes sense," said Sickert.

There it was, the whole damn thing, thought Vidor. It was a vast inland sea of gasoline, a place that every rider, raider, gas hound, Stormer, and 'lep was looking for. Even Leather himself was looking for it. Right then, Vidor realized, he was the most powerful man on the continent. More powerful than Leather even. A very dim light began to shine in the back of his head and he looked a little dazed for a minute. He was thinking.

"You know," he said, fingering the stubble on his grimy chin, "you know what I'm thinking?"

"What?" asked Sicken. "I'm thinking we are sitting on the biggest load of gas in the whole fuckin' Slavestates."

"Yeah, great, ain't it?" said Sickert happily. "Yeah," said Vidor, speaking to the whole group, "but what do you say we do a little thinking on it before we go running to tell the Leatherman what we found here."

"But Leather ..." began Sickert.

"Well, hell," said a Stormer named Dougal, "why should we give all this to Leather? We found it. It's ours."

"Right," said Vidor, "maybe Dougal gotta point."

The Stormers shifted uneasily. They all thought they deserved a little something for finding the gas, but the idea of taking on Leatherman . . . well, that seemed a little unreasonable. "Are you crazy?" demanded Sickert. Never again in his life would he speak so forcefully or think so clearly. "Are you guys out of your minds? We're gonna take on Leather"! The man is not in the Cap. The man is on the road and he's got a whole 'lep battalion with him. If you think some fuck-ups like us are gonna do any damage against him, then you dumb and you crazy too."

"Shut up, Sickert," yelled Vidor.

"The hell I will. You're making a big mistake. I say take the news to Leatherman and he'll do the right thing for us. If you don't, then you're gonna end up dead. Kilt."

Vidor's big Smith and Wesson crept out its holster like a snake creeping from its lair. He held it at his side, listening while Sickert continued his harangue.

"You ain't never gonna get across the Borderlands to Chi before some Stormers or 'leps or Leather—"

BLAM! A big .44 slug cracked into Sickert's forehead. His voice stopped, his eyes bugged out, and he fell down, a nasty ooze of blood, brains, and bone chips staining the black asphalt where he lay sprawled.

"He was spreading low morale," said Vidor, slipping the still-smoking gun back into its leather resting place. "Hey Dougal, you wanna be second on this patrol?"

Dougal really wanted to be first, but that would come. "Sure," he said.

"Anyone else here think that taking all this for our own selves is a bad idea?"

The seventeen Stormers looked at Vidor, then over at Dougal, who fingered his Remington Autoloader, then down at Sickert's corpse. The back of his head was soaked in a pool of thick blood, the cold air making it heavy and oily. like lumpy gravy. His dirty hair swirled lazily in the red puddle.

"Well?" demanded Vidor. "What do you guys think?"

In the sullen silence that followed, the other Slorm-ers looked at the ground or up at the tanks—they looked anywhere but at Vidor.

"Lennie!" yelled Vidor.

Lennie jumped.

"You think it's a good idea?"

Lennie pressed his thumb against his chest. "Me, boss?"

"How many Lennies we got?"

Lennie looked around as if hoping that another Stormer named Lennie might be handy. "One."

"So? Whaddya think?"

"Well, me, I ... I think it's a fine idea," Lennie said with one eye on Sickert's stiffening corpse.

"Good," said Vidor, "then we all agree. I reckon all you guys agree with Lennie, right?"

"Okay," said Dougal, "this is what we're gonna do. Some of you head out and round up something we can put the gas in. Like barrels or something. The rest of us gotta figure out how to get the gas out of the tanks."

"Now hold on a piece," said Vidor. "I'm running this outfit." 

"Just making a suggestion, boss," said Dougal.

"Oh, okay, that's different. Good idea. Barrels. I was just gonna mention that."

The group dispersed. A few men under Vidor's direction started ransacking the rusting sheds that stood in one comer of the tank site.

Dougal climbed up on one of the tanks and looked with confusion at the complicated system of valves that encircled the gas caps. All of the tanks were joined by a labyrinth of pipes, which led into one of the buildings that stood over near the old railway spur. Gas traveled through those pipes, but Dougal was damned if he knew how it all worked. He wasn't so much smart as he was cunning. Cunning was good, but smart was better. Smart men lived longer than cunning ones.

He hadn't figured he was going to have any trouble getting to the precious liquid inside all of those big old tanks. Somehow he thought that you just opened the top and scooped the stuff out, like a well. He was beginning to see that it wasn't that simple.

"Damn," he said, and kicked the metal under his feet. The tank boomed dully, as if mocking him. To make matters worse, just about then it started to rain; a cold, dirty rain. The icy drops were falling from the sky with startling speed, so he shot down the metal staircase, dashing for the cover of the old shacks. He kicked in the door and found Vidor and his men standing over an old gray metal desk closely examining something.

"Whassat?" demanded Dougal.

"Looky here," said Vidor with a leer. He held up an old calendar, yellowed around the edges. Each page was a different month and each month pictured a different woman. None of them wore clothes and they lazed about in languorous poses staring straight into the camera with a certain hot, smoky look in their eyes. Each page had, in addition, a rather stylized picture of a rabbit. "Ain't got nothing like this no more," breathed Vidor unhappily.

"You are crazy man," said Dougal, glancing coldly at the calendar. "We got work to do."

Vidor could feel his power slipping away from him. "We was just taking a break," he said meekly.

"Well, you gotta remember that we don't gotta a lotta time. Ole Leather could come down that road any minute."

"Jeez," said Vidor, paling slightly, "you think he could find us?"

"Maybe." "So what you doing in here?" he said, suddenly trying to reassert his authority. "You're s'posed to be gettin' the gas."

"We gotta problem there," said Dougal evenly.

The Stormers spent the rest of the day, right up until nightfall robbed them of light, running up and down the tanks, pounding on the valves, trying to figure out how the whole system worked. They cussed and moaned and yelled in pain when they scraped pieces of their skin off on the rusty handles. By dark they were wet and unhappy and sure that they weren't going to see a drop of gas. "We'll try tomorrow," said Dougal.

"Yeah," said Vidor, "great." Long after dark, Lennie pushed off his dirty blanket and rolled out from under the rickety table that he had been sleeping beneath. Ranged around him in the room—it was the same one that had yielded up the . calendar—were the muffled sleeping Stormers.

Lennie stretched, picked up his rusty Kassnar, and headed for the door.

Dougal sat upright in his tangle of bedding. "Where you going?" he hissed.

"Piss," said Lennie, yawning theatrically.

"With your rifle?"

"Who knows what's out there?"

"Leave it here."

"What? How come?"

"Cause I don't want anyone taking a hike."

"Where do you think I'm going? Listen to that hit." Rain was beating heavily on the tin roof of the shed.

"Leave the rifle."

Lennie shrugged and leaned the rifle against the wall. "Satisfied?"

"Don't take too long."

Outside, Lennie stood for a moment, cursing his luck. Dougal had guessed right. Lennie was getting out of there. He was heading straight back to Leather. But how far would he get without his gun? Well, one thing was for sure, he was leaving this bunch of fuck-ups behind. He walked away, the dark of the cold rainy night swallowing him in seconds.

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