As soon as we hear voices we go forward very silently. Heel on the ground, said Toby, then roll forward on the foot, other heel on the ground. That way nothing dry snaps.

The voices are men. We can smell the smoke from their fire, and another smell: charred meat. I realize how hungry I am: I can feel myself drooling. I try to think about this hunger instead of being scared.

We peer through the leaves. It’s them all right: the one with the longer dark beard, the one with the light stubbly beard and the shaved head that’s growing in. I remember everything about them, and I feel like throwing up. It’s hate and fear grabbing at my stomach and sending tendrils through my whole body.

But now I see Amanda, and I feel so light all of a sudden. As if I could fly.

Her hands are free, but there’s a rope around her neck, with the other end tied to the leg of the dark-bearded guy. She’s still wearing her khaki desert-girl outfit, though it’s filthier than ever. Her face is smudged with dirt, her hair is dull and stringy. She has a purple bruise under one eye, and there are other bruises on the bare parts of her arms. She still has some of the orange nail polish on her fingers from Scales. Seeing it makes me want to cry.

She’s only skin and bones. But the two of them don’t look so fat themselves.

I feel myself breathing fast. Toby takes hold of my arm and gives it a squeeze. That means Keep calm. She turns her brown face towards me and smiles a shrunken-head smile; the edges of her teeth glint through her lips, the muscles of her jaws tighten, and all of a sudden I feel sorry for those two men. Then she lets go of my arm and lifts the rifle, very slowly.

The two men are sitting cross-legged, broiling chunks of meat on sticks over the coals. Rakunk meat. The black-and-white-striped tail is on the ground, over to the side. There’s a spraygun on the ground too. Toby must have seen it. I can hear her thinking: If I shoot one of them, will I have time to shoot the other one before he can shoot me?

“Maybe it’s some fuckin’ savages thing,” the dark-bearded one is saying. “Blue paint.”

“Nah. Tattoos,” says the shorthair.

“Who’d get their dick tattooed?” says the bearded one.

“Savages will tattoo anything,” says the other. “It’s some cannibal thing.”

“You been watching too many dumb movies.”

“Bet they’d human-sacrifice her in about two minutes,” says the bearded one. “After they all had sex with her.” They look over at Amanda, but she’s staring at the ground. The bearded one jerks the rope. “We’re talkin’ to you, bitch,” he says. Amanda raises her head.

“A sex toy you can eat,” says the shorthair, and the two of them laugh. “You see the bimplants on those bitches, though?”

“Not bimplants, they were real. Way to find out, cut them open. The fake ones’ve got, like, some kind of gel in them. Maybe we could go back there, do a trade,” says the bearded one. “With the savages. They get this one, they seem to want her so much, stick their blue dicks into her, and we get some of those hot babes of theirs. Fuckin’ good deal!”

I see Amanda as they see her: used up, worn out. Worthless.

“Why trade?” says the shorthair. “Why not just go back and shoot the fuckers?”

“Not enough juice in this thing to shoot all of them. Cellpack’s really low. They’d figure that out, they’d rush us. Tear us apart and eat us.”

“We got to get farther away,” says the shorthair, alarmed now. “Thirty of them, two of us. What if they sneak up on us in the dark?”

There’s a pause while they think about this. My skin is crawling all over, I hate them so much. I wonder why Toby’s waiting. Why doesn’t she just kill them? Then I think, she’s old Gardener – she can’t do it, not in cold blood. It’s against her religion.

“Not too bad,” says the bearded one, lifting a skewer from the coals. “We can bag another one of these tasty little suckers tomorrow.”

“We gonna feed her?” says the shorthair. He’s licking his fingers.

“Give her some of yours,” says the bearded one. “She’s no use to us dead.”

“No use to me dead,” says the shorthair. “You’re such a pervert you’d plank a fuckin’ corpse.”

“Speaking of which, your turn first. Get the pump primed. I hate a dry fuck.”

“It was me first yesterday.”

“So, we arm-wrestle?”

Then suddenly there’s a fourth person in the clearing – a naked man, but not one of the green-eyed beautiful ones. This one is emaciated and scabby. He has a long scraggly beard, and he looks very crazy. But I know him. Or I think I know him. Is it Jimmy?

He’s carrying a spraygun, and he has it aimed it at the two men. He’s going to shoot them. He has that kind of maniac focus.

But he’ll shoot Amanda too, because the dark-bearded guy sees him and scrambles up onto his knees and pulls Amanda in front of him, one arm around her neck. The shorthair ducks in behind them. Jimmy hesitates, but he doesn’t lower the spraygun.

“Jimmy!” I scream from inside the shrubbery. “Don’t! That’s Amanda!”

He must think the bushes are talking to him. His face turns. I come out from behind the leaves.

“Great! The other bimbo,” says the bearded one. “Now we’ll have one each!” He’s grinning. The shorthair crouches forward, reaches for their spraygun.

Toby steps into the clearing. She has the rifle up and aimed. “Don’t touch that,” she says to the shorthair. Her voice is strong and clear but dead flat even. She must sound scary to him, and look it too – skinny, tattered, teeth bared. Like a TV banshee, like a walking skeleton; like someone with nothing to lose.

The shorthair freezes. The one holding Amanda doesn’t know which way to turn: Jimmy’s in front of him, but Toby’s off to the side. “Back off! I’ll break her neck,” he says to all of us. His voice is very loud: that means he’s afraid.

“I might care about that, but he doesn’t,” Toby says, meaning Jimmy. To me: “Get that spraygun. Don’t let him grab you.” To the shorthair: “Lie down.” To me: “Watch your ankles.” To the bearded one: “Let go of her.”

This is very fast, but at the same time slowed down. The voices are coming from far away; the sun’s so bright it hurts me; the light crackles on our faces; we glare and sparkle, as if electricity’s running all over us like water. I can almost see into the bodies – everyone’s bodies. The veins, the tendons, the blood flowing. I can hear their hearts, like thunder coming nearer.

I think I might faint. But I can’t, because I need to help Toby. I don’t know how, but I run over. So close I can smell them. Rancid sweat, oily hair. Snatch up their spraygun.

“Around behind him,” Toby tells me. To the Painballer: “Hands behind your head.” To me: “Shoot him in the back if you don’t see those hands quick.” She’s talking as if I know how to work this thing. To Jimmy, she says, “Easy now,” as if he’s a big frightened animal.

All this time Amanda has kept still, but when the dark-bearded one lets go of her she moves like a snake. She pulls the rope noose up and over her head and whips the guy across the face with it. Then she kicks him in the nuts. I can tell she doesn’t have a lot of strength left, but she uses all she has, and when he doubles over on the ground she kicks the other one. Then she grabs a stone and whacks each of them over the head, and there’s blood. Then she drops the stone and hobbles over to me. She’s crying, big gulping sobs, and I know it must have been very terrible, those days when I wasn’t there, because it takes more than a lot to make Amanda cry.

“Oh, Amanda,” I say to her. “I’m so sorry.”

Jimmy’s swaying on his feet. “Are you real?” he says to Toby. He looks so bewildered. He rubs his eyes.