Joshua Mote suddenly appeared around the side of the armored truck, arms filled with a pile of papers. As soon as he saw Doc he dropped them, reaching for a blaster at his hip.

"Dead old fucker!" he snarled.

But Doc's Le Mat was already drawn and cocked and he fired first. The single .63-caliber shotgun shell hit the curly-headed young man low in the belly, doubling him over.

"Wrong again, Master Mote," Doc stated quietly. "The dead fucker is yourself."

Mote rolled on his back, clutching at his stomach, trying to staunch the massive blood flow from the gaping wound. Lori stepped forward quickly and lifted her foot in the air, stamping down hard on Joshua's open mouth. The heel of her boot smashed in his front teeth, the silver spur snagging the flesh of his lips. She leaned with all her weight, grinding her boot as hard as she could, withdrawing it with a smile of contentment.

"Bastard," she said, watching him die.

"You killed my boy, you whore-slut gaudy bitch!" Norman Mote screamed, standing at the corner of the burning building, clutching an effigy of one of the mutie rattlers that looked as if it were made from pure silver. He staggered drunkenly, and his gray hair was tilted lopsidedly across his sweating temples.

Ryan didn't hesitate.

The 9 mm round that burst from the SIG-Sauer drilled a neat hole through the angry furrow between Mote's eyes. Like an empty suit of clothes, Norman Mote, Guardian of the Shrine, slumped dead, his body rolling against his dead son's legs.

"Where's bitch-queen?" Jak asked, looking around the corner of the alley.

"Probably heard the thunder of Doc's mortar," J.B. guessed. "Two from three isn't bad."

There was a note of real concern in Krysty's voice. "Wind's come right around. We haveto move now, Ryan. Come on!"

J.B. led the way back along the end of Main Street, followed by Lori, tottering on her high heels, Doc holding her arm. Jak jogged behind them, followed by Krysty. Ryan, bringing up the rear, suddenly realized that Rick wasn't with them.

"Keep going, lover!" he yelled. "Freezie's vanished. We'll catch up when we can!"

Richard Ginsberg was in the alley, kneeling near the two corpses. For a moment Ryan thought of Joshua Mote's turquoise nugget around his neck, but it wasn't that. The scattergun that Rick had absently picked up after Rat's shooting lay in the dirt. The freezie was picking through the pile of paper. He heard footsteps and looked around.

"These are from my time, Ryan. Porno magazines. Kiddies and animals. So much of my society blasted to kingdom come and this filth remains! There's something real... Look out!"

Ryan Cawdor whirled, too late. Marianne Mote had come out of the side door of the nearest house, and she was holding a small silvered machine pistol, which was aimed at Ryan's chest almost point-blank.

Her makeup was blotched and smeared, and the dense smoke had darkened her doll-like complexion. Her dress was torn down the front, revealing the pallor of her thighs. She'd aged twenty years since Ryan had last seen her. But the venom was unsullied.

"Seen what you done, outlander. You won most all of the prizes. But you lose the last hand. And I win it."

"No." The overlooked, crouching Rick Ginsberg shot her through the back with both barrels of the shotgun.

Ryan winced at the expectation of her shooting him with a dying spasm, but her long-nailed fingers opened and the blaster dropped. Her hands waved frantically, as if she were gripped by one of her religious frenzies, and her mouth opened wide. A worm of thick, blood-roped spittle oozed out over her chin. Her legs gave way, and she collapsed beside her husband and son, making a surprisingly ladylike corpse.

"Thanks."

"What?" Rick looked like a man waking after a long sleep. He stared at the empty, smoking scatter-gun he was holding as if he'd never seen it before.

"I said thanks for that. She'd have chilled me for sure."

"I guess she... Oh..." He closed his eyes, taking deep breaths. "I thought I was going to throw up. You know, you were wrong, Ryan."

"How's that?"

"Killing people. You said it was hard. It's not. It's too damned easy."

Chapter Thirty-Six

Snakefish was in its final, scorching death throes. Every building in the ville was burning. Smoke soared ten miles high, shredded by the wind as it was winnowed away from the foothills of the Sierras.

At the end nobody had tried to stop the seven friends or follow them. But now the threat came from the fire that they'd initiated. It was running along the highway and beginning to nibble at the edges of the mesquite.

"Gotta go for it," Ryan said. "Keep together. You can see the higher ground. Rocks. Reach that and we're safe. We'll soon be at the redoubt and away from here. Go for it."

They saw no signs of the mutie rattlers. No doubt the explosions and the fire had sent the great reptiles to their hidden burrows, deep beneath the desert.

Ryan set a steady pace, knowing that to start off too fast would have meant stragglers within a mile. He and J.B. could have pushed on at twice the speed, as could Jak and Krysty. But Doc Tanner was an old man, and Lori insisted on wearing her high-heeled crimson boots. And Rick was sickly.

The rising ground promised safety, but the wind had turned, causing the fire to pursue them. It was gaining all the time, and the roaring and crackling flames raced nearer to their heels.

"Gonna be close," J.B. panted.

"Freezie's bushed," Krysty said.

"An' Doc," Jak added.

Ryan held up his hand to stop everyone. The brush ended a scant half mile away, but the prairie fire was less than that. Smoke filled everyone's lungs and made running even more difficult. Rick was on hands and knees, clutching his cane, fighting for breath, shoulders heaving. Doc trembled with exhaustion.

"Krysty and I'll help Rick. Jak, you help Doc, and J.B. can give Lori a hand."

The girl shook her head, close to tears. "No. Jak and J.B. can help Doc along. He's needing it better than me. I'll be real fine."

It wasn't a situation for argument. Ryan nodded his agreement and the seven friends set off again for the last lap of their desperate race.

Rick was in a state of virtual collapse, feet shuffling and kicking out, hanging between Ryan and Krysty. Doc wasn't in much better condition, flopping between the two much smaller figures of Jak and the Armorer.

The nearer to safety, the steeper the slope, the greater the effort.

"Leave me!" Rick groaned. "Let me die again."

They ignored him.

Nobody dared to pause to look back, but they could all feel the heat of the fire and catch the smell of the burning creosote bushes. The roar of the flames, fanned by the wind, was deafening. Ryan could feel even his own enormous strength beginning to falter and fade. Now he was helping both Rick and Krysty, who was sobbing with the heart-bursting effort of staying alive.

Blinded by smoke, Ryan didn't even realize that they'd reached safety. Krysty was screaming in his ear, dragging at his arm to make him stop. He blinked his eye open and saw that they stood a good fifty paces clear, on the bare rock and out of danger from the onrushing fire.

Rick rocked on his knees, vomiting. A little to their right J.B. was bent over, hands on hips, fighting for breath, his spectacles hanging over one ear. Jak supported Doc, who was beyond the edge of physical tiredness, his face drained and blank, blackened with soot.

"Made it," J.B. gasped.

Ryan was beginning to nod his agreement, when the realization struck him like a dash of iced water. They hadn't made it. Not all of them. Lori was still...

"Lori!" Krysty screamed, pointing.

The tall blond girl was silhouetted against the towering wall of yellow-orange fire as it swept toward her, barely ten paces behind. She was less than fifty yards away from Ryan and the others.