“That cop was waving you off, wasn’t he?” Lois asked.

“You bet.”

“They’re not even going to let us get close.” She was looking at the black smudge on top of the hill with wide, dismayed eyes.

“We’ll get as close as we need to.” Ralph checked the rear-view for more traffic and saw nothing but hanging road-dust.

“Ralph?”

“What?”

“Are you up? Do you see the colors?”

He took a quick look at her. She still looked beautiful to him, and marvelously young, but there was no sign of her aura. “No,” he said. “Do you?”

“I don’t know. I still see that.” She pointed through the windshield at the dark smudge on top of the hill. “What is it? If it’s not a deathbag, what is it?”

He opened his mouth to tell her it was smoke, and there was only one thing up there likely to be on fire, but before he could get out a single word, there was a tremendous hot bang from the Oldsmobile’s engine compartment. The hood jumped and even dimpled in one place, as if an angry fist had lashed up inside. The car took a single forward snap-jerk that felt like a hiccup; the red idiot-lights came on and the engine quit.

He steered the Olds toward the soft shoulder, and when the edge gave way beneath the right-side wheels and the car canted into the ditch, Ralph had a strong, clear premonition that he had just completed his last tour of duty as a motor vehicle operator. This idea was accompanied by absolutely no regret at all.

“What happened?” Lois nearly screamed.

“We blew a rod,” he said. “Looks like it’s shank’s pony the rest of the way up the hill, Lois. Come on out on my side so you don’t squelch in the mud.”

There was a brisk westerly breeze, and once they were out of the car the smell of smoke from the top of the hill was very strong. They started the last quarter-mile without talking about it, walking handin-hand and walking fast. By the time they saw the State Police cruiser slued sideways across the top of the road, the smoke was rising in billows above the trees and Lois was gasping for breath.

“Lois? Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” she gasped. “I just weigh too-” Crack-crack-crack.pistol-shots from beyond the car blocking the road.

They were followed by a hoarse, rapid coughing sound Ralph could easily identify from TV news stories about civil wars in third world countries and drive-by shootings in third-world American cities: an automatic weapon set to rapid-fire. There were more pistol-shots, then the louder, rougher report of a shotgun. This was followed by a shriek of pain that made Ralph wince and want to cover his ears. He thought it was a woman’s scream, and he suddenly remembered something which had been eluding him: the last name of the woman John Leydecker had mentioned. McKay, it had been.

Sandra McKay.

That thought coming at this time filled him with unreasoning horror. He tried to tell himself that the screamer could have been anyone-even a man, sometimes men sounded like women when they had been hurt-but he knew better. It was her. It was them.

Ed’s crazies. They had mounted an assault on High Ridge.

More sirens from behind them. The smell of the smoke, thicker now. Lois, looking at him with dismayed, frightened eyes and still gasping for breath. Ralph glanced up the hill and saw a silver R.F.D. box standing at the side of the road. There was no name on it, of course; the women who ran High Ridge had done their best to keep a low profile and maintain their anonymity, much good it had done them today.

The mailbox’s flag was up. Somebody had a letter for the postman.

That made Ralph think of the letter Helen had sent him from High Ridge-a cautious letter, but full of hope nevertheless.

More gunfire. The whine of a ricochet. Breaking glass. A bellow that might have been anger but was probably pain. The hungry crackle of hot flames gobbling dry wood. Warbling sirens. And Lois’s dark Spanish eyes, fixed on him because he was the man and she’d been raised to believe that men knew what to do in situations like this.

Then do something! he yelled at himself. For Christ’s sweet sake, do something.

But what? What?

PICKERING!” a bullhorn-amplified voice bellowed from beyond the place where the road curved into a grove of young Christmas tree-size spruces. Ralph could now see red sparks and licks of orange flame in the thickening smoke rising above the firs. “Pickering, THERE ARE WOMEN IN THERE! LET US SAVE THEM! WOMEN!”

“He knows there are women,” Lois murmured. “Don’t they understand that he knows that? Are theyfools, Ralph?”

A strange, wavering shriek answered the cop with the bullhorn, and it took Ralph a second or two to realize that this response was a species of laughter. There was another chattering burst of automatic fire. It was returned by a barrage of pistol-shots and shotgun blasts.

Lois squeezed his hand with chilly fingers. “What do we do, Ralph? What do we do now?”

He looked at the billowing gray-black smoke rising over the trees, then back down toward the police-cars racing up the hill-over half a dozen of them this time-and finally back to Lois’s pale, strained face.

His mind had cleared a little-not much, but enough for him to realize there was really just one answer to her question.

“We go up,” he said.

Blink.” and the flames shooting over the grove of spruces went from orange to green. The hungry crackling sound became muffled, like the sound of firecrackers going off inside a closed box. Still holding Lois’s hand, Ralph led her around the front bumper of the State Police car which had been left as a roadblock.

The newly arrived police-cars were pulling up behind the roadblock. Men in blue uniforms came spilling out of them almost before they had stopped. Several were carrying riot guns and most were wearing puffy black vests. One of them sprinted through Ralph like a gust of warm wind before he could dodge aside: a young man named David Wilbert who thought his wife might be having an affair with her boss at the real-estate office where she worked as a secretary. The question of his wife had taken a back seat (at least temporarily) to David Wilbert’s almost overpowering need to pee, however, and to the constant, frightened chant that wove through his thoughts like a snake: [“You won’t disgrace yourself, you won’t disgrace yourself, you won’t, you won’t, you won’t.”] “PicKERiNG!” the amplified voice bellowed, and Ralph found he could actually taste the words in his mouth, like small silver pellets.

(YOUR FRIENDS ARE DEAD, PICKERING! THROW DOW,N YOUR WEAPON AND STEP OUT INTO THE YARD! LET US SAVE THE WOMEN.”

“Ralph and Lois rounded the corner, unseen by the men running all around them, and came to a tangle of police-cars parked at the place where the road became a driveway lined on both sides by pretty planter-boxes filled with bright flowers.

The woman’s touch that means so much, Ralph thought.

The driveway opened into the dooryard of a rambling white farmhouse at least seventy years old. It was three storeys high, with two wings and a long porch which ran the length of the building and commanded a fabulous view toward the west, where dim blue mountains rose in the mid-morning light. This house with its peaceful view had once housed the Barrett family and their apple business and had more recently housed dozens of battered, frightened women, but one look was enough to tell Ralph that it would house no one at all come this time tomorrow morning. The south wing was in flames, and that side of the porch was catching; tongues of fire poked out the windows and licked lasciviously along the eaves, sending shingles floating upward in fiery scraps. He saw a wicker rocking chair burning at the far end of the porch. A half-knitted scarf lay over one of the rocker’s arms; the needles dangling from it glowed white-hot.

Somewhere a wind-chime was tinkling a mad repetitive melody.