Alec drifted to sleep. When he awoke, it was dark. Rain pelted the roof of the cab he lay in, but it seemed lighter now, diminishing. Cramps again. He pushed himself up to a sitting position and the nausea washed over him in waves. Dizzy, he grabbed for the truck door handle and half-fell, half-slid to the floor of the Post Office room.

It was wet. The drizzling rain coming through the roof felt almost good on his head and shoulders. Clutching at his midsection, Alec staggered out toward the back door. If any of the men noticed him, they gave no indication of it. He saw no one stir.

He was fumbling with the belt of his pants when the first explosion came.

It lifted him off his feet and slammed him into the muddy ground ten meters from where he’d been standing. The back wall of the Post Office was a sheet of flame and it collapsed in surrealistic slow motion, crumbling in on itself. Sparks and flaming debris soared upward.

Alec rolled over on his back in the ice-cold mud. Gunfire. Men yelling. The high-pitched whine of an electric generator revving up to top speed.

He rolled over onto his stomach, fumbling for his pistol, but couldn’t find it. Four men were running toward him. In the dancing light of the flames he saw that they were armed. Then a truck smashed its front end through a store window across the street. The running men turned to flame as the invisible laser beam hit them. Their clothing burst into fire and they jerked, screaming, hair and flesh ablaze. They fell and the ground bubbled where the invisible laser beam struck. The pencil line of boiling earth marched across the street to where Alec lay, close enough for him to hear the hellish hiss of it as he watched, paralyzed with fear.

Then the beam swung away. More explosions. Another truck started to pull free of a building that was collapsing, but the truck itself blew up, hurling pieces of men and machinery so high into the air that they were lost in shadow.

Alec couldn’t move. He lay there soaked in mud and his own excrement as bullets zinged by, kicking up puffs of mud close enough to splatter his face. One truck seemed to be the only one fighting, and running, cursing men backed away from it, firing as they fell back.

Then another truck trundled slowly around the Post Office building. A dozen raggedly-dressed men charged at it, trying to capture it intact. The laser caught them in the open and they instantly became gibbering torches. More men appeared on the rooftop of the building where the first truck stood, but they must have been Alec’s men, for they sprayed the street with automatic weapons’ fire.

Bullets spanged everywhere and Alec knew he was going to be killed. Then he felt a tug at his ankles. Turning his head, he saw Ferret, lips pulled back over his yellowed teeth, bent over double to drag him through the muddy street over to the side of a building and a modicum of safety. Ferret knelt beside Alec, wincing with every bullet that whizzed near, obviously terrified.

Before Alec could find the strength to say anything, he saw a third truck coming up from the other end of the street. Its laser was silent and a gang of armed men crouched on the mounting platform, behind the armored cab. More men walked stealthily behind it. They’ve captured that one, Alec realized, but they don’t know how to work the laser.

Jameson must have realized the same thing. Alec saw him standing erect alongside the first truck, pointing a straight unflinching arm toward the captured one. The laser generator shrilled and the captured truck was caught in its merciless beam. Men screamed and burned, tires burst and the truck slumped to a halt. Then the beam found the oxygen and hydrogen lines of the fuel cell and the truck fireballed, searing Alec and Ferret with its glaring heat.

Suddenly it all stopped. The truck burned sullenly, the Post Office was a twisted mass of smoking ruins. The shooting ceased. No more shouting. No more movement. The street was littered with bodies.

Christ! They wiped us out and I lay there like a turd.

Alec forced himself up to his hands and knees.

“Okay?” Ferret asked, his voice high with fear. “You okay? Okay?”

“Yes,” he said, still nearly breathless. “I’m all right.”

Two men jumped out from behind the corner of the building, guns levelled at them. Ferret threw his arms over his head and dived for the ground.

“Hey, it’s Alec!” Gianelli’s voice shouted.

“And that Ferret character.”

“He’s one of them,” Gianelli said. “Shoot the bastard!”

Alec heard the snick of a gun being cocked. “No,” he commanded, as loudly as he could manage. “He saved my life. Leave him alone. He wasn’t with them. He pulled me out of the line of fire.”

“You got hit?” Gianelli asked, striding to Alec. His face was grimy, streaked with soot. His partner kept his rifle levelled at Ferret.

“No,” Alec said. “I’m... I wasn’t hit.”

After an hour of cleaning and changing clothes, Alec felt strong enough to look for some food. The other men were dragging off the bodies of the dead, tending to each other’s wounds. The word had quickly spread that Alec’s deepest injury was soiled pants. The men shied away from him.

He found Jameson by a small cookfire, near one of the remaining trucks.

“You’re okay,” Jameson said.

Alec nodded. “And you?”

“Broke a fingernail on the safety of my rifle,” he said with utter seriousness.

“How many... did we lose?”

“Three killed, five wounded. Two pretty seriously. The other three are just scratched. Could have been a lot worse.”

We’re down to a dozen men, Alec thought. “Did they get one of the trucks?”

Nodding, Jameson said, “It cost them twenty-two dead.”

“And wounded?”

“They dragged most of their wounded away,” Jameson said flatly. “The others died.”

A single pistol shot cracked through the smoldering darkness.

“That’s the last one now,” Jameson said.

“I got caught between you and them,” Alec mumbled. “Went out to... never got my pants down.”

Jameson shrugged. “I hear Ferret dragged you to safety. Guess I’ll have to start trusting him a little.”

“Yeah. Maybe he can help us locate some food.”

Jameson excused himself and left Alec alone by the tiny fire. While Alec tried to get some hot broth down, he heard one of the men grumbling: “I don’t care if he does hear me! He was crapping in his pants while Ollie and the rest of ‘em were getting killed. Some leader!”

And then Jameson’s voice, quiet, calm. “Maybe you don’t care if he hears you but if I hear you make another crack like that I’ll break your jaw. Understand? He was sick... still is.”

The reply was mumbled too low for Alec to hear.

He leaned back against the metal of the truck and held the warm cup of broth in both trembling hands. A dozen men. Twelve against Thebes. Twelve of us and two trucks to cross the country and find Douglas and the fissionables. And most of the men think I’m either a coward or a madman. Or both.

He almost laughed. The only real friend he had among them was the half-witted Ferret.

Alec looked up. The first hint of dawn was lightening the sky to the east. It would feel good to have sunlight wanning him again.

“All right,” he whispered to himself. “Two trucks and twelve men. We start north. Now!”

BOOK THREE