Rain chuckled in response.   He took one final look backward toward the wall of green that hid the trail leading to Rivendell, then sucked in a breath and squared his shoulders.  When he looked back to Snake again, there was a new sparkle in his eyes.  He glanced over his shoulder at the bundle behind him and grimaced slightly as he pushed his bike into motion.   "At least it isn't summertime.  Maybe he won't smell too bad.  Off to the City.  Free and easy, Snake."    

At the words, Snake went cold inwardly.  He kept his expression carefully neutral as he pedaled along the road next to Rain, but memory rose from a dark place within him.  He saw his old blue Mercury cruising down the highway, Springsteen's "Born to Run" blaring from the car radio, Bill Taylor belting an off-key accompaniment at the top of his lungs, and Snake tapping the beat on the steering wheel as he drove.  "We made it, Snake; free and easy," Bill Taylor said as the song faded to its end, "Free and easy!"  At Snake's automatic "Bullshit," Taylor grinned and lit a smoke, pronouncing his partner "fucking pro-found."

Snake returned to the present and the similarly slight figure with long, dark hair, who was pedaling along next to him.  Rain was not Taylor.  Nobody would ever be like Taylor.  Snake shoved the thought back into hiding and concentrated on the road ahead.  At least he was moving again.  His mood lightened gradually.

The steady pace lulled them both into a contemplative state, and they rode on in companionable silence, each man lost in his own thoughts.  They finally stopped at the top of a grassy hill to rest and eat a light lunch from the rations.  Snake noticed Rain's thoughtful expression as the younger man sat watching Snake steadily working his way through a freeze-dried energy bar, chewing without really tasting.  Finally, Snake raised a questioning eyebrow in the younger man's direction.  "What?"

"I was wondering, Snake... what's it like?  Flying, I mean."

Snake thought back to his final training missions in that cool, damp Finnish spring, so much like this northern California spring.  For a moment he hesitated, unwilling to open something that was so much a central part of him to anyone else.  Taylor understood.  I never had to talk to him about shit like this.  At the same time, something starved within him wanted to connect with another man on the neutral ground of technology and machinery, where men talked to each other in a code that communicated more than words.  He paused to consider.  "Depends.  Powered flight's fast and noisy: riding the engines; going where they take you.  With a glider, you're more in control.  It's like the machine's part of you."  His face softened as he remembered the soaring freedom and exhilaration of flight.  "Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth... Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue...."."  The familiar poem quoted itself on his inner ear, in silence.  It was too personal to speak aloud.            

Rain was still listening intently, waiting for him to go on.  "In glider flight," Snake continued, in the dry voice he had used to instruct his new pilot recruits, "You use air currents, like a bird soaring.  Thermals, updrafts, mountain waves, fronts of rising air, carry you up," he gestured with his free hand, a flowing, palm-upward move, fingers curled,  "and then you descend in long arcs."  His hand turned over, flattened in a long sweeping glide.  "If you're good, you can stay up forever."  Snake smiled at the old joke.  "The jet jockeys used to give us glider pilots shit.  Said we couldn't handle the speed of a fighter.  We said it was like sex; it's all in the technique: you can do it fast, shoot your wad and pull out, or you can do it right and make it last, and come in for a landing when you want to."  Rain laughed with him at the image, and Snake backed away skittishly in automatic retreat.  "The only things that'll fly now are hang gliders and hot air balloons," he finished shortly.  No more Gulffire.  

They got to their feet, buried the remains of the ration packets, and moved on.  Carquinez Bridge was undefended this time.  As they crossed, Snake noticed a dead body washed up against a rock farther down stream. "Getting predictable around here," he said as he pointed it out.

Rain turned to him and grinned.  "Michael said he was held up at the bridge."

Snake snorted softly in acknowledgement, thinking back to the last time they had come this way.  Rain was a good man to have at his side in a firefight.  Not many marksmen could hit a moving target with a crossbow bolt or a knife with Rain's range and accuracy.  The younger man could think on his feet, act on his own, but coordinate an attack with him nearly as well as Taylor had, and he had good nerves.  Snake could almost see Rain and himself as partners.  Accomplices, the blackbellies would call it, Snake thought, remembering the pompous Police Channel reports on his exploits with Bill Taylor.  Snake smiled inwardly, then darkened.  Rain seemed to want more than that.  There was something in the younger man that made him press against the unspoken boundaries Taylor had instinctively respected.  With Taylor, he'd never had to explain that shit either, but with Rain.... .  Snake left the thought unexplored.  He wheeled onward, keeping pace with Rain, parallel but separate.

By the time they reached the old winery, it was midnight.  A cautious survey showed that it was still uninhabited, undisturbed, the gate and door still locked.  Snake found the key he had dropped in the bottom of his pack so long ago, and made use of it.  The bicycles and provisions went inside, the corpse of the bounty hunter, on the back porch.  It was already beginning to be fairly unwelcome.  This night there was no time for conversation by the fire.  Snake took watch, while Rain fell into bed for a few hours sleep before pushing on at first light.  Snake was tired from a full day's ride on the bicycle, but he knew he would have a day or so to rest while Rain rode on into San Francisco with the dead meat.

In the morning, Rain lashed the corpse onto his empty bike-trailer and moved out at a brisk pace.  "I'll be back as quick as I can," he promised.   If I make it back hung unspoken on the air.  If the blackbellies discovered the ruse, they both knew, Rain would never be back at all.  Snake deliberately did not watch Rain leave; some deeply buried superstition suggested it might be unlucky.  Instead, he set about systematically looting the house and preparing for the journey.   Snake avoided thinking about the question of a destination and concentrated on the immediate practical details.  He would wait a week, he decided, and if Rain did not return by then, he would decide where he planned to go.   

A search of the garage turned up two canvas sacks, which fitted in the bottom of his bike-trailer, and some useful, and expensive, camping equipment, which went into the pack.  He filled the bags with the last of the cans from the pantry and a whole box-full of self-heating meal pouches he found with the camping supplies, as a supplement to the dried rations.  The best of the remaining full liquor bottles, he wrapped in warm blankets from the bedroom.  If he was going to be sleeping outdoors for a while, he could use the bedding.  Then he went through the bounty hunter's pack, retrieving his belongings and repacking them. The cheap Russian pistol went into the discard pile, the bullets reclaimed for use.  Snake destroyed  everything that could connect him to the dead bounty hunter, taking a grim satisfaction in obliterating Farris and his belongings.  One more dead.  One to go.  Someday.  Snake stirred the ashes thoroughly and went back to looking through the house.

The large desk in the study yielded a handgun and more ammunition.  Snake tossed the gun, but kept the ammo again, since his trusted Magnums were designed to be used with a wide variety of bullets.  He was stockpiling, knowing that ammunition would be almost impossible to buy anywhere by now.   Rain had better bring back my other gun and the belt, he thought grimly.  Rummaging through the desk, he found the usual collection of items in the drawers below the now-useless computer equipment and telephone.  As he picked up the former inhabitant's address-book, a business card fell out, and, glancing at it, Snake read,  "Jules Diebold 156-4582" in scrawled handwriting across the back.  He was about to drop it back into the drawer when his instincts tapped him on the shoulder, and he took a second look.  No seven-digit telephone number started with a one.  Diebold?  Jules?  Smiling to himself, Snake picked up the card and began a thorough search, knocking on walls, turning pictures, examining the backs of bookshelves and closets.  Finally, he found what he was looking for.  Removing a heavy gilt-framed painting from the wall, he uncovered the safe.  A Diebold.  Snake allowed himself a soft exhalation of satisfaction.     

The next step was to get it open.  Snake preferred commercial safes or bank vaults, and high explosives, to residential burglaries, but he had targeted a few government officials' houses in his criminal career, and the experience came in handy now.  He studied the little card.  No spacing or commas gave him the numbering to the combination.  First, he tried dialing the final number and tugging at the handle. Sometimes, safe owners just left the combination set there for convenience.  The door refused to budge.  Shit.  Snake settled in for a protracted effort.  He drummed his fingers sharply on the wall to sensitize the tips, then, lightly resting his hand on the balls of his fingers, he began carefully turning the knob, listening and extending his senses 'into' the mechanism, trying to connect with the tumblers.  His mind blanked in an alpha state of concentration.   Periodically, he would stop and tap his fingers to regain the nerve edge required for successful safe cracking.

For half an hour, Snake methodically, and unsuccessfully, tried every spacing of the numbers on the card.  While notoriously short-tempered with people, he had the patient persistence of a glacier when it came to machinery.  He knew that on most residential safes the combination lock was factory-set for five turns, alternatively right, then left. This was something that the purchaser could change, but, in Snake's experience, nobody ever did.  All Snake had to do was figure out how the owner of the safe had spaced the pseudo-telephone-number in five turns.  Had the old bastard changed the fucking combo and not tossed out the card? Snake wondered, exasperated, as he sat back, staring at the smugly uncooperative mechanism.    Anyone stupid enough to leave the numbers lying around.... .   Suddenly,  Snake smiled again.  Anyone that dumb might think it was clever to.... .   He dialed the numbers in backward.  The first try, 2, 85, 4, 65, 1, was futile, but the second spacing, right 2, left full turn past 2 to 8, right 54, left 65, right  rewarded him with a sharp click and the door opened easily.  Ha!  Give the asshole a "C" for "clever," but nothing more.  Snake stretched his sore shoulders and took a moment to savor his success before turning his attention to the opened wall safe.  Hello "Jules"!

He sorted efficiently through the contents of the safe.  Several items that looked like treasured mementos -- a silver locket with a strand of hair inside, a class ring, two old tintypes, and a tiny, child-sized gold ring -- he left.  Their monetary value was nil.  He picked out the items of jewelry that looked valuable to his trained eye, and a collection of old gold and silver coins, then closed the door and spun the lock a few times to reset the tumblers.  With a grim sort of mischief, he took the inscribed card and set it on fire, dropping the paper into an ashtray as it burned.  If anyone else ever happened by this house, he'd make the asshole work for this shit.  Good, he thought, I'll have a stake, even if Rain doesn't make it back.  There was a lot that could happen, and ten million was a very tempting prize.  He wouldn't count on the younger man bringing it back, even if the blackbellies fell for the ruse.  Rain might still take the money and run out on him.

He completed his plundering expedition by lifting a wide-brimmed, waterproof hat, an English all-weather full-length overcoat, and a handsome pair of custom-made motorcycle boots from the bedroom closet.  The boots were slightly too big for him, but an extra pair of socks would take care of that, and the sturdy black leather was too good to pass up.  He cleaned out the medicine cabinet in the bedroom's master bath, scoring a big bottle of prescription pain-killers and some unexpired antibiotics.  A final search of the back of the closet also uncovered a carefully hidden box of premium, highly illegal, Cuban cigars.  Snake decided to quit while he was ahead.  He fixed himself a meal from the last of the cans in the kitchen, smoked one of the cigars, and turned in early, after setting up his crockery alarm system.  A good night's sleep in a comfortable bed was just what he needed.        

                                           ******************

Rain rode for San Francisco at the fastest pace he could manage.   The sight of Snake's gunbelt and Magnum, and the dead body slung across the trailer, evidently convinced the residents of Oakland that Rain was not an appealing target, and he made it through the town without being attacked.  He crossed the Bay Bridge openly on the top level.  He was a successful bounty hunter with nothing to hide, bringing in the body of the notorious Snake Plissken.  The USPF guards at the bridge checkpoint cheered him on his way across the structure and on into the City, and assigned a uniformed officer to escort Rain and his burden to the central USPF headquarters in the Presidio.  Rain let the man lead the way, keeping a sharp eye out for any attempt by the blackbelly to ambush him and highjack Rain's prize for his own benefit.

It was high time to part company with the decomposing body of the bounty hunter, Rain thought.  A few blocks from the Presidio gate, Rain dismounted and strapped on Snake's gunbelt and single hand-gun.  It would be natural enough for a bounty hunter to wear the belt instead of leaving it with the corpse, and he intended to keep it on his body if he could, and out of any eager blackbelly hands.  The belt rode heavily on his hips, the one Magnum dragging at him, as he tightened the fastenings and swung up onto the bike again. He rode into the Presidio garrison, pulled up at the entrance guardhouse, and yelled, "Hey! Any of you in there want Snake Plissken?"

The effect was very much like kicking a hive of killer bees.  Black-uniformed police swarmed out and crowded around Rain's bike, deluging Rain with a flood of questions and loud comments as they dragged the body off the trailer and carried it jubilantly into the building.  The commander of the garrison, a large, rawboned man with the face of a dyspeptic sheep, came out of his office to greet Rain.

"I'm Commander Davis. Who're you?"

"Roy Patterson," Rain said, using the alias from his drug trafficking.  He had the papers to prove it, if they insisted.  They didn't.

"Where'd you find him?"  Davis eyed the smelly corpse dubiously from several feet away.

"I was up past Calistoga," Rain said, sticking to the essentials of the story. "I ambushed him.  The reward is alive or dead.  I knew I couldn't bring him in alive."

"Jesus Christ, it is Plissken!" cried one of the men.  He pushed the tight shirt upward on the dead body to reveal the tattooed cobra on slack, pale flesh.   "Kinda ripe," he muttered.  He backed away, rubbing his hands on his uniform trousers.

A blackbelly sergeant pointed at the gunbelt Rain was wearing.  "That his?  Looks like the one I seen in th' pictures of Plissken."

Rain laid his hands on the straps of the belt and gave the man a level, challenging look.  "Was," he said.  "It's mine now.  Right of salvage.  I'm keepin' this one -- as a little memento."  To his surprise, the bluff worked, and the blackbellies let him keep the rig after verifying from old photos of the outlaw that it was, indeed, Snake's.

"We'll fingerprint and photograph the body, just in case the computers ever come back up," Commander Davis told Rain.  "All the data's in L.A. or Lynchburg, but it'd be pretty hard to fake that old tattoo.  I'd say it's him, all right.  I guess we owe you the reward for bringing him in."  He pulled out a book of government certificates and started to write in the amount.

Rain shook his head.  "In gold," he said firmly.

Commander Davis gave him a crafty smile.  "We don't have that kind of money in gold here.  We'd have to have it transferred from the Denver Depository, and get an authorization from Lynchburg.  It'd take months, at least, to get a messenger there and back, these days.  Of course, you're welcome to wait...."."  His voice trailed off suggestively.

Not a chance, Rain thought.  "I'll take what you've got in gold," he said.

"Suit yourself," the blackbelly officer shrugged.  

Rain stood, looking menacing and dissatisfied, until the blackbellies brought out as much gold as they were prepared to turn over to him.  It was far less than the promised ten million, but still an impressive, and heavy, pile of metal.  Rain loaded as many of the small, flat ingots as he could carry comfortably into a canvas bag.  He lowered the bag into the bike-trailer, smiling to himself at the look on the Commander's face.  The other man clearly thought he was doing a brilliant job of cheating the gullible bounty hunter, and kept having to wipe the self-satisfied grin off his face every time he caught Rain watching him.  Rain managed, with  considerable effort, to keep his own expression greedy, dull-witted and apparently unsuspecting.  The Commander also handed over the "grease for a year" certificate absolving the bearer of all non-violent moral crimes for the duration.  Rain's alias and the dates were inscribed, along with the USPF seal and the Commander's signature.  "Use that wisely," Commander Davis said.   "A year goes pretty quick."

Rain nodded.  "Yeah, I know."  He patted the Magnum strapped to his thigh.  "And for my first grease, I'm hanging onto this."

The Commander seemed willing to surrender the gun to Rain to distract him from the issue of the reward money.  "Where are you staying, in case we need to contact you?" he said.  "You're a hero, you know; killing S.D. Plissken.  Everybody's going to want an interview."

"I'll be staying at the Westin St. Francis.  I can afford it now," Rain answered, with what he hoped looked like a convincing grin.  Right, he thought; as if I'd hang around and wait for you bastards to catch up with me.  As he strode out of the station, the blackbellies were cheering and the atmosphere was carnival.  The commander was twirling the eyepatch on a finger and several cops were arguing over whether they should bury the boots with the body or keep them as a trophy of the kill.  Keeping his face blank, Rain swung onto the seat of his bike and moved out, heading for Market Street and one last errand before leaving the City.

When Rain dismounted at the DMZ building on Haight Street and tugged on the bell-pull, Michael came hurrying down the steep flight of wooden steps to unlock the tall spiked gate and let him in.  "Rain! Did you...?"?" he began.

"Yes.  I found him in time.  I'll tell you all about what happened, but first I need to check in with Josh."

Rain stayed the night at the guest quarters at the Mint.  He went straight to bed.  It was late and he was too tired, he said, for detailed conversation.  He mentioned, casually, that Snake had gone off on his own after the rescue, heading north toward Canada.  Rain was already thinking ahead, covering tracks not yet made.  As much as he trusted the members of DMZ, what they did not know, they could not tell.   

The next morning, before he left, Rain joined Dan and Josh in Josh's big office on the Mint's second floor.  The City's gray winter fog curled thickly outside the window, and the sill was slick with drizzle.  Rain sat on the window seat built into the wide bay, looking down at the indistinct shapes of the entrance walkway below, thinking that the curled razor-wire barrier in the fog made it look like a scene from some old black-and-white war movie on late-night television.  "I owe you guys," Rain said.        

"Anything for one of our good customers," Josh responded with an expansive wave of his hand.  His swivel chair creaked as he leaned back and stretched his legs out in front of him.

"No.  I'm talking about money."

"What?" both of the DMZers chorused, and Josh's chair-back snapped upright.  "Rain," Dan began seriously, "Your people and ours are allies.  You would do the same for us.  What we did, we did out of friend...."."     

Josh cut him off.  "No, no, Daniel!  If the lad is mentioning money, I say 'hear him out'!"  A grin lit his face and his dark eyes sparkled.  "So-o, Rain, my good and loyal friend..." " a beat  "...what are we talking, here?"  

"Twenty per cent of the reward.  Gold." Rain said.

"What reward?"  Josh's eyes narrowed and his tone turned hard.

"The one I got when I turned in Snake's body."

"Uh... hold it."  Dan held up a hand, forefinger raised, and sat with his mouth open, as if trying to frame his question in exactly the proper words.  

Josh had no such problem.  He took a puff on his cigarette, stubbed it out in the overflowing ashtray on his desk, and leaned forward.  "Run that one by me again, Rain?"    

Rain was laughing silently now.  He loved seeing the quick-witted DMZ boss put off-balance, but hardly ever got the opportunity.  He outlined the events of the last few days, and described turning the dead body of the imitation Snake Plissken in to USPF headquarters.  He avoided mentioning his intention to rejoin Snake at the abandoned house.  He wanted to leave absolutely nothing behind him linking the two of them any further, and he wanted no suggestion that anyone connected with Rivendell might know anything about Snake's future plans.  For the safety of both Rivendell and DMZ, Snake had to disappear.

"If you hadn't sent Michael up to warn us, Snake would be dead," Rain said.  "I figure I owe you part of the reward.  Twenty per cent."  He shifted in his seat.  "I wish it could be more, but...."."  ...but I need it as a stake for Snake and me he finished silently to himself.

"No, no, Rain.  Twenty per cent is fine," Dan said hurriedly.  "I know things are tight at Rivendell right now."   

Rain dumped the gold ingots out on Josh's desk in a shiny pile, and the three men divided the money.  "Thanks," Josh said, when they had finished and Rain's portion had been returned to his canvas bag.  The humor had left Josh's expression, and he looked tired and worn.  "This will really help, Rain.  Things are falling apart in the City and we're fighting just to keep our heads above water.  The blackbellies are coming down hard, now that they're starting to get their shit together again.  It's getting ugly out there."          

Rain smiled.  "Glad I could do it."   He said hesitantly, "Maybe it's time for you to get out, go up north over the border."

Josh's expression hardened.  Rain turned to Dan and saw the same stone determination echoed in the other DMZ leader's face.  "No," Dan said softly, "Not while there are still some of our people here."  He gave the hint of smile.  "You know, that's what being a good top is all about: taking care of people who trust you and put their lives in your hands.  We always used to talk about that.  I guess now it's come down to proving it."

Josh nodded slowly.  "It was always about proving it, Dan. The blackbellies have raised the stakes, that's all."  He turned his head, stared out the window at the gray swirling dampness outside, then turned back toward the other two men.  "Besides, this is my city.  The damned USPF's not getting me out of here except in a body bag.  This one's my war."

Rain rose and shook hands with both of the others, feeling a resigned sadness within him.  These men had been good friends, and he would miss them.  He slung the bag with the remaining ingots over his shoulder, and walked slowly down the wide marble corridors of the old Victorian building, through the kitchen where he and Snake had eaten strawberries for breakfast so long ago, and out into the back garden where his bike waited for him.  He swung up onto the seat, pulled the hood of his jacket up over his head, and rode out into the rain-slicked city streets.  As DMZ headquarters disappeared around a corner behind him, Rain's heart lifted.  He'd be seeing Snake again soon.  

                                                 ******************     

When he heard Rain calling his name, Snake jumped to his feet and headed for the door.  He watched Rain slide down, rather stiffly, from the seat of the bicycle and start unfastening the straps of the trailer-cover.  "Good," he said, as Rain handed him the gunbelt and gun.  Snake looked both of them over thoroughly and smiled fleetingly when he found them in good condition.  "The reward?"

"I got it.  Well, part of it."  Rain hefted the heavy canvas bag and carried it back to the family room at the rear of the house.   He dumped its contents out on the big game table, where the ingots gleamed dully in afternoon light from the overcast sky outside.  "I'll go pull the bike inside," Rain said, and retreated the way he had come.

Snake counted the gold, enjoying the smooth feel of the metal against his fingers, calculating value.  With inflation and the new worthlessness of paper money, each slender ingot was worth several times the amount stamped on its surface.  Still…. .  Snake looked up with a scowl as Rain came in through the door, stamping mud and grass from the front yard off his boots.  "This is way short.  They fucking screwed you." 

"Yeah, but I figured it was better to get what I could in gold."  Rain shrugged out of his jacket and dropped with a thud into a chair next to the table as he detailed his run-in with Commander Davis and his men.  "You want me to go back and argue with 'em?" he asked.  At Snake's ironic snort, he added, "Plus, I gave part of my share to the guys at DMZ.  They need it."

"You tell 'em where it came from?"

"Yeah." Rain's smile flickered.  "Josh says he hopes you stay dead.  Says it's safer that way."

"You tell them anything else?"

"No.  As far as they know, you disappeared on me, lit out on your own for parts unknown, and I have no idea where you went."

"Good," Snake repeated.  His face remained deliberately expressionless, damping Rain's broad grin in response to his laconic praise, hiding his irritation at the younger man's enthusiasm.   It's never as easy as it looks, he thought.

Rain opened a can of stewed tomatoes and a box of crackers that Snake had left behind in the pantry and sat spooning the contents wearily into his mouth.  "So," he said at last, "Where are you -- we -- going?"

"I'm thinkin' about it."  Snake stared silently out the sliding glass doors into the back yard for a long moment.  Thunder rumbled in the distance, and fat, wet drops began to patter down on the flagstone patio.  "Shit," Snake mumbled disgustedly.  He turned back to Rain.  "Someplace out of this fucking rain," he said with deep feeling.     

Rain laughed and nodded.  "Well…."."  He sat back, ticking off points on his fingers.  "Canada's out.  With the power gone, we'd better stay away from places with really cold, snowy winters."

Snake nodded.  He'd never been fond of cold and wet, and ever since Russia, he'd had a hatred and fear of snow that had only been offset, marginally, by the freedom of Canada.  Now that was gone, he never wanted to see snow again.  "Mexico's out," he said.  "I'm wanted there.  From before.  Political shit."  He didn't elaborate.   

"Back east is Blackbelly Central.  Crowded, full of cities, cops, nosy people.  Polluted as hell since the gas and the biobombs," Rain said.  "What about Oregon, or maybe Humboldt County?  I know that country.  My people…."."

"No!"  Snake's face darkened.  He had no intention of moving in with another bunch like the ones at Rivendell.  He cast about for some other place, as far away from Humboldt County as possible, and long-buried memories surfaced of his childhood in Arizona and his days as a young pilot at Luke Air Force Base, before they ran out of water and shut it down.  He grabbed at the idea.  "Southwest," he countered decisively.  "Arizona, New Mexico, maybe Utah.  Beautiful country.  Dry.  Good climate.  Not a lot of people any more."  

"Yeah, " Rain said.  "I guess the cities pretty much dried up and blew away when they tapped out the aquifers.  My teachers used to use it as a bad example of what happens when you don't live bioregionally.  I heard a lot about it when I was a kid."

"Nothin' left but Indians."  The Tribes never had much modern technology anyway, Snake thought to himself, remembering the bare, parched land around Window Rock.  They're dirt-poor, but they can still grow or make just about everything they need.  Live off their own land.  If anybody could get through this shit in one piece, it'd be them.  Reservations aren't even U.S. territory.  And they fucking hate the USPF and the  government.  Been screwed over by them for years.  Make that centuries.  

"Snake, we could hide out there forever!"  Rain was sounding eager and excited now.  "Just like the renegades and outlaws in the old days."

"USPF'll be back to posses on horseback, too," Snake said thoughtfully.  "Wild West shit.  No planes, no cars, no electronics.  Back to Geronimo and Billy the Kid."

Rain went on, elaborating details.  "There's old pueblos in the canyons and the cliffs, whole cities carved into the bluffs by the Anasazi, then abandoned.   One of the Groups found a place not even the archaeologists knew about, in New Mexico.  I went there once when I rode the Circuit, training to guide.  There's water.  We could grow food…. .  Slap on a coat of adobe, and move right in."  Rain grinned.  "No worse than those damn cabins down by the lake, that's for sure."

Snake considered for another long moment, and finally said.  "Yeah.  An old pueblo."  That's the last place anybody would think of looking for me.  Squelch this fucking Group idea right now, though.  "Not one of yours.  Someplace else."

Rain looked troubled, then seemed to come to a decision.  "O.K., Snake.  Anyplace you want to go."

Snake thought back with longing to the off-duty hours he had spent exploring the mesas around Luke on those long, burning summer days.  He remembered the silence, the vast space, the solitude, the brilliant colors of the barren rocks in the clear, bright air, the startling, sudden green of the occasional isolated bush, the crunch of ancient earth under his boots, the smell of the endless dry wind.  You can see for miles up there, he thought.  Closest thing to flying with your feet on the ground.  He nodded slowly.  "Arizona."   

Rain smiled. "Arizona it is.  We can figure out where when we get there, I guess."  He got up and dropped the flattened tomato can with a flourish into the blue basket in the kitchen closet, as if he were ridding himself of all of California with the gesture.  Why bother?  It's not like they're going to be coming around to collect the recycling any time soon, Snake thought, then smiled to himself.  Old habits.    

Snake was relieved to be rid of the horses for this trip, and glad he didn't have to talk Rain out of bringing them along.  He felt more comfortable with machines and his own muscle-power than with large, potentially uncooperative, pack animals.  He and Rain spent a while scouring the crowded floor-to-ceiling bookshelves in the family room, and finally found the detailed atlas they were almost certain would be there somewhere.  They spent the rest of the day planning out their journey.  The

easiest route would be to take the central valley roads back south, avoiding the Sierra Nevada mountains, and swing east above Los Angeles, following I-40.  It would be a long, hard, dangerous trip, but they had all the time in the world.  Early the next morning, in a fine misting drizzle, they rolled down the driveway of the abandoned house and out onto the highway, heading back south on their heavily-loaded bikes.  As he pedaled along the rain-slicked blacktop, Snake thought to himself that he couldn't wait to get back into desert country.  He could do with a lot less water.

                                                       CHAPTER SEVEN                                                        

For the first leg of the journey, they followed the back roads and stopovers of Rain's old smuggling route to Ormsby's, conserving their supplies for the hard push across the desert, buying food whenever they could.  Rain did most of the negotiating, keeping Snake out of sight as much as possible, and often a hard-faced, narrow-eyed contact would find a little something he could spare and a place for them to spend the night when his old friend and pot connection, Rain, showed up at his door with hard coin in hand.  

A little less than a week's travel brought them to the turn-off above Bakersfield, and they swung east toward the gap in the mountains, the four-thousand-foot summit of Tehachapi Pass, and the Mojave desert beyond.  Constant biting wind swirled around them as they struggled upward toward the summit, walking the bicycles through the layer of mud and slush laid down over the road by the early spring runoff.  The air grew cooler, then cold, and the road became a narrow track of lumpy, hard-packed snow trampled down by the few travelers who had preceded them along this route.  A sheer wall of dark rock rose on one side of the road, and a sharp drop-off fell down toward an indistinct jumble of snow-covered scree, brush, and scrubby trees on the other.  A thin black line in the white at the bottom of the slope showed where a little stream was hidden under late-winter ice and snow.

Snake called a halt when a light drizzle began falling around midafternoon, and they wrapped their packs in the rainproof tarps he had taken from the old winery's  garage.  He and Rain pulled the hoods of their parkas up over their heads and slogged on through the wet, pushing the bikes, looking for a sheltered place to set up camp.  The drizzle became rain, which froze on the packed snow, and they slipped and slid on the slick, uneven surface, slowing their progress to a cautious walk.  Snake squinted against the flat whiteness around him, and Rain read, in the cat-footed gait of the body ahead of him, Snake's narrow, needle-sharp concentration on the next second, the next step, the next necessary shift in his balance-point.  The wind drove strands of his long hair across Snake's white face like tiny whip-strokes as he raised his head, scouting ahead, questing as if he smelled threat in the wet, cold air.  Rain found himself admiring the leashed power, the surefooted grace, of the other man as he moved.  His attention strayed, briefly, from his own footing.  

There was a scraping sound beside him, and Rain felt his bike slip and skid sideways toward the edge of the road.  He half-fell, half-flung himself, after it in a reflexive lunge, slipped on the wet ice, and slid into the slushy snow beyond the packed surface, losing his grip on the bike.  The machine and its trailer slithered down the incline and splashed through a thin layer of ice into the little stream below.  Snake made a futile grab for him at the same moment the bank crumbled under Rain and the younger man snowplowed downward.               

"Shit!"  Snake set his own bike's kickstand in a depression in the packed snow and edged to the overlook.  Halfway down the slope, Rain was struggling up out of a pile of slush, and, a good fifteen feet below him, his bike lay on its side in the freezing water, one of the trailer's wheels on the top side spinning slowly.  Rain braced himself against a scrubby bush, melting snow dripping down his face, and looked back up the hill toward Snake.                                                                      

"Stay there."  Snake dug into his own trailer and pulled out a length of rope.  He went to work a short way back from the edge, hacking at the hard ground with his boot knife until he had created two rough depressions in the frozen snow and rocks  where he could brace his feet, then passed the rope around his own waist and tied it off in a firm knot.   He called down the slope to Rain, "Can you tie a rescue knot?"

"Yeah," Rain grunted through teeth clenched against the cold.  He was shivering hard as icy water soaked through his clothes and trickled down the back of his neck under his parka.

Snake threw the free end of the length of rope down the embankment to Rain.  Fighting his rapidly numbing fingers, Rain doubled the rope, passed it through and yanked it firm into a three-looped  harness, then tightened it around his waist and legs.  He felt the harness pull against his body, and began climbing up the muddy slope, balancing against the rocks, feeling for footholds in the loose scree.   As the ground shifted under him and pebbles rattled downward, Rain could feel Snake's solid strength through the line, steadying him, pulling him upward hand over hand to safety.  Rain bellied over the shoulder of the road and struggled to his feet.  He pulled off the rope harness, taking a quick inventory of his battered body: nothing broken, as far as he could tell, just a few cuts, scrapes, and bruises, and a long, knife-like gash on one forearm, where his sleeve had slid up when he grabbed for the falling bike.  That'll teach you to keep your mind on where your feet are, Rain, he thought.  The two men stared wordlessly for a moment down the slope at the bike and trailer half-buried in slush and broken ice.  

"I'll go back down for it," Rain said at last.

Snake eyed him.  "You ever climbed in snow and ice?"

"No," Rain admitted.

"Right.  I'll get it."   

Rain's fingers and toes were wooden with the cold, and he could hardly feel his legs below the knees, where the icy water had soaked his pants.  There was no time to worry about that yet.  They had to retrieve the trailer before its contents became completely water-logged.  Working together, he and Snake anchored the rope around the largest outcropping of rock on the other side of the road, then Snake rappelled down the hill to the bike.  Rain watched as Snake unhitched trailer from bike, pulled both of them up onto the bank, then lashed the bike on top of the trailer and its pack and secured the whole package with a knot on the front hitch.  Snake stood for a few minutes looking back up the slope, then positioned the trailer pointing uphill.  He struggled back to the roadway, pulling hand-over-hand up the taut rope, then turned and braced himself in the improvised footholds he had cut into the ground.

"Snug it up," Snake called back over his shoulder in Rain's direction, and the younger man nodded.  Snake planted his feet and pulled slowly, steadily, guiding the heavy, unwieldy load of bike and trailer up the hill through the loose scree and brush to the surface of the road.  Rain kept the rope taut, adding his strength to the effort and wrapping the loose rope around the rock outcropping to secure it as Snake pulled the load gradually upward.  When the bike and trailer were safely back on the road, Snake and Rain stood for a moment, breathing heavily.

"Dry off," Snake ordered shortly.  There was a military snap in his tone, distant echo of a young Lieutenant Plissken.  Rain realized his brain, as well as his body, had been slowly going numb as the cold of his wet clothing sank into him.  He started toward his rescued pack, but before he could reach it, Snake was rummaging hurriedly through the contents.  He shook his head.  "It's all soaked.  You'll have to use mine."

Snake opened his own trailer, removed a blanket and handed it to Rain, then pulled out a set of dry clothing.  Rain undressed under the blanket, which cut the worst of the wind, and clumsily pulled on jeans, shirt, pullover, socks, and Snake's spare pair of boots, then his own waterproof parka.  He shoved his wet clothes back into his pack, as Snake reassembled Rain's bike and trailer, and the two of them moved a little way down the road until they found a wider area where they could set up camp on the upper shoulder.  The afternoon grayed toward dusk and the temperature dropped, as the rain turned to flurries of snow and then died away altogether.  The  wind cut like broken glass against Rain's face.  Numbly, he helped Snake stretch two of  the soggy blankets between some of the taller rocks and weight them down with stones to form an improvised windbreak, then gather some bits of dryer wood from the tangled bushes at the side of the road.  Pitching the tent on the opposite side created a relatively sheltered area where they were able to keep a fire going and thaw out slightly.  Self-heating foodpacks from the camping supplies helped warm their interior.  As they crouched near the little blaze, downing the last of their coffee, Rain glumly contemplated his clammy possessions.

Snake glanced up at the sky, where the wind above the peaks was driving away the last streaks of cloud.  "It's clearing,' he said.  "There'll be a hard freeze tonight."  He swallowed the last of his black coffee, shook out the cup, and replaced it in his pack.  "There's a trick I learned in Russia: spread your wet shit out on the rocks.  What doesn't evaporate will freeze, and we can shake it off in the morning."

Rain thought about this for a minute.  "Freeze-dried clothes."     

"You got it."  Snake almost smiled, and Rain was warmed by the hint of unspoken approval he thought he read in the other man's expression.  The two of them set about triaging the contents of Rain's pack.  They dropped the opened packs of food into the slush at the side of the road, where they would freeze solid and not attract animal scavengers, and repacked the sealed ones.  Soaked cloth was weighted and spread out over rocks, bikes, and scrubby bushes before they doused the fire and retreated into the interior of the tent for the night.  By the cold green light of a chemlamp, Rain set the rest of his damp equipment out on the floor of the tent to dry, as Snake unrolled his warm multilayer sleeping bag.  One of the casualties of the stream had been Rain's own sleeping bag, which was stretched over several tangled bushes outside.  Snake stripped to his underwear, ignoring the frigid temperature inside the tent, sat down on the edge of the sleeping bag to pull off his boots, then folded the bag up around himself.  As Rain hesitated, Snake growled, "Come on; get in here."       

Rain shucked Snake's borrowed garments down to the underwear, and slid into the sleeping bag next to the older man.  He curled against him, spoon-fashion, as Snake zipped the bag closed.  Rain laid his head down and closed his eyes.  Slowly, as their combined body warmth filled the narrow space, Rain began to thaw out, and his body relaxed.  A drowsy peace washed through him.  He shifted, feeling himself cupped in the security of Snake's strong, hard-muscled body.  He didn't have to try so hard any more.  Snake knew what to do.  He could handle this icy wasteland.  He could handle whatever they would meet; he and Snake could handle it together.  He, Rain, had steered them wrong every time he'd tried to take over, leading them to the disaster at Rivendell, leaving a trail for the bounty hunter.  From now on, Snake would make the decisions.  Rain smiled, feeling a great weight lift from him, and sighed softly, sinking toward sleep.  His body curved against Snake's.

With an abrupt shock, he came back to wakefulness.  The thick bar of Snake's erect cock was hard against him, pressing into his ass.  He tried to ignore it.  It's just some kind of reflex; it doesn't mean anything, he thought.  Snake's hand reached down between them and cupped Rain's buttcheek, then paused.  Rain felt the unasked question.  Why?  Why now? he wondered.  What's this all about?  Joy and wonder leaped in him.  Who cares why?  "Wait, Snake," he said softly.  He unzipped a corner of the sleeping bag and fumbled for his toiletries case, reached inside and fished out a little tube of lubricant.  He rezipped the bag, and slipped the tube down between them into Snake's questing hand.  He heard Snake's soft, half-laughing snort next to his ear.  After a moment, Snake's hand slid down inside Rain's shorts, and Rain felt the rough rasp of callused flesh gripping his bare butt.  Hard, slick fingers shoved into his asshole, working him open.  The request became demand, and Rain surrendered to it eagerly.

                                                  ******************

Snake felt Rain's body, cupped against his own, gradually warm and stop shivering, felt the rigid tension drain out of  it.  Faint residual glow of the chemlamp, turned to its lowest setting, picked out the dark mass of Rain's long, thick hair on the headrest next to his.  A stray strand was partway under his cheek, soft against his own bearded flesh, smelling faintly, not unpleasantly, of woodsmoke and snowmelt.  The   smooth silk of it stirred old memories, old responses.  The lithe, wiry body curled against him had a familiar shape and proportion.   Exactly Taylor's size…   The round curve of Rain's ass against his belly was inviting.  Snake felt his cock start to harden, felt the younger man tense slightly, then move closer into Snake's own body.   Make a decision, Snake.  Now.  He remembered Taylor lying like this against him, remembered what they had shared wordlessly and without any need of labels or explanations or definitions.  Never again; not like that.  Why did this kid make him think of Taylor?  Snake's mind jumped to Carjack, to the occasional other men over the years.  It's just sex. Yeah. That's all.  His mind brought up the bedraggled, dripping figure of Rain shivering on the roadway, waiting for Snake to give directions.  Rain wanted to take it up the ass from him.  That was a strength for Snake, not a vulnerability.  Snake could punk him, the way he had punked Carjack, and the kid would roll over for him.  It's just sex, Snake.  Lust surged through him and his cock hardened further.      

Snake moved his hand down between them and cupped Rain's ass, gripping it firmly.  He could read the surprise, anticipation, and uncertainty in the small movements of Rain's back and shoulders as the younger man reacted.  Snake smiled inwardly, knowing that Rain was probably scrambling madly for some explanation. Hph! Let 'im wonder.  Snake was going to enjoy himself, that was all.  He felt Rain twist, unzip his side of the bag and reach for something.  What?  Rain twisted back, handing what he had extracted from his small personal possessions bag, over his arm and shoulder, to Snake.  Snake squinted in the weak light at the small plastic tube of lube.  He snorted softly.  These faggots are always lookin' for it.

Snake kneaded the frozen tube and the gel within until it was warm in his fingers, opened it, and reached a hand down, running the lube over his hard cock.  Familiar, all of it.  He slipped lubricated fingers inside Rain's ass, worked it open, pushing harder into the slick passage as his hand remembered decades-old skills.  Snake slid his hips forward, wrapped an arm like an iron bar around Rain's body, and pulled the younger man to him.  His cock found Rain's asshole and slid home into it, thrusting, his body returning to rhythms it knew so well.  He felt Rain pushing backward against him, taking Snake farther into him, deepening the contact, and a fierce, pure, animal drive took Snake.  Eyes closed, mind blank, Snake's powerful body drove against Rain's and felt Rain respond.  Snake felt the lifting surge, felt it crest, felt himself cum, then slid hard, like his Gulffire down the front of a storm cloud, into the trough, gliding home on descending force to a stop.      

                                                  ******************

Rain was awakened by morning sunshine turned pale and milky by the blue walls of the tent.   He opened his eyes and, very slowly, shifted his position, turning his head to look at Snake.  Still asleep, his face relaxed, the man lay next to him breathing quietly.  Rain studied Snake's strong face. The eyepatch, still in place, seemed a part of him, like the scars and the weathered features.  Snake was a fighter who could never afford mercy for himself or anyone else, a fierce and dangerous man, an unsentimental survivor living on iron will, quick wits, and nerve.  But Rain thought he saw in the sleeping face a bone-deep weariness, a bleak loneliness, that was invisible in Snake's determined waking expression, and the younger man responded with a rush of confused emotion.  A strand of auburn hair, captured by the thin cord of the patch, lay against Snake's forehead, curled like a question-mark.     

Rain lay perfectly still, hardly breathing, but as his gaze touched Snake's closed eye, the other man awoke, effortlessly and instantly crossing the boundary between sleep and awareness.  Snake opened his eyes and looked back at Rain.  The visible eye was ice-blue and intense, challenging.  It was Rain who jumped.  "What?" the raspy, sleep-roughened voice inquired.

Snake's good eye tracked Rain as the younger man backed away.  Fabric tightened around the two of them, cold against Rain's back, and he heard the faint scrape of nylon on nylon in the silence, as the sleeping bag moved on the tent floor.  Warm air with the mingled scent of their bodies flowed up from the sudden gap between them.  It had happened.  Neither of them had dreamed it.  What was Snake going to do about it?  With an effort, Rain held himself completely still and quiet, keeping his face neutral, not forcing the issue.  Anything he did now could be a mistake.  Don't spook him.  He had to let Snake take the lead.

The cold challenge in Snake's eye did not change, but a half-smile curved his mouth, softening it.  Deliberately, he raised a hand and ran a thick strand of Rain's hair slowly through his fingers, giving it a little tug as he released it.  It was a sensual and somehow proprietary gesture, sexual but not in the least tender.  There were no words, but Rain was satisfied: Snake acknowledged what had happened.  Rain considered a kiss and quickly discarded the idea.  This was something different from what had been between him and Lynx, between him and Lanny.  There was a barrier between him and Snake that he did not understand and could not cross.  He knew now they would not talk about it, and realized that, strangely, that made it all the more real and meaningful.  The more important something is to Snake, the less he talks about it, Rain thought to himself.  He smiled warmly at the other man.  "I'm O.K., Snake," he said.

Snake snorted softly.  He unzipped the sleeping bag.  In a few forceful movements, he was out of the cloth cocoon and on his feet.  He picked up the clothes he had left on the tent floor the night before and dressed with economical efficiency.  Rain turned over and stared up at him.  "Time to get up," Snake growled, roughening his voice. "C'mon."  He turned and stepped outside, into the wind.  Rain watched the tent's entry-flap fall shut behind Snake's confident exit, then went to dress and begin the task of reclaiming his freeze-dried supplies, smiling to himself.                                    

As they moved out into the lowland basin, the problem became, not an excess of water, but a lack of it.  Days passed and winter shaded into spring, the temperature rising toward the killing heat of summer, the sun beating down through the clear air, scorching them with ultraviolet through the depleted ozone layer.  Miles that had whizzed by in hours by car took strenuous days of pedaling by bicycle.  Rain drew on hazy memories of his one trip around the Circuit, the summer before he had fostered out to Rivendell.  They were not much help.  Rain's guide had drilled him on the bioregion and the natural ecology of the route they were following, but he was surprised to find how academic the information became when he was faced with practical problems of survival: food, shelter, and, above all, drinkable water.  He found himself depending on Snake's distant memories of sketchy Special Forces training for fighting in Mongolia and Afghanistan, and even sketchier memories of his Arizona childhood.   

Rain rode along with his face set in a mask of fierce concentration, searching for the creek the map claimed was somewhere nearby.  Flat, tan ground stretched out in every direction, broken by an occasional joshua tree or scrubby creosote bush.  He tried to remember landmarks and connect them with the symbols on the flat paper surface.  Four years ago, coming from the opposite direction in a van, there had been a line of buttes.  Yes, there they were.  Or maybe they were some others that looked like the ones he remembered.  Anxiety settled in Rain's belly as it was brought home to him once again that if they failed to find water, both he and Snake might well die here in the unforgiving desert.

"Rest stop," Snake called over his shoulder from up ahead.  He squinted up at the angle of the sun in the afternoon sky, and pedaled more slowly, scanning the road, evidently looking for a good place to pull off and wait out the heat of the day.  At the top of the next shallow rise in the blacktop was a good-sized boulder casting a shadow, barely wide enough for two people, away from them.  The ribbon of pavement was visible for a distance in either direction, giving them advance warning of any other traffic along the road.  Although they often saw no one for days at a time along the desert highway, they both wanted to be cautious.  Rain drew up beside him as Snake dismounted and dropped the kickstand of his bicycle.  The older man sat down in the strip of shade and pulled off the wide-brimmed hat he had brought with him from the old winery in Napa, wiping sweat from his forehead with a khaki-cotton sleeve.  Snake had accepted that, much as he hated to have his arms and head covered, the UV was too bad here to travel for long in the open with bare skin exposed.  He took a sip from his canteen, rolling it in his mouth a moment before swallowing.  Rain knew Snake's water-bottle, like his own, was almost empty.  

"Hot," Rain said.  Snake gave him a look, disdaining to respond to the obvious, and fanned himself slowly with the hat as he studied the road.  Rain sighed once, and dug in his pack for his copy of the map.  He pored over it for a while, hunting for landmarks in the vicinity of the small creek they were looking for, and finally muttered, "Damn!"     

"What?"

"The creek's somewhere along here."   

Snake took the map from him.  "Here's that side road we just passed.  I remember the sign."  His forefinger, with its short, ragged nail, stabbed down on the paper, pointing.  "I'd make it, we're about here."  A fine, squiggly, blue line indicated an arroyo not far ahead.  "Wash should be another two miles."  

"Yeah, I see it."  Rain leaned over for a better look, frowning.  "I should be better at this.  I was being taught to guide, but this is my first trip without someone who knows the water stops."

"Final exam time."  Snake's tone sounded almost indifferent.  

Rain felt a chill along his backbone at the bleak fatalism he saw in the other's expression.  Here was a man, Rain thought, who had looked his own death in the face without fear and accepted its inevitability without surrender.  "Yeah," he repeated, feeling very inadequate.  

They rested through the hottest part of the day, and resumed their journey when the air had cooled a little.  Several miles farther on, they found the spot where a culvert passed under the highway, and tracked the fine gray gravel of the wash back to the creek.  Rain and Snake filled all their water containers, drank, and rinsed off in the tepid, ankle-deep liquid, then set up camp out of sight of the road, in the lengthening evening shadows.  They would take advantage of the little stream for a stopover, to conserve the water they carried.       

                                               ******************

Snake sat down on a smooth, flat stone near the rivulet of spring runoff in the arroyo and rested, feeling the first faint breeze of evening across his cheek.  In the stillness, he could hear the almost soundless flow of the stream in its shallow bed of pebbles.  A flicker of motion caught his eye, and he turned to see a desert rattlesnake emerging from its daytime shelter under a large slab of rock.  Snake froze, perfectly still, absorbed in the sight, as the serpent began nudging at the rough edges of the outcropping, rubbing its head against the gritty surface.  The rattler seemed oblivious to him, intent on its own private purposes in its silent world where humans had no place.  If he did not bother it, Snake thought, it would not bother him, but there was no way he could reach it, except to call forth its angry defense.  

The snake pushed its head back and forth against the rough rock until dry skin split and came away from its jaws, then began gliding forward, struggling to work itself free.  As the translucent husk peeled back, Snake saw the new scales shining in glossy diamond patterns down its back and sides.  The snake gradually pulled itself out of its dead shedding, adding one more dark button to the rattles on its tail, and    Snake watched the graceful, gleaming creature as it turned and flowed away over the ground toward its evening hunt.  The last flick of its tail as it disappeared into the slanting light seemed like a salute or a signal.  How many lives, how many identities, had he gained and shed since the time, years ago, when he had watched the white cobra whose image he bore shed her skin?  Snake thought about the cobra circling restlessly within her herpetarium before a shed.  He remembered her, her eyes turned milky with old scales, bunting blindly against the invisible glass walls of her prison, looking for a way to free herself from the uncomfortable, too-tight skin that bound her in outgrown patterns.  Which was he, Snake wondered, the rattler or the cobra?  He looked over to where Rain knelt, blowing bits of brushwood kindling into a fire, and shrugged as he rose to go join the younger man.  Behind him, desert air plucked at a filmy remnant of shed skin clinging to the stone.     

A streak of brownish-gray exploded out of a low bush in front of Snake's feet.  Snake froze, following its path with his eye, and several yards farther on, the streak slowed and became a rabbit.  It looked around, nose twitching furiously, then hopped over to begin nibbling on some green leaves growing near the edge of the wash.                                                     

Dinner…. .  Snake dug in his pack for the elegant little automatic pistol he had taken from the shack by Carquinez Bridge, smiling to himself as he loaded the .38 and clipped on stock and sights.  There would be a lot of rabbits coming down to the wash in the evening to drink and look for tender green vegetation fed by the spring runoff.  He slipped off the safety with a satisfying click.

Rain was on his feet now, a look of alarm on his face.  "What are you doing?"  

"Want to see what a Magnum would do to a three-pound chunk of bunny? "

"No," Rain said, " I mean, why kill something?  We're O.K. on food."

Snake eyed him.  "We need to conserve what we've got."   Rain stirred and opened his mouth as if to protest, then closed it again, evidently defeated by Snake's unyielding expression and air of command.  "Stay put," Snake said shortly.  An image of the sprung snares he had come across in the woods around Rivendell rose in his mind.  "And be quiet," he added in Lieutenant Plissken's voice.    

Snake moved out along the stream-bed, scouting and stalking in the timeless patience of the hunter until he had the small brown form of a rabbit sighted in the .38's crosshairs.  He squeezed the trigger delicately, adjusting for the Walther's light action.  The recoil barely registered after the Magnum's familiar heavy kick.  The rabbit disappeared in a puff of dust stirred up by the bullet and reappeared an instant later flat on its side, head blown open, fur matted with fresh blood.  Snake felt a surge of grim satisfaction.  It was good to be taking control of his own basic survival again.  He walked over, picked up the still-warm carcass by a hind leg, and hefted it in his hand.  Not much there for a good meal.  Snakes get hungry after they shed.  Snake missed the next rabbit he shot at, but killed the third.  He skinned and cleaned them, leaving the pile of entrails for the desert scavengers, and carried his prey back to cook over the campfire.  

Neither man spoke as Snake spitted the meat, roasted it over the flame, ate it with evident enjoyment, and disposed of the bones.  The small fire of creosote bush and dry desert sage crackled in the silence between them, sending up a sharp scent to mingle with the savory smell of roast rabbit.  Glowing flecks of fire scattered upward into the growing darkness.  At last, they snuffed out the fire and rolled up in their respective sleeping bags for the night.  The silence lengthened as each man lay still, wrapped in his own separate thoughts.

The kid seemed to be learning to keep his mouth shut, Snake mused, with slow approval.  Maybe the Rivendell shit was wearing off.  Snake thought back to the night he and Rain had shared a sleeping bag on Tehachapi Pass.  They hadn't repeated it, and so far Rain had kept his own silence, the same kind of calm silence Taylor had given him.  Snake and Taylor had never needed words; they understood each other: two pilots on parallel flight paths.  They had been exactly the same distance apart on the day Taylor died as they had been nine years earlier when they become partners in Black Light Squadron.  Snake brought up memories of his graceful Gulffire.  Contact, in midair, was fatal.  Safety lay in maintaining perfect spacing.  Rain seemed to be grasping that.  Good.

His mind returned to the rattler he had watched shed its skin.  For the moment he, like the snake, seemed to have slithered free of all the identities other people created to hold him captive, all the glass boxes.  He turned his head to see the indistinct shape of Rain's sleeping-bag, a faintly darker blur against the pale desert floor.  How many more skins to shed?  Snake closed his eyes and sank toward sleep on the sound of the desert wind.  

                                                *****************

At the same time, Rain lay staring toward the distant mountains, watching the first bright points of light fill the darkening sky.  Images of the limp, dead rabbit-bodies dangling from Snake's hand filled him with a churning mix of sorrow and pain, guilt and confusion.  He hadn't eaten any of the meat - at the thought, acid bile rose in the back of his throat and he swallowed hard - but he hadn't done anything to stop the slaughter either.  Why?  It wasn't just that Snake had told him not to interfere.  Rain shifted restlessly, staring up into the black void of the night sky.  Killing his own game, Snake had seemed so natural….

Rain thought back to the snares he had destroyed in the Rivendell forest, Snake's snares.  He's gone feral.  No, a conviction slowly formed out of the confusion: Snake always had been feral, always would be.  He was something more and less than fully human; he was a part of the wild world.  That was why Mother Gaia had chosen Snake for her great purpose, the destruction of the Machine.  Rain remembered his glib comment to Snake: "Here the dying gives life.  It's part of the pattern."  He had said it, but he had not really believed it then.  Now he did.  The owl and the mouse; the wolf and the deer: Snake was a part of that pattern, too.  In Gaia's wild world, as he had been taught, life created death created life: the rabbit who cropped the grass, and the fox who killed her, and the innocent swarming life forms that broke down all of their dead bodies into the rich humus out of which new life grew, and the equally innocent ones - Rain thought with a sudden chill of his conversation with Dr. Spencer - that brought disease and death to all of them.   It was all part of an interwoven pattern with Snake at the center, but the pattern, like Snake, was an alien and disturbing mystery beyond human understanding, beyond human definitions.  It was not his place to judge or interfere with the role Mother Gaia had chosen for Snake, Rain thought to himself.  An uneasy resignation, full of unanswered questions, settled over him.  He rolled over to face Snake's sleeping bag.  A faint smell of burnt ash from the scattered fire drifted to him on the light desert wind as he turned.  He noticed it was getting cold.  "Good night, Snake," he called softly into the darkness.  From the other sleeping bag, a neutral sound of acknowledgement answered him.  Rain closed his eyes and settled himself for sleep.

They woke early and traveled on, riding in the morning, resting through the hottest part of the day, and traveling again late in the day when the air was cooler.  When the moon cast enough light, they sometimes slept by day and traveled by night.  They felt no need to hurry, and set no timetable.  Snake kept a certain distance, concentrating on the journey, keeping his flight path parallel.  He let himself become a part of the rhythm of movement, the sweeping open spaces, and the solitude.  The miles stretched ahead and behind, an empty ribbon of concrete carrying them farther and farther toward their goal.  They met no other travelers, now, on the road.  Either people were avoiding the desert crossing, or the whole world had died.  Snake told himself he didn't much care which.  Now and then they passed empty vehicles, cars or trucks, left abandoned on the road when the power had gone out.  The few big rigs had been opened, their cargoes rifled.  An occasional campsite, where one of the cars had been pushed to the side of the road and a makeshift shelter set up beside or beneath it, told a silent story.  Snake remembered the public service announcements he had seen printed and heard on the news channels: If your vehicle breaks down in a wilderness area, stay with it until help comes.  Don't leave your car.  Patiently, or desperately, hoping for assistance from the highway patrol, the passengers had obediently stayed with their cars, growing weaker and weaker as the days passed, until at last they had died there, waiting for the official help that never came.  Snake and Rain pedaled on past without stopping.         

A few miles past the ghost town of Barstow, a scatter of bleached human bones along the side of the road caught Snake's attention, and he stopped to examine them briefly.  The mysterious gnawed fragments left behind by the desert scavengers looked as though they had been there for months.  Still, he and Rain rode on warily, weapons at the ready.  A few miles farther, and Snake caught a flash of light reflected off something some distance from the road.  Glass? Snake wondered; metal?  Whatever it was might prove useful, or at least provide some answers.  He and Rain parked their bikes on the shoulder and approached the reflection cautiously.  They came over a rise to find metal chunks spread across the other side of the hill and down the slope into the flat land beyond, where something had plowed into the ground with considerable force and been broken apart by the impact.

"It's a plane," Rain said at last, pointing toward the tip of a wing standing half-buried in the sand like a giant metal surf-board.  

"Was," Snake agreed.  He studied the wreckage.  "Big one… transcontinental, looks like."  

They worked their way downhill between charred and crumpled pieces of metal.  One large section of fuselage was relatively intact, although fragments of bone and cloth still strapped into the seats showed that the passengers had not survived the crash.  A sun-faded strip of red fabric twisted in the fitful wind, drawing Snake's eye to the motion.  A cross-section of the compartment had flipped, leaving the seats attached to what was now the ceiling, and through the jagged metal semicircle created by the broken  hull, Snake could see the mummified remains of a woman hanging suspended from her locked seatbelt.  The dangling shreds of fabric were what was left of her clothing.  In the seat beside her was a smaller mummy, its dry brown flesh partially covered in rags that had once, apparently, been a blue dress.  It no longer had a head.  Snake looked down.  Next to his own boot, almost buried in wind-drifted sand, was a candy-colored blue plastic sandal, its strap broken.  Snake pulled his attention back to the passenger cabin.  An empty seat close to him had a newspaper shoved into the fabric seat-back holder.  Snake reached in, pulled it out, and unfolded the brittle sheets of paper.  At the top of one of the less-faded inside pages, he could make out a date: the Lynchburg Times, Early Edition, for October twenty-third, 2013.  The day he had shut down the world.  Snake dropped the page of newsprint, and it blew away across the ground on the wind.  How many planes had been airborne, Snake wondered numbly, when he pushed the button on the Sword of Damocles remote?  Out of the corner of his eye, Snake caught movement.  He turned to see Rain staring at what was left of a tattered stuffed toy he had picked up from the dirt at his feet.  Gingerly, the younger man pressed a control in the toy's back.  Nothing happened.  Everything had shut down when he pushed the button, Snake thought: planes, automobiles, computers, refrigerators, toasters... talking toys… everything…. .  Gone, all of them.

Snake and Rain looked at each other and silently turned away, heading back toward the place they had left their bikes.  They didn't bother to explore any further.  On the way they passed a burned-out section of the plane's tail.  Beyond it was a neat row of rocks with a chevron of rocks at one end, an arrow marker laid out on the sandy clay to show the direction the survivors had taken.  It pointed toward the road and the way Snake and Rain had come.              

The two men returned to the spot at the side of the road where they had left their bikes, and pedaled on without speaking.  Rain seemed subdued, and Snake was glad of the silence.  "The name's Plissken "…click…. .   Snake's imagination called up vivid pictures: the sudden silence of the jets, the downward plunge as the desperate pilot fought unresponsive controls, the shattering impact, the upward roar of consuming flame, then nothing.  He imagined the screams of the passengers, abruptly silenced, or, for the burned and mangled who survived for a time after the crash, less abruptly silenced.  For a morbid moment Snake wondered if the mummified girl's head had been ripped off by flying debris before or after he had lighted his American Spirit cigarette and stumped off into the dark to "disappear."  At the thought, Snake was flooded with a raw, sharp remembered craving for nicotine.  The last of the cigars had been smoked days ago.  No, he thought, it didn't just stop when I shut down the power.  It doesn't just end.  There are always consequences.       

Snake's hands, clenched on the handlebars, were like ice.  A corner of his mind said he ought to be able to see his breath; the air was so cold…. .  He saw the flaming ruins of Novosibirsk, the shape of his Gulffire, dark between fire and snow, and the child he had shot, dying at his feet.  Collateral damage… just collateral damage…. .  Memories of the black cold of November in New York Max, lit by flickering fires, of the charred wreckage of the President's plane, and Hauk's voice: "It's the survival of the human race, Plissken; something you don't give a shit about…."."   Visions of the frozen dead in the snows of  Canada.  Another voice: "So what happened to you, War Hero?  Whadda you have to say, Plissken…? ?  Snake pedaled grimly on, feet moving up and down mechanically as he drove himself forward, legs pumping furiously as if to outpace the images, the thin remembered smell of gas in his nostrils, his thoughts swirling and dissolving like smoke on the wind.  Welcome to the human race…. .   He heard Rain's voice behind him and slowed to allow the other man to catch up to him.  The two rode onward side by side in silence.

At last weariness forced them to stop and make camp for the night.  Banked clouds on the horizon suggested a rare spring storm might be in the offing, and they reluctantly pitched their tent.  They still had not exchanged more than three or four laconic sentences since leaving the site of the crash.  Snake chewed a few mouthfuls of something without tasting, before he and Rain unrolled their sleeping bags and smothered the last dying embers of their campfire.  Snake pulled the nylon close around him, trying to force himself into sleep, fighting the visions.  Sleep was a long time coming.  When it did come, he could not defeat his dreams.      

He stood at attention before the court martial.  Behind the judges, to one side, stood the American flag, the way it had stood on the day he had accepted his commission.  To the other side stood the standard of Black Light Squadron.  The judges stared at him coldly, their faces set in expressions of contempt and formal disapproval: his father, Colonel Robert J. Plissken, in his Air Force dress blues, the braid on his cap and his silver eagles glinting in the harsh light; to one side of him Colonel Bailey, commander of Black Light.  With puzzlement, he recognized the third figure: his ROTC instructor.  What was he doing here, among all the brass?  On the polished wooden tabletop was the black box of the Sword of Damocles remote, the red numbers glowing balefully 666.  He could feel the presence of observers behind him, but didn't dare turn around.  He looked down; the colored bars of his ribbons showed on his chest, and, farther down toward the floor, USPF rod handcuffs gleamed dully against his uniform.                                                                   

"Plissken, Steven David, Lieutenant."

Snake's head snapped up and he focused.  He had two good eyes.  The voice came again, crisp and precise: Taylor's voice, reading the charge.  "Lieutenant Plissken, you stand accused of crimes against humanity.  How do you plead?"  Snake's "not guilty" stuck in his throat.  The small, dark-haired man faced him accusingly: "Why'd you do it, War Hero?"      

"I… d don't know…" " Snake felt his words, burning dry and hot in his raw throat.  The sides of his neck ached.  He could feel pellets there, dissolving.

"You don't know!" his father's scornful voice mocked him. "You never do know, do you, Steven?  You didn't think, did you?  You live in a world of collateral damage.  The last man standing, aren't you, Steven?  The only one left alive."

There was a rising murmur from behind him, indistinct sounds, and Snake threw a look over his shoulder at the crowd of observers.  In the dimness beyond the courtroom railing they stood, bloodied and broken: the men of Black Light... Cabbie, his head a shattered mass... Maggie in her bloody dress... Fresno Bob, a skinned horror... Brain...a figure burned beyond recognition that might have been Carjack Malone... Taslima...a crowd of others.  So many, all his innocent dead.  Their voices rose wordlessly, like a wind, and they swayed like plants in an ocean current, blindly, holding out their hands in his direction.  To one side Dawn stood by herself.  As Snake watched, she raised her arm and pointed in his direction, her face grave and disapproving.  "What do you have to say for yourself, Plissken?" Taylor barked at him.      

Snake turned back, clenching his jaw hard, staring straight ahead, pulling himself up to more rigid attention.  At last he grated, "No… e excuse, Sir."  As he stared, bloody letters slowly formed, oozing from the shining oak paneling behind the judges' heads.  My Lai, they read, Andersonville… Wounded Knee… Dresden… Hiroshima… Baghdad …Moscow… more names, the letters scrolling down, blurring into each other.      Snake's ROTC instructor read the list in a droning, lecture-hall tone.  He stood and stretched out a classroom pointer, and the wall dissolved into a TV screen, flickering in black-and-white footage from a late-night documentary program: piles of emaciated corpses.  …. . Crimes against humanity…. .  The wall reformed, the letters on it glowing like liquid  fire.  As the blood dripped down, it began to bubble, steam, spark into flame.  "S. D. Plissken: Planet Earth," his instructor's emotionless voice finished the roll call.

"You self centered, irresponsible, arrogant bastard!" Taylor's voice dragged Snake's attention back to his old sergeant.  "You were responsible.  You knew."  The stark white letters on Taylor's name badge read "Collateral Damage."  A hard, painful knot coiled in Snake's belly, burning.  He heard an echo of another desperate voice: "For God's sake, Snake, don't do it!"

The gavel in his father's hand slammed down.  "Guilty."  "Guilty," repeated each of the other judges.  Snake felt his guts twist, felt himself choking as he struggled to catch his breath.  His searched the unrelenting faces of his accusers.  What punishment?   

"The sentence is death," came Col. Bailey's emotionless voice.  "Living death, among the death you have created.  You carry death with you: whatever you touch will wither; whoever trusts you, will perish.  You are the murder of the innocent."  The three chorused, "You are Destruction."

Taylor came forward in formal parade-step, his face like stone, and began methodically stripping Snake's uniform, tearing away decorations, insignia, cutting away buttons.  Military snare drums sounded a measured cadence, drumming Snake out of the Service, out of Black Light.  Shame and guilt raged in him, and a cold fear.  Snake heard the sighing murmur of the observers rising behind him.  The knife in Taylor's hand flashed upward.  Pain flared, and, as Taylor stepped back, Snake saw in his partner's hand, his now sightless left eye.  Blood flowed down Snake's mutilated face like tears.  Taylor dropped the eye into the snow on the courtroom floor.  He slipped a black eyepatch in place over the oozing wound, saying "Here.  To remember us by.  You lived!"

The figures flickered and disappeared into tainted mist rising from the snowy floor as the letters on the wall roared into a sheet a flame, turning the mist blood-red.  There was a wrenching agony in his belly and Snake looked down to see the white cobra rear up into life out of his flesh, "You are Plissken," she hissed, twisted, and lunged forward to drive her fangs into Snake's chest, pumping poisonous rage that burned like acid into him.  He heard the screams of the observers behind him as he struggled to free himself of the handcuffs, and, in a final moment of terror, he felt the capsules in his neck exploding.  The courtroom dissolved into bloody live steam thick with the stench of gas and putrefaction…. .      

Rain was jerked out of his own uneasy sleep by the muffled sounds from Snake's sleeping bag.  He reached over and turned the chemlamp on at the lowest setting.  In the dim greenish light, he saw Snake, still asleep, thrashing within the nylon cocoon, struggling with some creature of his own imagination.  Rain unzipped his sleeping bag and moved over toward the other man.  In the cramped space of the tent, the air was thick with the smell of Snake's sweat and fear.  It's a bad one, Rain thought.  "Snake," he called softly, "Snake, wake up."  Snake continued throwing his head from side to side and moaning, and Rain shifted across the nylon floor toward him.  He raised his voice: "Snake!  It's a dream.  Wake up!"  Finally, he reached out and took hold of the other man's shoulder, shaking him at first gently, then harder.  Snake's teeth were gritted as he strangled on bits of unintelligible words, shuddering toward wakefulness.  Rain felt the tremors in the body under his hands as Snake's gasping breath slowed.  "It's O.K., Snake," he said.  "It's all right.  It's just a dream."  Snake's intensely blue eye fluttered open.  He unzipped his bag part-way and struggled toward a sitting position as Rain released his hold and rocked back on his heels.  Snake ran a hand over his wet face and pushed back strands of damp hair, still breathing raggedly, staring fixedly at nothing.  Finally, his eye focused, and he glanced around the tent, his expression still confused and disoriented.              

"You O.K.?" Rain asked.  Snake gave a rasping cough but didn't answer.  Silence stretched awkwardly as the two men sat staring at each other, only inches apart.  Rain reached out and put his hands on the other man's shoulders.  When Snake did not pull away, his grip tightened.  "I'm here, Snake," he said.  "I told you I wasn't going to run out on you."  Snake was rigid in his grasp, except for a slight flinch as Rain's hands met Snake's flesh.  For a long moment Rain held the pose, willing Snake to feel, through his touch, his determination.  Whatever Snake had done, he, Rain, would not betray the pledge he had made to Snake and to himself.  Snake needed him.  There was nobody else.  The older man raised his hands slowly to Rain's forearms, moving like an automaton.  It was all the permission Rain needed.  He slid forward and wrapped his arms around Snake, pulling the other to him in a hard embrace.  Short, ragged nails bit into Rain's shoulders as he felt Snake's body shuddering against him, felt Snake's breath in sharp, warm gusts against the side of his neck, felt Snake's face buried in his hair against his shoulders.  After a minute, the shuddering stopped.

                                                    ******************                                   

For Snake, it was a confused, chaotic slide from nightmare into wakefulness.  The first thing he recognized was the warmth of bare flesh and the feel of thick, silky long hair against his sweaty face.  At the touch, he was flooded with a desperate, angry hunger, and a mindless need to regain contact with the real world.  His body remembered other nightmares, and the waking nightmare of his life; his flesh    remembered fear and pain, darkness and blood, the putrid stench of New York Max, and all the other things, and remembered driving them down into the place where he could control them, conquered in the flesh of his willing partners, with his face buried in their hair.  The hair had been blonde, or red, or dark; the body female or male.  It made no difference in the moment of his need.  Snake pulled himself loose from Rain's grip and unzipped his sleeping bag the rest of the way open.  Desperate for simple contact, for grounding in reality, he reached out.  With a wordless growl, he turned Rain over, shoved him down to the tent floor, and took him with animal passion in that oldest of all communications.  The sex was rough, almost violent.  Snake was relentless, driving fiercely into Rain, biting his shoulders, his fingers digging deep, his thrusts slamming the breath out of both of them, his cock burying itself in Rain as if trying to merge with him.  Snake came hard, with a strangled shout, and collapsed across Rain's back, breathing heavily.  He pulled out, rolled off, and lay still with his eyes closed.

For a long moment Rain lay still also, as if stunned by the intensity of Snake's assault.  Then he turned and levered himself up on one elbow, looking down into Snake's face.  He breathed a shaky laugh and smiled slightly, then leaned down.  His lips brushed Snake's, lightly, quickly, and were gone again.  Snake felt too tired to object.  With a little voiceless snort, he pulled Rain against him, spoon-fashion, and zipped up the sleeping bag with both of them inside it.  Spent, lulled by the warmth of each other's body, the two men drifted into sleep again, a sleep, this time, without dreams.         

Snake was quiet the next morning as they struck camp, distant and preoccupied.  He seemed drained of all emotion, running on automatic.  He pedaled steadily all day, unwilling to stop until he and Rain put distance between themselves and the wrecked aircraft.  That night, the two slept together again, Snake silently motioning Rain into his sleeping bag and taking him almost mechanically.  By the next day, the older man's stoic air of self-control had resurfaced, but the remoteness in his good eye remained.  Both men maintained a deliberate silence.

A few more days travel brought them to a big truck stop on the outskirts of Needles, where they halted to reconnoiter.  Snake studied the wide, deserted slab of concrete and felt the hairs on the back of his neck slowly rising.  The instinct he depended on for survival was screaming at him that something was wrong.  The hulks of several dusty and sun-faded automobiles dotted the pavement, and two abandoned long-haul eighteen-wheelers loomed in the shelter of the big service bays near the gas pumps, their cargo trailers open and stripped clean.  Beyond them was the squat, rectangular shape of the station's convenience store, glass front wall shattered, shelves almost empty.  In the center of the bare end-cap facing them, just inside the open door, was a case of red-and-white cans of soup.   Rain started forward, but stopped before he had completed the first step and looked back toward his companion.  Snake had not moved.  Rain raised his eyebrows and a grim little smile curved his mouth.

Snake nodded.  "Yeah.  Bait."                 

The two men pulled their bikes behind the gas pumps opposite the shop and armed themselves.  Rain cocked his crossbow and steadied it across his handlebars.  Snake's Magnums were a comforting weight at his sides as he removed the Barrett's protective covering and shifted it into firing position.  They skirted the edge of the service plaza, pushing their bikes, like scouts moving into enemy territory.  A flicker of almost-invisible movement behind a side window alerted Snake.  He ducked sideways, with a quick hand-signal to Rain, a second before a bullet flew between them, then raked the building with return fire from the Barrett.  Chunks of stucco and glass flew as the big gun smashed a smoking hole in the side of the building.  Shattering sound was followed by tense silence, as the hidden gunman evidently thought better of the unequal contest of firepower.  Snake and Rain moved quickly out of range, and headed in toward the center of town for a last try at replenishing their supplies before the long, barren stretch to Flagstaff.                                                           

"How stupid do they think we are?" Rain muttered as he pushed his bike along.  

"Not stupid," Snake said, "Desperate.  Anybody coming in from the desert's going to be low on supplies."  He snorted softly.  "Needles always has lived off people passing through.  The more things change, the more they stay the same."

The pair moved on, cat-footed and alert.  Needles seemed deserted.  The houses, drab stucco squares set in bare, packed yellow dirt, were quiet and seemingly abandoned.  Here and there, a door hung open on its hinges and a rectangle of light slashed into a dark interior of dull-white walls and faded linoleum flooring.  Whatever else was hidden inside was invisible in the dazzle of sun on the street, but Snake had a crawling sensation that he was being observed by something in the silence.  He hoped it was his imagination.        

They came to a asphalt parking lot where red-plastic letters on a bigger stucco building identified BASHAS SUPERMARKET.  The store's windows were shattered and its doors jammed open to reveal an interior littered with ripped boxes, bags and cartons, empty tin cans and bottles, overturned metal shelves, and broken equipment.  Smashed glass and shards of plastic glinted on the floor.  A faint, disgusting odor that reminded Snake of a fast-food dumpster on a hot summer afternoon drifted out to where he stood.  Black stains on the walls and concrete in front gave evidence of an earlier violent struggle, but Snake saw no fresh blood.  By the doors lay a bicycle with a pack strapped to the rear.  A thin tire-track in the dust indicated that the bike had recently arrived, but there was no sign of its rider.  Snake and Rain exchanged glances, then lowered the kickstands on their bikes and began a wary exploration of the building's exterior.  Snake's hands hovered over his Magnums, and Rain's cocked crossbow was held at the ready.  As the two men rounded a corner of the building, three figures huddled over something on the pavement suddenly exploded into flight.  Snake caught a glimpse of staring eyes, matted hair, and filthy rags, wrapped in an unmistakable stench that instantly brought back memories of New York Max.  One of the group fired hastily over his shoulder at Snake and Rain before all three vanished around a corner of the store's wall.

On the ground lay the body of what looked like the bicycle's owner.  There was a bullet wound in the back of the skull, and deep knife-gashes carved into the flesh of his back where the dead man's denim shirt had been slashed  open.  A long cut in the thick muscle of the man's tanned thigh oozed blood.  Snake took another quick look around, then squatted by the body and touched it with the tip of his finger.  The corpse was still warm.  "Cannibals," he said in a matter-of-fact tone.  Rain nodded, looking more than a little green, but standing his ground.  Good man, Snake thought as he rose to his feet again.

Surreal images rose in his imagination of the bloody struggle that had taken place here between desperate defenders of the market and the town's starving inhabitants, fighting for survival.  Multiply that by the population of Chicago, London, Paris, Shanghai, Calcutta, Mexico City… every city, everywhere.  The whole world had become New York Max.  No trucks, no trains, no airplanes to bring in supplies: first had come hunger, and then worldwide starvation, millions dead, the survivors turning on each other.  Snake felt a thin chill down his spine as the dark vision brought back an echo of his dream.  He pushed it away, down into the hidden place where S. D. Plissken still existed.  

"We've got to get out of the open," Rain said.  His voice was emotionless.  

Right.  They'll be back for their kill.  And for us, Snake thought.  The two men backtracked to the supermarket's open doors and wheeled their bicycles inside, out of range of gunfire.  Snake noticed Rain's nose wrinkling.  The dumpster-stink of decaying meat was thick in the hot, still air.  "Watch out front," Snake said shortly, and went to investigate the interior of the market.  A quick reconnaissance was all he needed.  The store's shelves had been stripped bare of anything useful.  Bubbled linoleum, blackened concrete subflooring, and charred splinters of bone showed where the cannibals had lighted fires to cook their victims.  At the right of the entrance, Snake found what had been the store's deli.  Behind a bank of glass cases, wide metal doors to walk-in coolers stood open, and inside one hung a human body, headless, gutted, and rotting, with ragged chunks of flesh hacked away.  Battlefield memories rose in the back of Snake's mind.  He swallowed hard.  You never get used to the smell.  He turned and walked back to where Rain was standing next to their bicycles, watching the approaches to the building.

"Nothing here," Snake said.  "Let's go."  

"Yeah," Rain answered.  His expression suggested he was having a battle with his stomach, and would be as glad as Snake to get out of Bashas Market.  His mouth became a grim line.  "They're still out there."                                                                    

I'll see if I can get up on the roof," Snake said.  "You stay here with the bikes."  Sniper situation.  Snake thought back to search-and-destroy missions in the streets of Russian cities, and old training clicked into place.  Red swinging doors in the back led to the warehouse.  In gray light filtering through their windows, Snake saw  the store's back entrance.  Rolling doors to the loading lock were secured with thick looped and padlocked chains and barricaded with a heavy mechanized pallet-jack.  Everything that could be moved had been piled on top and around it.  Nothing was getting in that way.  Snake gave a single short nod of satisfaction and moved on.     

After a bit of searching in the dimness, Snake located the access panel to the store's roof.  He pushed the rolling ladder across the wall, its rusty wheel squealing along the track, until it was under the panel, and climbed up.  The panel was wedged firmly shut and locked.  Cursing under his breath, Snake climbed back down.  More searching uncovered a pile of tools that had been dumped out of one of the lockers piled on the pallet-jack, and Snake returned to the top of the ladder with a heavy hammer.  A few solid whacks broke the trap-door loose.  Snake pushed the access panel open, listened, then pulled himself through the opening onto the store's roof.  Hot, gritty tarpaper burned against his belly as he worked himself over to the edge of the flat surface.  After the store's dark interior, the street below was a dazzle of light on white stucco walls and pale cement.  Snake squinted, his good eye watering, until his vision adjusted.  He finally located three ragged figures crouched next to a wall across the street from Bashas Market, facing the supermarket's front door.  Waiting for us, Snake thought.  The one at the front of the huddle was holding a handgun, one held a knife, and the third clutched a black something that might be a length of pipe.               

Snake returned to where Rain was waiting for him.  He gave a short outline of the situation and finished up with, "Give me five minutes, then throw something out the door to get their attention and take it from there."  Rain checked his watch, and nodded understanding.

Snake climbed back to the roof, located his targets, and waited, guns drawn and ready.  Shortly after, a wooden produce box arced out from the inside of the market and thudded onto the parking lot.  The figure with the gun jumped and his weapon swung toward it, discharging in the direction of the box.  Snake smiled to himself.  Amateurs.  The first blast from his Magnums took out the one who had fired.  The one with the knife made the mistake of stepping out from the shelter of the wall, looking around wildly for the source of Snake's fire, and Rain's crossbow bolt caught him squarely in the chest.  As the third started to run along the wall in the opposite direction, Snake's bullets dropped him.

Snake rejoined Rain, who was still waiting near the bicycles.  In grim silence, they detoured around the dead cannibals and headed out of Needles, alert for any further attack.  At the edge of the Colorado River, they stopped and disarmed, replacing Snake's Barrett and Rain's crossbow in their protective coverings, and remounted their bikes to ride on.  Halfway across the bridge, Rain halted his bike again and pointed downriver.  "Look!"    

Snake squinted against the glare off the water.  Some distance down the bank they has just left, he saw a squalid little group of listing tents and knocked-together shelters in a trampled patch of bare ground and rubbish.  Earthworks surrounded the encampment, giving it the look of an ancient Roman bivouac or an archaeological dig.  Part of the area was set apart with another low earthen wall.  It was filled with mounds of dirt, some newly dug, to judge by the darker color of the soil, some older.  A few had crude crosses set at one end.  Graves, Snake realized.  In one corner of the enclosure were several cloth-covered heaps that Snake identified, after a moment, as bodies still awaiting burial.  A ragged figure sat slumped against the wall of the graveyard, a rifle lying on the ground next to his motionless hand.  Snake wondered if he was dead too.  Several vultures patiently circled overhead, riding the thermals.

"I think we found where the rest of Needles went," Rain said.