“And it’s heavy,” Ron said. “We’ll need at least six guys to carry it. But it’ll be worth it.”

Al glanced over his shoulder toward the truck and the smashed front gate where his eight fighters were crouched tensely, waiting for an enemy attack. Then he looked back at the big plastic crate.

“Dimmy, Lou, Patsy, Ed—come over here, quick!”

Al got the driver to back the truck up to the end of the row where the generators were stacked. Then the six of them heaved and lifted and strained to get one of the big crates onto the back of the truck. Ron and Al helped, too. Ron felt its weight against his shoulders, felt sweat breaking out on him as they struggled to get the crate high enough to slide into the truck. He wished for a powered forklift.

More shots! Guys shouting, cursing. Somebody screamed with pain.

They got the crate into the truck. Ron’s arms seemed to float away from him once the load of the turbogenerator was taken away.

They scrambled up into the truck. The driver edged it out toward the gate and the other warriors who had been defending the gate against the Chelsea fighters clambered in. One of them was badly hurt. He had to be pulled in. His face and chest were covered with blood, and he moaned sickeningly.

Ron stared at him as they dumped him on the floor of the truck, next to the generator crate. The truck roared out into the daylight, and into a hail of enemy fire. Bullets whizzed by and clanged off metal. The guys flattened themselves on the track floor. All except Al, who knelt at the tailgate and fired back with an automatic rifle. The shattering noise of the gun’s blasting shut everything else off from Ron’s brain.

Only when the gun stopped firing could Ron open his tight-squeezed eyes. He smelled sharp, bitter, slightly oily fumes from the gun. He felt the wind ripping through the track from a hundred bullet holes in the plastic sides.

Then he saw that he was lying next to the wounded boy. Ron backed away, his hands and knees sliding on the blood-slippery truck floor. Ron found that his clothes, his hands, even his face were sticky with the kid’s blood.

“How’s he?” Al asked.

“Dead,” somebody answered.

And then Ron was leaning out of the truck, over the tailgate, vomiting. He could feel his stomach twisting inside him. All the strength left him.

Is that what it’s like here? Is this the way I’m going to have to live?

So Ron became a member of Al’s gang. Its formal name was the Gramercy Association, Ron found out, although no one ever told him why it was called that, or where the name came from. No one seemed to know. To each of the hundred or so members, it was simply Al’s gang. Al was their leader, tough, wary, totally without a smile in him, but as fair as any leader of a pack of wild teenagers could be.