I pulled the shirt over my head to see the three of them staring at me with a look of mildly annoyed concern. “Are you okay?” Astor said. “Because you just took your shirt off in the middle of the street.”

“Fire ants” I said. “All over my back.” I slapped at my back with the shirt, which did no good at all.

“A man rammed us with his car” Rita said. “And he tried to grab the children.”

“Yes, I know” I said, twisting myself into shapes a pretzel would envy as I tried to get at the fire ants.

“What do you mean, you know?” Rita said.

“He got away” a voice said behind us. “Moved pretty fast, considering.” I turned in mid-ant slap to see a uniformed cop, panting from his apparent chase of Weiss. He was a youngish guy, rather fit looking, and his name tag said Lear. He had stopped and was staring at me. “This isn't clothing optional here, pal” he said.

“Fire ants,” I said. “Rita, could you give me a hand, please?”

“You know this guy?” the cop asked Rita.

“My husband” she said, and she let go of the children's hands, somewhat reluctantly, and began to slap at my back.

“Well” Lear said, “anyway, the guy got away. He ran clear over to US 1 and headed for the strip malls. I called it in, they'll do a BOLO, but ...” He shrugged. “Gotta say he ran pretty good for having a pencil stuck in his leg.”

“My pencil” Cody said with his strange and very rare smile.

“and I punched him really hard in the crotch” Astor said.

I looked down at the two of them through my red cloud of ant bite pain. They looked so smug and pleased with themselves; and to be honest, I was very pleased with them, too. Weiss had done his worst —and theirs was just a bit worse. My little predators. It was almost enough to stop the ant bites from hurting. But only almost especially since Rita was smacking the bites as well as the ants, causing added pain.

“Got yourself a couple of real scouts here” Officer Lear said, looking at Cody and Astor with an expression of slightly worried approval.

“Just Cody” Astor said. “And he's only been to one meeting.” Officer Lear opened his mouth, realized he had nothing to say, and closed it again. He turned to me instead and said, “The tow truck will be here in a couple of minutes. And EMS will want to take a look, just to make sure everybody's okay”

“We're okay,” said Astor.

“So,” Lear went on, “if you wanna stay with your family, I can maybe get this traffic going?” I think that will be all right” I said. Lear looked at Rita and raised an eyebrow, and she nodded.

“Yes” she said. “Of course.”

“All right” he said. “The Feds will probably want to talk to you.