"Jody," Herbert said patiently, "I need you to put the car in reverse and back away very slowly."

Herbert knew that he wouldn't be able to get in the car without lowering the gun. And lowering the gun, they'd be attacked. He took a quick look back. As far as he could tell in the dark, the terrain behind him was clear for several hundred yards. His plan was to let the open car door move him and the chair backwards, allowing him to keep the gun trained ahead as they retreated. When they were a safe distance away, he'd pull himself in and they could drive off.

That was the plan, anyway.

"Jody, are you listening?"

She nodded, sniffled, and stopped crying.

"Can you drive us back slowly?"

With painful slowness and uncertainty Jody put her hand on the gearshift. She started to cry again.

"Jody," Herbert said calmly, "we've really got to go."

She moved the lever just as the front tires exploded.

The car left the ground as they blew up, chewed apart by a burst of gunfire from somewhere ahead. The open door flopped back, slapping Herbert toward the rear of the car. A moment later gunfire from a semi-automatic began eating into the open door. The crowd had parted to make a path and a woman was holding the weapon under her arm. As Lang had said-- was it only that morning?-- "This can only be Karin Doring."

Herbert rolled back. He opened the rear door, got behind it, and fired a burst from around the side. That kept the front line pinned down though it didn't stop the woman. She was coming as inexorably as winter.

Jody was crying. Herbert saw the guns in the backseat. He also saw something else there, something he could use.

He fired another few rounds at the mob, then said, "Jody. I need you. to cover me."

She shook her head. He knew she had no idea what he was saying.

Bullets slammed into the front door. A couple more bursts and they're goin' right through, he thought. Then they'd penetrate his door and after that they'd penetrate him.

"Jody!" Herbert screamed. "You've got to reach through the partition, take the guns from the backseat, and shoot. Shoot, Jody, or we're dead!"

The young woman was squeezing the wheel.

"Jody!"

She continued to cry.

Desperate, Herbert turned toward her and put a round into the seat beside her thigh. She screamed and jumped as feather-light padding flew up, then drifted down.

"Judy," he repeated. "Take the guns and shoot Karin Doring or she will goddamn own you!"

The student turned to him, wide-eyed. Apparently that she understood. Turning determinedly toward the back, Jody stretched through the open partition and grabbed the two guns.

"Release the safeties," Herbert said, "the little latches on the--"

"Got them," Jody said.