“Ow! Ow! Stop!” Milton howls near me. We’ve been jumped. I can’t see the guy who’s got me from behind, but the one who’s grabbed Milton is big, with long stringy hair hanging over the collar of a torn denim jacket with a Pagan’s patch.

“Hey! Quit it!” Another Pagan has Arno. All three of us are forced quickly down the walkway by our attackers. Amid the scrapes and slaps of rapid steps, my knees have gone rubbery. Are we being mugged? Are we about to die? The hand over my mouth is clammy and stinks of nicotine. My shoulder throbs painfully. I’ve never been mugged before. I’ve never been killed before. Blood pounds in my temples. I am scared shitless. If John Bonham himself were bashing my heart with his drum kick, he couldn’t make it beat any faster.

We’re herded into a small dank tunnel that’s so dark I can only tell how close the walls are by the echoes. It’s like being in the fallout shelter again, only here the air is rank with urine and Pagan’s BO. My pulse continues to race — from fear and the haste at which we’ve been marched down the walkway.

“Hey! Wait! No! Let me go!” Milton’s flipping out.

“Shaddup!” a voice snaps, and I hear the hard chunk! of hand against skull.

“You a pig?” That’s Clyde’s voice, high, nearly hysterical. As my eyes gradually adjust to the blackout of the tunnel, I recognize his Lincolnesque silhouette. He’s nose to nose with Arno, who’s being restrained from behind by a heavy guy with greased-back hair. Under Arno’s chin is the faintest glint of metal.

A knife?

Oh, God, no!

“Mffh?” Arno’s answer to Clyde’s question is muffled by the hand over his mouth.

“Undercover heat?” grunts the guy who’s holding him.

The knife under Arno’s chin becomes a sword. Clyde is a Pagan black knight in denim armor.

I’m trembling with fright for Arno. For Milton. For me. Please, we’re just three suburban kids.

“Nffh!” Arno frantically tries to shake his head. There’s the faint but irrefutable dribble of liquid splishing on the ground around his feet.

“What’d you tell that pig?” Clyde screams.

“Pfft!”

The stinky hand leaves my mouth, goes into my back pocket, and yanks out my wallet.

“Please, let me go! I need to get out of here!” Milton’s begging desperately.

Smack! “Shaddup!”

“He’s claustrophobic,” I try to explain.

“What?”

“What’d you tell that pig?” Clyde yells at Arno again.

“Th-that y-you took my m-money. I — I thought you w-weren’t coming back,” Arno stammers, his voice high and terrified.

“You tell him my name? You say anything about the Pagans?”

“N-n-no. I swear!”

A cigarette lighter bursts on. The flame illuminates a hairy hand holding Milton’s Life magazine, which immediately gets flung away.