“No you don’t, muhfuh!”she screamed, and slung the plate in her right hand. It sheared through the gleaming saber and the weapon simply exploded at the hilt, tearing off the Wolf’s arm. The next moment one of Rosa’s plates amputated its thinking-cap and it tumbled sideways and crashed to the ground, its gleaming mask grinning at the paralyzed, terrified Tavery twins, who lay clinging to each other. A moment later it began to smoke and melt.

Shrieking Benny’s name, Jake walked across the East Road, reloading the Ruger as he went, tracking through his dead friend’s blood without realizing it. To his left, Roland, Susannah, and Rosa were putting paid to the five remaining Wolves in what had been the raiding party’s north wing. The raiders whirled their horses in jerky, useless circles, seeming unsure what to do in circumstances such as these.

“Want some company, kid?” Eddie asked him. On their right, the group of Wolves who had been stationed on the town side of the arroyo path all lay dead. Only one of them had actually made it as far as the ditch; that one lay with its hooded head plowed into the freshly turned earth of the hide and its booted feet in the road. The rest of its body was wrapped in its green cloak. It looked like a bug that has died in its cocoon.

“Sure,” Jake said. Was he talking or only thinking? He didn’t know. The sirens blasted the air. “Whatever you want. They killed Benny.”

“I know. That sucks.”

“It should have been his fucking father, ” Jake said. Was he crying? He didn’t know.

“Agreed. Have a present.” Into Jake’s hand Eddie dropped a couple of balls about three inches in diameter. The surfaces looked like steel, but when Jake squeezed, he felt some give—it was like squeezing a child’s toy made out of hard, hard rubber. A small plate on the side read

“SNEETCH”

HARRY POTTER MODEL

Serial # 465-11-AA HPJKR

CAUTION

EXPLOSIVE

To the left of the plate was a button. A distant part of Jake’s mind wondered who Harry Potter was. The sneetch’s inventor, more than likely.

They reached the heap of dead Wolves at the head of the arroyo path. Perhaps machines couldn’t really be dead, but Jake was unable to think of them as anything else, tumbled and tangled as they were. Dead, yes. And he was savagely glad. From behind them came an explosion, followed by a shriek of either extreme pain or extreme pleasure. For the moment Jake didn’t care which. All his attention was focused on the remaining Wolves trapped on the arroyo path. There were somewhere between eighteen and two dozen of them.