"I can get new teeth. Now we have to get out."

"What's happening out there? Where can we go?"

Glen threw open the back window. "Away from here. Let's go."

"Mom! Dad! You here?" Chris Davis walked through his parents' home, calling out. No one answered. He glanced into the bedroom. A commercial jingle prattled from the bedside clock-radio. He went to the living room and saw the front door standing open. He looked outside. The street was empty.

"They here?" his cousin Roger called from the kitchen.

"No."

Gunshots boomed through the night. Jack Webster raced in through the kitchen door. "Someone's shooting on the other side of the block!"

"Christ. A shotgun." Chris locked and chained the front door. He hurried through the house, turning off all the lights, checking the windows and patio doors.

"Still want to go looting?" he cried at Jack as they passed each other.

There were more shots a few blocks away, toward the beach. The youths looked at each other, words failing them. Then a strange scream came from the street. It rose and fell; it wasn't a scream of fright, it was like a rebel yell. It ended in a crackle of mad laughter and the roar of a motorcycle engine.

The three teens heard the sound of their surfboards fall. They had leaned the boards against the back fence. Someone was coming in through the back.

The house was dark. Chris felt his way to his father's study. Roger and Jack were only a step behind him. Chris didn't risk turning on the lights.

"Gimme the lighter, Jack."

By the flame's soft glow, Chris found the second drawer of his father's desk, pulled it out, found the key taped to the underside. It was the spare key to the gun closet.

From the closet he removed the long-barreled semi-automatic 12-gauge that his father had used to win second place in Catalina's trap shooting tournament. Also the double-barreled 12-gauge that his dad took hunting. He passed the double-barreled weapon to his cousin Roger.

"What do I get?" Jack protested. "I've got to have..."

"Here." Chris passed him a holstered pistol.

"An automatic. Wow. What about ammunition?"

"In those pouches on the belt." Chris found a day pack in the closet drawers, hastily dumped boxes and boxes of 12-gauge shells in the pack.

The back door screen rattled. Chris fed shells into the long shotgun's magazine. He passed a handful of shells to Roger.

Jack struggled to fasten the gun belt around his waist as he walked to the kitchen. Once there, he unsnapped the holster flap, took out the Colt .45, pointed it at the shadow on the kitchen door and pulled the trigger, even as Chris smashed the pistol down..

"You jerk-off!" Chris hissed. "We don't know who's out there. Anyway, you have to cock an automatic." Chris worked the shotgun's action, calling out in a loud voice: "Who's out there? Identify yourself or I'll fire!"

"Don't shoot..." a woman pleaded.

"It's Glen Shepard, from the other street..."

"That's the political freak, the guy with all the bumper stickers," Jack said.

"Please let us in," said a male voice. "My wife's pregnant..."

Roger opened the door. Even in the semi-darkness, the curly-haired boy had to turn away when he saw Glen Shepard. Glistening blood covered his face and chest. There was blood on his hands up to his elbows. His pregnant wife was smeared with it.

"God, what happened?" Chris asked.

Glen helped Ann to a chair. "A hoodlum shot his way into our house," said Glen, gasping for breath. In the window's light, they saw that most of his teeth were gone. "Ann gunned him down. Then a bunch of them started shooting at the house..."

"We've got to call the sheriff." Roger went to the kitchen's wall phone and dialed in nervous desperation. He clicked the receiver twice.

"Nothing, right?" Glen asked.

"The line's dead."

Outside, shots popped in the distance. More shots burst out on the other side of the block. Glen took a dishrag from the sink and wiped off the bloodied shotgun he was carrying.

"I think it's up to us to help ourselves," he muttered.

Islanders in robes, pajamas, casual clothes crowded the wide walkway that paralleled the beach. Family groups and clusters of neighbors waited for official explanation of this emergency assembly. The sirens were wailing again. It was ten minutes since they had heard the voice over the loudspeakers.

Babies cried; children ran through the cold tide-soaked sand, parents calling after them. Friends talked and waved to each other and introduced neighbors. Islanders continued to stroll down from the residential areas. In twos and threes they joined the mass of people already on the beach. They too talked animatedly with their neighbors as they walked.

One man on the beach — stocky, his short hair sticking up in various directions — limped from group to group, always questioning. People shrugged, shook their heads.

Then he went in to one of the tourist hotels, The Pavilion Lodge.

"Hey, Max!" The desk clerk called out to the limping man as he crossed the lobby. "You talked to the sheriff yet?"

"Can't find him anywhere," Max said. "I been up and down the beach. Haven't talked to anyone who has seen him, either."

"Christ, just what we need," the clerk complained. "A weekend crowd in the hotel and we get an emergency I can't even explain."

"Pass out the complimentary booze," Max smiled. He was almost an old-timer on the island. "Keep them pacified." Despite the lobby's warmth, he kept his coat closed. He was shivering. He wore a sports coat, slacks, a pinstripe shirt with a tie, shined shoes: Max was a traveling salesman accustomed to dressing quickly.

"Not that easy," the clerk told him. The balding man leaned across his desk, spoke quietly. "I got some people here — the reservation came on a fancy corporate letterhead, they pay with corporate checks, but they've got two Secret Service agents with them. I can tell. These big guys in gray suits, nasty metal things with handles on them right here..." the clerk reached for his left armpit, "...you get the picture. They ask me what's going on, I can't tell them. They look at me like I'm dog shit on their shoe."

"Do you really think they're Secret Service?" Max had studied all the guests in the lobby. He saw one wide-shouldered young man with a briefcase in his hands, stationed in front of the door leading to the hotel's party lounge, who looked like he was on a military field, standing at parade rest.

The clerk pointed at his lapel. "They got these little buttons — and anyway, the sheriff told me. There's two of them with these six professor types. Why did all this have to happen this weekend?"

Max stared hard at the young Secret Service agent, then he turned and without a word limped quickly out of the hotel. As he did so, there was the nearby sound of automatic weapon fire.

"Mayday, Mayday!" the officer chanted into the shortwave radio's microphone. "This is Deputy Sheriff Fletcher of the Avalon Sheriff's Office on Santa Catalina Island. We are under attack by an armed motorcycle gang. We are under attack by an armed motorcycle gang. They have automatic weapons. They have killed several residents. They are taking hostages.

"Mayday, Mayday. Please, anyone hearing this call, notify the mainland. We are under attack..."

The young deputy heard motorcycles, then voices. The glass of the office's front door shattered.

"Mayday, Mayday. This is Santa Catalina Island. We are under attack by a motorcycle gang. They are killing..."

Shotgun blasts rocked the outer office. As he spoke into the microphone, the deputy took out his speed-loaders and laid them on the table in front of him. Then he cocked his .38 service revolver and aimed it at the closed inner office door. He heard the front door being kicked open. He heard the sickening shock of rifle fire and shotgun blasts. Slugs punched through the office wall.