Jak, who was scouting at point, called back to them. "Blacktop here. Looks used. Kept good. Safe come on."

It headed in from the northwest, in the rough direction of the Pacific, looping to run eastward, toward where the scent of gasoline was strongest, toward where they could, at last, make out the smudges of buildings.

"There's a sign," Doc observed. "Perhaps we might go to peruse it."

Snakefish. Population two thousand and growing all the time. Gas sold and traded. Outlanders welcome.

Under that last part, someone had added, in a maroon acrylic paint: If they behave good.

"Better make sure we behave good." Rick grinned. "Looks like some things haven't changed. Strangers are fine, as long as they walk the line."

"Wrong," Ryan said. "Not many villes welcome outlanders. Doesn't matter how they behave."

"Xenophobic capital of Deathlands, you mean?"

Ryan didn't understand him, so he didn't bother replying.

"Someone's coming!" Krysty said suddenly. "Wags. That way." She pointed to the east.

They could hear a thin keening, humming sound, which was far off, but approaching fast.

"Air wag?" Jak asked.

"No. Different sound. Some kind of gas wag," Ryan replied, head to one side, considering what their best course of action might be.

"Two-wheeler," Lori said unexpectedly. "Had vids back in my redoubt. Keeper used to look for them. They was some of his faves. They was about two-wheeler wags. That's what the noise is being."

There weren't many two-wheel wags around Deathlands. They used up precious gas and you couldn't carry supplies on them or mount a blaster. A man on a two-wheel was about as vulnerable as a skinned armadillo.

"Lot of them," J.B. observed, as laconic as ever. "Take us some cover?"

Ryan looked around. The desert stretched behind them, dry and faded, the brush high enough for them to hide. But if they were tracked, then their chances would lie somewhere between zero and one on a scale of one hundred. The thought of what a single match could do with a breeze behind it was terrifying. Ryan had seen some bad fires in his life and didn't much want to find himself at the center of another one.

"We'll stand," he decided. "Keep ready, but nothing unless I give the order. We're travelers. Wag broke down three days ago, far side of the mountains there. Keep it vague."

The buzzing sound became louder. Krysty saw them first, with her heightened mutie vision. "Group close together," she said. "Around a dozen. Lot of sun-flash off metal."

It wasn't long before they could all see them, riding down the center of the blacktop, where the white line would once have been.

"Keep together," Ryan warned quietly.

The motorcyclists came closer, and they could all see the morning sun bouncing off steel and polished chrome. They were riding in an arrowhead formation, and their leader held up a gloved hand when they were about a hundred yards off. He slowed, and the rest of the group swerved to left and right, ending up in a half circle around the seven friends, about twenty paces away from them. The riders kept their engines revving, twisting the throttle grips, giving Ryan and the others ample time to look them over.

Automatically the one-eyed man weighed the newcomers up as potential enemies. The odds were they wouldn't prove friendly: eleven, all males, aged from about eighteen to forty-five. Most were overweight, which was unusual in the Deathlands. Many were bearded and had long hair, tied back with ribbon. All wore heavy boots and blue denim in varying stages of filthy decay, with badges and patches painted or stitched on.

But the important items were the blasters. Most had either hand-built pistols, based on old Saturday night specials, or weapons with parts grafted together from other old blasters, .32 the most common caliber. Two had sawed-off scatterguns of uncertain vintage slung from their shoulders. Their leader packed a Smith & Wesson Model 29, with a nine-inch barrel, .44 caliber. From the battered appearance of the piece it looked like it had been used to hammer in nails and stir a caldron of mutton stew, neither of which would stop the killing punch of the blaster, if the man carrying it knew how to use it.

None of the bikers made any obvious threatening moves. Hands rested near bolstered pistols while eyes raked the companions. The leader finally lifted a hand again and everyone cut their engines. The sudden stillness was deafening.

The two groups stared at each other for several long seconds, nobody wanting to break the silence. Finally Ryan spoke.

"Nice two-wheel wags," he said.

"Not wags, you straight double-stupe mother! They're our choppers."

"Choppers?"

Rick took a hesitant step forward. "Either my brain has now completely fallen apart in little splinters of sugared candy, or..."

"What?" Krysty asked.

"Or these guys are real, live Hell's Angels."

The man with the Smith & Wesson heard what he said. "One of you's got some sucking brains! Yeah! We're Hell's Angels. Snakefish Chapter of the California Motorcycle Gang. We call ourselves the Last Heroes. Riding the road and keeping the good word alive for today and forever."

"What's a Hell's Angel?" Lori asked, sucking at her thumb in a coquettish baby gesture.

One of the other riders answered her. "Yea, though we walk through the valley of the shadow of the dead, we fear no evil. Because we're the most evil mothers that ever walked through the valley of the dead."

Ginsberg nodded. "I did a sociology thesis on these guys. Well, I mean, not these guys. These guys weren't going to be born for fifty years when I wrote 'The Social Phenomenon of the Motorcycle Gangs: Macho or Myth?' I decided that they were about ninety-nine percent myth."

"What you saying about us, you four-eyed straight mother?"

Ginsberg stepped closer. "You've got the colors and... chopped hogs. Sissy bars. It all comes back to me, Ryan," he said excitedly.

"How come you know so much? You ain't from around these parts. You seen other chapters of righteous brothers, someplace else?"

The long-barreled Smith & Wesson was sliding slowly from the tooled holster.

"No. I read about you back in..."

"Enough, Rick," Ryan interrupted quickly. "Let's cut the talk. We're traveling through. We lost our wag three days back. Heading for Snakefish. There going to be some sort of problem here?" Ryan's hand rested on the butt of his automatic rifle.

"Problem, straight? Outlander comes in looking like he's in charge of a gang of mercies. Snakefish doesn't like mercies."

Ryan figured they could take all eleven out, but not without a minimal body count against them.

"Mercies?" Rick whispered.

"Hired blasters," Krysty replied. "Short for mercenaries."

"Wrong. We aren't mercies. I asked you once. I'll ask you one more time. Do we have a problem here?"

Now the Smith & Wesson was jerked clear of the holster. The leader of the cycle gang smiled at Ryan, showing a mouthful of broken teeth. "Problem? What the fuck do you think?"