The Wanderer

The officer let off a couple of shots that holed the stucco over Hixon’s head. He dropped the rifle.

Margo was holding the revolver behind her.

Hunter climbed out of the car and came up the steps, hands held shoulder high.

The backing police car drew up behind the first. More officers piled out of it. The third police car drew up outside the gate.

Something dropped through the sedan window and bounced on the seat. Something else smashed against the windshield of the first police car, and hissing flames jetted out in a blue-yellow burst.

The police fired around the side of the building from which the Molotov cocktails had come. Two or three unseen guns returned their fire.

Margo was looking at the white tag on the black door. She ripped it down and crumpled it up.

The driver of the first police car lunged out of it, face arm-shielded from the flames. There were flames inside the sedan, too.

Hunter, keeping his hands raised, came up to Margo and Hixon.

The Molotov cocktail that had fallen unbroken into the sedan exploded. Big, blue-yellow flame-jets flared from the four windows.

Hunter said: “Let’s run for it. The little gate we saw first.”

They did. The police didn’t shoot at them. The officers were already piling back into their second car. Thunder rumbled again, much louder.

Margo and Hunter and Hixon ran past the last white building just as a bunch of teenagers came around it on the other side. Margo felt the gust of their crazy high spirits like an electric wind, and for a moment she was on their side. Then gravel jumped ahead of Hunter, there was a crack, and she realized one of the kids was shooting. They were waving bottles and knives and one of them had a handgun. It was still more than fifty yards to the little gate.

The teenagers came at them whooping and screaming. A girl threw a bottle.

As she ran, Margo shot at them three times with the revolver and didn’t hit anyone. Making the third shot, she tripped and sprawled on the gravel. The thrown bottle hit beside her and broke. She threw up her hands to shield her face from the flames, but there was only the smell of whiskey.

Hunter yanked her up and they ran on. Ahead, Hixon was pointing at something and yelling.

The teenagers no longer came straight at them, but a dozen or so raced ahead toward the little door, cutting them off.

Margo and Hunter saw what Hixon was pointing at: a bright red car with a black hat at the wheel coming fast down Monica Mountainway, tires screeching at the turns.

The teenagers had them blocked off from the door but they still ran toward it.

The Corvette lurched to a stop in front of the door. Rama Joan stood up beside the driver and pointed a gray-tipped hand at the teenagers. Dust and gravel blew up in their wild faces, they went staggering, lurching, sprawling backwards as if struck by a gale; the fence sagged inward.

Doc stood up beside her and yelled toward Margo and the two men: “Come on! Make it fast!”

They ran through the gate and piled into the tiny back of the Corvette. Doc cut the wheels sharp and turned it.

They saw the second police car, escaped from Vandenberg Three, bouncing back around the burned car-crush.

But the third police car was coming straight at them up Monica Mountainway along the fence.

Rama Joan pointed the momentum pistol at it.

Hixon cried: “Don’t do it They’re police.”

The police car seemed to brake to a stop, except that its occupants were not thrown forward but back. The whole car started to skid back. Rama Joan quit pointing the pistol.

The Corvette roared uphill. Hunter protested: “Not so fast, Doc.”

Doc retorted: “This is nothing. Didn’t you see me coming down?” But he did slow a bit.

Hixon chortled: “I’ll say we did! You sure swung it, Captain!”

Behind them the car Rama Joan had stopped had turned back, and both police vehicles were headed north along the flat outside the freeway fence. The flames of the abandoned laager waved and twisted higher. The fire had spread to other cars.

Hunter snorted and said: “That was the last useless, heroic nonsense I’ll ever go in for.” He scowled at Margo.

Thunder roared. A big drop or two of rain spattered.

Margo fished a small ball of paper from her bosom and uncrumpled it. “Useless?” she grinned at Hunter, holding the paper forward between Doc and Rama Joan, but so Hunter could see it, too.

The big-scrawled message was: “Van Bruster, Comstock, rest of you! We’re being lifted out to Vandenberg Two. Join us by Monica Mountainway. Luck!”

It was signed: “Opperly.”

A big raindrop hit the paper. The rain was black.

Don Guillermo Walker and the Araiza brothers were halfway up Lake Nicaragua. The launch would soon head around the island of Ometepe. From the island’s two volcanoes rose thick black smoke plumes that glared red toward the base even in the bright sunlight.