Wiggy heard the engine, muffled at first in the dawn air, but getting louder a lot faster than he liked.

He said: "Fuck." And then he almost dropped the bucket of gasoline he had just hoisted up from the oasis. It was a Devil fuel dump he was stealing from and if that engine he could so plainly hear belonged to a Devil or a friend of theirs then there was going to be trouble and trouble was the last thing Wiggy wanted. He had plenty of that already.

His hands were trembling so bad he slopped gasoline all over the tank of the little brute of a car he was trying to nourish. The gas went everywhere but down the narrow mouth of the gas tank.

"Damn, damn, damn," said Wiggy, his voice quavering in fear.

The vehicle was as weird as Wiggy was. It was a three-wheeler of almost laughable design. A triangular chassis with two fat tires up front and a single wheel behind supported a seat and the two engines. At the rear, behind the driver's seat was a gas-powered generator. In the snubbed prow of the car sat an electric motor that must have been stolen from the housing of an elevator or some other heavy piece of electrical machinery. The generator generated the power which drove the electric motor which powered the car. The whole thing was connected to a primitive drive train by belts that would burn your hand off if you touched one while the whole thing was running. The rider who sold it to him told Wiggy that the rig needed practically no gas to keep it moving. He lied.

Not only did Wiggy's wagon need as much gas as everybody else's machine, the three-wheeler was noisy, slow, unreliable, heavy, and hard to drive. Most of the time Wiggy hated the thing. But sometimes he loved it. It was his and it meant he wasn't a raider anymore. But was that such a good thing? Right then all he wanted was his old bike and his old gang.

Wiggy had been a raider in an outfit called Pershing's Pistoleroes (whatever the hell a pistolero was) but he had had ambition. He didn't want to be a raider. He wanted to be a smuggler and make himself some real profit. There were twenty pistoleroes and Wiggy didn't like splitting the share twenty ways. It only dawned on him after he was on his own that he hadn't done a whole hell of a lot to earn his share but it was too late for that now. So he set himself up to ride alone. He needed money so he sold his reliable old cycle—an iron creature made up of a half a dozen major spare parts from other bikes—and used the money to buy himself about a ton and a half of ammunition and his strange little vehicle. With a dismissive sneer—"So long, assholes"—Wiggy left the Pistoleroes and struck out on his own.

This was his first ride and he wasn't having much luck. He got lost a lot. His dreams of returning to Chi with gas or something equally valuable had long since faded. He just couldn't find anything. He couldn't even find trouble. Wiggy figured he was the only rider on the continent who hadn't been shot at recently. The world was one big empty space filled with dead ground and dead ruins.

He still had the ammunition he had equipped himself with and he figured he was going to head back to Chicago and say that he found it someplace and sell it as if it had been his haul. Then he would put it around that he wouldn't mind joining the Pistoleroes again, just for a couple of rides. The truth of it was the emptiness, the loneliness of a single-handed ride scared him. It was worse than running into a bunch of Stormers or Devils—almost.

A big trouble with his crazy little car was that it was hard to start. It was the rule of simplicity taken to a ridiculous extreme. To turn the generator over you had to swing a crank and the engine was always, but always, reluctant to catch. This little feature made a quick getaway a little hard to pull off.

The fuel flopped everywhere. The engine was getting louder.

"Fuck it!" screamed Wiggy, throwing the bucket aside, splashing gas everywhere. He dove for the crank and swung it and in the process scraped most of the skin off the back of his left hand. He yelped in pain and tried again. This time the generator rewarded him with a few taunting tut-tut noises and died.

"Fuck you," he bellowed. He kicked the machine as hard as he could. The approaching engine seemed to fill his ears.

"Okay," he said, "I'll fight it out." He pulled a long barrel rifle from behind the seat and scampered away behind some of the rubble that had once been the gas station. He found some cover behind the metal sign that had fallen into the station forecourt. It read MOBIL.

Wiggy put a round in the chamber and told himself that anybody who came round that corner was going to buy a slug. "Dead meat." he said between clenched teeth.

"I don't care if it's my fuckin' mother. Blow her head off," he said to make himself feel better.

Then he noticed something. The silence. The sound of the engine had vanished. Gone. One minute it had seemed as if the car had been right on top of him, just around the corner, now nothing. Had he really heard it?

"Gotta stop drinking that shit," he said referring to the only companion he had had on his lonely trip. It was a jug of raw alcohol that he had bought from Dorca and that he soused himself with every night.

"Stuff makes you crazy," he whispered as if it was secret information. Although, right then he would have given anything for a drink. The thought inspired such sudden and violent longing in his mind that he thought about risking a dash to his car to get the earthenware flagon that he could see tantalizingly close. It was peeping out from the huge bale of ammunition.

"There was nobody coming," he said as if to explain unseen judges why he was giving up his position for a swig of that tongue barbeque he carried around with him. He strolled out from behind the Mobil sign, grabbed the flagon, and stuck the cork in his ear. He did that so later, when he was drunk, he would know where he had put it. He lifted the jug and took a deep pull. He held it in his mouth a second and then shivered as he swallowed the fire-hot liquid. His eyes rolled in his head and he stamped his feet a couple of times in a happy little frolicsome dance of pain.

"Ahhhhhhh," he said happily. He looked analytically at the jug and wondered what the hell Dorca made this shit out of. For a second he thought about the chances of running his little machine on it if he ever got low on gas.

The jug made a second trip to his lips. "Hell," he said, "it might be better, as a rule, to drink the gas and use Dorca's swill on the piece of shit engine." He laughed out loud at his little joke. Life suddenly looked better.

On the third trip to his mouth catastrophe struck. In fact, a bullet hit his jug. The liquor poured onto him drenching him from head to foot. He damn near shit his pants. The raw alcohol got into his eyes and set them on fire, or at least that's what it felt like. He rolled around on the ground howling in pain, rubbing his burning eyes to clear them of the pain. When he regained his sight he managed to focus on a man standing over him. The man had a fistful of automatic.

Holy shit, thought Wiggy. It's Bonner. "Hi," he said lamely.

"Where's Pershing?" asked The Outrider. "I ain't with him no more," stammered Wiggy. "I don't know your name," said Bonner. Jeez, thought Wiggy as the Mean Brothers wandered up. He's got his doom freaks with him. Wiggy had seen the Mean Brothers in Dorca's drinking beaker after beaker of Dorca's best booze—on the house because they were with Bonner, the lucky fucks—but they never got drunk. They would put away twenty or thirty each and stare at their glasses and at each other unable to see what all the fuss was about. As if drinking was a game they couldn't get the hang of with rules they didn't understand. 

"I asked your name," said Bonner. 

"Wiggy." 

"Pleased to meet you, Wiggy."

"Likewise," said Wiggy. "Look, can I stand up?"

"Sure."

Wiggy rose slowly as if afraid that a sudden movement would set off the Hi Standard without any good reason.

"That your rig?" asked Bonner.

"Yessir." He paused a moment. "Where's yours? I heard it coming ..."

"I stopped a ways down the road. No sense in driving into a surprise."

"Nope. Nope. Guess not." Wiggy took off his shirt. It had been drenched with liquor and the fumes were beginning to make him feel woozy. Wiggy was nervous. Bonner seemed friendly enough but you could never tell with a bullet eater like him. Hoping Bonner wouldn't notice, Wiggy placed the frayed cuff of his denim shirt to his mouth and sucked out some of the liquor. The taste on his tongue revived him.

"See you got yourself some ammunition."

"That's right."

"Got something for this?" Bonner held up his automatic.

"Yes, I believe I do."

"Something for a shotgun?"

"That too. If the gauge ain't that big."

"No problem."

"Look, you want it," said Wiggy, "you take it. On me." A couple more inches of sleeve went into his mouth.

"Could you take your shirt out of your mouth?" 

"I said, it's yours. Take it." 

"I'm not going to steal it," said Bonner. 

"Oh yeah, oh yeah, I know that," said Wiggy quickly, affably. "You ain't gonna steal it. It's a uh, a watchamacallit, y'know, a loan. When we meet in Chicago, hey pay me back. You know, when you can. No problem. No hurry." Please thought Wiggy, just take the fuckin ammo and get out of here. "No," said Bonner.

"No," agreed Wiggy quickly, "I guess not." He shrugged his shoulders. "Hey, you win some, you lose some." He reached for his shirt. Suddenly he felt pretty silly. He was standing there his thin white chest sticking out and with a cork in his ear giving away all his worldly possessions to the meanest man on the continent. He took the cork out of his ear but it didn't make him feel any better.

"I'll trade you," said Bonner. "I have a couple of sides of beef on my rig. I don't need them where I'm going. I need your ammo. You're bound for Chi, right?"

"Right!"

"Then you can haul this beef with you. If you hurry, it won't spoil."

"Meat?"

"Yep."

"You want to trade me meat for ammo."

"S'right."

"Where'd you get it."

"Texas."

"Deal." Wiggy was already framing the story. 'Yeah, I headed down to Texas. Got some meat. Headed back. Simple . . .'

Wiggy helped Bonner and the Mean Brothers move the heavy slabs of grey meat. "So where you headed?" he asked as he and Bonner were equals.

"No place you ever heard of," said Bonner knowing they weren't.

When the exchange of cargoes had been completed and Bonner had topped up his tank Wiggy stood around waiting for the Outrider to get in his big powerful rig and get the hell out of there. He didn't want to be humiliated by that damn ornery crank in front of Bonner.

"See ya," yelled Wiggy over the boom of Bonner's engine.

Bonner waved.

"Hey," shouted Wiggy, "I just got one question. Why did you blow away my jug."

"I wanted to see your face," yelled Bonner. Then he slammed his car into gear and took off. The little rider had provided him with enough firepower to protect himself. He pointed the sharp nose of his car down the road. Almost Normal was his next stop.

Wiggy watched him go. "He wanted to see my face," he said, "what an asshole ..."

He got his funny little rig going faster and easier than he thought, almost as if the car had been scared by Bonner and wanted to get the hell out of there as fast as it could. But the spirit of cooperation didn't last. Wiggy had travelled about twenty miles when the oil feed that lubricated the armature on the motor parted forever. In another mile the engine seized and billowed black smoke all over the place. The car coasted to a halt and died.

By nightfall Wiggy was weeping, a wreck. He had taken the engine apart and put it back together twice and nothing. The whole idiotic contraption had given up the ghost at last. And the meat was beginning to smell suspicious. Goddam, he could use a drink.

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