"Means," bellowed Bonner, "take care of the kids!" He whipped out his Hi Standard and blasted a slug into the drunk, startled body of a Devil who was just standing there watching the murderous cavalcade of midgets sweeping into the camp like a stream that suddenly overran its banks.

Skippy dived for his gun. "Holy shit!" he said, "it's those crazy little fuckers and ." He didn't want to say Bonner's name out loud in case by not saying it he could make the man go away.

A chatter of bullets poured over Bonner's shoulder as all the Lashmen started up, firing from the saddles of their tiny machines. A couple of Devils fell. The tiny bikes screamed around the bumpy acreage, rushing up and over the humps then littered the park. The bikes were airborne for the second after they left the crest, then they slapped down onto the tarmac and ascended the next.

Floyd got a bead on a fleeing Devil and chased him across the broken asphalt. The midget stood up on the little running board of his scooter and lined up the spot between the shoulder blade of the running Devil. The big Dan Wesson pistol barked and the slug seemed to explode on the spine of the Devil. Instantly, the man's shoulders and neck turned into a bloody hash. He fell and for the hell of it, Floyd ran his scooter over the bloody body, the studded tires tearing up the tattered flesh.

"Fuckin' pansy," screamed Floyd over his shoulder.

The Devils, all of a sudden pretty sober, were running around, fumbling for weapons. A lucky shot from one of them tore into the throat of a Lashmen and the tiny body fell from the saddle. Bunny saw his brother little guy fall and started after his killer. An inarticulate cry of rage broke from his lips.

The killer flopped to his belly and started laying down fire ahead of him, unaware that Bunny had marked him for death. The midget screeched to a halt next to the big Devil and leaped from his bike right onto the back of the wildly firing tough guy. Heels out. Bunny landed with the combined force of his weight and his rage on the Devil. On impact he splintered a half a dozen small bones in the Devil's back. The Devil rolled to one side.

"Get the fuck off me," he screamed through his pain. "Dick," yelled Bunny and his Colt spat six hot shots into the silk's face.

The Mean Brothers were quite unhappy with their assignment. Bonner had stopped the car and had picked up his Steyr and slipped his cut down shotgun from its nest and was now sprinting across the broken tarmac, the battle raging around him. The Mean Brothers didn't know where he was going, but they watched him enviously. But an order from Bonner was an order they would never disobey. They pulled Bobby and Emily from the back of the war wagon and hunkered them down in the lee of the heavy machine. They shielded the kids with their giant forms. Bonner said to take care of the kids and to the Mean Brothers that meant stopping a stray bullet with their bodies if they had to. But they felt cheated.

Bobby and Emily poked their heads out from the hairy protecting arms and watched wide eyed.

The Devils had gotten over their initial shock and they were taking advantage of the cover provided by the trucks, and the hummocky ground to repel the invaders. Skippy and Johnny were lying side by side and firing at the speeding Lashmen. They took down two apiece and thought they were pretty hot shit for doing so. That was before Floyd blasted their heads into pink gray pulps with his shotgun.

One of the Silks, a man called Willy, had some pretensions to brains. He figured out instantly why the Outrider was here and he moved to use that information against him. Willy knew that Bonner was there to rescue the slaves. That was the kind of stupid gallantry that people like Willy couldn't understand. Right now, Willy wasn't going to try and figure out the Outrider's motives; all he knew was the slaves were his tickets out of a sudden and painful death at the hands of Bonner and the Lashmen.

Willy squirmed across the hot asphalt towards the little hut that most of the slaves were huddled in. Willy hoped with all his soul that no one noticed him as he made his way slowly towards the broken-down shack.

He needn't have worried. A number of the Devils had recovered from the shock of the sudden attack and were doing their best to drive off their vicious attackers. Willy figured that was what made him smart and the others dumb. They were busy fighting and he was busy escaping. The Lashmen were still buzzing around the drive in like angry hornets. They moved too fast for most of the Devils to get a line on them and the little men were expert fighters from the saddle. Rarely did a shot miss.

Floyd was having fun, running a Devil ragged all over the broken paving. Instead of cutting the big man down with a single well-placed shot, he chased him, staying on the Devil's tail, chasing the hard guy all over the place. He circled and buzzed and rushed like a sheep dog corralling a wandering animal. The Devil was panting from the exertion and, instead of standing his ground and fighting he kept running—which was just what Floyd wanted. The midget leader reached behind him and yanked a yard-long machete from his saddlebag which he waved over his head, screaming:

"Take a look, you big fuck! Take a look!"

The Devil tossed a quick look over his shoulder and saw what he must have thought was a vision from Hell. A tiny man with a scraggly beard mounted on a weird machine, his green eyes glowing, his voice raised in an unnatural screech waving a few feet of sharp metal that he seemed to be very anxious to drive deep into the Devil's body. In the second that the Devil glanced over his shoulder he ran full tilt into one of the metal poles that were dotted around the park. He cracked his head painfully on the heavy pipe and mashed his balls against the unforgiving steel. He slumped to the ground and was just conscious enough to register that the midget was upon him.

As the scooter roared by him the little man reared in his seat and swept the shining blade down with sickening force. The blade slit the Devil's skull, opening it wide to the bright morning.

An incoherent scream of joy and rage broke from Floyd's lips. He was especially delighted because the Devil he had just killed must have been six six if he was an inch.

Willy kicked in the door of the hut that sheltered the slaves, took a step into the room, and got cracked on the head by a chair.

The men and women of Almost Normal were not used to being slaves and didn't know that they were supposed to cower in terror when one of their captors chose to come near them. Amos, the slave that had belted Willy wasn't going to sit there and get murdered by some tough guy—at least, he wasn't going to get killed without a fight.

"Fuck," screamed Willy from the ground where he lay. Amos was about to pounce on him and start beating him with his powerful fists but courage was no match for lead. The revolver in Willy's hand spoke loud and Amos' strong face opened up, a bloody mass of bone and brain. He dropped.

Willy was on his feet in a second. "Okay," he screamed brandishing the pistol, keeping the unarmed men back. "We're leaving . . ."

Willy left the hut surrounded by a few of the slave women. He walked in the center of them, his ancient Colt held against the temple of one of them. Bonner was too sentimental to chance a shot at him.

"Everybody keep close to me," he hissed at the women. "We are headed for that bike over there." He gestured towards the big 1200 that was parked a distance away. He planned to get right next to it, gun it to life, and get the hell out of there. He chanced a shot in the back as he fled but he figured it was worth it. If he was on his powerful bike he might hightail it out of there. To stay was to die.

The firefight crackled around him. He and his hostages inched their way towards the bike.

Bonner saw them. Willy saw Bonner. "Stay back, man," screamed Willy, "stay back."

Bonner stood tall. Willy was almost completely covered by the bodies of the slaves. A tiny sliver of his head showed from behind the long hair of the women who quivered under the press of the gun to her temple.

Bonner saw the slaves. He saw Willy—he saw enough of Willy to chance a shot. Bonner didn't think. He was caught in the whirling wind of fury that turned him from an ordinary man with ordinary powers into that most feared of all men: the man with a mission, the man with righteousness on his side. He raised his Hi Standard and instinct did the rest. Bonner's eyes closed on the few inches of Willy's head that he could see. In that second there was nothing else on earth, no other target for the Outrider's gun.

It all happened so fast that Willy didn't register that Bonner had fired at him until he was sitting on the ground looking at his ear which had been torn from his head by the steel-jacketed slug that winged him. Blood as forceful as a fountain spurted from the side of his head and drenched the tarmac.

Like the opening of a flower, the female slaves had fallen away from him and he was sitting on the ground unprotected, his Colt in his hand. He looked up, exposing his dirty neck. The Hi Standard barked again and tore his throat out.

The Mean Brothers had seen the whole thing. They exchanged glances. That, they said, was shooting.

Bobby too, had seen the Outrider cut down Willy and his heart swelled with admiration and pride. But he had seen something else: the woman that had shielded Willy was his mother. She was gray and thin and so scared that she hadn't even registered that her saviour had been her old friend Bonner.

But Bobby had seen her and he decided he was going to finish the job that Bonner had started. He squirmed from the Mean Brother's grasp and dashed for a gun that lay a few yards from the sheltering lee of Bonner's war wagon. The Mean Brother made a quick grasp for the running kid but the shirt tail of the boy just eluded his grasp. The Mean set off after him.

Two midgets had cornered a Devil and were methodically kicking him to death. The big Devil rocked and roared trying to crawl away from the metal-toed boots that the little men slammed into the Devil's flanks. A rib cracked, then another and suddenly the Devil tasted blood in his mouth. One of his sharpened, split ribs had gouged itself deep into the soft sac of his lung. He was going to drown in his own blood. He stared up at his tormentors and thought he was dreaming when he saw one of the little guy's head explode.

A motorized figure rushed by Bonner. The Steyr in his hands chattered of its own accord and sliced the back of the rider to ribbons. The bike skidded off and wrapped itself around one of the poles. The rider fell heavily at Bonner's booted feet. Bonner raised a steel heel and smashed the plastic face mask of his most recent victim. Tom, disfigured dead features stared back at him. The creature spread before him had a face of unparalled hideousness. His lips were a tattered reddish line of flesh; his cheeks were a mangled mass of scars and scabs.

Bonner kicked the helmet off. The thing had no hair, just a crazy patchwork of lesions and sores. Bonner knew instantly what it was: Radlep.

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