Lucky, the best mechanic on the continent, was a real strange-looking, tiny man, with a Beck-sized temper. He was short and slight with blonde hair so pale it seemed almost white, and washed-out blue eyes that almost glowed when he got mad, which was often; he also got mad at everybody.

It was no secret that he preferred machinery to people. In fact, he hated people, mostly because of the terrible things they did, not to each other—the more people killed people, the happier Lucky was— but because of the things they did to the engines of the machines that faithfully carried them around on their stupid marauding missions.

Lucky lived in the cavernous, cold, dirty old bus station right in downtown Chi. He shared it with a few dead and seized buses. Lucky liked the buses.

They were like monuments of the old days when men knew how to build engines and keep them running smooth.

Littered around the rest of the bus station were hundreds of broken chairs, rusted lockers, hundreds of suitcases that had long since been pillaged of anything that could be considered even remotely valuable. The mildewed suitcases lay strewn around every level of the huge building like tiny rotting coffins. Lucky had stopped seeing them years ago.

On one of the wide aprons on which the buses used to park and receive passengers were parked eight or nine automobiles, most of them Lucky's creations, and maybe twenty or thirty bikes. All of these vehicles were Lucky's children. He doted on them, coddled them, talked to them—then turned them over to their owners who screwed them six ways from Sunday and then returned them to Lucky to fix.

Lucky only took on a few clients. Men he almost liked: Bonner, Beck, a couple of others. Why should he slave for any old rider?

Lucky's leg had been smashed by a big old engine that fell off a crane about ten years back so his leg stuck out in a strange way from his body. He had a cramped, crabbed walk, he couldn't move fast at all, and when it got damp and snowy, his twisted bones hurt. Strapped to his thin thigh was an old Colt Peacemaker that he didn't use too well.

He was sitting in the pool of light cast by a hum-cane lamp fiddling with the points of the car that Clara, the leader of the Sisters, had him build. It had a big old Pontiac engine and not a hell of a lot else. It was a typical Lucky special: an engine, a place for the driver to sit, a place to stow his haul. A heavy chassis, four fairly good tires, and axles that could take it. They were always built out of pieces of other machines. Nothing fit but everything worked.

He examined a spark plug: AC/DELCO could just be seen through the yellow patina on the porcelain on the lower half of the device. Lucky held it close to his face, marveling at it.

"Folks today . . ." he muttered. Folks today, he thought, they could fight, they could kill, they could ride the roads like wild men . . . "But how many of them can make a spark plug? Nobody. Not even Bonner and he's the smartest of the bunch."

He cleaned the plug and was about to screw it back into the head of the black engine when he heard a voice.

"Lucky." It was a soft, rasping voice.

Lucky moved as fast as his twisted little body would allow. He flung the spark plug at the hurricane lamp, breaking the glass and extinguishing the flame. At the same moment he hurled himself into the darkness, headed in the general direction of away from where he heard the voice.

His permanently black fingernails scrabbled at the Colt on his hip. He pulled it out and waved it around.

"Lucky," said the voice again softly.

Lucky blazed away, a couple of the slugs singing as they skimmed off the concrete walls. Lucky cursed to himself. Someone had snuck in here and Lucky had no intention of finding out who it was. All he knew right then was that he didn't know the voice and if he didn't know it, he wanted to find out who owned it—but only once the owner was dead.

'Course, could be anybody. People knew that he had a lot of valuable stuff in his lair. Auto parts, some precious tires, gasoline even.

"C'mon, Lucky."

Lucky fired again, twice. He ran his fingers over the chamber of the Colt and found he was down to a last bullet. He had some more but they were somewhere on his worktable. But that was on the far side of the room. Close to The Voice. He was going to have to hang on to his last bullet and wait until he had a clear shot.

He sat in silence for a second and then a thought hit him. The fucker hadn't fired back. He must know where he was. What the hell was going on?

There was a crash as a pile of sheet metal fell over. In spite of himself, Lucky fired at the sound.

A sound more terrifying than a sharp return of fire loomed out of the darkness. It was laughter.

"Well, I think that's about it, don't you. Lucky?"

Lucky listened close to the voice. No, he had never heard it before.

"I figure you just about out, right?"

Lucky sat very quiet. Then he heard his visitor start walking towards him. When he sensed that his attacker was close enough he hurled the gun at where he thought he was. The gun clattered away in the darkness.

An overpowering smell of rotting flesh filled Lucky's nostrils. Then a large hand came out of the gloom to grab him by the shirt front. The hideous smell was enough to force the little man to react without thinking. His hand reached for any weapon in the darkness. It closed over the cool shaft of an eighteen-inch pipe wrench. Blind and scared. Lucky swung.

The heavy head of the wrench hit man. There was the sound of a bone cracked and the angry yelp of a the stalker. Lucky could tell that the unexpected blow had thrown the man back. He didn't hang around to find out how badly he had hurt him. Lucky jumped to his feet and started scuttling away.

"You little mutherfucker! I'm gonna . . ."

Lucky dashed for the old rusty escalator that led down to the street. At the top of the steel staircase Lucky's luck ran out.

Powerful hands snatched at his ankles and tripped him. He fell headlong into the narrow gully of the escalator stairs. The sharp, rusty edge of one of the steps caught him on the cheek and opened a wide cut across his cheekbone.

The 'lep jumped onto Lucky's frail body and grabbed a handful of Lucky's thin hair and cracked his skull against the metal sides of the escalator, once, twice.

For Lucky the black night suddenly got blacker.

Whitebait knew all about Bonner. He knew that he wasn't going to be an easy bring down and that there was no sense in busting into the Outrider's lair blasting away and hoping you'd hit something. Too many men had died that way. No, to get Bonner you were going to have to be a little more clever than the other hard guys who had gone gunning for the man in the past.

Whitebait and Billy had entered the open city without being observed. No one was quite as conspicuous in Chicago than a couple of Radleps. The first rider who saw them would start shooting—nothing the two 'leps couldn't handle, but awkward nonetheless. They came in, on foot, by night. They planned to leave that way.

Whitebait saw Bonner once, that was all he needed. The Outrider was driving into the city with three huge men in the back of his powerful automobile. One of them cursed and shouted every time the big car bounced over a pile of rubble in the street. He had his leg stuck straight out in front of him, resting on the thin firewall above the cockpit where Bonner sat.

Later that night. Whitebait saw the car again. It was parked in a dark little street in front of a rundown four-story house. The mean 'lep hid himself and looked up. A faint light glimmered behind one cracked window. He had found his quarry's lair.

He hid in his comer, figuring out what to do next.

He decided that the first thing he was going to do was get rid of the streetworker who was creeping up behind him—creeping so stealthily that the little scummy mugger thought that the tall man crouching behind a rusty pile of trash cans probably couldn't hear him.

They called him Syph, because he always was picking up a dose from the cheapest of the whores who worked the streets. He hadn't eaten in a couple of days, he was down to a single bullet for the crude, homemade handgun he carried. Unless he was mistaken, his prey had a gleaming M-16 slung over his back. No telling what that was worth. He snuck within a few yards of Whitebait.

Syph had no idea how much danger he was in. The telltale smell of the 'lep, the warning signal that told of more peril than most people wanted to find themselves involved with, didn't reach Syph. Syph carried an overpowering smell himself, great enough to mask the nastiest smell from any 'lep.

Syph eased forward another yard, then two. He held the gun an inch from Whitebait's spine. "Okay, Mister, turn around real slow." Whitebait froze, as if Syph's words were the first news he had had of anyone being behind him.

Very slowly, just like the man said. Whitebait turned around. There was just enough light from a half moon to illuminate Whitebait's tom-up features and let Syph know just how much trouble he was in.

Whitebait smiled. For a second or two Syph stared, unable to move, to act, to think. His wide eyes took in Whitebait's horrible features, the nose half eaten away, the bug eyes set deep in their sockets, the delicate flesh around them torn and criss-crossed with bleeding lesions, trickling thin gore down his hashed-up cheeks. His face looked like a skull of a long, rotting corpse.

There was a sound like rushing water as Syph's bladder just let go.

"A 'lep!" whispered Syph, unaware of his dripping pants.

"That's right, sonny," croaked Whitebait.

The moon glittered for a second on the yard-long blade that Whitebait carried hooked to his belt.

Syph watched more knife than he had ever seen before sink into his churning guts. It was a quick thrust, but deep, and he felt every inch of it. On his way to the ground, Syph saw the blade whip around, streaming with his own blood. He lost sight of it as it disappeared under his chin. There was enough force behind the second blow to slice through most of the neck, leaving Syph's head attached to his body by his spine alone. He sprawled in the gutter. His corpse would lie there for months.

Whitebait had decided what to do.

He stalked passed Bonner's doorway, moving quickly and quietly. He chose a building a few doors down. Bonner's was one of half a dozen row houses on the block. They were joined together, each roof attached to the one next door.

Whitebait pulled out his blade again before entering the blown-out doorway of a house three down the street from Bonner's. If there was someone inside they were about to die, but they had to die as quietly as Syph. Whitebait had no intention of forewarning Bonner.

The 'lep made his way through the dark house, climbing the broken stairs two at a time. He was alone except for the rats who scurried ahead of him, fat and scared, parting like a mass of tall grass in a wind. At one point the rotten boards of a step broke under Whitebait's weight and he plunged down to the knee in a swamp of damp wood and plaster.

The rats, thinking that the interloper was trapped, swarmed back at him. The machete chopped up a half dozen, while Whitebait's other hand grabbed a fat body and squeezed the sleek rodent until its eyes popped and a dozen tiny ribs snapped. He tossed the broken body at the others.

The rats, realizing that the man was very much alive, dragged the dead bodies of their fellows back into the shadows to devour them in peace and to await another chance at Whitebait's pungent flesh.

He pulled his leg out of the hole and pressed on. At the very top of the house he found what he was looking for: an ancient, rusted iron ladder that ran up to a hatch in the roof. The planks of the trap door were so rotten that they parted like wet paper when Whitebait put his shoulder to them. He pushed his way through them into the clear night.

It was an easy matter to creep across the rooftops to Bonner's. Whitebait was assuming that the Outrider would always expect attack to come from below, not from above. Ahead of him was the big skylight that looked down directly into Bonner's apartment. Whitebait worked his way to the edge and peered in. In the split second he allowed himself to look in, he saw all he needed. A bed. A figure in it. A faint light from a dying fire in the grate.

He carefully unslung the automatic weapon from his back. A short burst should be enough to tear the sleeping body into a couple of bloody chunks. Whitebait lifted one foot, spreading his legs wide to steady himself against the M-16's healthy kick. As he put down his boot-shod foot he stepped on a fearless rat that was curiously sniffing the delightful smell that issued from under the 'lep's pants. The rat squealed and Whitebait jumped. A split second later he was crashing through the glass.

"Holy fuckin' shit!" bellowed Beck, jumping up from the bed.

As soon as the glass had cracked, Bonner had sprung out of the bed in the other room. Bonner and the girl had given up the larger bed to their injured friend. Bonner was at the door in a second.

Whitebait sprawled in a pool of glass. His eyes darted from Beck on the bed to Bonner at the door.

"A 'lep," screamed Beck. "A fuckin' 'lep!"

Whitebait jumped to his feet only to be felled by a sideways swipe of Beck's broken leg. The girl had bandaged it into a splint made out of two long lengths of pipe, one on either side of the broken limb. This weight plus the amazing strength that Beck could put behind the blow, cracked a couple of Whitebait's ribs and sent him flying. Most any other man would have said "The hell with it" and given up.

Not a 'lep.

His fingers closed over a shard of glass, slicing his hand to the bone. He flung the murderously sharp weapon at Beck. The huge man threw up an arm to defend himself and took a nasty gash on the fleshy edge of his forearm.

Seeing Beck momentarily occupied. Whitebait thought he might have a chance and turned on Bon-ner. What he had not seen was the glass fragment cross paths with the the three knives that Bonner brought with him out of the bedroom.

The blades, sure and true, sank into Whitebait's boney chest in a neat line, beginning just below the neck and ending deep in the Radlep's breastbone.

Whitebait spat a gout of blood from his torn mouth. The three blades had made a hash of his chest, tearing up veins and muscle. A weakened hand reached for the revolver tucked into his belt.

But before he could draw it out. Beck had stumped across the room and swatted him again with his steel-encased leg. Something very important cracked in Whitebait's body. It was his skull. Beck pivoted on his good leg and swung his "bad" leg again. The 'lep took another debilitating blow to the head. An ear was crushed against weakening bone. A couple of more blows and his hard head was mush.

Back staggered back to the bed, dripping blood onto the sheets.

He wiped his brow. "Damn! These fucks take a lot of killing. Shit."

The girl was tearing up a sheet and binding up his arm.

"Fuck, I been knocked around these days," said Beck.

Bonner hadn't heard him. He was staring at the 'lep.

"Whatsamatta, Bonner?"

"What's he doing here?" said Bonner, indicating the broken body.

"Beats the crap outta me," said Beck. He looked longingly down the front of the light shift the girl slept in. Real nice tits, he thought.

The girl looked over at Bonner. She knew the look on his face. Please, she wanted to say, please, whatever it is, please let it go. You don't have to find out...

But it was plain as day why there was a dead 'lep in his apartment. Leather had sent him. It was no secret that Leather wanted Bonner dead, but there had been no attempts on his life for a long time. So why now? And Leather had never sent a 'lep before. Leatherman was up to something and Bonner decided he was going to find out what it was.

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