Swayne got back to Chicago just after midnight. During the course of his long, hard ride he had done some thinking. By the time he pulled up onto Lake Shore, he figured he had the answer to the extraordinary martial activity he had witnessed on the road that day. It was not information he planned to keep to himself.

People thought that there was no rule of law in Chicago. They were right. They also thought that there was no hierarchy, no careful delineation of status, that men were men and equal in the eyes of each other's guns in the Open City. They were wrong. A few men. Beck, Dorca, The Armorer, were held to be superior in brains and courage to others. Naturally, men looked to them as leaders. Those men looked to Bonner. Swayne headed for Bonner's place. He would know what to do.

Swayne mounted the stairs leading to Bonner's lair with a certain amount of fear. A lot of men— foolish men—had lost their lives on those old wooden steps trying to catch the Outrider unawares.

"Hey Bonner, man," shouted Swayne into the darkness, as he stood at the bottom of the staircase. "It's me, Swayne. I hang out at Dorca's. I'm a rider. I carry a pump-shot gun and a pistol and I'm comin' up. I ain't looking for trouble. I just gotta talk to you. Okay?"

The only answer was the creak of the door at the top of the stairs being opened a crack. Swayne didn't see, but he could sense, the barrel of the gun that had filled the opening. He wondered if the rumors he had heard about the Man being able to see in the dark were true.

Swayne put one foot on the bottom step. "Okay? I gotta talk to you. It's real important."

He advanced a step or two. If he knew one thing about Bonner he knew that he wouldn't shoot down a man who hadn't done him any harm. Swayne had no intention of giving the man any trouble, so there was no problem, right?

At the top of the stairs, he stopped again. "Okay. I'm at the top of the stairs. Can I come in?"

The door swung open and the Outrider stood there, two barrels of a shotgun pointed at Swayne's chest.

"How you doing, Swayne?" said Bonner. "You alone?"

"Yep," said Swayne. "You ain't gonna get any

shit from me, Bonner."

"Come in," said Bonner, "I'll give you a drink."

"Much obliged," said Swayne.

"It's okay," said Bonner to someone in the room. Swayne saw the girl put down a mean-looking pump-shot gun. She gave a quick, contemptuous look at Swayne and then headed into a room beyond the living room.

"Man can't be too careful," said Bonner with a smile. The truth of it was he sort of liked Swayne. He was more or less honest, good with a gun; he could be funny sometimes. He hit the bottle way too hard, but then so did most everybody else.

Swayne sipped the good pre-Bomb brandy that Bonner had found in the Hotstates.

"Now that is drinking!" he said appreciatively.

"Where didja find it?"

Bonner smiled.

"I know. Forget 1 said it," laughed Swayne. "Nobody tells nobody nothin'. 'Cept ..."

"Except?"

"Except, I'm gonna tell you something," said Swayne. "In fact, 1 gotta tell you something."

"What might that be?" "I think that Chi-town is about to get sliced.

But good."

"No one's ever tried," said Bonner. "That's why they're trying now, I reckon."

"Who is 'they'?"

"Carey, Berger, Leather."

Bonner got very interested, very quickly. "What makes you so sure?"

"Well, Bonner, I'll tell you . . ." In as few words as possible, Swayne told Bonner what he had seen that day. He didn't have to indulge in flight-of-fancy talk to make the Outrider know that he was telling the truth. Swayne was not a man of great imagination. His flat rendition of the events was proof that he was telling the truth.

"Leatherman heading west, Carey headed east, Berger making for the north. All of them with more men than even you killed. What does it sound like to you, Bonnerman?"

"Sounds like things are gonna get hot around here." It made sense. He was even prepared to bet that Lucky's mysterious disappearance and the 'lep sent to kill Bonner had something to do with it.

"So what should we do?" asked Swayne.

"We're going to have to defend ourselves," said Bonner. He stood up and grabbed his shotgun.

"Let's go," he said.

For one terrible moment, Swayne thought that Bonner was suggesting that the two of them go out and battle the combined forces of Berger, Carey, and Leatherman.

"Where to?" he asked nervously.

"Dorca's," said Bonner.

"Good idea," said Swayne. He was always ready for a drink.

Bonner pushed open the doors of Dorca's and saw that virtually everyone he wanted to be there, was there. Beck was sitting at the bar, his bad leg stretched out over a couple of barstools. Seth sat with him. In the comer sat Dorca eating some pure maple syrup that Seth had found on his run to the north. Starling, Junior sat next to him. At a table was Crazy Nick Blastoid with a couple of his very mean, violent riders. The rest of the room was filled with most of the other riders and gangsters that made Chicago what it was today.

The Mean Brothers came over to Bonner as he entered. "How's things, Meanies?" said Bonner.

"Care to do some fighting?" The Mean Brothers grinned. They were always ready for that.

"Hey Bonner," shouted Dorca, "can Amie get you something?"

"Not right now, Dork, I want to talk to the men here."

"All of them?"

"That's right."

Dorca slammed his leg of a pool table on the bar. "Yo," he bellowed, "Bonner's got something to say! Listen up!"

Conversation died down. All eyes turned to Bonner. "It's like this," said Bonner. "Swayne here saw something pretty weird on the road. Tell 'em about it, Swayne."

Swayne was unaccustomed to public speaking, so he hemmed and hawed his way through a short speech about the terrors he had seen on the road that day.

"Meaning what exactly?" asked someone.

"Meaning," said Bonner, "that it looks like there's been some kind of alliance between the states to wipe out Chicago once and for all. Now, we can do one of two things. We can run or we can fight."

All eyes were fixed on Bonner.

"What's it gonna be?" he said.

"Run?" suggested someone.

"Sure, Donny, you can run," said Bonner, "but where you gonna run to?"

"Dunno," said Donny.

"I say fuck 'em," said Crazy Nick Blastoid.

"Yeah," said Beck, "this is our town. They come here then they gotta expect to get themselves fucked up. This is where we live, man. There's nothing that says they got a right to come here and fuck with us. I mean, those three fucks, they own the whole fucking continent. Am I right?"

There was a low rumble of assent from the men in the room. No one seemed to remember that the riders from the Open City made their living raiding deep into the lands of the men who were coming to kill them.

"Still ..." said someone, "you know, it kinda worries me. Hell, I ain't saying that we can't take Stormers or Snowmen or even 'leps, you know. But shit, all of them at once. Maybe it's better we clear outta town and then see what happens." To this there was a murmuring of assent also. "Run now," said Bonner, "and you'll be running for the rest of your lives."

"If we don't beat it the shit out of here now," put in a raider called Byrd, "we won't have a rest of our lives."

"That's a possibility ..." said Bonner. " 'Course," said Dorca, "if you run now and we win, we ain't gonna let you come back. No way. We fight for this town, we plan to keep it. Know what I'm saying? Don't think you can cut south or north and then come back when things are cooled off. You go, then you stay gone. Don't come back, hear?"

"Yeah," said someone, "that's fair." "I say fight," said Beck. "This is our big chance to kill 'em all and we don't have to ride all over the Big C to do it. You might say they all done us a favor."

"That's about right," said Seth. There were still a few riders who questioned the sanity of taking on the combined forces of the three states but they saw that Bonner had called it right: if they ran, where would they go?

"Gonna need more men," said Dorca. "We'll round up every rider, every whore, every streetworker in Chi," said Bonner. "How many is that?" asked someone.

"Who knows," said Beck.

"Still ain't enough, no matter how many it is," allowed Dorca.

"We'll send riders out to the Habs, to Bullets for Jesus. They'll help," said Seth.

"Can you think of anybody else?" said Nick Blastoid.

"How about the Hungries," said Bonner. A silence came over the room. Men shifted uncomfortably. The Hungry Men were savages with some rather peculiar habits. They were so strange and so mean that not even the citizens of Chicago felt real comfortable with them around.

"Jeez, Bonner," said Beck, rubbing the stubble on his chin, "I don't know if we want the Hungries around." "They're tough," said Bonner. "They're fucking animals," said someone. "So are the 'leps," said Bonner simply. "Man's got a point," said a rider called Cory. "Maybe we oughta use them," said Blastoid. "Fine," said Dorca, "but who's gonna ask them?" "I will," said Bonner.

There was a general sigh of relief around the room. Let Bonner take the risk. The rest of the men were happy to stay there and await the coming hordes.

They quickly decided that Bonner would go after the Hungry Men, a rider called Roger would head west for the Bible-thumping band of road defenders called Bullets for Jesus, and that Seth would head north looking for the French Canadian riflemen known as the Habs.

"Someone look around for the Lash of the Little People," said Bonner.

"Will do," said Seth.

The rest of the riders fell to the task of defending the Open City.

In the few minutes that it took for Bonner to ready his machine and head out of town, preparations were already underway. There were more people in the cracked streets than Bonner had ever seen before. There were knots of streetworkers, not quite able to believe that the arrogant, strutting, heavily armed riders who usually treated them like so much trash in the streets, were now offering them a raise in status. They were actually suggesting that they fight alongside men like Bonner and Beck as equals. No streetworker ever thought he would live to see that day dawn.

A very mean-looking collection of whores had gathered outside Dorca's and had put themselves under the charge of a formidably sized madam usually called Killer Kate. Kate wielded a lot of authority with the girls. All in all, Kate and her squad looked like they would be doing a lot of damage.

Bonner cruised to a stop in front of Clara, the leader of an all-female gang, who was appraising the band of whores with the eye of an expert.

"What do you think, Clara?"

"Future sisters," she said.

Bonner hit the lake and stamped on the accelerator. He had only a sketchy idea of where the Hungries were, and a less-than-clear idea of the whereabouts of Leather's army. He'd have to bypass them and then turn his attention to finding the Hungry Men.

He shot a quick glance over his shoulder at the receding, broken skyline of Chicago. It was going to be a tough nut to crack.

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