'W-W-Winterport, the sign s-said. Oh, I can't! I can't wait for them to do it! can't!'
'Okay,' he said.
She blinked slowly, giving an infinitesimal shake of her head as if to clear it. 'What?'
'Stop. Get out.'
'But they'll kill y-'
'Yes. But there won't be any blood. You won't see any blood. They've got enough firepower out there to vaporize me and the car, too.'
'You're lying. You'll kill me.'
The gun had been dangling between his knees. He dropped it on the floor. It clunked harmlessly on the rubber floor-mat.
'I want some pot,' she said mindlessly. 'Oh God, I want to be high. Why didn't you wait for the next car? Jesus! Jesus!'
Richards began to laugh. He laughed in wheezy, shallow-chested heaves that still hurt his side. He closed his eyes and laughed until tears oozed out from under the lids.
'It's cold in here with that broken windshield,' she said irrelevantly. 'Turn on the heater. '
Her face was a pale blotch in the shadows of late afternoon.
Minus 037 and COUNTING
'We're in Derry,' she said.
The streets were black with people. They hung over roof ledges and sat on balconies and verandahs from which the summer furniture had been removed. They ate sandwiches and fried chicken from greasy buckets.
'Are there jetport signs?'
'Yes. I'm following them. They'll just close the gates.'
'I'll just threaten to kill you again if they do.'
'Are you going to skyjack a plane?'
'I'm going to try.'
'You can't.'
'I'm sure you're right.'
They made a right, then a left. Bullhorns exhorted the crowd monotonously to move back, to disperse.
'Is she really your wife? That woman in the pictures?'
'Yes. Her name is Sheila. Our baby, Cathy, is a year and a half old. She had the flu. Maybe she's better now. That's how I got into this.'
A helicopter buzzed them, leaving a huge arachnid shadow on the road ahead. A grossly amplified voice exhorted Richards to let the woman go. When it was gone and they could speak again, she said:
'Your wife looks like a little tramp. She could take better care of herself.'
'The picture was doctored,' Richards said tonelessly.
'They would do that?'
'They would do that. '
'The jetport. We're coming up to it.'
'Are the gates shut?'
'I can't see . . . wait . . . open but blocked. A tank. It's pointing its shooter at us.'
'Drive to within thirty feet of it and stop.'
The car crawled slowly down the four-lane access road between the parked police cars, between the ceaseless scream and babble of the crowd. A sign loomed over them: VOIGT AIRFIELD. The woman could see an electrified cyclone fence which crossed a marshy, worthless sort of field on both sides of the road. Straight ahead was a combination information booth and check-in point on a traffic island. Beyond that was the main gate, blocked by an A-62 tank capable of firing one-quarter-megaton shells from its cannon. Farther on, a confusion of roads and parking lots, all tending toward the complex jet-line terminals that blocked the runways from view. A huge control tower bulked over everything like an H. G. Wells Martian, the westering sun glaring off its polarized bank of windows and turning them to fire. Employees and passengers alike had crowded down to the nearest parking lot where they were being held back by more police. There was a pulsing, heavy whine in their ears, and Amelia saw a steel-gray Lockheed/G-A Superbird rising into a flat, powerful climb from one of the runways behind the main buildings.
'RICHARDS!'
She jumped and looked at him, frightened. He waved his hand at her nonchalantly. It's all right, Ma. I'm only dying.
'YOU'RE NOT ALLOWED INSIDE,' the huge amplified voice admonished him. 'LET THE WOMAN GO. STEP OUT.'
'What now?' she asked. 'It's a stand-off. They'll just wait until-'
