"You done?" the colonel said. "You showed me what you wanted to show me? Den toin dis truck around, take me back to your picnic, and I'll take the other truck back to Boston."

I slowed the truck, just a little. "Our truck? Colonel, you're going to drive our truck to Boston?" The more I thought about it, the more ridiculous it sounded, a colonel dispatched alone to retrieve a truckload of explosives, and he would leave behind his own SUV . . .

Amber screamed, and I felt a cold metal circle pressed against my temple.

"You're right, that's not what I'm going to do," he said, and his Bronx accent had given way to a Midwestern lilt. "I'm going to drive it to Virginia, and give it to some God-fearing people with morals. Now turn this truck around, or I'll spray your heathen brains out the window."

"Okay, okay," I said, as the rush of adrenalin made my hands shake on the steering wheel. I'd signed up during secession, I'd done my time in the army, but in all honesty I'd served as an attachˇ in Canada, and I'd never had a loaded gun pointed my direction. I let up on the accelerator.

"What do we do, Bram?" Amber asked, sinking down in the back seat.

"You shut the hell up," Flemming said. "You shut up or I put a hole in your head."

I slowed, and started a k-turn, then ran the truck squarely into a stout oak. Flemming's head smacked against the windshield and his gun blew out my window. Amber, swearing a blue streak, was trying to get off of him, having been flung halfway over the seat. I grabbed the gun when I saw Flemming was scrabbling under his shirt, reaching for his unlikely pot belly.

"Jump!" I shouted, though Amber had already hopped out of the truck. Even before I hit the ground, Flemming shouted "Jesus Saves!" Then I was rolling on the pavement while the truck exploded and showered the road with glass.

It was fortunate that it had been an electric vehicle. Amber had barely cleared the door before Flemming blew himself, and if the explosion had touched off a gas tank she probably wouldn't have made it. As it was, we suffered no more than some nasty scrapes. The truck was totaled, though. The battery case had cracked, leaking a gallon of corrosives onto the differential. Stupid design.

Amber and I limped our way along Brown's Trace. With luck, some farmer would come by and give us a lift. Not so many people on the highways since the Reconstruction got going.

"So, do you think he was a spy out of Indiana?" Amber asked, her hands stuck in her torn back pockets and her shoes scuffing along the road.

"Nah," I said. "I think his accent was Michigan."

"So why the fake Bronx?" Amber asked.

I shrugged. "Who'd expect that out of New York City? He was some Fundie who stayed up north and listened to too much Radio Free Jesus. I s'pose that truck would be pretty valuable to someone on the red side of the line. We should be more careful."

"What, and start regulating everything?" Amber asked. "And spy on our own people, and put armed guards on the highway, and all that? No thanks. I'd rather people try to blow me up."

I smiled. Her brush with death hadn't changed her at all.

Amber paused. "Why do people do that?"

"God said to, I guess," I said.

"No that." She pointed. "That is the ugliest house I've seen. And it's all wood, we wouldn't even need the explosives, we could just burn it down. Can't we? Please?"