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rider pointed at a curved mirror high in a corner. In the reflection, his dark goggles looked right at Raven.
    Raven dropped her two cups full of coffee and ran the only way she could, toward the back of the store. They opened fire on her, and white plasma consumed the shelf beside her, melting the cans of ravioli and beans. A box of Pop Secret packets exploded, hurling smoking black corn across the aisle.
    Another ball of glowing plasma melted the glass doors of the beverage cooler at the back of the store. Hundreds of bottles and cans exploded, ejecting a superheated steam cloud of Fanta and Budweiser. The steam scalded her face and hands but provided some cover as Raven ran through a door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY.
    She found herself in a storage room piled with cardboard boxes. A dusty Slush Puppy machine occupied one corner, with a plastic cartoon dog presiding over a row of empty cylinders and nozzles.
    She wedged the Slush Puppy machine between the doorknob and the wall, pinning the EMPLOYEES ONLY door shut. She ran out the back door under the glowing EXIT sign, emerging onto the small concrete pad of the convenience store's loading dock. She'd finally made it outside.
    She raced across the parking lot, where Jebbie, to his credit, was idling near the exit, ready for a quick escape. She glanced through the glass wall of the store.
    Inside, the clerk raised a double-barreled shotgun and fired it at the first of the riders. He staggered back, grimacing and brushing at his chest. The other rider shot back with a plasma rifle, incinerating the clerk and the entire counter. A nearby rack of fried fruit pies boiled and burst through their cellophane wrappers.
    Raven fired a round of plasma at the two armored bikes parked outside the store. The plasma spread out to engulf them, but she didn't have time to check whether she'd done any real damage.
    She climbed up into the truck and slammed the door. "Let's go!"
    "I don't see no coffee. I said 'large coffee,' not 'no coffee.'" Jebbie scratched his stubbly face. His eyes were sagging, with heavy dark spots underneath. "Don't see my Moon Pies, neither."
    "The attackers are here. We don't have time!"
    "Them fellers on them freaky bikes?" Jebbie asked. He checked his side mirror as he accelerated out of the parking lot. "Helen's damnation, they done set the Flying J afire!"
    The truck barreled down the on-ramp, and he wasted no time crossing to the far left lane. The interstate was nearly deserted under the late-night sky.
    "You remember who they are yet?" he asked. "Could be handy to know who's trying to kill you, it seems like."
    "Providence. They're called Providence Security."
    "Providence, huh?"
    In her side mirror, Raven saw the first bike rocketing towards her. It was already alongside Jebbie's trailer, just beneath the cottony pink sheep of the Puflex logo. Puflex , it said, For When It's One of Those Days.
    "Step on the gas," she said.
    "I already got the hammer all the way down the hole, darling."
    Raven raised her plasma rifle and leaned out the window, facing backwards. She didn't have a moment to aim before the armored rider fired a round from the small cannon mounted above his two front tires.
    She ducked inside as the round screeched past, punching a rippling wormhole in the air. The deafening shockwave smashed her side mirrors, the front and rear windshield, and every window in the truck cab. The truck swerved to the left and the tires dropped from the pavement to the grassy median. Mud sprayed up over the hood and windshield.
    The round continued onward and upward, finally smashing into a billboard advertising a Guns-and-Ammo-Stravaganza at the Civic Center! Bring your kids! with an image of a happy blond boy gripping an M-16. The billboard crumpled like a tissue, with a screaming, screeching-metal sound, then snapped free of its support post and tumbled forty feet to the ground.
    "What in the name of James Earl--?" Jebbie began. All over his face, tiny cuts wept