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Doc shouted: "All out, everybody, for a stretch, and to answer Nature&039;s calls," forcing a rudely jolly note into his hoarseness "Wojtowicz, it looks like we&039;ve finally found the roadblock you deduced"

The saucer students eagerly yet coh air Froht fro sun - the party&039;s scientific consensus was that it was due to volcanic ash already crowding the stratosphere, though the Ramrod had ideas about planetary auras

It was very clear they&039;d been through a lot in the day just ending and that the effects of last night&039;s lost sleep were showing up with a vengeance

The yellow paint of the school bus and the white ena black streaks where they&039;d barely outraced brush fires There was a heavy bandage around Clarence Dodd&039;s right hand, which the Little Man had badly burned holding up a tarpaulin to shield Ray Hanks, Ida and hi flames

Hunter cursed as he al over two spades carelessly left in the aisle after a wearisoravel to level a buckled stretch of Monica Mountainway enough for the two cars to get through He shoved them under the seats with another curse

Several of the wayfarers looked quite damp, and the black flahty rain which had coray waves out of the west, ten reat dark curtain-clouds still obscured the east, though the as clearing spottily

They were al the next to the last ridge before the descent to the Valley, Vandenberg Three, and inland Route 101 leading north froeles toward Santa Barbara and San Francisco

There et patches on the borrowed raincoat Doc had thrown over his shoulders, with the barest suggestion of a military cape, as he led the others forward, Rao just behind him

At this point the Mountainway traversed a half natural, half blasted step in a great slope of solid rock, which froht ran down at an angle of thirty degrees and then, after the step holding the road, continued down at a slightly greater angle for a dozen yards or so and then plunged away precipitously, nothing visible beyond it but the side of another sray rock-slope was patched with lichen, pale green, orange, sed trenches and potholes, so up to panel-truck size

One of the biggest of the latter lay squarely across the road, indenting it deeply A lichen-free area just above showed the spot froed, presumably by one of the quakes

"Wow, I&039;ll say we&039;ve found the roadblock, Doc," Wojtowicz called from behind "She&039;s a bitch!"

Drawn up sideways just in front of the boulder was a top-down, four-passenger Corvette Lipstick-red, freshly washed by the rain, it added a saucy touch to the soht, and Doc&039;s cheery "Hello there!" was answered only by echoes

Ida ca: "Mr Brecht, Ray Hanks isn&039;t going to be able to take anytoday We&039;ve propped his shoulders up a bit - it eases him, he says - but he&039;s in continual pain and has a two-degree fever"

Doc rounded the red hood, then all of a sudden stopped dead and reared up and back as if invisible grapples had lifted hiht inches by the shoulders He turned on those behind hiht and swept out an ar, "Stay where you are Don&039;t anybody come any closer" He whipped off his raincoat and drew it across so just beyond the car

With a thin, wavery moan Ida quietly collapsed on the asphaltoid

Then Doc turned to the a tre hand across his forehead, and said in jerky rushes, with difficulty, as if he were fighting down an i woman She didn&039;t die naturally She&039;d been stripped and tortured Remember, way back, the Black Dahlia case? It&039;s like that"

Margo was half doubled over with nausea herself She had just glimpsed, before the pale raincoat covered it, the bloodless mask of a face with cheeks slashed so that theAnn&039;s head to her waist, but her body on tiptoe as she peered ahead, called: "There are two sedans on the other side of the rock I don&039;t see anyone in them"

The Little Man un, Doddsy?" Doc demanded of him

"Why, I can&039;t handle it with this hand," the other retorted "It&039;s all I can do to jot notes in ot mine, Doc," Wojtowicz called He stuht hiainst the asphaltoid As he recovered balance he was holding it for a rim&039;s staff

At the same moment a voice from close by called out very sharply the trite words: "Don&039;t er, anybody, or you&039;ll be shot"

A man had stepped out from behind a boulder just above the road, and two more men from another just below it These two leveled rifles at Wojtowicz, the other sloagged back and forth, only an inch or so either way, the muzzles of two revolvers The head of each of the e eyeholes The iate black felt hat pulled down over the top of his, and he was sliave the ie rather than of real youth

Now he ca down, rather quickly and very sure-footedly His eyes twitched as ceaselessly across the knot of travelers as did the uess about the Black Dahlia," he said rapidly but very clearly, enunciating every ith a finicky precision "She was the o much more pleasantly - and a chance of survival for each of you - if the o of it now" Wojtowicz&039;s hand unclasped, and the gun teetered oddly for a second before starting to fall "And if all theback and a little downhill, so - "

Rock chips spattered fro boulder five feet to the side of the black-hatted, red-, and immediately the crack of a rifle behind theet off a shot froun and shot from the hip at the two masked men with rifles Almost at once they both fired, and Wojtowicz fell

By that tiray pistol out of her jacket and was pointing it at Black Hat and squeezing the trigger He slaainst the boulder with a crunch, his hands thrown out like a man crucified, and his revolvers shot out of his hands to either side The boulder rocked, just a fraction

So fiercely, exultantly

Wojtowicz shot froo had turned the pistol on the and so a boulder, their rifles whirling along separately, until they were a dozen yards beyond the cliffs edge and had dropped out of sight