By tacit agreement--and in a somewhat piecemeal fashion--both sides had withdrawn from an imaginary line a few miles west of Bowie when the sun went down. Without being ordered to, the citizen-soldiers of Melanie's army set up a line of guards facing the paratroopers, but those were, in everyone's opinion, far too beset by fatigue to try a nighttime assault. Melanie had wanted to set down for the night near the front lines, Harry and Miller had pushed for the far back; after some arguing they ended up in an open field behind some large factory. Not long after they'd arrived there, a large group of college students--dressed as most of them seemed to be dressing today, the women nude and the men in camouflage--set up a camp not far from the helicopter. There they built a campfire--it looked like they were using wood from one of the local structures that had been blown apart during the day's fighting by the RPGs or mortars--and settled in for the evening.

From the window of the helicopter, Melanie watched them. "I am," she said, "going to go over and visit with them. You want to join me, Harry?"

He smiled. "They aren't your Deer, Melanie," he reminded her, "in spite of what they look like. But yeah, I'll go with you." They opened the door and jumped down; just a few minutes later they were approaching the group.

A young girl, completely naked, stood up and smiled as they drew near. She looked, Melanie thought, very much like one of her Deer; slender, pretty, athletically toned, small-breasted, long-legged. Her hair was very long and light brown, her eyes hazel. She reminded Melanie in many ways of Nadine, and she was glad Harry was with her and not Dave.

"Hi, welcome," the girl said. "I'm Jamie, Jamie Thompson. You get separated from your group or did it get wiped out? Well, do you need food? We have plenty, you know those Navy guys have been dropping these rations all over the place." She jabbered on, punctuating her conversation with occasionally girlish giggles, not giving Melanie or Harry a chance to say a word. A few of the other girls had noticed them and had moved over closer. Jamie introduced them: Joan, a tiny and almost elfin dark-haired girl, not even close to five feet tall; tall blond Ellie; long-legged, full-breasted, and classically-beautiful brunette Karen; and bespectacled, thin, and serious-looking redhead Alice. "You two," Jamie went on, "really do have the Melanie and Harry look down pat!"

Melanie smiled broadly. "Yes, well--"

"Best I've seen," Jamie went on. "Well? Are you going for first-wave or second-wave tomorrow?"

"First-wave?"

"Your group wasn't doing that? Oh, well. It works really well. I'll tell you about it in a minute, right now Jennie is going to get up there and call for volunteers for the waves and after that I'll tell you all about it." Her manner suddenly changed, she became quite serious. "Don't volunteer until you know," she added.

"Okay," Melanie said with a small smile. She watched as a girl with tied-back auburn hair got up on a box before the fire. "Okay, people, sit down and listen up, we need to decide on first-wave and second-wave for tomorrow!" she cried. All faces turned toward her. "I think," the auburn-haired girl went on, "we should choose second-wave first. We want about thirty. If you don't understand this, don't put up your hand. I'm going to choose by who I notice first, okay? Okay? Okay!"

Around the group, hands started going up--including Jamie's and Joan's. Melanie thought she saw about fifty, which was perhaps a quarter of the entire assembly. Jennie started pointing to various people, men and women; she'd started at her left and would never get to those on her far right before she reached thirty. As each man or woman was pointed to, he or she stood. Both Jamie and Joan were selected, which seemed to neither delight nor upset them; they merely stood. The whole process was then repeated with a request for the "first-wave." Alice raised her hand for this one, was selected, and stood up.

"Okay, now you know who you are and what you're supposed to do," Jennie said. "For all the rest of you, remember what Melanie says: watch, remember, tell the stories. Okay? Okay!"

Melanie looked at them somberly as Alice sat back down and the little ceremony was ended. She was almost sure she understood what "first-wave" meant and what Alice had volunteered for.

And, a few moments later, Jamie confirmed it. "Yeah," she said in response to Melanie's query. "'First-wave' means they lead the charge when we run into a bunch of soldiers."

"Who are," Melanie said, looking at Alice, "very likely to be shot."

"Well, yeah, it's war, right?" She looked a bit exasperated. "What was your group doing? I mean, you have to have a plan! Melanie says, we aren't as good as those soldiers but there's a lot more of us than them. Did you know you look a lot like her? Wish I did... So anyway, anyway, the whole point is that some of us are going to get shot and so on but that's okay as long as we get them, you see? The idea is not to let them kill a bunch of us while we're getting them. To do that you have to plan!" She shook her head. "We didn't have it clear until today. Now we do, though."

"I see," Melanie said. "So second-wave is just the ones who go in after the first wave is down?"

Jamie frowned. "No, no, not that at all. First-wave takes the lead. Everybody comes in after them. Second-wave, well, that's what happens when we get in real real close and the soldiers start using their bayonets." She patted her flat stomach. "Then we break out from the line and run right at the soldiers. The idea is to either let them bayonet you or run onto their bayonets. Once they have it stuck in you they can't use it for a few seconds. Then--depending on how strong you are--you can take out maybe three or four of them before you go down. We've been saving our ammo, see, we haven't been shooting like everybody else."

Melanie, dumbstruck, just stared at the girl for a moment. "Is this a plan," she asked finally, "that you people came up with before today's fighting?"

Jamie shook her head. "No. Today, there was a girl named Melissa--I don't remember her last name--in a group that came in from Florida State. She ran right onto a bayonet like that. She managed to kill ten soldiers before she finally died." She shrugged. "Ten of them for one of us? In this kind of a fight it's worth it. We all know a lot of us are going to die in this fight."

Melissa might well have been, Melanie told herself, the girl with the long black hair I watched--and if so, "ten" was an exaggeration, but understandable under the circumstances. "Jamie," she said, "this plan--this second-wave business--this is not a good idea. Yes, you should rush the guys with the bayonets. Should you run right onto them and deliberately kill yourself? No! What you should do--"

"Melanie," Jamie said stiffly, "wouldn't agree. Haven't you heard her stories about the girls who gave themselves up to the hunters so the troop could survive?"

"Those were situations," Melanie explained patiently, "where the hunters had a clear-cut advantage. They were situations where it was one girl or several. This is not the same. You should come in as a second wave, yes. You should charge the soldiers, get in close, yes. If you get bayoneted, you should try to take out as many soldiers as you can before you go down. You should absolutely not throw yourselves onto the bayonets or wait to be bayoneted. Melissa was lucky in a way. I'm not faulting her courage, far from it, but she was hit in such a way that she didn't go down immediately. It happens. You get hit in another way, an inch difference in where that blade goes in, and you're going to drop your rifle and stand there helpless. That's a waste."

Jamie looked at her curiously. "How do you know so much about it?" she asked challengingly. "Who are you, anyway?"

"Melanie Abbot," she said with a smile. "And this is Harry Littlebird. That's why we have the 'look' so down-pat!"

Jamie's eyes flew wide open. She glanced over at the command helicopter, just visible over a little rise in the landscape. Then she--and Joan, almost at the exact same moment--jumped to their feet and started yelling, announcing to the rest of them that Melanie herself was here among them. For a few minutes she and Harry were mobbed, but at last Jamie escorted her up to the place in front of the fire where Jennie had been speaking before. Knowing that a speech was expected from her, she mounted the box and at first repeated, almost verbatim, what she'd just told Jamie.

"I cannot help," she went on, "but be amazed--and gratified beyond anything I could have imagined--by your courage in creating these plans. You aren't wrong, unless something unexpected happens many of you will die tomorrow in the fighting. But throwing your bodies onto their blades is just suicide. Don't do it. If you are to die, make them kill you, make them work for it. The best possible outcome is for none of you to die; don't make plans that make that outcome impossible." She continued with a little "pep talk," telling them about the Marines joining their cause and how most of the Army was not going to be coming to reinforce the paratroopers--and telling them that she was now confident they would, eventually, have a victory.

"I just want most of you to be alive to see it," she concluded. She then stepped down from the makeshift platform; one of the girls in the front row jumped up and hugged her, then Harry. That started a pattern, and before it was over she was sure she'd hugged every single student in the group. At that point she took her leave and started back toward the helicopter. Jamie and Joan insisted on walking them back.

"Don't forget what I said about second-wave," Melanie admonished as they walked. "I'll make it a full command order if I have to."

Jamie shook her head, the long hair whipping back and forth. "You don't have to, Ms. Abbot. We'll do what you say." She looked wistful for a moment. "For me I just don't think it matters a lot, though. I'd love to see the victory, the march into Washington. But I just feel sure tomorrow's my last day on earth." She touched her belly in the vicinity of her navel, then kneaded it with her fingers. "It's almost like I can already feel a bayonet in there--and maybe somewhere else too, I heard Melissa got bayonetted four times before she died. It's funny. I have no fear at all of being shot. I just know, somehow, that I'm going to die on a bayonet." She gave Melanie a look of wide-eyed innocence. "Don't get me wrong, it's okay. For me, this is a cause well worth dying for. My older sister and two of my friends have already been taken and executed. I've always figured it was just a matter of time for me."

"Feelings like that," Melanie cautioned, "aren't always accurate. Be careful you don't make it a self-fulfilling prophecy." She looked at the girl's face closely. "Jamie, was your sister--or one of your friends--executed on one of those TV shows?" Jamie nodded. "Did you watch it?" She nodded again. "How was she executed?"

Jamie's eyes flicked away, then back. "My sister... Laura... she was on that show 'Slaughterhouse!'... they played a scene where, where, she was, see, she was a soldier and she was captured in a battle... and..."

"And they killed her with a bayonet?"

Jamie shook her head. She would not meet Melanie's gaze. "No. One of those big military knives. Whatever you call them."

Melanie sighed. "Jamie, just because your sister was stabbed to death does not mean you have to have the same thing happen to you!"

"I know... but..." She looked up and frowned. "But I already volunteered for second-wave. I can't back out now."

"No," Melanie sighed, "you can't. And it may happen, you may be killed, and maybe with a bayonet. Like all of us you have to do your part. All I'm saying is, don't force it."

Jamie smiled a little. "I won't. I'll try to survive if I can."

"Good." She turned to Joan. "What about you?"

The elfin girl flashed an infectious smile. "I haven't lost a relative to the executions. I have lost friends. Convicted of crimes they didn't do and I knew damn well they didn't do. So frustrating, y'know? And you can't do a thing about it." She shrugged and made a helpless gesture with her hands. "So, now, well, maybe I can make a difference, y'know? That's why I'm here." She paused. "As to why I volunteered for second-wave--well, somebody has to, y'know? And me, well, I've always been sort of average. I never did anything special. Second-wave, the way we planned it originally, well, that would make me sort of a tragic hero, y'know? A martyr for the cause. I figure, hell, I'm not a great shot with a rifle and I'm not that quick or athletic or anything and I'm probably gonna get myself killed out here anyway. So, second-wave lets me go in a blaze of glory. And do something useful at the same time."

Makes more sense, Melanie told herself. "All I ask," she told the small girl, "is that you don't make it happen. If it does it does. Don't force it."

The grin flashed again. "I won't. Believe me, I'd just as soon live!"

"You might. You survived today, didn't you?"

"Oh, we didn't even see combat today at all," Joan answered. "Jamie and I, our group, we were too far back. Late this afternoon we joined up with two other groups that had lost a lot of people in the fighting today. But we're close to the front now, I'm sure we'll see combat tomorrow!"

"Yes," Melanie said grimly. "I'm sure you will."

By that time they had reached the helicopter. "Well," Jamie said, "we gotta go." She giggled. "That part of the plan we aren't changing. We still figure there's a good chance we're gonna be dead this time tomorrow, so we want to go back to the group and get laid." She looked back toward the camp. "Trouble is, there's a lot more girls in our group than guys--there's not more than thirty guys all told. They'll give preference to the first-wave and second-wave volunteers but there's sixty of those and some of them are guys. And we've lost time coming here..."

Melanie gazed at them for a moment. There wasn't a doubt that what Jamie was saying was true. "Come on," she said finally, gesturing toward the open door of the helicopter. "Get in." They gave her questioning looks--as did Harry--but they got in. Once inside, she left the pair with Harry and walked back to the computer station where Dave and Mitch were. Coming up behind them, she draped an arm over each man's shoulders.

"Gentlemen," she said with a grin, "I have some rather special duty for you tonight..."