A light mist was hanging over the Maryland countryside the next morning; in general, the scene looked incredibly peaceful and pastoral considering the carnage that had taken place there a day before. A closer look, however, showed that by no means had all the bodies been cleaned up; in the distance, a house, set afire during the combat, still burned quietly, sending up a soft plume of grayish smoke.

Melanie, from long habit, awoke at dawn; she glanced toward the front of the helicopter, where Harry, who'd taken the last watch of the evening, remained on duty. Rising from her bunk, she walked toward the back, where Dave and Mitch had their sleeping quarters. Pulling aside a curtain, she looked into Dave's bunk. Her own usual sleeping place, on Dave's arm, was currently occupied by Joan. Against Dave's arm and chest, she looked more tiny and fragile than ever. Leaning over, she kissed him lightly on the head.

"Time to get up," she said softly. "Time to go to war again."

His eyes flickered open. He glanced at Joan and momentarily looked guilty; then, obviously, he remembered the circumstances of the previous night. Melanie could not suppress a small laugh, which woke the elfin girl as well. After a short time everyone was up; Harry had already made a pot of coffee, and the remainder of breakfast was going to consist of the ubiquitous rations the Navy was dropping everywhere.

"I want to get the word out," Melanie said as she sipped coffee, "up and down the line, but especially at the front. Let's get the vehicles moving again, and begin to advance--ideally within the hour. No shooting until we're fired upon. By now those paratroopers know the regular Army isn't coming. I want to give those men the opportunity to give ground if they choose."

"They probably won't," Miller said, "they've chosen their side--or had it chosen for them--and they'll fight hard for it. Right now, they're going to be hoping the arrival of the Green Berets and the Rangers will be enough to turn the tide." He grinned. "Still, I agree with you."

After they'd finished eating, Jamie and Joan gave Melanie a final hug and left, running back to their group, doubtlessly eager to tell the tale of the previous night. A little sadly, Melanie watched them go, then gave the pilot orders to lift off. Soon enough, the helicopter was cruising along up near the front line and Melanie was again up front, looking over the situation.

"That was a wonderful gift you gave those two girls last night," Harry commented. "I must admit, I was a little surprised you gave them Dave, though."

She glanced at him and smiled. "Dave's good," she said bluntly. "So is Mitch. And I felt they deserved it. After the way things were in the Preserve, I don't think I have anything resembling jealousy or possessiveness left." She laughed. "I would have given them you, Harry, if I hadn't thought you'd turn them down cold!"

He smiled. "Well, you never know," he observed.

She looked confused. "You wouldn't have?"

"As I said--you never know. We're not in the Preserve any more, Melanie. I'm not responsible for you and your Deer the way I was there. Things have changed a lot."

She touched her lip. "Hm. Means I have a shot at you after all?"

"We'll have to ask Dave and Rachel about that," he answered. Melanie laughed again, shook her head, and went back to business, back to observing the situation below.

As Miller had predicted, the paratroopers showed no sign of being ready to retreat. To Melanie, it looked as if there were substantially more of them than there had been just before sundown the previous day; it seemed very possible that at least some of the Green Berets and Rangers had already arrived, swelling their ranks. They were arrayed in several long parallel lines, stretching north and south of the highway for about a mile in each direction. There wasn't much cover to be had, but whatever was there they were using; there was one large group that seemed to have taken up a position in and around a factory or warehouse of some sort. Melanie scribbled a note on a pad; that one was going to require an air strike. After a while, as the helicopter cruised down the line, her pad began to fill up with air strikes that were going to be needed. She did not want her inexperienced troops trying to dislodge these soldiers from set defensive positions, and there was no need for them to do so.

Finally, after having surveyed the whole line, she told the pilot to return to the road. Down there, the vehicles looked as if they were almost ready to begin moving. On the other side, about a mile away, a substantial group of soldiers waited with RPG launchers and mortars at the ready.

"Still want to wait for them to fire first?" Miller asked her.

She hesitated--but then she shook her head. "No. They're too well set up. We'll lose a hundred people during their first barrage, before we even have a chance to close on them."

"I figure five hundred," Miller said.

"Either way. We need to break up that position."

"Agreed." He went to the radio and began calling it in. Down below them, the first vehicle--the same one that had led yesterday--began rolling forward. The remainder of the line, in chain-reaction fashion, began to move as well.

"Has anyone heard," Melanie asked, "if Fred survived yesterday?"

"He did," Dave told her, coming up behind her. "He's back in that lead truck again."

"Damn, once was enough," Melanie murmured. She started to say something else but was interrupted by the scream of Navy jets coming in for the air strike.

This time, it was different. As they came in, streams of smoke rose from the soldiers, headed for the jets. "Shoulder-fired SAMs," Miller muttered. "Stingers. That'll slow things down."

It did. The two lead jets, targeted by the missiles, veered away sharply. Two more, however, released their missiles further back, and in the end it did not matter, several huge explosions erupted over the Army position. The jets, none of them hit, swung around and came back for a second run, and again the soldiers fired SAMs at them. This time they scored a hit, and one of the jets went spiraling down as its pilot ejected. The other three, however, released a firestorm of explosions on the Army position. As the smoke cleared it became obvious that the Army's defensive position had been, for the most part, broken up.

Meanwhile, Melanie's troops, seeing the explosions, surged forward much more quickly. It took less than five minutes for them to close to within rifle range of the soldiers, and as soon as they did, the crackle of rifle fire again filled the air. Several of the soldiers still had RPGs, and they launched grenades toward the advancing column. Melanie winced as at least three exploded among the massed people, hurling dozens of bodies in random directions. At that point the crowd began to spread out, and just seconds later they'd closed with the soldiers.

Scanning the combat with her binoculars, Melanie focused on a large group of people right at the front, people who appeared to be somewhat older than the student-troops, generally in their late twenties or thirties. There were several hundred of them, about a third of them women. These were not nude; for the most part they were wearing brief shorts and T-shirts. which, strangely, seemed to more or less match. The men were dressed in ordinary shirts and slacks or shorts, not the camouflage which had become standard for the students. They were, however, showing the same remarkable courage the students had shown, rushing right at the soldiers and ignoring their fire. Melanie watched at least twenty men and ten women go down under the withering fire, but the group was not slowed at all. Firing back, they came on, relentlessly.

Most of them were moving at a run. But there was one that caught Melanie's attention; a blond woman ludicrously dressed in a short red skirt and what looked like a silk top. Even at this distance she could see that the woman's hair was carefully done, and she had, it seemed, meticulously applied her makeup before going into battle. She was advancing at a steady walk, her rifle on her shoulder and her eye fixed to the sights, firing almost rhythmically. Melanie followed her aim, and watched soldier after soldier going down. As Melanie watched she accounted for at least a dozen by herself; she never seemed to miss. The crowd, moving faster, surged in front of her and she stopped shooting for a moment. But then several of those went down, and she began again, picking off soldier after soldier. Six more went down.

Then one or more of the soldiers apparently noticed her and understood what sort of a threat she represented. Her body jerked, she stopped for a second; but then, even as blood began staining her pristine white blouse, she walked on, firing still. Another bullet hit her, and now Melanie could see blood streaming down her legs. Still she came on, still firing methodically and as accurately as ever. A third bullet tore into her, and at that point she did a sort of a half-turn and, rather gracefully, sat down on the ground. As soon as she was down she raised her rifle again and picked off another soldier. But she was then hit twice, in quick succession, in her chest. Finally, she dropped her rifle; rather slowly, she toppled over on her side. Blood draining from her mouth, she shuddered, then laid still. That, Melanie said to herself, is a loss. By herself the woman had taken close to twenty soldiers out of the fight.

The rest of the group, while not acquitting themselves as spectacularly as the blond woman, were not doing at all badly. Well over a hundred of them lay dead or wounded on the ground, but they were steadily pushing the soldiers back, and that section of the front line was, on their side, becoming rather thin. Troops rushed up from the rear lines to offer support, but at the same time a group of mostly young men were merging with the larger group on Melanie's side, and the push went on. Melanie watched a dark-haired woman up front get shot in her right shoulder and drop her rifle; she turned her head, looking as if she was yelling something over her shoulder, and then she planted her feet and spread her arms. Two men and a woman rushed in behind her and started firing around her, using her body as cover. She took four more bullets before she finally collapsed.

There were a series of explosions off to Melanie's left; she looked that way, and saw that the warehouse which had been taken over as a defensive position had been destroyed. The crowd had now spread out to engage the Army all along the front, and pretty much everywhere they were, as was the case yesterday, being forced to give ground to the attacking citizens' army.

"Swing down toward that warehouse, or whatever it was," Melanie told the pilot. "There were a lot of soldiers down there." He nodded, and a few minutes later the helicopter hovered near the wrecked and still-burning building. For the most part, this was a fairly open area; there was a wide expanse of lawn in front of the bombed building, a driveway circling around it to what appeared to have been loading docks in the back, a large parking lot, and a number of smaller outbuildings. Beyond the parking lot was an overgrown embankment leading down to a small stream, and beyond that, another parking lot. Behind it another large building, this one low in profile, had stood, but the Navy jets had reduced it to rubble as well. Doubtlessly a number of soldiers had been killed when the buildings were bombed, but there were plenty of them still around--and most of then were visibly scrambling around, trying to reset the defenses that the jets had wrecked. For the first time, Melanie was able to confirm that the Green Berets had indeed arrived; there were quite a few of them in this area. This was, as far as Melanie could tell, the most heavily defended area in the entire line--and as yet, they had not been engaged by Melanie's troops.

That was about to change, however. From the north, across the grassy lawn, a mass of people including a number of National Guardsmen in uniform were approaching, and coming from the south--headed for the back parking lot--was a group much like the one Melanie had just been watching. Coming straight at them down the center, though, was a group of students, naked girls and camouflage-clad men--about two hundred of them. Melanie asked the pilot to move in closer. Through her binoculars, she confirmed what she'd thought when she saw Jamie's long hair flying behind her as she ran and Joan's tiny form. Damn, she said silently. You had to pick the hardest section of all. Worse, they were going to engage the soldiers around the front parking lot, where the numerous outbuildings and the embankment provided at least some cover.

Combat began when a Green Beret in the back parking lot, having hastily constructed a barricade from charred wood and twisted metal from the destroyed building, opened up on the nearest group--the group coming from the south--with machine-gun fire. Three women and a man, all of them clad in shorts and sneakers, were caught in the first volley and their bodies riddled with bullets. As they fell others came on, firing at the soldier's position as they came. He kept firing, but he was being forced to keep his head down now and much of his fire was wildly off-target. Still, another woman and two other men went down. The south group split up, part of them rushing right at the machine gunner and another part veering off further south, near the remains of the low building, apparently planning to flank the gunner. But as soon as they reached the edge of the parking lot they ran into a large group of soldiers who were then headed back toward the main building, and these turned and started firing. Bodies began to fall rapidly on both sides as the civilians and soldiers, without any kind of cover, opened up on each other at a range of about a hundred feet. The north group arrived then, racing across the front lawn and down the road, and everyone began firing at everyone indiscriminately. Soldiers kept falling and so did civilians, but the machine-gunner was still doing by far the most damage. He kept doing so until a long-haired woman wearing shorts, sneakers, and just the rags of a top--evidently it had been mostly torn off of her in some way--managed to get around behind him and, from very close range, shoot him down. She hardly had time to see him fall before a soldier behind her opened up on her, shooting her in the back three or four times in quick succession. She fell almost across the machine-gunner's body.

Into this melee rushed the mass of students. They were, Melanie could see, following their plan precisely. Thirty of them had pulled ahead of the rest, and they ran right at the guns, firing as they came, heedless of their own safety. Melanie couldn't be sure it was Alice, but she saw a very thin girl get shot several times and go down; she was left clawing at the ground at the edge of the front parking lot, still alive at least for the moment, as her comrades ran on past her. Much more quickly than the other two groups the students closed to face-to-face contact with the soldiers, although they lost practically all if not all of their "first-wave" doing it. Watching intently, Melanie saw the soldiers, now without the time to fit fresh clips to their rifles, ready themselves to use their bayonets. And she saw thirty of the students rush on--including Jamie and Joan. The "second-wave" was on its way.

Melanie was gratified to see that they'd listened, they did not hurl themselves onto the bayonets. That did not mean, of course, that the soldiers could not use them. As the two groups collided, Melanie saw a tall slim girl take a bayonet in near the junction of her abdomen and her left leg. Blood from a severed artery shot out with garden-hose force and she could not stand, she went down. The soldier leaned down to finish her off, but she shot him from the ground instead. Another nearby soldier drove his bayonet deeply into her right breast; the girl braced her rifle on the ground and shot him too. He fell, leaving the bayonet sticking in her chest, and she was forced over onto her side as the rifle fell. She grabbed at it weakly, then became still. Nearby, a somewhat heavier girl was running toward a soldier who had not yet emptied his clip, who was still firing. Her rifle seemed to have jammed; she dropped it and almost pounced on the man, wrapping her arms around him tightly. He managed to get the muzzle of his gun around and started shooting her in her lower belly; her body jerked violently as she was shot again and again, her hips bouncing back, but she still clung to him. Finally someone else shot him and both he and the girl went to the ground.

It took a moment, but at last Melanie found Jamie. As Melanie caught sight of her, she was rushing toward a man whose bayonet was at the ready, but she shot him cleanly before she got close enough for him to use it. Without hesitation she pushed on forward, firing at the next soldier she saw, and he fell too, blood pooling under his head. Stepping over him she fired at another one, but this time she missed. The man lunged with his bayonet. She sidestepped and he almost fell past her. She half turned to fire at him but she could not, as he was practically entangled with one of the camouflage-clad men, who was himself fighting another soldier. As she hesitated, a soldier she'd not seen came up alongside her and drove his bayonet hard into her side at her waistline, piercing her deeply. Startled, she turned her head; as the man jerked the bayonet out, she swung her rifle around and shot him in the chest. He fell back, but at the same time the other man she'd been engaging had turned around. When she turned back he drove his bayonet almost squarely into her navel--right where she'd shown Melanie she expected to be stabbed.

"You got your bayonet, Jamie," Melanie said sadly. "I hope it was what you really wanted..."

It was not over for her, though, not yet. She seemed to be trying to raise her rifle to shoot at the man who'd just attacked her, but, already bleeding severely from the puncture in her side and with another in her belly, she could not hold onto her weapon. The man who'd just stabbed her started to pull his bayonet out, but just as it was coming free, Jamie grabbed the barrel of his rifle with both hands. Holding onto it with renewed strength, she pushed forward with her legs, forcing the bayonet even deeper into her body. The soldier seemed to realize what she was doing, and he tried to pull back, taking a few steps backward. Jamie pushed on, following him, keeping the blade inside herself. Another student, a camouflage-clad man, stepped in and shot the soldier in the head. He let go of his rifle and fell back heavily. The stock of his rifle fell to the ground while the blade was still inside Jamie's abdomen, pulling her down to her knees. Still holding onto the rifle's barrel, the blade still deep inside her, she stared down at it for a second while blood pooled around her legs and the battle swirled around her.

Then she started trying to pull the blade out. Just as it began to move, another soldier, backing up, bumped into her. Seeing that she was still alive and probably not realizing that she was no longer a threat, he jabbed at her right side with his bayonet, piercing her shallowly between her ribs, under her breast.

She looked up at him with a wide-eyed expression of amazement. Then, without any hesitation at all, she grabbed the barrel of his rifle and jerked it toward herself, pulling the blade much further into her chest. Blood burst from her mouth. The soldier tried to pull it out, but she refused to allow it; instead he dragged her along on her knees. The other rifle snagged on something and the blade tore out of her, ripping open her abdomen and releasing a gush of blood. Even so, she kept holding the other man's rifle, pulling the bayonet on into herself, until one of the other students ran up and killed him.

She started to fall then. Still holding on to the rifle, the bayonet still buried in her chest, she slowly toppled over on her side. Holding it almost as if it comforted her, she shuddered a few times before lying still in an ever-widening pool of blood.

Moving her point of view away from Jamie, Melanie looked for Joan, fully expecting to see her corpse lying on the ground somewhere. To her surprise, the tiny elfin girl was not dead, and, so far, she appeared to be uninjured. She was, Melanie could see, using her small size to full advantage, ducking around and under bayonets that were being thrust at her, rolling on the ground, and firing up at the men from point-blank range. Melanie watched her take down three soldiers in quick succession without ever being touched. The battle swirled around her, a jumble of people, and Melanie lost sight of her for a moment, but when she saw her again she was still doing the same thing, staying low, escaping notice. Twice Melanie saw soldiers notice her scurrying around almost underfoot and try to stab downwards with bayonets, but each time they never managed to get into position before someone else was there to shoot them. Although Melanie tried to keep watching her, she again disappeared into the mob.

Focusing her attention on another part of the battle nearby, Melanie thought she saw Ellie, the tall willowy blond who'd been sitting with Jamie and Joan. She did not appear to be wounded, but somehow she'd lost her rifle. Fighting on bare-handed, she had grabbed a soldier's rifle from the side and was hanging onto it, keeping him from using it, until another student, a man, came up and killed him. Letting go as soon as the man started to fall, she tried to do the same to another soldier, but instead this man grabbed her and pulled her body hard against his own, using her as a shield. Facing away from the man she struggled, but the man was large and strong and she could not break free. Thrusting around her body with his bayonet, he plunged the blade into the belly of the young man who'd just killed the other soldier. He fell, and the soldier, still holding Ellie, went on to bayonet a thin Asian girl in her chest--a girl who'd hesitated to fire at him past Ellie. Ellie struggled harder, but to little avail. A black girl was close, and she too seemed reluctant to fire; the soldier, wielding the bayonet one-handed, drew back for a stroke. Apparently seeing what was happening, Ellie pushed her hips far out and managed to get her body in front of his bayonet.

Then she threw it back, hard, driving the bayonet into her own back. Her head flew back, her arms flailing; the black girl stepped up close and shot the soldier. He fell, and the bayonet appeared to be stuck in Ellie's back; he carried her with him. On the ground she struggled frantically, apparently in terrible pain, but she seemed unable to free herself from the dead man's bayonet. As the battle swirled around her, she looked up; right beside her a soldier was withdrawing his bayonet from the belly of a slightly heavyset girl he'd just killed. She threw her arms around his ankles. Immediately he turned to her and stabbed downward with his bayonet, driving it into her side just below her armpit. Still she hung on, even when he started grinding the blade in deeper. Another student shot and killed the soldier; Ellie, blood streaming from the side of her chest, shuddered once and then became still.

Very rapidly, the area around the bombed-out buildings was become the focus of the whole battle. Soldiers from further south were shifting their positions northward to try to reinforce the beleaguered lines here, and along with them, new groups of citizens, including a fresh group of students at least three hundred strong, were pressing in from behind. At the line of contact it was sheer carnage, practically no one on either side was managing to survive. And not only were they killing the enemy, they were killing each other as well. Melanie saw a short blond girl, one of the new group of naked students, take a bayonet in her chest. A man coming up behind her tried to shoot the soldier who'd just bayonetted her and instead shot her in the back of the head. Practically alongside them, a Green Beret made a powerful thrust with his bayonet but his target, a dark-haired and long-legged girl with a striking figure, ducked to the side--this girl, Melanie thought, might well be Karen, one of the ones she'd met the night before. He missed, and the bayonet went into the back of another soldier. The girl then put the muzzle of her rifle against his head and blew his brains out. Another soldier struck at her with his bayonet and she dodged behind the already dead and falling Green Beret, who took the blade instead. Firing over him, she killed her new assailant as well. But even as he was falling, a soldier drove his bayonet into the solar plexus of a dark-skinned Hispanic girl nearby, and, once it was deep, ripped downwards with it. The Hispanic girl tried to shoot him but she had no control, and instead she shot the long-legged girl in her upper thigh. Her leg spouted blood. Crippled now, struggling to stay on her feet, she seemed to sense a man coming at her from her left and she tried to turn toward him, but now she was too slow and his bayonet sank deep between her ribs. She fell, blood pouring out of her side, and she vanished from Melanie's view. The Hispanic girl, half-disemboweled, went down as well. The soldier who'd killed her turned and attacked a camouflage-clad man, driving his bayonet through his victim's groin and disabling him immediately. As the man went down, a tall Asian girl with noticeably large breasts fired over him and killed the soldier. Another soldier lunged at her and was shot by someone else as he came; even so, his momentum carried him onward and the tall Asian, unable to get out of the way, took his bayonet deep in her belly. She fell too, and the bayonet ripped out of her, tearing her belly wide open. With blood streaming out of her she raised her rifle and took another shot, hitting another soldier. This soldier, badly wounded but not dead, turned on her and drove his bayonet deep into her left breast. She started spasming in her death throes, but the soldier was mortally wounded as well and joined her on the ground.

In the middle of this welter of confusion, she again caught a glimpse of Joan. Still darting around, still being effective, and still alive. At this point, it looked to Melanie as if she might already be the sole survivor of the group of students she'd spoken to the previous night.

From somewhere a sizeable group of Green Berets appeared, pushing into and through the mass of soldiers in a wedge. The leader was a huge tank of a man who was carrying a belt-fed machine gun. Reaching the line of contact he opened up with it, sweeping it across in a wide arc and taking down several dozen people with his first attack. As these people fell he began another sweep, and the civilians rushing forward found themselves being cut down before they could even fire at him. Joan, who was at that moment quite close to the man, came sprinting in. When he turned the machine gun in her direction she did sort of a half turn and a controlled fall, and she ended up on her back on the ground with her head toward the machine gunner and almost between his legs. Raising her rifle above her head, she poked the muzzle into his groin and fired. He fell heavily--right on top of her. Another Green Beret nearby tried to bayonet her but instead sank his blade into the wounded machine gunner's back. Meanwhile, two men in National Guard uniform and a woman wearing brief shorts had seized the big machine gun, and together they turned it around to face the group of Green Berets and started firing. The Special Forces men now began falling in waves, and the ones in the rear started pulling back. Joan, meanwhile, struggled out from under the huge soldier atop her and, keeping her head down to avoid the hail of machine gun bullets flying over her, scurried around behind the trio that were wielding it. Then, with seemingly boundless energy, she hurled herself back into the line again a little further down.

Seeing the group of Green Berets falling back had an effect on the remainder of the Army men who were trying to hold the line. They too began a retreat, and it started moving like a wave up the line. The citizen's army pressed on, attacking them furiously. After just a few minutes, the retreat turned into a rout, the soldiers now in full flight. Gradually, Melanie's troops came to a halt as well, and the fire from them became sporadic.

"Move in closer, down lower," Melanie told the pilot. "It's over for now, I think." He obeyed, and, down on the ground, people started looking up at the big command helicopter. Right out in front, as always, was Joan. She looked up as well and she sprang into the air, waving her rifle wildly. Even from there Melanie could see the huge grin on her face. Hoping she could be seen through the glass, she gave the elfin girl a strong V-for-victory with both hands.

"That one," she told Dave, "is a survivor. That one is special."

His expression enigmatic, he gave her a sideways glance. "Yeah," he agreed. "She sure is."