Freddie Jenkins, better known by his nickname Cro-Magnum, continued to lope through the wreckage of Dowtown Baltimore, now beginning to resemble Grozny or Mogadishu more than any American city. The gunfire seemed to be dying down, at least for the moment, the few Baltimoreans that had turned out to offer resistance to the second drop had been repulsed or dropped. Cro-Magnum didn't know this, nor would he have particularly cared. His little brain was trying to come up with some sort of plan.

He didn't really know Baltimore. If this had been going on back in Alamogordo, he would've known every alleyway, every nook and cranny. In holding, Freddie had sat down in front of a map, staring at it for hours and hours, trying to memorize it. But now that he was down on the ground, surrounded by buildings and burning cars, he couldn't make it work. The ground wasn't yellow like on the map, it was really confusing him. Where could he go?

Though he usually got a blinding headache if he tried to think for too long, Cro-Magnum suddenly had what passed as a flash of inspiration in his book. A name half-remembered from the map. Pen Lucy. Of course! He had known a Lucy back in school. She had always been nice to him, until she moved away to Fresno in eighth grade. Obviously, Pen Lucy had to be the best place in all of Baltimore if they named it after such a nice girl.

He looked up at the roaring of engines, dozens of them approaching. Mom had always told him to stay on the sidewalk, so he was doing that when the souped-up bikes and pickups bearing the WAR militia roared around the corner, headed straight for the LZ. Great, Cro-Magnum thought. Someone he could ask for directions. He waved both hands over his head, trying to get their attention.

One of the stragglers, alone on his Harley-Davidson, saw the man on the side of the road. With an evil grin, he flicked the bike towards Cro-Magnum, free hand pulling the Ruger P89 from his holster-

-it was as though he had been hit in the chest with a sledgehammer. All of the sudden, the Neo-Nazi realized his bike was no longer beneath him, traveling freely without him down the street. He was in the air, but he couldn't breathe. Had he been shot?

The white supremacist slammed into the ground, his bike innocently tipping over a good thirty feet further down the road. Cro-Magnum rubbed the palm of his hand, still sore from tapping the man in the chest as he drove past. "Sorry," he said to the biker, turning blue as he lay on the ground. "I didn't think you'd be able to hear me with that bike going. Do you know how to get to Pen Lucy?"

There were shouts up the road, a honking of horns. Cro-Magnum looked up to see a couple of the WAR trucks turning around, fingers pointed in his direction, rifles raised.

"Oh, dear."