The beige machine, wrapped in clouds of pink dust, raced toward the carriage. The passengers ran to meet it.
When the distance closed to fifty meters, the machine stopped… A little orange burst leapt out of the barrel and vanished. A boom rang out. The carriage toppled off the dune.
The ones running toward the tank stopped. They watched the carriage topple, and bolted the other way.
Running didn’t work out.
A machine-gun burst over our heads sent everyone to the ground. I dropped too.
What next?
Something clanked and clattered inside the tank. The hatch on the turret swung open. A grimy fellow climbed out.
A fireman’s helmet on his head. His muscular torso was wrapped in a piece of gray fabric, fastened with buckles at the belt and at the shoulders. His footwear was a hybrid of bast shoes and sandals, size forty-something. An automatic rifle across his back, barrel up.
The fellow jumped down off the tank, came over to the passengers lying on the ground, ordered them up with his voice and sorted them with gestures, splitting them into two halves — men and women. Two more strapping lads leapt out of the tank.
One of them, taller and broader, seemed to be the chief. His pale-yellow chiton stood out from the faded rags of his comrades. His bearing and his unhurried movements breathed a commander’s calm and confidence. The other tanker, grimy and ragged, seemed to be the driver-mechanic. Wiping his hands with a rag, he walked around the machine, kicked the track links, poked a finger under the fuel tanks, then came over to his own men and stood beside them.
All three were big, powerful, swollen with muscle. It was beyond understanding how such strapping hulks fit inside the machine.
The commander stopped in front of the woman at the end of the line, a buxom blonde.
The blonde shrank into herself. The commander ran a hand down her cheek, slapped her shoulder, and with a sharp downward yank tore her blouse open. The blonde shrieked. The line of men broke apart. A fellow rushed to her aid and dropped, cut down by an automatic-rifle burst. It was the first one out of the tank who’d fired — from the hip, dramatically, effectively, like a cowboy, if cowboys carried automatic rifles. The people who had been standing in formation scattered in every direction with screams and shrieks.
