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 turret hatch 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 shoulders. His footwear was some hybrid of bast shoes and sandals, size forty-something. An automatic rifle slung 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, struck me as the commander. His helmet sported a horsehair crest, and his tunic was a pale yellow, unlike his comrades’ faded rags. His posture, his unhurried movements, radiated a commander’s calm and confidence. The other tanker, grimy and ragged, looked like the driver-mechanic. Wiping his hands with a rag, he walked around the machine, kicked the treads, poked a finger under the fuel tanks, then came over and stood with his own men.
All three were big, powerful, bulging with muscle. It was hard to even understand how such hulking men 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 recoiled, and he let out a delighted bark of laughter, grabbed her by the neck, pulled her close, and bit her ear. The blonde shrieked, kicked out, and, felled by a blow to the gut, collapsed onto the sand. The tanker started kicking her with all his strength. The women gasped. The line of men broke into motion.
A pot-bellied fellow rushed to the blonde’s 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, effectively, dramatically, almost like a cowboy, if cowboys carried automatic rifles. The sand around the fallen man bloomed with dark red-brown stains. The people who, a moment ago, had stood in formation, scattered in every direction with screams and shrieks.
