Zack and the children embraced her and wanted to know when she was coming home.
"Soon, I think. They're all frightened of us now."
Zack said, "I'm not so sure."
"There doesn't seem to be any resistance."
"Oh," he said, "they've decided to let you have the town."
"What did I tell you?"
"Sop," he said. "You can have anything you want. Up to a point."
Sally was thinking of Rap and Dr. Ora Fessenden. "What if we take more?"
"Wipeout," Zack said. "You'll see."
"Oh Lord," she said, vaulting into the jeep. "Maybe it'll be over sooner than I thought."
She was already too late. She saw the flames shooting skyward as she came out the drive.
"It's Flowermont."
Because she had to make sure, she wrenched the jeep in that direction and rode to the garden apartments; smoke filled the streets for blocks around.
Looking at the devastation, Sally was reminded of Indian massacres in the movies of her childhood: the smoking ruins, the carnage, the moans of the single survivor who would bubble out his story in her arms. She could not be sure about the bodies: whether there were any, whether there were as many as she thought, but she was sure those were charred corpses in the rubble. Rap and Dr. Ora Fessenden had devised a flag and hoisted it from a tree: the symbol of the women's movement, altered to suit their mood—the crudely executed fist reduced to clenched bones and surrounded by flames. The single survivor died before he could bubble out his story in her arms.
In the camp, Rap and Dr. Ora Fessenden had a victory celebration around the fire. They had taken unspeakable trophies in their raid and could not understand why many of the women refused to wear them.
Patsy and Andy, in the bushes, watched with growing alarm. Even from their safe distance, Andy was fairly sure he saw what he thought he saw, and he whispered, "Look, we've got to get out of here."
"Not now," Patsy said, pulling him closer. "Tonight. The patrols."
By now the little girls had been brought up from the day care compound and they had joined the dance, their fat cheeks smeared with blood. Rap's women were in heated discussion with the Mothers' Escadrille about the disposition of the boy children: would they be destroyed or reared as slaves? While they were talking, one of the mothers who had never felt at home in any faction sneaked down to the compound and freed the lot of them. Now she was running around in helpless tears, flapping her arms and sobbing broken messages, but no matter what she said to the children, she couldn't seem to get any of them to flee.
Sheena and her lieutenant, Margy, and Lory, her secretary, came out of the command shack at the same moment Sally arrived in camp; she rushed to join them, and together they extracted Rap and Dr. Ora Fessenden from the dance for a meeting of the council.
When they entered the shack, Ellen Ferguson hung up the phone in clattering haste and turned to confront them with a confusing mixture of expressions; Sally thought the foremost one was probably guilt.
Sally waited until they were all silent and then said, "The place is surrounded. They let me through to bring the message. They have tanks."
Ellen Ferguson said, "They just delivered their ultimatum. Stop the raids and pull back to camp or they'll have bombers level this place."
"Pull back hell," Rap said.
Dr. Ora Fessenden shook a bloody fist. "We'll show them."
"We'll fight to the death."
Ellen said, quietly, "I've already agreed."
Down at the main gate, Marva, who was on guard duty, leaned across the barbed wire to talk to the captain of the tank detail. She thought he was kind of cute.
"Don't anybody panic," Rap was saying. "We can handle this thing. We can fight them off."
"We can fight them in the hedgerows," Dr. Ora Fessenden said in rising tones. "We can fight them in the ditches, we can hit them with everything we've got . . ."
"Not from here you can't."
"We can burn and bomb and kill and . . . What did you say?"
"I said, not from here." Because they were all staring, Ellen Ferguson covered quickly, saying, "I mean, if I'm going to be of any value to the movement, I have to have this place in good condition."
Sheena said, quietly, "That's not what you mean."
Ellen was near tears. "All right, dammit, this place is all I have."
Aiyuoa, Annie Chandler shrieked. "Rape." She parted the bushes to reveal Patsy and Andy, who hugged each other in silence. "Rape," Annie screamed, and everybody who could hear above the din came running. "Kill the bastard, rape, rape, rape."
Patsy rose to her feet and drew Andy up with her, shouting to make herself heard. "I said, it isn't rape."
Rap and Dr. Ora Fessenden were advancing on Ellen Ferguson. "You're not going to compromise us. We'll kill you first."
"Oh," Ellen said, backing away. "That's another thing. They wanted the two of you. I had to promise we'd send you out."
The two women plunged, and then retreated, mute with fury. Ellen had produced a gun from her desk drawer and now she had them covered.
"Son of a bitch," Rap said. "Son of a bitch."
"Kill them."
"Burn them."
"Hurt them."
"Make an example of them."
"I love you, Patsy."
"Oh, Andy, I love you."
Sally said, softly, "So it's all over."
"Only parts of it," Ellen said. "It will never really be over as long as there are women left to fight. We'll be better off without these two and their cannibals; we can retrench and make a new start."
"I guess this is as good a time as any." Sheena got to her feet. "I might as well tell you, I'm splitting."
They turned to face her, Ellen being careful to keep the gun on Dr. Ora Fessenden and Rap.
"You're what?"
"I can do a hell of a lot more good on my new show. Prime time, nightly, nationwide TV."
Rap snarled. "The hell you say."
"Look, Rap, I'll interview you."
"Stuff it."
"Think what I can do for the movement, I can reach sixty million people, you'll see."
Ellen Ferguson said, with some satisfaction, "That's not really what you mean."
"Maybe it isn't. It's been you, you, you all this time." Sheena picked up her clipboard, her notebooks and papers; Lory and Margy both moved as if to follow her but she rebuffed them with a single sweep of her arm. "Well it's high time I started thinking about me."
Outside, the women had raised a stake and now Patsy and Andy were lashed to it, standing back to back.
In the shack, Rap and Dr. Ora Fessenden had turned as one and advanced on Ellen Ferguson, pushing the gun aside.
The good doctor said, "I knew you wouldn't have the guts to shoot. You never had any guts."
Ellen cried out. "Sheena, help me."
But Sheena was already in the doorway, and she hesitated for only a moment, saying, "Listen, it's sauve quipeut in this day and time, sweetie, and the sooner you realize it the better."
Rap finished pushing Ellen down and took the gun. She stood over her victim for a minute, grinning. "In the battle of the sexes, there are no allies." Then she put a bullet through Ellen's favorite moosehead so Ellen would have something to remember her by.
The women had collected twigs and they were just about to set fire to Patsy and Andy when Sheena came out, closely followed by Dr. Ora Fessenden and a warlike Rap.
Everybody started shouting at once and in the imbroglio that followed, Patsy and Andy escaped. They would surface years later, in a small town in Minnesota, with an ecologically alarming number of children; they would both be able to pursue their chosen careers in the law because they worked hand in hand to take care of all the children and the house, and they would love each other until they died.