It was my turn to drive that day, Beach riding shotgun, no passengers. Beach and I were regulars at this - Patrol #3, as we were known in our camp - and we were pretty good at working together. We had been even back in our civilian life when we still lived in The City; food-shopping, garage-sale-ing, nabbing parking spaces - we made a good team.

Beach was about 10 years my junior, Japanese-American, slight but curvy, very attractive, and apparently not possessed of an ounce of libido. Several guys - usually within their first week in camp - had moved on her, all with a singular lack of success. Beach and I had our lines well-drawn as good friends and partners, and we got along fine as long as I didn't tell her any details of my sex-life.

We were down at the far end of the playa where we'd been camped for the last two weeks, looking for salvage. A Land Rover - evidence suggested it was driven by city refugees with at least one kid in tow - had wiped out next to the big soft spot down there, leaving a mess of tools, blankets, canned beans and Gerbers around it. Patrol #1 had found the Rover 2 days ago, minus its human inhabitants, and had - so they said - promptly stripped it of anything that might be of value to our camp.

Patrol #1 - Jones and Marcy - had also followed pawprints to a big clump of sage at the playa's edge and coaxed out a shivering, very hungry yellow lab pup. Now the pup was back in camp, being mama-ed by Gigglegirl, and was the subject of one of the most active debates we'd had yet. Another mouth to feed and water, some said; we're not doing it any favors by keeping it alive in this heat, others added. It's a puppy, Gigglegirl declared. Besides, Marsden said, we need dogs for keeping watch. And hunting, Caz added.

That morning at Council - after a fight the night before between Gigglegirl and Jimmy over a tin of corned beef hash intended to feed the dog - #3 had drawn the duty of going to the Land Rover to look for the dog food it had surely carried. Jones of #1 said that he hadn't seen any goddam dog food, but others thought might have been thrown clear when the Rover rolled or it might have been stowed in one of the cargo hatches. I suspect Council was glad of a reason to send us back there without hurting #1's feelings; Jones and Marcy weren't exactly the most disciplined scavengers, the type that would overlook a box of Handi-wipes in favor of a handful of bubblegum. But they could sniff out drugs or hooch like no one else. The Land Rover had contained neither.

So Beach and I had started out after 8, when the sun was just beginning to be really brutal, and found the place, all right; the scars in the playa and the debris marked it like a beacon. But there was no Rover there anymore.

"Think they found someone to pull them out?" ventured Beach as she surveyed the scene, shading her eyes with her right hand.

"Maybe. Maybe they walked off and found a place to hole up and are still there, regretting all the water they left in the Rover," I answered, retrieving a piece of some Hasbro toy from the ground. "I doubt they made it very far on foot carrying a young kid."

Playa Survival Rule #3: Always stay with the vehicle. Someone will come along sooner or later.

Rule #4 was: Always carry a gun, because the someone who comes along may not be exactly a knight in white armor.

Several days ago, Council had decreed that we should not display our weapons openly for the time being. "Brandishing," they called it. Things might be starting to settle out a little bit, Council thought, and we wanted to bring in strangers that would add to the camp's pool of knowledge and capability. Our getting a reputation as a bunch of gun-happy freaks would make bringing in those strangers - some of whom had never seen a gun outside of the movies up until 6 months ago - all that much harder.

So for the past couple of days, Beach's Police Positive revolver that she usually wore on her belt now sat in the odds-and-ends box between the front seats of our Passport. My own .45 was in its box under my seat. I was relieved, in truth, to not be wearing it for awhile. Gigglegirl was great with kids and stray dogs but I didn't want her patching the hole an accidentally-loosed .45 slug would make in my foot. Nurse Sara had been gone with AlDawg - who 9 months ago she'd been in the process of divorcing - on an extended trip back over the Sierra to get info on her family and possibly bring them back with her. A lot of us were holding our breath, hoping that we wouldn't need any of Gigglegirl's ministrations beyond a massage or herb potion until The Nurse returned.

She would return, of course. She'd damn well better. I'd missed her in my bed sorely for the last month.

"Well," Beach said, "where'd the Rover go then?"

"Good question," I said. "You'd think we'd have spotted it if someone tried to mount a rescue operation down here," though that wasn't necessarily true. Our camp had a 20-foot tower built of painter's scaffolding, but it was sporadically manned. Anyway, the playa was home to half the world's optical illusions. The tower saw most of its use when we were expecting someone back in from Lovelock - or when a few of the hardcores had been into the acid stash.

"Maybe, maybe not," Beach said. "This is pretty weird."

"Maybe, maybe not," I mimicked Beach. "They had some friends, got pulled out, and were on their way. What's weird about that?"

"It feels weird," Beach said.

"You got that right," I replied. "Let's look around some more."

Scouring the playa surface yielded a few clues - half-erased shoe prints, wheel-marks, the large square imprint of a 4WD lying on its side - but nothing either of us could interpret. "We oughta go back and get Baker," Beach suggested. "He used to be a cop, didn't he?"

"Or someone like Caz who hunts and knows how to read the ground," I said. "Are you regretting now that you never went hunting with your father?" I jibed Beach.

She just shivered in the heat of the desert morning and said, "Cleaning the kill. Ugh."

We poked around a little while longer. I was staring down at a baby-food lid, trying not to think about how brutal high-desert exposure was foro an infant, when Beach called to me and pointed. "Over there."

Coming down a track through the brush that fringed the playa was a Nissan pickup, about 6 years old. It had a small winch mounted on its front. The sun glared blindingly off its windshield. Neither of us could see a dust cloud settling in the truck's path; if the Nissan had been coming down the track for some time and we just hadn't noticed it, the dust would have still been hanging in the air for miles in the still air.

"Think they were there the whole time?" Beach inquired.

"Fuck if I know. Let's wait. Maybe they know something."

"Gun?" she asked. I couldn't see behind her sunglasses but I knew what her eyes would look like - narrow, the kind of eyes that go with a frown. Beach was an excellent shot - better than me - but so far had avoided drawing down on anyone. It was her secret, shared only with me, that she hoped she'd never have to. If Council found out, I'd have a new patrol partner the next day.

"Suit yourself," I said. "They look harmless enough." She stayed where she was.