A man carrying a little boy ran up to them, screaming, "Help us! Please stop them!"

"What the fuck you expect us to do? We ain't armed."

"Please! They're coming-!" He was suddenly blindsided by a running leap, taken down by a feral-looking teenage girl. She was all over him like a snake swallowing a rat-it was if she thought she could burrow down into his body through his mouth. Her teeth broke against his teeth. The little boy was knocked to the ground and lay there screaming.

They could hear the man's chest collapse, like the dregs of a milk shake being drained through a straw.

Voodooman grabbed the kid and put him on the skittish horse, tying a rope around his middle and fastening it to the saddle horn. "Hug his neck good and tight," he said, shaking the child by his shoulder to snap him out of it. "Okay?" The boy nodded through his tears. To Righteous Weeks, Marcus said, "Get up there with him, man. Go!"

"You do it-I ain't gonna be nailed with no childendangerment rap."

"Just ride clear of this mess and drop him off with somebody!"

Before Righteous could reply, the horse suddenly reared up, yanking him off his feet and breaking his grip on the reins.

"Damn," he said, watching his favorite mount escape with the bawling kid on its back.

"Ain't nothing we can do," said Voodooman grimly. "Come on."

They allowed themselves to be swept up in the hysterical mob exiting the field. People were being attacked right and left, or falling and being trampled. As the two convicts crowded through the entrance promenade, they saw their cell-mate 50 Cal galloping toward them on another horse, the warden's big Percheron stallion. Cal had a blue woman lying hog-tied across his legs, and a little girl hanging on to his waist from behind. As he rode, he had to hold down the woman with one hand to prevent her from bucking loose. People beseeched him to stop, to save them, too, but he ignored them, breasting their yearning hands as if they were a cane thicket.