Now bring this story and "Nevilles" right together...

Only a single van and a motor scooter accompanied Krista as she pulled up in front of Luxor Casino. A forlorn gaze became alarm when the apex of the pyramid lit up. "Dear God," she murmured, "if Austin or the lepers are up there, they'll all be blind."

"Nothing we can do about it," said Sydney.

Q pulled up beside them on the scooter. "Get me a high enough vantage point, and I could," he said, fingering the grip of his enormous .50 BMG revolver. Krista shook her head and reached for the ignition.

"Don't do that," Sydney said. He half-opened the truck's passenger-side door and leaned out, listening. "Oh *! Drive!"

It was close enough to sunset for headlights to be turning on. Through Branson's binoculars, Abbie locked on one set moving ahead of the zombie swarm. "I think I see the Tremors Truck!" she exclaimed. A comparatively dim, cyclopean light turned, and was augmented by the double flash of an enormous gun. "And that would be Q's scooter..."

Behind them, Il Deuce turned west onto a side street, though the now-skeletal WinnebEdsel stayed with them. "Perhaps we should turn back," said Branson.

"No!" Abbie screeched. "We have to help Krista!"

"And how would we do that?" A volley of assault rifle fire erupted from the Tremors Truck, and more poured out in all directions from the van. "It looks like they are better defended than we would be." Tal's expression grew pensive enough to hint at hesitation.

Branson pressed the issue. "The sensible thing to do is to turn around and return to my camp. The longer we are occupied here, the more time Enid will have to assemble his favorites for a takeover."

"No," Abbie said curtly. "I'm going back to my sister. You can make your own way home."

"Abbs... Of course, we'll go back to Krista," Tal said. "But this isn't a cut-and-dry thing."

Abbie frowned- indeed, glowered was not too strong a word. She looked ready to protest, argue or flat-out insult. But then she saw a single headlight in the rear view mirror. "Oh no."

"Holy *, he just doesn't quit," Branson muttered.

The kettenkrad was coming fast, well over sixty, perhaps topping seventy, and it was too close for more than a split second to react, which was just enough time for Tal to know that there was nothing he could do. But Bill was a little faster. He steered the WinnebEdsel into the kettenkrad's path, and when the very high-speed tractor moved in for a lazy ramming, he turned slightly and hit the brakes. The result was the virtually complete destruction of what remained of the WinnebEdsel's rear end as the kettenkrad ran over it, followed a moment later by the kettenkrad flying through the air. The tractor shed its tracks and all but destroyed its suspension as it came down roughly alongside the Caddy, but kept going. Abbie's last glimpse was of the little vehicle came as it skidded off the road, into a ditch. She thought it rolled over, and was not ashamed to be pleased.

Then she gave a shriek as Tal swerved and braked, narrowly avoiding a side impact on the Tremors Truck as it drove west, leading at least a hundred zombies. "That's Krista! Follow her! Honk!" Tal complied grimly, while she cheerfully waved. Behind them, Q's scooter went weaving through the ragged leading edge of the swarm. The gunsmith thinned the zombies' ranks first with both barrels of a 4-gauge shotgun as he crossed the street and then with a full clip from an Uzi held sideways as he rode back the other way. His course brought him to a skidding halt that ended in a relatively gentle impact against a wrecked delivery van, drawing a line of zombies after him. Dismounting, he drew the .50 revolver, looking- very justifiably- more afraid of it than the zombies. He delayed firing while he crouched, unfolded a bipod and rested it on the back of the scooter, then grimaced as he pulled the trigger. The recoil of the first shot knocked him down, while the tracer round felled three of his immediate pursuers before sailing its deadly way into the swarm.

"You had an LMG! Where is it?" Branson demanded as he leaned over the back of the seat.

"It's in its original carrying case, and if you're climbing around while I'm trying to drive, the zombies may not have to catch up with us!"

"Krista's waving for us to slow down," Abbie said.

Tal squinted at the hand sticking out of the driver's side window. "Nah, she wants us to go aroun-!" As he spoke, Il Deuce whipped by in the other lane. "Okay," he said over the sounds of carnage as the bus plowed into the swarm, "she wants us to slow down."

Q sat up, and ducked down again to avoid a wild volley of gunfire from the bus. "Well," he said, massaging his wrist and surveying the crushed, mangled and/or shot bodies in Il Deuce's wake, "that wasn't exactly sporting." He started to lift his scooter by the handlebars, stopping when he found that a close approach by the bus had left little except the handlebars. He gingerly picked up the gun instead, lying prone to rest the bipod on the edge of the asphalt.

It was easy enough to pick out zombies by the light from the pyramid. There were a fair number of them, but he couldn't find two or more lined up with each other, so he held his fire. Then he saw a figure with an inordinate amount of exposed flesh and a small but prominent amount of glittery clothing. "Floozie Q," he said with a smile, "I always wanted to bag a stripper, but I wish it didn't have to be like this..."

He twitched at the hint of a disturbance in the air, then a vibration in the ground. A certain instinct kicked in and he dropped lower in time to avoid a spray of whizzing bullets from a suppressed weapon. He looked up just in time to glimpse a figure with a lumpy cap strolling out of sight. "Andy Capp, you SOB!"

The Caddy had not stopped moving before Abbie was out of the car and running to her sister. By the light of the Luxor apex, they embraced in tears. "I'm sorry!" Abbie said.

"It's all right." Krista kissed her sister's head, while raising her eyes to look at Tal. "I love you, Abbs."

"I love you too." Abbie squeezed her sister a little tighter, then said, "Where's Austin?" Krista opened her mouth for an awkward explanation, glancing toward the pyramid.

The top of which, at that very moment, exploded.