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We silently considered the idea of what would happen then. "You can’t really believe all the tales that they say of the other side," I said at last.

"No – but they aren’t exactly being humanitarian towards us either, are they?" G jerked his head towards the artillery fire now flashing on the eastern horizon, across the city. "I’ll tell you something, though."

"What?"

"When things finally break down totally, I’m more worried about our own militia than I am about them." He tapped his holster. "That’s why I’m carrying this."

"Let’s hope you don’t have to use it," I said.

An army officer came into the bus station and glared around. "The curfew is about to begin," he shouted. "Nobody is allowed to be outdoors. Go home, all of you civilians. Right away!"

"The convoy –" someone ventured.

"What convoy? There is no convoy. What’s this rumour about a convoy? Go away or I’ll march you off to the front line to dig trenches."

People began to leave, in twos and threes. G looked at me expectantly. "Are you coming?"

I hesitated. "I’ll follow you. Let me talk to this officer first, see if he can pass on my bag to a driver if the convoy arrives. It’s government business, after all."

"Right, I’ll be expecting you. Don’t be late, it’s almost curfew." Rubbing his white beard, G walked away into the shell-lit night.

I went to the officer and talked to him. "Give me the bag," he said. "If there’s a convoy – if – I’ll see it goes out. And as for you, I want to see you training in the militia tomorrow morning. There’s no more exemption for anybody."

The kids had been right about that, evidently. I hadn’t even touched a gun in my life. I had no idea what to expect. I told the officer this.

"No exceptions," he said. "If you can’t do anything else, you can at least fill sandbags or haul ammunition, or something."

Giving him the bag, I walked away without a word. Except for the soldiers, the bus station was now deserted. The militia who had been there were just leaving. I walked alongside them, listening to them talk. They were older than the children from earlier, young men in their late teens.

"You have a cigarette?" one asked me, nicely enough. "If you have one, give me, man."

"I don’t have a cigarette," I replied. "I don’t smoke."

"I’m dying for one," he said gloomily. "Haven’t had one in so long."

"Don’t worry," one of the others told him. "You won’t have to die for it much longer." There was some uneasy laughter.

We reached the turning to G’s home street. The barrage was creeping steadily closer, shells falling up and down the streets, shrapnel splattering against the concrete walls of the higher buildings around. At each explosion hot air buffeted me, like a door to a furnace opening and closing. Something exploded off to the left, a ball of flame rising into the sky.

"Must have hit a car," someone said unemotionally.

"Well, I’ll be off," I said. I’d seldom been so close to the shelling, and it was making my stomach knot with tension. I wanted to be indoors, away from the blast and shrapnel. "Be safe."

"I’ll come along a bit with you, man," the cigarette man said. He seemed to have taken a liking to me. "See you home."

"All right, thanks." I walked down the street to where G’s apartment building was. Something seemed to be wrong with it, and as I came closer I understood.

Sometime during the evening, the building had taken a direct hit. Half of it, the back half, seemed to have disappeared completely. The front half was still there, but dark and totally silent.

I took off at a staggering run, racing through the rubble on the street and into the building, up the stairs, pulling the torch from my pocket. G’s door hung open, sagging on its hinges, the wood charred and blackened, a chunk of broken wall crumbled before it like a sleeping guardian. I scrambled over it and into the flat.

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