from a human body with trivial ease. The stickies are prone, overlooking the canyon and sighting on something, presumably J. B. and Mildred, through rifles. The three companions quickly dispatch the stickies, only to be held at gunpoint when the rest of the stickies move in behind them. Jak is able to escape, while Ryan and Krysty are tied up and taken to the stickies' camp several miles away. The leader of the stickies is an unusually intelligent and unusually (for a sticky) blond-haired mutant named Charlie. Almost 20 years prior Ryan, J. B., and a Trader man named Abe cleared out a nest of stickies. The only survivor left was a strangely blond sticky child: Charlie. Resentful over the death of his parents, but equally resentful of their unintelligent, barbaric lifestyle which led to their extermination, Charlie has become well-educated and intelligent, and has organized a large group of fellow stickies into a functioning community, rather than an animalistic nest. He gleefully tells Ryan that his leadership is asserted by periodically and publicly killing "norms", something he says he will enjoy even more when it is Ryan. Ryan and Krysty are placed in a pit used to hold captives, and discover one of the eight other people there is none other than Abe. This comes as a surprise, since they had assumed Abe was killed while trying to reach the first redoubt. Though shot in the neck with an arrow, Abe was able to remove the shaft and recovered after several months, leaving him with two scars and a ragged voice. The reunion is bittersweet, especially when Charlie tells the captives be intends to have killed all of them within three days. Ryan begins trying to formulate a plan. The next day the sticky camp is visited by "fladgies", religious worshipers who practice flagellation on themselves and each other. The stickies take them captive, and, in a grim form of irony, decide to whip them to death. In an effort to save himself the leader of the group tells Charlie about a large group of armed lepers he saw heading towards the camp, intent on taking it for their own. Charlie heeds the warning, but allows the fladgies to be whipped to death anyway. That night, while planning an escape attempt, the captives are interrupted when Ryan is ordered out of the pit. He is tied up and taken