eeps working at you.

"I recall the first man I ever killed--" Pop started to reminisce
softly.

"Shut up!" Alice told him. "Don't you ever talk about anything but
murder, Pop?"

"Guess not," he said. "After all, it's the only really interesting topic
there is. Do you know of another?"

It was silent in the cabin for a long time after that. Then Alice said,
"It was the afternoon before my twelfth birthday when they came into the
kitchen and killed my father. He'd been wise, in a way, and had us
living at a spot where the bombs didn't touch us or the worst fallout.
But he hadn't counted on the local werewolf gang. He'd just been slicing
some bread--homemade from our own wheat (Dad was great on back to nature
and all)--but he laid down the knife.

"Dad couldn't see any object or idea as a weapon, you see--that was his
great weakness. Dad couldn't even see weapons as weapons. Dad had a
philosophy of cooperation, that was his name for it, that he was going
to explain to people. Sometimes I think he was glad of the Last War,
because he believed it would give him his chance.

"But the werewolves weren't interested in philosophy and although their
knives weren't as sharp as Dad's they didn't lay them down. Afterwards
they had themselves a meal, with me for dessert. I remember one of them
used a slice of bread to sop up blood like gravy. And another washed his
hands and face in the cold coffee ..."

She didn't say anything else for a bit. Pop said softly, "That was the
afternoon, wasn't it, that the fallen angels ..." and then just said,
"My big mouth."

"You were going to say 'the afternoon they killed God?'" Alice asked
him. "You're right, it was. They killed God in the kitchen that
afternoon. That's how I know he's dead. Afterwards they would have
killed me too, eventually, except--"

* * * * *

Again she broke off, this time to say, "Pop, do you suppose I can have
been thinking about myself as the Daughter of God all these years? That
that's why everything seems so intense?"

"I don't know," Pop said. "The religious boys say we're all children of
God. I don't put much stock in it--or else God sure has some lousy
children. Go on with your story."

"Well, they would have killed me too, except the leader took a fancy to
me and got the idea of training me up for a Weregirl or She-wolf Deb or
whatever they called it."

"That was my first experience of ideas as weapons. He got an id