"Get up," Stan yelled into the man's face. "Get up—"
The man came up all at once, and his weight hurled Stan clear across the room. He felt the gum machine shatter under him, and the metal grinding into his side as he rolled. Stan felt the grease-gun in his hand as he saw the man lifting the tire tool, and then Stan swung the grease gun into the face, seeing the terrible grin, the blood-stained white smile.
Unrecognizable as it was, the man's face wouldn't go away. Stan swung at it again. Then he heard her voice, Anna's voice, intense and alive, and there was a flash of Anna the way he remembered her a thousand years ago, before they were put on the road. She was tearing at the man's face with her fingernails and kicking him savagely.
Stan had the man's shirt collar and it was ripping under his fingers as he slammed the head against the concrete floor. The thudding rhythm was coming up through his arm and throbbing behind his eyes.
Like drums, he thought as a sickening light flashed on the dusty glass, like primitive war drums beating out a dance of tribal doom.
Suddenly feeling sick and weak, he stood up and walked stiffly out into the sun.
He leaned against the side of the building trying to keep from retching. Anna touched his arm and he looked up, half blinded by the glare of the sun. Her face was flushed and alive. She seemed ten years younger.
"Don't be sorry," she said. "Be glad, Stan."
"They broke us," he whispered. "We've crawled into the cage."
"It doesn't matter, Stan, it doesn't matter what they do to us now! It's something to admit you're human, isn't it?"