Alone in the Ashes

Circle OF DEATH

A crowd of ragged men and women had gathered around the pickup. They were armed with clubs, axes, knives, and spears.

“The welcoming committee,” Ben Raines said softly.

“What do you want here?” a woman shouted at Ben and Judy.

“We don’t mean you any harm,” said Ben calmly, hoping for the best. “We’re just traveling through.”

“Why did you stop?” a man called. He held an axe in his hands.

“People on the roofs with bows and arrows,” Judy whispered.

“I see them. If shooting starts, you take the south side of the street, I’ll take the north.”

“All right.”

“We don’t want any trouble,” Ben called out. But he was going to get trouble-and plenty of it!

"All I want of you is a little servility, and that of the commonest goddamnest kind."

Anonymous

"Them’s my sentiments."

Thackeray

Prologue

Ben knew he should feel some sort of regret; some feeling of sadness or sorrow at leaving his people-and they were his people-behind.

But the only feeling he could muster up was a feeling of freedom.

“Free at last,” Ben said aloud, with only the wind and the truck to hear him.

And they gave no reply.

He shook his head at the paraphrasing of Doctor King’s famous statement, and wondered how many young blacks, a decade and a half after the world had exploded in nuclear and germ warfare, could even say who King was? Or for that matter, Ben pondered as he drove, how many young whites knew anything about J. F. K., or Watergate?

Most were too busy just staying alive in this world gone mad, Ben concluded. They didn’t have time for school-even in those areas where school was available.

He sighed, the rush of cold wind carrying the sound away, out into the brisk autumn afternoon air.

He was not making very good time, even with the new truck his people had provided for him. The highways were getting worse and worse. And for some reason Ben could not fathom, highway maps were becoming as scarce as hen’s teeth. Any map printed between ‘89 and ‘98 was to be treasured. He had heard that people were killing over highway maps. A good map could bring food, weapons, ammo, and on occasion, women.

Ben could not prevent a bitter laugh from pouring past his lips.

If a person could not understand the written word, how could they comprehend a map? And Ben knew from experience that a full seventy-five percent of those born after the World War of ‘88 were illiterate.

He had turned west at the deserted Tennessee town of McMinnville. A crude sign had stated Highway 70 leading north was closed to traffic, and another sign had stated Highway 56 north was closed to traffic. Ben doubted they were closed for any other reason except the whim of a local warlord or some religious nut who wanted a closed society to practice his or her mumblings upon.

On impulse, Ben jerked his Thompson submachine gun free of the clamps that held it upright, and laid the old weapon on the seat beside him.

“You and me, old boy,” he said with a smile, “are outdated.” He patted the smooth stock. “But we can still spit and snarl, can’t we?”

Ben wore a .45 semiautomatic pistol belted around his waist and a long bladed Bowie knife on his left hip. In the rear of the camper-covered bed of the pickup.

Ben carried a myriad of survival gear. Tent and sleeping bag, extra clothing, a case of grenades, and two cases of .45-caliber ammunition. A rocket launcher and a case of rockets for the tube. Cases of food and jugs of water. He had a Weatherby 30-06 with scope, and a Remington model 1100 S. W.a.t. shotgun with an extended tube that held enough three-inch magnums to stop a rampaging Cape buffalo. Strapped to both sides of the Chevy pickup, and on a special framework built on top, he carried five-gallon cans of extra gas. He had enough radio equipment in the truck to transmit anywhere within what used to be known as the United States of America.

After more than a decade of leading his people, constantly searching for a place to put down roots and live and work and grow and rebuild from out of the ashes, Ben Raines was pulling out, heading out by himself.

He would be alone. In the ashes.

BOOK ONE

Chapter 1

Ben pulled off the highway just outside of what remained of Woodbury, Tennessee. Tucking his truck behind a farmhouse on the east side of the highway, Ben sat for several minutes, his eyes searching for signs of life. Falling back on years of experience, Ben knew after only a moment that he was alone.

He inspected the house, cautiously going from room to room. The house was, of course, ankle-deep with the litter left behind by rats and mice. When the rodents had eaten everything they could find to eat, they had left. But once they had done that, the roaches had followed.

The house was crawling with living waves of brown movement.

Ben pulled out of that locale and spent the night sleeping in the cramped space under his camper.

He awakened to a cold dawn, under a sky that promised rain very soon. The dull grayness of the sky matched the landscape that surrounded Ben. Everything around him seemed lifeless.

He didn’t like this area, didn’t like the feeling of foreboding it offered him. Skipping breakfast of any sort, Ben cranked the engine and pulled out, finding Highway 53 and taking that until connecting with a road that would take him to Interstate 40, at Lebanon. There, he drove over the interstate and pulled off the highway at the outskirts of town.

Smoke from wood and coal fires drifted up from houses in the coolness of morning. But, as Ben had so often sadly observed over the years, the homes were not centralized or grouped for safety or work. They were widely separated, which meant to Ben-and it had been proved time after time-that the people were not organized. And in these times of anarchy and warlords, and roaming gangs of thugs and punks and creeps and assorted savages, not to be organized was an invitation to die quickly.

And to let what was left of civilization die.

Ben spotted the gang of young men and women long before they spotted him.

Go on, Ben! he urged himself silently. Go on. Just pull out and avoid trouble.

But he knew he would not. That flaw, if it was a flaw, and Ben thought not, within him was rearing up.

Ben lifted his Thompson and cradled it, clicking the .45-caliber submachine gun in his arms. He got out of the pickup and stood by the hood of the truck, watching as the young people spotted him.

Back in my day, Ben thought, they would be called punks.

I’ll still call them punks, he thought.

Ben stood tall and rangy and loose by his truck. The years had peppered his hair with gray and had put a few lines in his face. But as Doctor Chase had told him, “For a man your age, Raines, you’re in disgustingly good shape.”

“Clean living,” Ben had said with a smile, knowing what response that would bring from the crusty old ex-Navy doctor.

“Horse shit!” Doctor Chase had replied. “You’re going to be a dirty old man, Raines.”

“What do you mean, “going to be?”

“Hey, Dads!” one of the young men called. “They’s a toll for passin” through here.”

The young man was tall and slender and blond. He was dressed in dirty jeans, heavy boots, and wore a black leather jacket. His hair was very long and very dirty and very unkempt.

The knot of young men and women around the punk were, except for coloring and size, his mirror image.

Punks.

Ben was dressed in tiger-stripe field clothes. His field pants bloused into jump boots. He had already stopped along the road and fixed a meager breakfast, boiling water to shave.

Even after a worldwide tragedy and a nation swarming with anarchy, the generation gap still holds true, Ben thought.

“Public road,” Ben said.

“Not no more,” the spokesman said. Ben pegged them all as in their late teens to early twenties. “We took over the road. Now you shut your mouth and pay up.”

“You want money?” Ben said with a smile. Money had been worthless for years.

“You a real smart-ass, ain’t you?” a pouty young woman popped off.

“At least my ass is clean,” Ben told her.

“Dads,” the tall young man said, reaching for a pistol on his belt, “you just bought yourself a world of hurt.”

“Kill “im, Tad!” the young woman cried. “Shoot his legs out from under him and let’s watch him flop around.”

“Yeah,” Tad smiled.

Ben dropped the muzzle of the Thompson, heavy in his hands with its full drum of .45-caliber ammunition, and pulled the trigger.

The quiet morning air was shattered by the hammering of the old Thompson and the screaming of the dead, dying, and badly wounded.

Ben knelt down beside the young woman who had wanted Tad to shoot Ben’s legs out from under him so she could watch him flop around.

The young woman had managed to pull a .38 out of her belt before Ben’s Thompson had very nearly cut her in half.

Despite the events that had prompted the shooting, Ben felt some small waves of pity wash over him. The young woman was really, under the grotesquely and amateurishly made-up face, a very pretty woman.

“It ain’t fair,” the young woman gasped. “Tad said he was the boss of this town and he’d take care of us.”

“What did you do with the people who refused to pay your toll?” Ben asked.

“Kilt ‘em,” the young woman groaned.

All feeling of sorrow for her left Ben.

She closed her eyes and lapsed into unconsciousness.

Tad screamed, his hands clutching his shot-up belly.

Ben walked back to his pickup and pulled out. “You goddamned cock-sucker!” Tad screamed after him. “My town! My road! Jimmy kilt Lucas for it and I kilt Jimmy. Mine!”

“You are certainly welcome to it,” Ben said. He rolled down the window and let the cold air fan him. “Should be quite an interesting trip,” he said aloud. “Certainly starting out with a bang.”

At an old truck stop just outside Nashville, Ben pulled off the interstate and into the parking lot, carefully maneuvering his way between rusted-out rigs and stripped cars. He tucked his truck between two rusting hulks that once were eighteen-wheelers, and walked toward what used to be the restaurant, his Thompson slung over his shoulder, the drum refilled.

He liked to stop at these old truck stops because sometimes he lucked out and could find, among the rubble, playable cassette tapes; he had left all his back in Georgia.

The first thing he spotted were two bodies, a man and a woman. The man had been tortured, then shot between the eyes. The woman had been raped, judging by the still-visible bruises on her inner thighs and the blood that had dried on her legs and buttocks. Like the man, she had been shot between the eyes.

Ben knelt down between the bodies. He touched them both. They were cold, but they had not been dead for very long. Bugs had not found them, and rats and dogs had not gnawed their flesh.

Ben walked the ruined and littered truck stop. There was not another living soul-that he could see. He stood and looked down at the man and woman. He had seen so many dead and rotting bodies that they had long since ceased filling him with any emotion. They were now merely a part of the way things were.

He walked out of the truck stop and to his pickup.

As he pulled back onto the car-and truck-littered interstate, Ben wondered if that was the way he’d end his span on earth. A bullet between the eyes and left to rot in some house or ditch?

Before he could answer his own question, an old woman trudging along the side of the interstate flagged him down. What did they used to call people like this? Ben thought.

Bag ladies. Yeah.

He leaned over and rolled down the passenger-side window. “Can I help you, ma’am?”’

She cackled, exposing the blackened, rotting stumps of teeth. “If I was twenty years younger, you damn sure could, young feller!”

Ben laughed. Young feller! “Thanks, lady. You just made my day.”

“Or if you was twenty years older,” she laughed again. ““Course, if that was the case, you probably couldn’t get it up no more, could you?”

“Probably not,” Ben said. “You want a ride?”

“Well, you look like a trusting sort, Mr. Ben Raines. But I think not. I just wanted to warn you not to go into Nashville.”

“How’d you know my name?”

“Seen some pictures of you a time or two. Country sure has gone to crap, ain’t it, Mr. Raines?”

“We’ll rebuild it.”

She smiled and shook her head. “No, we won’t, Mr. Raines. Not none of you nor me. Maybe two, three hundred years up the road. But we won’t know nothin” about it. Don’t go into the city. Thugs and shit-heads took it over. Turn back around and take the Gallatin exit. You a big, tough man, but don’t tempt fate.”

“Aren’t you afraid of going into the city?”

“Oh, they won’t bother me. Too old to do them any harm. They think I’m crazy so they leave me alone. Bye now, Ben Raines. Hang in there, kid.”

She picked up her sacks and went trudging on up the road.

Ben smiled as he watched her leave. “Luck to you, too, lady,” he muttered.

He turned the truck around and backtracked, found the Gallatin exit, and cut north, then west. It took him almost six hours to drive approximately one hundred miles. He finally pulled over after crossing the bridge at Lake Barkley, deciding to spend the night on the west shore of the lake and do some fishing.

He carefully hid his truck and laid out his sleeping bag on the porch of an old fishing camp, after first inspecting the cabin and several more nearby.

He got his rod and reel, gathered up several of his favorite crank baits, and walked down to the pier of the camp. Within fifteen minutes, he had caught half a dozen small-mouth bass. “Kentuckies,” he said aloud. That’s what we used to call them. “Damn, they must be hungry.”

Then he realized the lake probably had not been fished by sport fishermen in years.

He cleaned the fish, carefully inspecting the liver for discoloration. He fixed an early supper, recalling as he did, that this was how he’d first met Pal Elliot. He struggled to remember what part of the country he’d been in when he first met the man. Arkansas, he thought. They had talked about forming a new country-a country within a country. And Tri-States had been born on that evening, years back.*

But Pal was dead. And Valerie. And Salina. And hundreds more who had helped form Tri-States, and had fought for it, and died for it.

Sitting on the porch of the old fishing camp, watching the afternoon fade into evening, Ben smoked one of the few cigarettes he allowed himself daily-harsh, homemade cigarettes-and let his thoughts drift back into the past, something he rarely did.

But he could not allow much of that. And he knew it. It was dangerous. He, and others like him, needed to look constantly toward the future. That was the only way anything could ever be rebuilt from the ashes.

Far across the lake, Ben caught the first flickerings of a fire being built. No fires for me this night, he thought. Too dangerous. I don’t know if the people across the lake are friends or enemies; probably the latter.

Then he realized the campfire was not across the lake but, rather, across a narrow inlet of the lake. The cabin he was using was facing the inlet. That knowledge made him even more wary.

He went to bed on the open porch. He was asleep in less than five minutes.

Voices brought him awake, tensing his muscles, bringing his nerves taut.

*

Out of the Ashes.

Slowly, quietly, he unzipped his sleeping bag and slipped from the down-filled warmth. He laced up his boots, slipped into his field jacket, and got to his feet, Thompson in hand. He eased the bolt back, locking a round in place.

“I heard a truck yesterday afternoon,” a man’s voice came to him. “I know I did.”

“That doesn’t mean it stopped around here,” a woman replied.

“We have to check it out. They might be coming back for you.”

“I’ll die first,” the woman said. “I mean it, Wally.”

The man and woman rounded the corner of the cabin and came face to muzzle with Ben’s Thompson. They froze.

“I’m just traveling through,” Ben said softly. “I don’t mean anybody any harm. My name is Ben Raines.”

The man’s eyes widened. “General Ben Raines? President Ben Raines?”’

“Yes.” Ben first looked at the woman. And she was well worth looking at. Probably in her late twenties. Dark brown hair. Tanned, smooth face. Stacked, as used to be said. Ben shifted his eyes to the man. The family resemblance was strong between them. Probably brother and sister.

Both were well-armed. The woman wore a pistol and carried a rifle. The man wore two pistols and carried a pump shotgun.

“I saw your campfire last night,” Ben said. “I wanted to check it out but didn’t know what kind of reception I’d get.”

Ben lowered the muzzle of the submachine gun.

“Where are all your troops, General?” the man asked, suspicion plain in his voice.

“North Georgia. I left General Cecil Jefferys in charge and pulled out. For many reasons; some of them purely personal.”

The man relaxed his grip on his shotgun. “I guess even Ben Raines gets tired.”

“Yes. Come on up and let’s talk. I have a little bit of coffee. Would you like some?”

“This is the best coffee I have ever tasted,” Judy Williams said.

Her brother, Wally, laughed. “Sis, it’s the first cup of coffee I’ve had in months.”

“I get the impression you’re both running from somebody,” Ben said. “Care to talk about it?”

Brother and sister exchanged quick glances. Made up their minds. “Jake Campo,” Wally said. “Ever heard the name?”’

“No. What is a Jake Campo?”’

“He’s a warlord. Controls most of this part of Tennessee and up into Kentucky. Has two, maybe three hundred men in his gang. What he wants, he takes. There was ten of us originally. Me and Judy’s all that’s left. Jake and his men raped and tortured and killed the rest. We’ve been running for the past two weeks. I’m … I’m afraid, General, you’ve stepped right into something that even you can’t handle. You see, Jake and his gang have been closing the circle on me and Judy. We figure they’re maybe three, four miles from here, and closing fast. They’ve got every road and path blocked off. They’ll be here sometime today, we’re figuring. Sorry, General. But you’re stuck.”

“Oh, I’ve been stuck before, Wally. But I seem to have this knack of getting unstuck.”

“Well,” the voice came from behind Ben. “Let’s see you get unstuck from this, mister.”

Chapter 2

Ben took Judy and Wally with him, the woman in his left arm, the man in his right. He jumped and sent all three of them crashing through the rotted railing of the porch. Rolling, he did not look to see who or what the man behind the voice might be. He just came up with his .45 in his right hand and shot the man twice in the chest.

Movement and a slight sound from the far corner of the cabin spun him around, the Colt .45 barking and bucking in his hand. The slugs caught the second man in the throat and face, blowing off part of his jaw, sending bits of jawbone and teeth spinning wetly through the air.

“Jesus God!” Wally said. “You are quick, General.” Ben rose to his booted feet and reached for his Thompson, holstering his Colt. “A person had damn well better be quick, Wally. Or get dead. Check the surroundings and shoot anybody you don’t know that even looks like they might be hostile. Learn that right now, up front-if you want to stay alive.”

Wally looked at the man, a curious glint in his eyes. “I’m a minister, General. I can’t kill wantonly.”

“I’m not asking you to kill wantonly,” Ben said. “I’m telling you that in these times, if you feel any degree of suspicion toward strangers, if they make just one off-the-wall or hostile gesture, if they even say anything that could be construed as hostile, shoot first and worry about it later.”

Wally smiled gently. “I will shoot if fired upon, General. Other than that, I can do no more.”

Ben nodded his head. “Wonderful,” he said. Glancing at Judy, he asked, “You feel the same as your brother.”

“No,” she said quickly.

“We got a chance then,” Ben said.

Ben had stripped the two men of their weapons: two 9mm pistols and two M-16’s. Both men had bandoliers of clips for the M-16’s around their shoulders, bandit style, and clips for the pistols on their belt. He tossed the weapons and ammo in the bed of his truck and motioned for the brother and sister to get in the cab.

“You have some kind of transportation?” Ben asked.

Judy smiled. “Shank’s mare.”

“I heard that,” Ben said, returning the smile. “What kind of vehicles does the Campo gang use?”

“One-ton trucks that they’ve fortified with welded-on sheets of metal,” Wally told him. “They’ve made light tanks out of them.”

“Uh-huh,” Ben said with a smile. He dropped the gear selector into D and pulled out. “But how about underneath the trucks?”

“What do you mean?” Wally asked. “There’s nothing under the trucks except what the trucks came with.”

“That’s their weakness, then,” Ben told them. “Roll a grenade under the trucks and they go sky-high.”

“I like the way your mind works, General Raines,” Judy said, placing a hand on his thigh.

“Call me Ben.”

After consulting his map, Ben took a rutted county road out of Dover, heading south. He connected with Highway 49, then turned east on 147, stopping at a deserted little town called Stewart. The buildings had been looted and all were in bad condition. He pulled in front of an old service station.

“See if the doors of the bays will open, Wally,” Ben said. “You might have to put some oil on those old hinges. If so, use it sparingly; we don’t want to change the appearance of the building.”

“Don’t dribble it all over the place, right, General?”

“You got it.”

While Wally was struggling with the door, Ben walked around the building. At the rear, he smiled. Around front, he told Wally, “Forget it. There’s no back wall to the station. We’ll hide the truck somewhere else and we’ll use the station to wait for Campo’s men to find us. Judy, start rounding up a dozen or so old soft-drink bottles; any long-necked glass container will do.”

While she was doing that, Ben used a small portable pump to bring up any gas that might be left in the tanks of the old station. Ben and his Rebels had learned all the tricks of survival years back. He used the old measuring stick first to check the gas, then to detect water in the tanks. Had there been water in the tanks, the stick would have come out of the tank a pretty pink.

“Water settles to the bottom,” Ben told the brother and sister. “Almost any station that was worth a damn would or will have a detection stick around. Good, you found some wine bottles. Fill them up about three-quarters full with gasoline, then stick a rag down the top and set the cocktails inside the old station. Hurry right back, because we’re just getting started. I’ll rid this country of Campo and his creeps for good.”

“You’re awfully sure of yourself, Mister Raines,” Judy said.

“Yeah, I am,” Ben said. He looked at Wally. “You go around to every car you can find in this burg. Remove the batteries and, if possible, dump the battery acid out into a large glass container. Don’t get any of it on you. Bring it back to me. Judy, when he gets back, you find a pot and boil that battery acid until white fumes appear. Then remove it from the heat and don’t inhale any of the fumes.”

Ben prowled the station until he found several cans of antifreeze. “Good enough,” he muttered. “Mister Campo, you are about to experience one hell of a lot of big bangs.”

When Ben had all the materials at hand, he began measuring carefully. Judy watched him intently. “Ben, what are you doing?”

“Making methyl nitrate dynamite, dear. You’re old enough to remember the United States Army Rangers, aren’t you?”

“Yes. were you one?”

“Yes.” Before you were born, Ben thought sourly.

“Get some shotgun shells out of my truck and pour out the powder in a dry container. I’ve got to make some blasting caps.”

“You’re a strange man, Ben.”

“I’m a survivor, honey. Do unto others before they do unto you.”

She laughed at that and went off to get the powder Ben needed.

“Wally, prowl the town and find me some iron or steel pipe that has one end capped off. Get a hacksaw-I saw one in the office-and cut me half a dozen. No smaller than an inch. Take off.”

With the brother and sister out of harm’s way, Ben checked the glass containers. The mixture had settled and separated. Ben carefully removed the top layer and very carefully placed that in another jar. This was the explosive. He added an equal amount of water and began swirling the mixture. He set it aside and once again allowed the mixture to separate. The highly volatile explosive was now the bottom layer in the jar. He removed the top layer and threw it away-carefully. Ben had shredded some cloth and placed that in an old pan. He slowly added the mixture until the cloth had absorbed it and was damp. He now had a form of dynamite.

It took him only a few minutes to construct blasting caps.

“What are you going to use to detonate those things?” Wally asked.

“I’ll make regular fuses for some of them,” Ben explained. “For the others, find me some clothespins.”

“Clothespins?” Judy asked.

“Clothespins,” Ben repeated. “Wally, you get me some copper wire and the finest, darkest wire you can find. We’ll booby-trap some of these buildings and lay down a false trail.”

Muttering, Wally went in search of material.

Ben stripped the copper wire and wrapped one wire around the top jaw of the clothespin, another raw wire around the bottom part. He took a small, flat piece of wood, punched a hole in one end, and clamped the wire-wrapped jaws of the pin to the other end. He secured one end of the tripwire through the hole.

He talked as he worked, conscious of Judy standing very close to him. “I’ll have two wires running from the explosives. One wire is connected to the positive terminal of a battery; the other wire runs to the top jaw of the pin. The wire running from the bottom jaw of the pin is connected to the other terminal of the battery. This piece of wood between the jaws prevents contact from being made until someone trips it. When the exposed wires come in contact-bang!”

“I don’t think I’d want you for an enemy, Ben Raines,” Judy said.

Ben looked up at her and smiled. “Then let’s be friends.”

“I’d like that.”

Ben worked the rest of that morning on his bombs and booby-trapping several buildings on the main drag of town. The buildings he rigged with explosives were located in the center of town, on both sides of the street. After rigging each building, the tripwire located several feet inside the doorway, Ben would clear away the debris that littered the doorway, making it appear that someone had recently used the doorway several times.

“Tell me about this Campo bastard, Judy,” Ben said.

“He’s a big hulking brute of a man. A giant. Probably six feet, seven or eight inches tall. Three-hundred-plus pounds. While I was a captive of his, several of his men mentioned that he was somehow tied in with a man called Sam Hartline. What do you know about Hartline?”

Ben stopped working and looked at Judy. “That son of a bitch! Will I never be rid of him?”’

“You know him?”

“Unfortunately. Sam Hartline is the sorriest bastard God ever put on the face of the earth.”

“Well, Campo doesn’t work for him any longer. Campo turned out to be too brutal for even your Mister Hartline.”

“That’s going some. But please. He isn’t “my Mister Hartline.” I’d like nothing better than to kill that perverted filth.”

“Why don’t you, then?”

Ben smiled. “He’s about as hard to kill as I am, Judy.”

“Then make friends and team up with him.”

“If you can’t beat “em, join ‘em? Would you try to make friends with a rattlesnake, Judy?”’

“No. But that’s not the same. Hartline is a human being.”

“So was Hitler,” Ben countered.

Judy cocked her head to one side. “Who’s that?”

Judy, Ben learned, was twenty-five years old-she thought. Her parents were killed during the initial wave of nuclear and germ warfare back in ‘88. That would have made her eleven years old at the time.

She had “taken up with an ol’ boy,” when she was seventeen. He’d been killed two years later by Hilton Logan’s Federal Police. Judy hated and feared cops-of any kind.

“Chances are, Judy,” Ben told her, “you’ll see very few cops from here on out.”

“Good,” she said.

Ben had posted Wally on top of a building. He knew that trucks like his-in such good shape and equipped with several antennas-would be extremely rare. And he felt sure Campo would have spies throughout his territory.

Ben was ready. The three of them had worked hard and swiftly for several hours in preparation for Campo and his creeps. Now all they could do was wait.

“Why did we pile all that junk around those fifty-five gallon drums of gasoline, Ben?” Judy asked, pointing to the carefully piled materials at each corner of the block.

“Because when I get as many of Campo’s people within this one-block area as possible, I’m going to turn this street into an inferno. We toss a cocktail into the debris, then, when it’s burning, shoot into the drums of gas. The fumes ignite.”

“Where are you going when this is over, Ben?”

“Just wandering. How about you?”’

“Wally wants to stay in this area and start up another church.”

“And you?”’

“I don’t want to stay. I’d like to see the country. I’ll bet I haven’t been three hundred miles in any direction from this point. Not in my whole life.”

“How did you avoid Logan’s resettlement plans?”’

“Paul and me hid out, then we went to live with kin up in Kentucky. That’s when I started back to school. Then the rats came.”

Ben had learned that most people did not care to discuss that period of their lives. The memories were just too horrible. Those rodents had almost been the final blow against humanity.

“Well, I’m certainly going to ramble around when this is over, Judy. You’re welcome to come with me.”

“No strings attached?”’

“None whatsoever.”

“Here they come!” Wally shouted. He scrambled down from the building and took up his position. Ben watched him through worried eyes.

Wally had pointed toward the east.

“You don’t think Wally has his share of guts, do you, Ben?” Judy asked.

“I’m sure he is a very brave man, Judy. But being a brave man and being a survivalist are two entirely different things. Wally has a reluctant trigger finger, that’s all. And at times like these, that is a drawback to those who might be depending on his reactions.”

“He’s killed before,” Judy defended her brother.

“When absolutely pushed to the wall and then only after putting his life, your life, or somebody else’s life in jeopardy.” It was not posed in question form.

“How’d you know that?”

“Wally’s about ten years older than you, right, Judy?”

“How’d you know that? Yeah, that’s right.”

“Wally remembers when a person could call a cop. His formative years were in the late ‘60’s and ‘70’s. He probably feels guilty just at the thought of picking up a big, bad gun to defend himself against all these poor misguided souls that roam the country, raping and killing and stealing.”

She laughed softly at the expression on his face. “You ever been married, Ben?”

The sound of labored engines was growing louder.

“Yes. A long time ago.” Long ago and far away, the line came to the one-time-writer-turned-warrior. “Here they come. Stay very still, Judy.”

“Campo won’t come in with his men,” Judy said. “He always lays back until it’s clear. I’ve watched him do it a half-dozen times.”

Ben nodded and watched the lead vehicle turn the corner, its ugly, squat nose poking arrogantly around the corner. The truck was not a one-ton truck but a heavier bob truck. The front and sides had been fortified with steel plate. Gun slits bad been cut into the steel plate. The muzzles of automatic weapons stuck out of the slits.

Ben watched as two more fortified trucks pulled around the corner. “They’re going to strafe first,” Ben whispered. Whispering was not really necessary. The trucks had no mufflers and were making enough noise to almost cover a gunshot. “You climb down into that bay there. I’ll join you very soon, believe me.”

Then Ben was alone as the woman scampered into the protective old bay. He heard the metallic sounds of radio speakers barking out their static. Another truck pulled around the corner, then another. He watched as the muzzles of the guns on his side lowered. He slipped into the concrete protection of the bays just as the machine guns opened up, the slugs tearing great jagged holes in the old wooden doors of the service area. Bits of broken glass sparkled in flight, showering Ben and Judy with shards of glass. Several of the big .50-caliber slugs struck the inner frame of the sliding door and knocked the door ajar.

The strafing stopped. “Remember, Jake wants that cunt alive. Fan out and search both sides of the block. They got to be here. They didn’t make it to McKinnon and they ain’t on the east side of town. Most out.”

Ben had tucked his truck into a ravine a half-mile out of the town proper and covered it with brush. The ravine wound around and connected with a dry creek bed that ran just behind the old station. That would be their escape route.

They hoped.

Boots crunched on the broken and littered street and sidewalks. Ben and Judy tensed as the boots stopped in front of the service station.

“Shit!” they heard a man mutter. “Ben Raines ain’t nowhere around these parts. And if n he was, I don’t want no truck with him.”

“You better not let Jake hear you say that,” another man said. “Jake hates Ben Raines.”

In the darkness of the bay, Ben felt Judy’s eyes on him, asking silent questions. Ben shrugged. So far as he knew, he had never met Jake Campo.

Hell, he’d never even heard of the man until that morning, back at the lake. But Jake may have been one of the many thugs and hoodlums and slime Ben had run out of Tri-States, years back, when he and his Rebels were moving in to start their own country within a country.

“Somebody’s been in and out of this building!” the shout reached Ben and Judy.

“Here, too!” another man called, the shout coming from across the street.

“Check “em out!” the order came down the line.

Judy looked at Ben. The man was smiling. Strange man, she thought.

Two tremendous explosions, one coming only a heartbeat after the other, rocked the old deserted town. Ben ran up the steps of the bay, a Firefrag grenade in his hand. He was pulling the pin before he reached the top of the bay, the spoon pinging away. He rolled the grenade across the street, under the lead truck, and jumped back, unseen, into the bay of the service station.

Shouts of confusion and fear filled the dusty air. Then a huge explosion ripped the air as the Firefrag grenade exploded, the incendiary capabilities of the grenade blowing the gas tank of the truck. The truck was lifted off its tires and tossed to one side, those inside trapped in the raging inferno. Their screaming echoed up and down the street.

That was Wally’s cue. Crouched in a building at the other end of the street, Wally tossed a burning firebomb into the debris piled around the drum of gasoline. He ran to the rear of the store, took aim with his pistol, and fired into the concealed drum. The fumes ignited, turning that end of the street into a firestorm.

Ben tossed a cocktail into the debris at his end of the street and leveled his Thompson at the hidden drum, pulling the trigger.

“Out the back and to the ravine!” he called to Judy.

She was running for the ravine as the gas drum exploded.

Ben tossed cocktail after cocktail into the confusing conflagration. Through the blaze, he could see Wally running for the ravine.

Without a second glance, Ben ran out the back of the station, throwing his last Molotov cocktail into the station, near where he had placed the materials left over from his bomb-making.

The hot blast almost knocked him off his booted feet. Ben stumbled, caught his balance, and continued running for the ravine and the truck.

“Get in front with Wally!” Judy panted, a rifle in her hands. “I’ll get in back and lay down cover fire if they follow.”

She knows more combat than her brother, Ben thought.

Ben dropped the truck into four-wheel drive, roared out of the ravine, and headed across a field. He found a dirt road that ran some distance from, but parallel to, the blacktop road leading out of the town. He stayed close to the woods and circled the town, coming out on the blacktop that would take them to the town of Tennessee Ridge. On the blacktop, he cut out of four-wheel drive and drove as fast as he could on the littered road, weaving and dodging the fallen limbs, and in some cases, entire trees that had fallen across the road.

He bounced onto Highway 13 and followed that for some twenty-five miles, until connecting with Interstate 40. There, he cut west. He didn’t stop until they had crossed the Tennessee River. There he pulled off the interstate and they all took a well-deserved breather.

Ben and Judy stood patiently as Wally bowed his head and spoke a short prayer, thanking God for His help in delivering them from the hands of savages.

Brother looked at sister. “Time for us to think about heading back home, Judy.”

“Wally,” she said gently. “We don’t have a home.”

“Home is wherever God sends me,” he said. “And I have to go back to spread His word.”

Ben stood quietly. He wasn’t about to interfere between brother and sister. And he’d seen enough lay preachers-and Judy had told him that’s what her brother was-to know that many times they were as stubborn as a mule.

“They’ll kill you, Wally,” Judy said bluntly.

“Perhaps. But if you go off to live in sin with this man,” he looked at Ben, “you’ll be worshipping a false god. You know what we’ve heard about him for years.”

Ben stirred as the old rumor flared up once more.

“I am not a god,” Ben said. “I am flesh and blood and bone like everyone else.”

“I shall worship, in my own way, the only true God, Wally,” Judy said. “The God whose words are contained in the Bible.”

Wally looked at Ben. “May I have a small bit of food for my journey, General?”

“Take whatever you need, Wally. But I wish you’d stay with us. At least, for your sister’s sake, until we get further away from this part of the state.”

“I have to go back, General. I’m called to do so.”

Ben nodded his head in agreement. “I wish you luck, Wally.”

Wally smiled. “God is on my side, General.”

There was nothing Ben could say to counter that.

Chapter 3

Ben and Judy stood by the pickup and watched Wally Williams walk slowly up Highway 641. He had told them he was only going a few miles, then would cut northeast, toward Eagle Creek on the Tennessee.

He rounded a curve in the road, and was lost from sight.

“I will never see him again,” Judy said.

“You can’t know that for sure,” Ben said.

“I will not see him again,” she repeated. She turned and faced Ben. “Let’s go, Ben. I want to leave this part of the country. And I don’t care if I ever come back.”

Ben opened the door to the truck. “Your chariot awaits you, dear.”

They spent their first night together at a tiny town just off the interstate. They never did find out the name of the town, for they could never find any highway markers denoting the name.

“Don’t you have a tent, Ben?” she asked.

“A pup tent in all that mess somewhere.”

“That won’t do.”

“Oh?”

“Tomorrow, first town of any size we come to, we start lookin” for one of them big pretty-colored tents like I seen in a catalog one time.”

“Those and saw,” Ben corrected.

“You ribbin’ the way I talk, boy?” she asked.

“No. Not at all. I used to be a writer, that’s all. It’s habit.”

“You wrote books!”

“Yes.”

“Big books?”’

“Yes. If by that you mean a hundred-thousand words or more.”

“What’d you write about, Ben? Tell me some stories.”

Ben fought to keep a straight face at her childish excitement. “I thought you told me you went to school?”’

“Oh, I did. I got to the seventh grade. I can read. But I’m slow at it “cause I have to skip over the big words.”

“All right, then. But first things first. We can’t get a bright-colored tent, because the color would stand out and might bring us visitors we don’t want. Understand?”

“Oh, yeah. Right.”

“But we will get a tent-somewhere. Next we’re going to get you some books. Some English books and a dictionary.”

“That’d be great.”

“Why didn’t your brother ever help you with reading?”

“Why … I don’t know. I guess ‘cause I never asked him.” Good reason, Ben thought.

“Which way did they go, bitch?” the voice rumbled out of the huge chest, exploding in the air.

“I didn’t see them, Mister Campo,” the woman said. “I swear to God, I didn’t.”

“There ain’t no God around here but me, bitch,” Jake told her. “And you’d best remember that.”

“No, sir,” the woman told him.

“Huh?”’

“I will not forsake my God and He will not forsake me.”

Campo laughed. The woman thought him to be the ugliest man she had ever seen. His head was shaved clean and round as a basketball, and just about as large. His eyes were small and piggy. His nose was large; with the nostrils flared, he looked like a pig. His mouth was wide, the lips thick and constantly wet from saliva. The man seemed to have no neck. Just the head attached to massive shoulders. His arms were thickly muscled. A huge chest and big belly. But the big belly did not quiver and shake like a fat man’s. It was solid. His legs were like the trunks of small trees. His feet were curiously small for a man his size.

“No, bitch,” Campo said, towering over the frightened woman. “You worship Jake Campo.”

She shook her head.

He squatted down beside her with a grunt and squeezed one soft breast. He clamped down hard, bruising the flesh. He laughed as the woman screamed in pain.

Her husband broke free of the hands that held him, and ran to Campo. He hit the man on the bald head with his clenched fist and the sound of the knuckles breaking was loud.

Campo stood up and roared with laughter.

“You do have balls, mister,” Campo said. “But nobody hits Jake Campo and gets away with it. Let’s see, what shall your punishment be? Should I cut off your balls? Naw! Rip out your tongue and feed it to the hogs? Naw!” Campo’s big face brightened. “I know.” He looked to his men. “Strip the broad, boys. And tie her husband to that tree yonder.”

The man was forced to watch while Campo’s men took turns raping the woman.

Campo pulled out a long-bladed hunting knife. He grinned at the man. “You seen Ben Raines’ fancy pickup truck, didn’t you, pig farmer?”

“No, sir, Mister Campo.”

Campo cut the man’s worn belt and let his patched trousers fall around his ankles. He cut the man’s long-handled underwear and lay the cold steel of the knife against the man’s testicles. “You want your balls cut off and stuck up your wife’s ass?”

“No, sir.”

“Ben Raines.”

“I seen this fancy truck go by just a-sailin’. Two men in the cab and a woman in the back, under a camper. She had a rifle stuck out the open camper winder.”

“You done good, boy,” Campo told the man, cutting the ropes that held him. “I’m gonna let you and your big-pussied woman live. This time around.”

He waved for his men to follow him. The hungry—

looking truck farmer jerked up his pants and ran to his wife’s side.

“Radio headquarters,” Campo told a man. “I want half the men to come with me, the other half stay in this area and collect our booty. Tell the boys to gear up for a long hard run. Lots of food and warm clothing and winter gear. I’m gonna foller Ben Raines until I catch that prissy, law-and-order son of a bitch. And I don’t care if I have to foller him, and that snooty cunt with him, all the way to the Pacific Ocean.”

Jake Campo looked to the west. “I’m gonna git you, Raines. And that there’s a promise.”

Even though the going would be much slower and would sometimes involve backtracking, Ben decided to stay on the secondary roads. They would afford him so many more ways to twist and turn in case Campo and his men were chasing them.

And Ben felt sure they would be.

Ben and Judy pulled out just after dawn, angling more west than north. At a small town in West Tennessee, Ben stopped at the public library-or what was left of it-and found some books for Judy. A book on creative writing, a good dictionary, and Fowler’s Modern English Usage.

On the road again, Judy opened the dictionary at random. “Ga-vo-tit,” she said.

“I beg your pardon?”

She repeated her pronunciation.

“Spell it, Judy.”

“G-a-v-ocommentcomment-every.”

Ben hated to admit he didn’t have the foggiest idea what the word meant. “What does it mean, Judy?”

“Well, hell! I don’t know. I’m askin’ you.”

“See all the smaller words to the right of the bold-type word?”

“Huh?”

Ben slowed the truck and took a quick look at the word. “An old French dance,” he read. “Since I never wrote the types of books where that word would be used, I am not familiar with it.”

“So you don’t know everything after all?”

“Who in the world ever said I did?”

“Lots of people have. I seen-was

“I have seen.”

She looked at him. “I have seen lots of shrines and stuff like that built for you. Lots of the Underground People worship you.”

“So I heard,” Ben said through gritted teeth. “I am not to be revered or worshipped, Judy. I am not a god. Would a god do the things we did last night?”

“They would if they was horny.” “Jesus!” Ben muttered. “That’s not what I mean, Judy.”

“I know that, Ben. Look! There’s the sign pointin’ the way to Missouri. Let’s go there. I ain’t never been to Missouri.”

“I have never been.”

“Whatever.”

Ben drove into Dyersburg, Tennessee, and after carefully parking the truck on the street, enabling them to keep an eye on it, they began their search of the stores. Over the years, though, the stores had been looted many times, and anything of any value was long gone.

“Have you gotten used to the skeletons, Ben?”

They had just opened a broom closet door and two old skeletons had fallen out, clattering at their feet.

“A long time ago, Judy.”

A noise from the street spun them around and sent them running through the littered store to the sidewalk. A crowd of ragged men and women had gathered around the pickup.

They were armed with clubs and axes and knives and spears.

“The welcoming committee,” Ben said.

“What do you want?” a woman shouted the question at Ben and Judy.

“We don’t mean any harm,” Ben called. “We’re just traveling through.”

“Why did you stop?” a man called. He held an axe in his hands.

“People on the roofs with bows and arrows,” Judy whispered.

“I see them. If shooting starts, you take the south side of the street, I’ll take the north.”

“All right.”

“We don’t want any trouble,” Ben called, as they walked closer to the truck.

“You say!” the woman spokesperson said angrily. “That’s what they all say. Then they rape and kill and take away the young girls and boys.”

“Who takes them? Where do they take them?”’

“Who knows?” the woman said. “We never see any of them again. The attackers or our young.”

“My name is Ben Raines,” Ben spoke softly.

About half of the knot of people drew back in fear. They whispered and muttered among themselves. The spokeswoman stood firm, glaring at Ben, her hands knuckle-white from gripping the spear tightly.

“You lie!” she shouted.

“I do not lie,” Ben told her. “I… we …” he said, indicating Judy, “just killed about twenty-five of Jake Campo’s people. Just east of the Tennessee. They’re probably only about a day behind us.”

“Jake Campo does not bother us,” the woman said. “This is not his territory. We pay homage to a warlord called West.”

“Do you do so willingly?”

The woman laughed. It was not a pretty laugh. “What do you think, Mr. So-Called-Ben-Raines. West has gathered up all the guns and left us with only clubs and spears and homemade bows and arrows to defend ourselves. He leaves us just enough food to survive and takes the rest. How can we fight him and his men?”

“You could leave here and find guns. There are millions of guns scattered around the country.”

“Do you see any cars or trucks or horses or mules?” the woman asked. “No. West has taken them all. If we tried to walk out, the beasts and the mutants would eat us, if West’s men did not kill us first. We are trapped here.”

An idea Ben had been nurturing for a long time took more solid shape in his mind. “You say people come in and rape and kill. Why doesn’t this West person protect you?”

“He does when he’s around. But he ain’t always around. He has a big territory to look after.”

“This doesn’t make sense,” Ben muttered. “Have these people lost all will to survive as free people?”

A man stepped from the crowd. “I heard that!” he shouted. “Look, you bastard. I’m a doctor. Or I was. Now I’m reduced to carrying a spear. There used to be about fifteen hundred of us around here. Now we’re only about four hundred strong. If you’re really Ben Raines, help us.”

“Do you want to help yourselves?” Ben asked.

“Yes!” the man shouted. “But we have to have the means to do so.”

“All right, then. I’ll see about giving you the means, Doctor?…”

“Barnes. Ralph Barnes.”

Ben walked through the crowd to his truck and opened the camper. He handed Judy an antenna. “Take this to the top of that building,” he told her. “Then drop this end of the lead-in down to me.”

The radio connected, Ben flipped the set on. The frequency was preset. “General Raines to Base Camp One. Raines to Base Camp One.”

“General Raines!” the operator-on-duty’s voice snapped out of the speaker. “Yes, sir.”

“Get me General Jefferys.”

“Yes, sir. It’ll take me about one minute.”

“I’ll be here, son.”

“Ben!” Cecil’s voice was full of warmth over the miles.

“Cecil. At the chance we’re being monitored, I’m scrambling.”

“Yes, sir.”

“All right. I’m in Dyersburg, Tennessee. Are you aware of the fact the country has deteriorated to the point of warlords terrorizing the people?”

“It doesn’t surprise me, Ben.”

“Very well. You remember we spoke of setting up outposts east to west, every hundred miles or so?”

“Yes.”

“We may as well start here.” He explained the situation. “I want a full platoon in here. As heavily armed as you can get them. Rations for a winter’s stay. Enough weapons and clothing for four hundred men and women. Reloading equipment, medical supplies, the whole nine yards. I want them rolling in the morning, Cecil. I’ll meet them here.”

“Ten-four, General.”

Ben clicked off the set and waved Judy down from the rooftop. He turned to the people.

“They’ll probably be here in two days. Now let me tell you people something. How many of you know anything about the way the old Tri-States was run?”

Most hands went into the air.”

“Then you know how fast my system of justice goes down. I will not tolerate racial bullshit. I will not tolerate laziness or sloppy work. Everybody in my command pulls their fair share. You do not steal, you do not lie, you do not cheat. Everybody pulls together. Personally,” he said with a smile, “I despise gardening. I always have; I always will. I have what is known as a brown thumb. I touch a plant, it dies. Fortunately, those otherwise blessed saw this fact and asked if I would please stop. I have a flair for administration and a passion for order. The point I’m making is this: Do what you are good at and enjoy. We’ll talk more tomorrow. For now, how many of you know anything about combat?”

Only a few hands went up.

Ben’s eyes settled on a man who looked to be in his late forties. “Where’d you serve?”

“Eighteen years in the Army, sir. I got shot during the assault on Tri-States and was court-martialed because I ordered my platoon to pull back and take no further action against you or your people. Name is Charles Leighton.”

Ben handed him one of the M-16’s taken from Campo’s men. “Well, Charles, you have just been promoted to the rank of Colonel and placed in charge of security on this outpost. What’s your name?” Ben asked another man who had raised his hand.

“Jim Canby, General. Three years in the Marine Corps.”

Jim got the other M-16, and the two pistols were given to a Chuck Morris and a Dot Fontana.

“All right, people,” Ben said. “Now you level with me. How many contraband guns have you managed to stash away?”’

The spokeswoman, Dot, smiled. “Twelve rifles and six shotguns. Four pistols. But we don’t have much ammunition for them.”

“You will,” Ben said. “Soon.”

Leaving Judy talking with the others, Ben took those he had just armed off to one side.

“West has to have informers among you,” Ben said. “Who are they?”

Dot named four people she was sure of and two more she suspected. The others agreed.

“Place them under guard,” Ben told them. “If they’re innocent, we’ll apologize later. When that is done, I want whoever it is among you who usually contacts this West person, to do so. Tell him you have to see him first thing in the morning. Tell him … tell him half a dozen women just wandered into town and you don’t have enough food for yourselves, much less a half-dozen more people. The mention of women should bring him on the run. Does he usually come in by the same route? Good, We’ll ambush the son of a bitch-or whoever he sends-take their guns and vehicles. Then we’ll raid his base camp and steal some more.”

Broad grins greeted Ben. Dot said, “Oh, I like the way you think, General.”

“So do I, lady,” Judy said, joining the group. Her eyes were mean. “And I got first dibs.”

“You married to him?” Dot asked.

Judy balled her fists.

Ben stepped between them.

“Get outta the goddamned way!” Judy said.

Ben got.

Chapter 4

There was no trouble between Judy and Dot. Doctor Barnes intervened and the woman stepped back.

Dot said, “I apologize to you both. But men, as you shall see, are scarce around here. I had to test the waters.”

“What do you mean, men are scarce?” Ben asked.

“West takes most of the men to work his camps,” Doctor Barnes said. “Those he leaves are usually under fourteen or over sixty. The few men you see here are all that are left in town. The rest are too young or too old. The women remaining here are also very young, or over fifty.”

“And the other men and women?” Ben asked.

“They’re held at the work camps.”

“Then we’ve got our work cut out for us, haven’t we?” Ben said.

“Yes, sir.”

West, Charles told Ben, always came in from the north. His work camps were located in a half circle, ranging from Union City in the north, extending eastward to Martin, down to Milan, taking in Jackson, down to Bolivar, then in a straight line west to Memphis.

“How many men?” Ben asked.

“It fluctuates,” Barnes said. “But I’d say four hundred at any given time. Don’t misunderstand, General. The people in the area he controls aren’t cowards. Not by any means. He just built his little army and then took one town at a time. Some of the towns might have had fifteen people left when he came, others might have had fifty. He just overpowered them, set up informers, took the guns and vehicles, and left after torturing and killing and raping to prove who was boss.”

“Yes,” Ben said. “And he also caught the people at just the right time. I’ve seen it many times before. Beaten down, scared, hungry, and most important, leaderless.”

“Leaders, General Raines,” Dot said, “are very hard to find.”

“Leaders, Miss Fontana,” Ben countered, “are very easy to find. Finding the right one is what is so difficult.”

Ben spent the rest of that day making more bombs. West had stripped the area of all functioning vehicles, but had left behind those that would not run. Ben ordered the batteries to be pulled from those vehicles and emptied of their acid-if any remained. Many of the batteries were dry.

He showed the people how to properly make and handle Molotov cocktails, and how to construct tin-can land mines, filling them up with gunpowder and nails; how to make wine-bottle cone charges, capable of penetrating two or three inches of armor.

“Special Forces or Ranger, General?” Leighton asked.

“Both,” Ben told him. “Then into the old Hell-Hounds. You remember them?”

“Jesus!” Leighton whispered. “I figured all you guys were long dead.”

Ben showed the people how to take sodium chlorate and sugar, and by adding one other easy to find ingredient, make a highly volatile pipe bomb.

By late afternoon of the first day in town, Ben had more than a hundred of the people gathering materials for him, and by dusk, he had quite an impressive display of homemade bombs.

“Let’s call it a day,” Ben said, straightening up. “Tomorrow morning, early, we’ll go over the plans once more, then take out the column this Mister West sends in.”

They assembled an hour before dawn, at staggered positions along both sides of the old county road. Ben had ordered extra precautions taken with the suspected informers under guard, and his suspicions paid off-one man had tried to escape. Under questioning, he admitted he was an informer for West. He had received extra food for that. Ben ordered him hanged.

“He has a wife and family, General,” a man told Ben.

“He doesn’t anymore.”

In the chilly predawn, Ben finally told his plan to those men and women he had armed, before positioning.

“We wondered when you were going to let us in on it, General,” Leighton said.

“It’s very doubtful we locked up all the informers,” Ben said. “I couldn’t take the chance of one getting away and blowing it all. All right, here it is. First rule of battle: Keep it simple. The more complicated the plan, the more chance you have of it failing. We have to have the vehicles. That’s essential. A roadblock would warn them of danger. So that’s out. Notice how I’m dressed? None of you have. Learn to be more observant. Your life is going to depend on it. My clothing is old and dirty. I didn’t shave this morning. My hat is different. I found it in an old department store, all rat-chewed. I look like I’ve been on the road for a time. I’m holding a ragged-looking coat over my arm. The coat conceals the tear-gas grenade in my left hand. When we hear the sounds of West’s vehicles approaching this position, I’m going to step out into the road with the pin pulled on this grenade, holding the spoon down. With any kind of luck, the driver of the lead truck will roll down his window and call me over. When that happens, I’ll toss the tear-gas grenade into the vehicle and dive for the ditch. That’s your cue to open fire on the others. You don’t have much ammo, so don’t waste it. Never mind broken windshields. They can be replaced; broken skulls can’t. You know your positions, now get to them.”

The thin line of Ben’s newest contingent of Rebels waited in the weed-grown ditches. For many of them, this would be the first taste of actual combat. For despite the collapse of the government of the United States of America a decade after the world had been torn by nuclear and germ warfare, many of the survivors just rolled with the flow, so to speak, obeying blindly the often-times idiotic dictates of a central government that, even in the best of times, had never worked to the satisfaction of a very large and varied minority.

The newly formed Rebels waited. Despite the coolness of the fall morning, many wiped sweaty palms, then regripped their weapons.

The faint sounds of engines sprang out of the morning’s mist. Ben stepped onto the rutted blacktop road. He had slipped another tear-gas grenade into the hip pocket of his old field pants at the last minute. His .45 pistol, a round in the chamber, was tucked in his belt at the small of his back.

He stood alone in the road, waiting.

The vehicles approached slowly, taking their time on the old road. Ben started walking slowly, not wanting to walk past those that lay crouched in the ditches.

The lead truck, a three-quarter ton, stopped, as Ben had hoped it would, only a few yards from him.

“That son of a bitch looks familiar to me,” the man on the passenger side said, his words reaching Ben.

“Raggedy lookin’ thing don’t look like nothing to me,” the driver said. He stuck his head out the window. “Hey, skinny!” he shouted, although the distance between them was short. “Get your funky ass over here, boy.”

“Yes, sir, boss,” Ben said. “I don’t mean no harm to nobody. I was just-was

“Shut your goddamn mouth, boy! And don’t speak until you’re spoken to.”

“Yes, sir, boss.”

Ben stepped closer to the truck. He could smell the rancid odor of unwashed bodies.

“You new around here, ain’t you, boy?” the driver asked.

“Yes, sir, boss.”

“You quick with them bosses, ain’t you, boy? You ever done prison time?”

“Yes, sir, boss. Down in Texas. Huntsville.”

“Well, now,” the driver grinned. Surprisingly, his teeth were in good shape. “The boss might like to talk to you.”

“The hell with that!” his partner yelled. “That’s Ben Raines!”

Ben released the spoon on the tear-gas grenade, dropped his overcoat, and flipped the hissing grenade into the pickup. With his right hand, he jerked out his .45 and shot the driver of the next vehicle in the face, the slug spider-webbing the old, cracked windshield and blowing away part of the man’s jaw.

Ben leaped for the ditch barely in time to avoid being shot by one of the new people. Ben leveled his .45 and shot the man in the stomach, just as Judy shot the traitor in the head with her .30-30 rifle. The slug exited out the right side, blowing out brains and blood and bone and fluid.

Judy tossed Ben his Thompson and he spun to join the fight..

It was over before he could get into action with his submachine gun.

The new Rebels were filled with hate for West’s people, and they gave no quarter to his men. Ben did not try to stop them as they jerked those few left alive out of the vans and trucks and escorted them to the nearest tree for hanging. Ben and Judy stood silently by and watched as the townspeople strung West’s men up with rope and wire and belts and let them swing.

Dot came to face Ben. “That was Ned that tried to shoot you, General. He’s been one of our most faithful people. I never would have suspected him.” She looked at his body. “I wonder why he did it?”

“We’ll probably never know. It doesn’t matter now. Come on, let’s dump the bodies in the ditch and gather up the weapons and ammo. Get these vehicles back to town and look them over. We’ve got to get ready for West’s counterattack.”

Back in town, those who waited were jubilant when their friends drove back into town, cheering and shouting. They now had two dozen more guns and four vehicles.

Ben sat in his pickup truck and watched it all, an amused expression on his face.

“I think it’s sad, and you think it’s funny,” Judy said. “I don’t understand you, Ben.”

“I’m just thinking how my people are going to have to go from coast to coast, border to border, propping up the survivors. It isn’t that I really want to do it, but for our survival, we have to do it.”

“Isn’t that kind of… of… what’s the word I’m looking for?” Judy asked.

“Conceited, smug, arrogant-take your choice. You’re correct to a degree.”

“You make me mad sometimes, Ben Raines.”

“Dogs go mad, dear,” Ben automatically corrected. “People become angry.”

She got out of the truck and slammed the door. She stalked up the street, her back stiff.

Doctor Barnes had been leaning up against a light pole, only a couple of feet from the cab of the truck. He smiled at Ben.

“I wasn’t eavesdropping,” the doctor said. “I was standing here when you drove up.”

“I know,” Ben said. He got out of the truck and walked to the curb, leaning against the fender, looking at the doctor.

“People confound you, don’t they, President-General Raines?”’

“Ben. Just Ben. Yes, they do, Ralph. I would have died fighting before I would have allowed myself to become what West made of you people.”

“I won’t become angry at that, Ben. Some people might, but I won’t. I was quite a fan of yours, Ben. Not during your short tenure as President, mind you; but when you were writing books for a living.”

“I did my best to warn the people what was coming dead at them.”

“Yes, you did. You and a dozen other writers. But we just wouldn’t listen, would we?”

“Sure as hell wouldn’t,” Ben muttered.

“And now the great, indomitable, long-suffering Ben Raines, with a long sigh of resignation, will gather up all his hundreds of survival experts, and travel the battered nation, setting up little outposts of civilization, kicking the civilians in the butt, jerking them out of their doldrums, saving them from themselves. Right?”

“You’re the one talking, Doctor. But you’re in a pretty sorry state for a man who has all the answers.”

“Oh, you’re right. But you enjoy it, General.”

“What?”’

“Stop running from the truth, General. You wouldn’t have conditions any other way. You see, it’s always easy for men like you. I envy you: you and those that follow you.”

“Barnes, I don’t know what in the hell you’re talking about.”

The doctor studied the man for a long moment. “Maybe you really don’t, General. I have all your books, Ben. I really do. St. You could have been a great writer, but you chose to write pulp. Oh, it was good pulp-contradictory statement, yes.”

“Doctor, get to the point of this, will you, please?”

“You’re an idealist, General. You refuse to take into account the many weaknesses of human beings. You took what you considered to be the cream of the crop and built your Tri-States-was

“It worked, Doctor,” Ben cut him off. “You can’t deny that.”

“I won’t try to deny it. Yes, it worked. How could it fail when you gathered the best around you?”

Ben smiled. “Here it comes. After all that’s happened, you’re still a liberal at heart.” .

“To some degree,” Barnes admitted. “There is no middle ground with you, Ben. Everything is either black or white. No gray in-between.”

“Doctor,” Ben said patiently. “One can train a dog to obey basic rules. Now if a dog can be taught the difference between right and wrong, it should be very simple to teach a human being.”

Barnes shook his head. “You’re a hard man, Ben Raines. But,” he sighed, “perhaps it’s time for hard men. One philosophy, right, Ben? No taking into account different cultures, backgrounds, early upbringing-anything like that, right?”

“You stick to healing, Barnes,” Ben told him. “Leave the rest for people who have the stomach for it.”

“General Raines, you want what never was and never will be: a perfect society. But you cannot build a perfect society when the architects are imperfect human beings.”

Ben smiled again. “The man said, quoting Ben Raines.”

The doctor’s smile matched Ben’s. “That’s right, you did write that, didn’t you? I’ll live in your society, General. But I’ll do so because of the safety it affords me, not because I agree with its basic philosophy.”

“Then that makes you a hypocrite, doesn’t it, Mr. Barnes?”

The doctor chose not to reply. He studied Ben for a moment, then walked away.

Ben noticed the seat of the man’s jeans had been crudely patched with a piece of canvas. For all his education and lofty thoughts, the man could just barely keep his ass from showing through.

Chapter 5

“Still angry at me?” Ben asked Judy.

“Mad!” she said.

“Very well. When you get your rabies shot, let me know. I’ll be around.”

She grabbed his arm with surprising strength and spun him around as he turned to go. “Ben, these people were beaten down-whipped. Now they’ve had a small victory and they’re happy. And you think it’s funny.”

“Judy …” Ben stepped closer. “I’m amused, but not in the way you think. My Rebels have played out this same scenario for years. Has it occurred to you that we just might be weary of it?”

“Then why don’t you and your people just quit?” she asked hotly.

“We can’t. For our own sake, we can’t. It’s never-ending for us. I see that now. If I-we comh a destiny, this is it.”

“Yeah, you said that-something like it-back in the truck. But you don’t have to act so … so smart-assed about it!”

He laughed at her and took her hand. “Come on, fireball. We’ve got to start setting up a defense line against West and his people.”

“And it annoys you that you have to remind the people to do it, right, Ben?”

“Oh, not really. I guess it’s second nature for me.” He smiled. “Just one of my many talents.”

Judy muttered something extremely profane under her breath.

“You don’t know the exact location of West’s base camp?” Ben asked.

“Not his main camp,” Leigh ton said. “We know where most of his work camps are, though.”

They were taking a break from setting up a first line of defense on the north side of town.

“After we arm ourselves better with the weapons taken from the next contingent of West’s people, we’ll hit the first labor camp and free your friends. By that time, my Rebels should be here with some heavier stuff.”

Barnes looked horrified. “You plan to fight West’s people before your troops get here?”’

“Sure,” Ben said.

“Are you mad or just insufferably arrogant?” the doctor asked.

“Neither one, I hope,” Ben said with a smile.

“Look around you, General!” Barnes almost shouted the words. “You have thirty people armed, and not well-armed, at that. West has between four hundred and six hundred well-armed and trained men.”

“But he can’t send all of them at once,” Ben said gently. “That would leave his labor camps unguarded. He can’t leave his base camp unguarded; that’s probably where he stashes his weapons and ammo. Warlords down through history share many things in common, one of which is a monumental ego. I’m counting on this West person to fit the mold. He will find where we ambushed and killed his people. I’m counting on that. It’s kind of hard to miss a half-dozen hanging bodies,” Ben added drily. “That’s going to make West either awfully angry or awfully cautious. I’m betting on angry. We’re going to let him bust through this first line of barricades with very little resistance. See how they’re placed close to deep ditches so we can jump into their protection and run screaming and frightened away from the Big Bad West? You notice I have the other teams working just around that curve, one mile down the road. Row after row of drums filled with water, concrete blocks, old junked cars. No way he can get through. When his column grinds to a halt, what’s going to be directly over and behind him, Doctor?”

The doctor smiled grudgingly. “An overpass, General. And you and Leighton and Canby and Morris will be up there with automatic weapons and bombs, right?”

“You’re learning, Ralph. I’ll make a fighter out of you yet.”

“I’ll stick with medicine,” the doctor replied, turning away.

“That man does not have much use for me,” Ben told Dot.

“He resents the ease with which you handle things,”

the woman told him. “We’ve been plotting and scheming for a year around here, trying to come up with some solution to our problem. Then you walk in and take over. And get it done,” she added.

Ben looked at the woman. “Dot, no nation whose citizens were fully armed was ever conquered by an outside force. I might get some argument on that, but in the main it’s true. Just as it’s true that many nations went from right-wing dictatorships to a democratic form of government. But no nation ever went from a communist form of government to a democratic form of government. The people who control the guns control it all.”

She smiled at him. “I’m old enough to remember that the writer Ben Raines was a liberal hater in print. A liberal hater in person, too, it appears.”

Judy came to Ben’s side, two cups of what currently passed for coffee in her hands. More chicory than anything else. But at least it was hot, and if enough honey was added, not too bad.

“Thank you,” Ben said, not sure if Judy was still angry at him, for whatever reason.

“You’re welcome.” She handed the second cup to Dot. A quiet peace offering from woman to woman. “The lookouts are reporting everything is quiet. No sign of West.”

Dot sipped her coffee. “They’ll be here. What worries me is what happens if West and Campo join forces?”

“We fight them,” Ben said. “My people will be here in the morning; possibly late this evening. Campo doesn’t have artillery and no one here has seen any type of artillery in the hands of West. There’ll be a mortar crew with my Rebels and at least two .50-caliber machine guns-maybe four of them. That, plus our discipline and experience, will make up the difference.”

“Here they come!” the excited call was passed down the line. “A whole great line of them.”

“Get into position,” Ben ordered. “You all know what to do. Do it, and we’ll come out of this alive. Fuck up, and we’re dead.”

Ben and those with him, all armed with M-16’s, crouched on the overpass and watched and waited. Ben saw the twenty-odd vehicles of the column slow, then stop. Using binoculars, Ben watched the lead vehicle, a van. A man got out and stood with hands on hips, surveying the flimsy barricade that stretched across the road. The bearded man laughed at the obstacle and pointed toward it.

Ben handed the binoculars to Leighton. “Is that West?”

Leighton looked. “That’s him.” He counted the vehicles in the column. “Figuring five men to a vehicle, I make it about a hundred twenty-five men we’re up against.”

“Yes,” Ben said. He lifted his walkie-talkie. Judy was behind the second, as yet unseen, barricade around the curve. “Judy? Everybody in place and ready?”

“Ready, Ben,” she radioed back. The young lady had never seen a walkie-talkie before meeting Ben.

“Stay loose,” Ben said.

“One guy got too loose,” Judy radioed back. “He messed his pants.”

Ben grinned and rehooked the walkie-talkie to his chest harness. “Here they come.”

A few desultory shots were fired at the advancing column by those behind the first barricade. They then jumped into the ditch, running and yelling as if in mortal fear.

A bob truck with a steel grate welded in front of the hood was waved on past West’s van. The bob truck slammed through the barricade, the column following.

“So far, so good,” Ben muttered.

When the last vehicle had passed the wrecked barricade, people ran out from the thick weeds and brush on both sides of the highway. They carried concrete blocks, wooden planks with long nails driven through, sacks of broken glass. Others rolled water-filled fifty-five-gallon drums. Still others unrolled barbed wire, securing the ends on both sides of the highway.

They quickly and effectively closed the highway to West and his people.

Rounding the curve, the second barricade looked at first glance to be as flimsy as the first. The bob truck picked up speed, preparing to ram right through the barricade. The bob truck’s right front tire struck a series of concrete blocks, tipped to one side, and rolled over, spilling the men riding in the back. The men were shot down before they could rise to their feet. From behind the barricade, men and women darted out, grabbed up weapons and ammo belts, then raced back behind the shelter.

In the van, West realized he had driven right into a well-thought-out trap. He spun the steering wheel, the van slewing around, facing the direction he’d come. On the overpass, Ben leveled his scope-mounted, .30-06, lined up West’s ugly face in the cross hairs, and pulled the trigger. The slug slammed through the windshield,

deflected upward several inches, and struck West on the side of the head. The slug blew off the man’s ear, taking a thick patch of hide and hair with it. He jumped out of the van, howling in pain, one hand to the side of his bloody head, and tried to run. Ben shot him in the knee, almost blowing the lower part of the leg off. If he could do it, he wanted West alive.

West’s men found themselves trapped in an increasingly bloody box. There seemed to be no way out. The rage of the men and women they had brutally subdued and abused and oppressed howled to the surface, erupting like a savage trapped beast. When the men attempted to surrender, they were hacked to pieces by axe-and machete-wielding men and women. The blood and gore slicked the old highway.

“Cease fire!” Ben yelled. “Cease fire! Back off, people! Back off! It’s over, goddamn it!”

Silence settled over the smoky, bloody carnage-filled highway. The men and women looked at what was left of that which they had so feared for so long.

“Doctor Barnes!” Ben yelled, standing up.

“Here, General.”

“See to West’s wounds. We want him alive for barter. The rest of you gather up the weapons and tear down the barricades. Get the road clear of nails and glass.”

“We did it!” a woman cried, crying tears of joy and relief and disbelief. “We really did it!”

Ben looked down from the overpass, his eyes touching Doctor Barnes.

“Might rules once again, right, General?” the doctor called.

“An armed, disciplined, organized people cannot be enslaved, Doctor. were I you, I would keep that in mind.”

“Still the writer, aren’t you, General?” Barnes said, his voice carrying to the top of the overpass. “Still carrying your liberal-hating message to the masses, right?”’

“Somebody damn well better continue doing it,” Ben said.

The doctor turned away. The canvas patch on the seat of his trousers had worked loose.

His ass was showing.

Chapter 6

One hundred and fifty of the town’s residents were now armed, with plenty of ammunition for the weapons. Only a handful of West’s men made it out of the ambush alive, and two of those died during the night. West’s leg, from the knee down, was amputated by Doctor Barnes. It really was not that tough an operation, for Ben’s bullet had done most of the work. When Barnes complained that he had nothing to knock the man out with, Ben looked at the doctor as if he were an idiot.

The doctor got the message.

“It’s going to be very difficult closing all this off,” the doctor bitched.

“Cauterize it,” Ben said.

The doctor finally lost his temper. “You’re a fucking savage, Raines! Goddamn it, the man is a human being.”

Ben met the man’s hot eyes. “West has killed, in cold blood, no telling how many hundreds of people. He has raped, tortured, mutilated, degraded, enslaved, and

God only knows what else, to countless hundreds more. If you’re expecting me to feel any degree of pity for that scum, you’re going to have a long wait, doctor. Like forever!”

“Now I know why the Tri-States was virtually crime-free!”

“That’s right, Doctor. We just didn’t tolerate it.”

West lay on the table, tied down with ropes, and cursed Ben.

Ben looked at the man and spoke quietly. After his words, West shut his mouth and kept it shut.

Ben had placed the muzzle of his pistol against West’s temple and said, “I can put you out of your pain permanently, West. The choice is yours.”

Doctor Barnes said, “God, Raines! I’d hate to have to live with your conscience.”

“I don’t have any problems with it at all, Ralph,” Ben replied.

The contingent of Rebels rolled in just after first light. They were commanded by a Captain Chad.

“You made good time, Captain,” Ben told the young officer.

“We took shifts at the wheel, General. Only had to detour three times and then not too far.” He looked around at the looted and nearly destroyed city. “This going to be our first outpost, General?”

“One of the first, I suppose. I’d like to set up at least two more between Base Camp One and here. We’ll see how this one works out.”

The Rebels were introduced all around. The men and women of what was left of Dyersburg could only stand and stare at the healthy, well-dressed, and fit Rebels. A young woman, dressed exactly like her Rebel counterparts, walked up to Ben. She wore a .45 belted at her waist and looked very comfortable with it.

“I’m Doctor Walland, General. We met briefly back at Base Camp One.”

“Yes, I remember, Doctor,” Ben said, shaking the woman’s hand. He waved for Doctor Barnes to come over. He introduced them and said, “I’ll leave you two alone. Doctor Barnes doesn’t care for my company.”

Gloria Walland looked at Ben and smiled. “You’re joking, of course, General.”

“According to Doctor Barnes, I am a barbarian and a savage,” Ben said bluntly. “He doesn’t care for the Rebel system of justice.”

Doctor Gloria Walland, a captain in the Rebel Army, faced Doctor Ralph Barnes.

Ben leaned over to see if the doctor had changed trousers. He had.

“Let’s clear the air, Doctor Barnes,” Gloria said.

“That would probably be best, Doctor Walland,” Ralph said. “Captain Walland,” Gloria corrected.

“But of course.”

“I am a physician, Doctor Barnes. If you bring two wounded people to me, one a member of the Rebel Army, the other a prisoner of war, I will check to see which person is the more severely wounded. But I would not, and will not, allow a member of the Rebel Army to die in order to save the life of the enemy. Is that clear, Doctor?”’

“Perfectly clear, Captain,” Barnes said stiffly.

“One more thing, Doctor Barnes,” Gloria said. “Two years ago I was seized at gunpoint by armed men. Scavengers, looters, scum. They raped me. One of them made a mistake and turned his back to me when he had finished. I grabbed his pistol, a .38-caliber revolver, took very careful aim, and shot the bastard squarely and precisely in his asshole. He was still screaming as I killed the other two and drove away. Does that give you some insight as to what I think about criminals, Doctor?”

“I get a very clear picture, Captain Walland.”

“Fine, Doctor Barnes. Now if you’ll help me with my equipment, we’ll see about giving everybody here a checkup and see where we have to go concerning vitamins and diet.”

“With pleasure … Doctor,” Ralph said. As Walland walked away, Ralph looked at Ben and smiled. “Very … ah, forceful young woman, General. I think we’re going to get on splendidly.”

“I hope so, Ralph. I’m told she’s an expert shot.” When Ralph had gone, Captain Chad said, “General? I’ve known Gloria for five years. She never was raped.”

Ben smiled. “Yes. I’ve read her file. She’s just telling Doctor Barnes how the show is going to be run, that’s all.”

Leaving half the newly arrived contingent of the Rebels behind, Ben took the mortar crews, the machine gunners, and one hundred of the newly armed citizens with their newly acquired vehicles and led the column toward the first of West’s labor camps. Ben’s heavily armed force rolled up to the gates of the forced labor camp, located some twenty-odd miles from Dyersburg.

A strange silence greeted them. There were no guards in the crudely built towers, no guards to be seen behind the high barbed wire that surrounded the camp.

“I don’t think we’re going to like what we’ll see in those barracks, General,” Captain Chad said.

“Nor I, Captain,” Ben replied. “Blow the gates and let’s take a look.”

Several of the civilians lost their breakfast and many more turned green around the mouth.

The prisoners in the labor camp had been machine-gunned in their barracks. The rough wooden floors were slick with blood. The stench of loosened bowels was nearly overpowering.

“Why, General?” a man asked. “Why did they do this?”’

“Revenge. West must have had observers behind the main column yesterday. They reported back, and this,” he waved his hand, “is their reply to us.” Ben turned to Dot. “You know where the other camps are located?”

“Most of them. But… what about the dead here?” she asked.

“You have no earthmoving equipment, Dot. And I didn’t bring any body bags with me. So unless you people want to spend several days digging holes for the bodies-which the dogs and other wild animals will dig up as soon as you’re gone-I suggest we put all the bodies in one barracks and burn them.”

“And … then?” Canby asked.

“We go wipe out what is left of West’s operation.”

The smoke from the controlled burn poured black and greasy into the morning sky. The unmistakable odor of burning human flesh filled the still air.

The scene was nothing new to the small contingent of Rebels that stood impassively by and watched. Many of them had been with Ben for years; they had seen much worse than this during the years of traveling.

But to the civilians of Dyersburg, the scene was awful.

“Got a long way to go to make these folks fighters, General,” Captain Chad said quietly. “If it’s possible at all.”

“I’ll opt for the latter, Captain,” Ben said. “And I’m not downgrading them for it. I think we can train them to become a pretty good militia force, as long as some of us are around to lead.”

“And that’s up to me and my troops, right, General?” Captain Chad asked.

“That’s it, Captain. This outpost idea was just a thought. We’ll review what’s happened next spring. Take it from there.”

The captain thought about the small city. “First thing we do is clean up the town. Got to give the people some purpose; keep them busy. Elect a leader and set up work teams. But the people will have to think they’re the ones who thought of it and implemented the plan.”

“The chief of security will be Charles Leighton. Let him pick his own security people; he’ll do a good job. Watch Doctor Barnes, Captain. The man is living in a dream world.” Ben was thoughtful for a moment. “I believe Barnes is a good man. But he’s no Rebel and never will be. He’s going to question every decision you make, Captain.”

“What you’re saying, sir, is that the man is going to be a pain in the ass.”

“Very aptly put, Captain.”

Ben sent out scout teams of his own people, with Charles Leighton guiding them, to reconnoiter the largest of the forced work camps. While that was being done, he sent a jeep back to get West.

“Doctor Barnes isn’t going to like that, General,” Canby told Ben.

“He probably won’t,” Ben agreed.

Ralph Barnes returned with West. The man was clearly upset and made no effort to conceal his ire.

“I demand to know why you ordered this man taken from his bed and brought here, General?” he said. “Can’t you see he is clearly in pain?” The doctor sniffed several times. “What is that smell?”

“Burning bodies,” Ben told him. “Several hundred of them.” He told Barnes what they had discovered at the camp.

Sitting in the Jeep, under guard, West laughed. Barnes flushed at the taunting laughter.

“Real nice fellow, isn’t he?” Ben asked. “Has the milk of human kindness flowing strongly through his veins.” Ben looked at West. “You’d better hope your men think enough of you to swap you for the prisoners, West. “Cause if they don’t, you won’t be laughing when I put a noose around your dirty neck.”

West’s laughter ceased as quickly as it came. He sat in the jeep and glared at Ben.

The woman Rebel manning the radio called to Ben. “All the prisoners have been grouped together at one camp, General. They’re still alive. Our scouts have made contact and are keeping the camp under visual.”

“Tell them we’re on the way,” Ben told her. He turned to Doctor Barnes. “Coming with us, Doctor?”

“You couldn’t keep me away, Raines.”

“I wouldn’t bet on that, Ralph,” Ben told him.

The doctor met the Rebel’s eyes. “Just a figure of speech, General.”

“Uh-huh,” Ben muttered.

“What’s the procedure, West?” Ben asked.

Ben stood by the jeep where West sat. The outlaw was clearly in pain, his face slick with sweat and pale. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat and looked at Ben.

“I don’t know,” West finally said. “Nothing like this ever happened before.”

“Then I’ll tell you,” Ben said. “We’ll make an even swap. You for the prisoners.”

A sly look came into the outlaw’s eyes. “You know damn well you ain’t got the people to overrun my boys, don’t you, Raines?”

“Maybe. But we could sure put one hell of a dent in your number.”

“Yeah,” West admitted.

“Think about it, West. You’ll have to shut down your labor camps, but you’d be alive.”

“And you’d keep your word?” the outlaw asked, suspicion in his eyes and voice.

“Yes.”

“You got a bullhorn?”

“No. But we have walkie-talkie’s.”

“Gimme one.”

A field radio was brought to the jeep. West checked the frequency and called in. He spoke for a moment, listened, then his voice became harsher. He turned to Ben.

“The guys don’t trust you, Raines. Hell, I don’t trust you. But it’s the only game in town, so I gotta play it.”

“When the last prisoner walks free of that camp,” Ben said. “You’re free. That’s it.”

“Hey!” West protested. “That ain’t worth a shit, man.”

“You said it, West. It’s the only game in town. Take it or leave it.”

“Awright, awright.” He lifted the walkie-talkie, and spoke for a few seconds. He again turned to Ben. “They’s comin” out now.” His eyes shot hate at Raines. “This ain’t the end, Raines. You takin’ a hell of a chance turnin’ me loose. You know I’m gonna be comin’ after your ass.”

“A lot of folks have tried, West. I’m still around,” Ben told him.

“You ain’t never had me on your ass, Raines. I’ll get you for this. And that’s a flat promise, buddy.”

Ben smiled, thinking that his newest odyssey would prove quite interesting.

Chapter 7

Ben’s Rebels and the newly armed civilians ringed the big camp, keeping the outlaws penned until the last of the prisoners were being safely trucked away back to Dyersburg.

Ben lifted his walkie-talkie. “You and your men are free to leave, now, West. Lay down your weapons and start walking.” “What?” West screamed, the word bouncing out of the walkie-talkie.

“You heard me,” Ben radioed. “Start walking.”

“No goddamn way, Raines. We take our guns and vehicles.”

“Captain Chad,” Ben called. “Put ten rounds of mortars, H.e., into that camp.”

“Yes, sir,” the captain grinned.

A long barracks-type building went first, the high-explosive round sending bits of splintered wood flying. A guard tower was blown all over that part of Tennessee; another building was blown, then a mortar round shattered the big front gates of the labor camp.

“All right, goddamn it!” West screamed. “All right, you bastard. Cool it!”

“Cease firing,” Ben ordered.

“I cain’t walk outta here, Raines,” West’s voice whined out of the speaker. “Gimme a break, man.”

Charles Leighton whispered into Ben’s ear. Ben grinned and lifted his walkie-talkie. “All right, West. You can ride out. On a mule.”

West did not need a walkie-talkie. His cursing could be heard for half a mile.

“You got anything to say about that, Doctor Barnes?” Ben asked the man.

“Would my opinion make any difference, General?” the man asked.

“Not a bit, Doctor. But this being a democratic society, I thought Td ask.”

“We need more medical people in here,” Doctor Barnes bitched to Ben. “The prisoners are in extremely bad shape. We need more doctors.”

Ben was tempted to tell the man that a frog probably wished it were more beautiful; people in Hell wished they had ice water, and that if Barnes’ aunt had been born with balls, she’d have been his uncle.

Ben was getting awfully weary with Doctor Ralph Barnes.

Ben held his temper. “In addition to Doctor Walland, there are two fully-trained medics with the Rebel platoon. I can’t pull any more people in here from Base Camp One.”

“Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute.”

“Guns and butter,” Ben countered. He walked away.

He found Judy helping in the makeshift hospital. “I’m pulling out in the morning,” he told her. “If I stay here any longer, I’m going to end up beating the shit out of Doctor Barnes. And that’s not going to do either one of us any good.”

“Ben …” She faced him.

“I know. I know. You’re staying. I think you should, Judy. You’re needed here. I mean that, kid.”

She kissed him, then smiled up at him. “I’m going to make you proud of me, Ben. I’m going to study and learn how to write books.”

“I think you will, Judy. We’ll say good-bye, now.”

“Bye, Ben.”

He walked away.

Ben was surprised to see Doctor Barnes leaning against his truck in the just-breaking light of dawn. Ben tossed his kit into the protection of the camper and walked around to face Barnes.

“I hope you’re not leaving because of me, General,” Barnes said.

“You’re part of the reason,” Ben said truthfully. “But the real reason is I’m no longer needed here. Captain Chad and his people will handle it. So it’s time for me to be pulling out.” Ben stuck out his hand and the doctor shook it.

“I was thirty-five years old when the bottom dropped out, General,” the doctor said, speaking softly as dawn broke. “I had a family, a fine practice, and everything that went with that. I looked up the next day, and the entire world had gone mad.”

“And you bet your whole roll on Hilton Logan,” Ben said.

“Am I that transparent?” Barnes asked.

“Let’s see if I can peg you, Ralph,” Ben said, leaning up against the fender and lighting one of his horrible, homegrown, homemade cigarettes. He offered one to the doctor and Ralph took it.

“It’s bad for your health,” the doctor grinned.

“I heard that,” Ben replied with a laugh. “You were what was known as a Yuppie. You belonged to the country club locally. You were politically and socially aware and active …”

He paused while the doctor inhaled and went into spasms of coughing. “Damn, that’s good!” Ralph said. He took another drag and said, “Reasonably accurate. Continue, please. You’re a very astute man.”

“You were a democrat, politically. You were opposed to the death penalty and loudly in favor of gun control. You bemoaned the state of the nation’s health care for those who could not afford the skyrocketing medical costs, but you were against any type of socialized medicine. And you lived in a two-hundred-thousand-dollar home and your wife drove a Mercedes or BMW. How close am I, Ralph?”’

The doctor went on the defensive, as Ben had thought he would. “And what did you do about health care for those who could not afford it, General?”

“Nothing,” Ben said. “I didn’t have lobbyists in Washington, Ralph.”

“And you weren’t paying fifty thousand dollars a year for malpractice insurance, either, General.”

“Want to jump on the back of lawyers, now, Ralph?” Ben said with a laugh.

Barnes joined in the laughter. “No. I don’t believe so.

We’ll save that for your return trip.” He stuck out his hand and Ben shook it. “See you, General. Good luck to you.”

“Luck to you, too, Ralph. See you on the back swing.”

His scouts had reported that West and his people had last been seen trudging up Highway 51, heading north toward Kentucky. Ben headed west, taking 155 toward the Mississippi River and into Missouri. The bridge over the Big Muddy was clear and the river rolled beneath him, eternal and silent. Ben stopped on the center of the bridge and got out of his truck, gazing down into the muddy waters.

As he watched the swirling, ever-rushing waters of the Mississippi, a passage from the Bible came to him: One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth forever.

“But what kind of men and women will the next generation give the earth?” he asked the cool winds of late fall.

Like the river, the winds swirled and rushed, speaking in a language only they could understand.

With a sigh, Ben got back into his truck and headed west.

He stopped at Hayti and looked around. There was no sign of life. But he knew there was life. Almost every town of any size at all held two or ten or twenty survivors. But most, instead of organizing, pulling together, working together in a cooperative effort, for safety and defense and productivity’s sake, were instead lone-wolfing it, and by doing so, were helping to drag down what vestiges of civilization remained.

“No good,” Ben muttered. “It can’t be allowed to continue. The outpost idea must be implemented-and soon.”

He smiled as he drove on west. “That’s right, Ben. Set yourself up as a modern-day version of Don Quixote.” Or perhaps you’re playing the role of Sancho Panza, he thought.

Either way, what right do you have to play God, rearranging peoples” lives? Who named you the Great Overseer? Nobody came down from the mountain and whispered in your ear, Raines.

He shook away those thoughts and concentrated on his driving.

But his mind refused to stay idle; the outpost idea kept jumping to the fore. The outposts would, out of necessity, have to start out small. Because of the recent revolt within his ranks, his Rebel number had been cut by forty percent.*

They could not, as yet, stretch coast to coast; there weren’t that many Rebels left. Perhaps a thousand miles without strain. From Base Camp One in Georgia to the middle of Colorado. Maybe. Just maybe. But due to the aftereffects of the limited nuclear strikes, the jet stream had shifted, so he needed to get some people down south, to where the growing season was longer.

“Shit!” he said aloud. “Raines, this is supposed to be a vacation for you. You’re supposed to be doing some writing.”

But he doubted that would ever happen. Something always came up to keep him from paper and pencil.

*

Blood in the Ashes

Suddenly, one of those “somethings” reared up from the left side of the road. Ben braked and stopped. He checked both mirrors. It was clear behind him. He was still a good hundred yards from the man with a gun in his hands. Ben got out of the truck, taking his Thompson with him.

The hood of the truck protected him from the chest down. Ben clicked the Thompson off safety as the man slowly raised his rifle.

“I want your truck,” the man called. “Gimme it here and there won’t be no trouble.”

“Why do you need my particular truck?” Ben called. “There are thousands of vehicles for you to choose from.”

““Cause yours is runnin”,” the man said.

“Sorry, friend. Find your own mode of transportation.”

“Then I’ll just kill you,” the man said.

Ben stepped from behind the door. Holding the Thompson waist-high, the muzzle pointed at the man’s legs, Ben pulled the trigger and held it back.

A hundred yards is straining it for a Thompson, and the first six or eight rounds whined off the road in front of the man. But as the powerful old .45-caliber spitter roared and bucked, the muzzle pulling up and right from the weapon on full auto, a dozen or more rounds struck the man, starting at his ankles and working up, stitching him from ankles to head. Part of the man’s skullbone flew out into the field behind him as the man was knocked backward, dead before he hit the ditch.

Ben quickly ejected the drum and slapped in a full thirty-round clip. Crouching beside the truck, Ben did a slow sixty count before moving out. He ran to the body and crouched down in the ditch. The back of his neck was tingling with suspicion. Something was all out of whack here. Working quickly, Ben jerked the web belt off the man. The man was loaded down with M-16 clips, all full. Ben grabbed up the M-16 and inspected it for damage. None of his slugs had struck the weapon. He looked at the dead man. The man wore new boots, reasonably fresh trousers, and clean-discounting the fresh blood stains and bullet holes-shirt and jacket.

“I don’t know what your problem was, buddy,” Ben said, walking back to the truck. “But you’ve been relieved of it.”

He stowed the M-16 and extra ammo in the camper and drove on, thinking it was another mystery that would never be solved.

Ben drove on into Kennett, Missouri, stopping at the edge of town. He could see smoke from fires pluming into the sky, but as it so often was, the smoke was not centralized, but widely separated, as if the people wanted no part of each other.

“You’re making a mistake, folks,” he said aloud. “Now is the time to come together, not drift apart. Black, white, red, yellow, tan; we all bleed the same color.”

At the crossroads, Ben flipped a silver dollar he had carried for years into the air. “Heads, I go right; tails I turn left,” he said.

The coin came heads up.

Ben cut the wheel right, heading north.

He did not see another living soul, nor any sign of human life for the next twenty miles. At Campbell, Missouri, sitting out front of a long-unused service station, Ben spotted a man leaned back in a cane-bottomed chair. The man waved in a friendly gesture and Ben pulled over.”

“Howdy, neighbor,” the man said.

“Hello,” Ben returned the greeting.

“Been waitin’ for you to show up,” the man said. “Folks over to Kennett radioed you was headin’ this way.”

“I see. Then they are a bit more organized than I thought.”

“We’re pretty well organized around here. They told me you was travelin’ alone and didn’t appear to be hostile. Damn, you look familiar to me, mister.”

“Ben Raines.”

The man turned several shades paler. “The Ben Raines?”

“I guess so. Is the world ready for two of us?” Ben kidded.

“Well, I’ll just be damned! Well, come on out and let’s talk some. Let me get on the radio and get the folks together. Not that there’s that many of us, mind you.”

“How many?”

“Oh, “bout two hundred and fifty. And that number is made up of about twenty different bands and knots of folks.”

Ben decided to keep his mouth shut about the man he’d killed on the road.

“I know what you’re thinkin”, Mr. Raines,” the man said. “Are we under one leader, right? The answer is no. There’s about sixty or so of us that would like that, but the rest of the folks are against it.”

“Then get them together,” Ben said. “I’m not interested in speaking to or meeting any of the other people.”

The man smiled. “I heard you was a hard, hard man, Mr. Raines.”

“So I’ve been told, sir. So I’ve been told.”

Chapter 8

Ben liked what he saw when the group of people was assembled in the old gym. There were sixty-eight adults gathered, their ages ranging from early twenties to what used to be called the Golden Age.

But, Ben thought with a smile, this bunch of elderly folks looked fit and hard.

Ben had met and shaken hands with them all. He’d met a couple of musicians, several farmers, mechanics, former small business people, accountants, two doctors, several lawyers … a pretty good cross-section of small town America.

Briefly, Ben explained his idea of outposts stretching across the land. He explained the advantages to that plan, and then let the people talk about it among themselves for a time.

“And we can count on help from your Rebels, General Raines?” he was asked.

“Once you people are committed to the plan, yes,” Ben said. “But I’m not going to send my people in here to waste their time and yours if you’re not ready for organization and law and order. I think you’re all familiar with how the Tri-States operated. That’s the way I’ll expect you to run your community. You people have the beginnings of a good operation here. All you need to do is break away from the dissidents among you and set it up. And you don’t need my help to do that. You’re well armed and you look fit. I’ve given you the frequency of our Base Camp One. If you hit a snag, contact them. The next outpost is just across the river, in Dyersburg. Why don’t you send someone over there to look around, compare ideas. All I can tell you is, “good luck.””

Ben pulled out, alone, early the next morning. For some reason he could not fathom, Texas was pulling at him, and he wanted to get there and spend the winter there, exploring and writing and being alone. He had been surrounded by people for more than a decade, training and fighting and organizing and being pushed and prodded into something he had never really wanted to be: A leader.

He just wanted to be alone for a time.

Ben headed straight west, or as straight as the road would allow after he took a county road down to Highway 142. At Neelyville, Missouri, he filled his gas tanks and prowled the deserted town-and this town was definitely deserted. He sat for a time in an old barber shop and thumbed through what was left of an old Field and Stream magazine he’d found stuck up under some hair tonic behind the closed doors of a cabinet. He leaned back in the old chair and muttered, “A shave and haircut, please.”

Then the old chair collapsed and dumped him to the floor.

Laughing at himself-something Ben had always been able to do-he continued westward.

Just outside of Gatewood, Missouri, he found the highway blocked by a fallen tree. Using his chain saw, Ben cleared the road and drove on for a few more miles before deciding it was time to hunt a place to spend the night.

He stopped on the west side of the Eleven Point River and caught a mess of fish for his supper, cooking them on his camp stove on the closed porch of a once-fine old home.

When he awakened the next morning, dawn was breaking and the ground was white with frost.

He was also looking down the muzzle of a double-barreled shotgun.

“Well, now, if that ain’t the sorriest lookin’ sight I ever did see,” Jake Campo said. “A one-footed warlord ridin’ a goddamned mule, and a-leadin’ a pack-rat bunch of whupped rednecks.”

The big outlaw lifted his ugly face to the sky and howled with laughter.

“Laugh, you lardassed son of a bitch!” West snarled at the man. “I got more men than you have, and if you want a fight you damn sure got it.”

“Now, now,” Jake said, wiping tears from his eyes. “Don’t get your bowels in no uproar, West. How in the hell did you lose your foot?”’

“That bastard Ben Raines shot it off!”

“It appears Raines not only took your foot, but your ear and cars and most of your guns as well,” Jake observed. Campo helped West down from the mule and to a camp chair in front of his tent. He poured the man chicory coffee.

West slurped his coffee and sighed. “Good,” he said. “Warms my belly but don’t do nothin” for the hurt in my leg.”

“That’ll pass, I reckon,” Jake said. “Or else you’ll die. One of the two. Tell me what happened.”

West tried to ease his aching stump by propping it up. He told Campo what had happened, greatly embellishing the heroism of himself and his men against overwhelming odds.

“Uh-huh,” Jake said, slurping his coffee. “Now that we got the bullshit outta the way, tell me the truth.”

“I just tole you!”

“No, you didn’t. You told me a bunch of lies. Raines probably pulled together a gang of civilians and then proceeded to kick your ass. He’s good at doin’ things like that. Now, West, ain’t that what really happened?”

West slumped back in his chair. His face still silently expressed the ache in his severed stump. “Yeah,” he said. “That’s just about it. Jake? You reckon they’s any truth in all them stories about Raines?”

““Bout him being a god, you mean?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know,” Jake admitted, all humor leaving his eyes. “I’ve given that some thought. Hartline is probably the best soldier I ever served with. Hartline couldn’t take Raines. The Russian couldn’t take Raines; Raines whipped him good. The goddamned United States Government couldn’t even whip Raines back in “97 or so. Man’s been shot a dozen or more times, blown up, stabbed-can’t kill him. But he’s got to have his Achilles heel.”

“His what?”

“I always forget what a dumb son of a bitch you are,” Jake said contemptuously. “His weak spot.”

“Why didn’t you just say so? I’m gonna get him, Jake,” West said. “I swear on my mother’s grave, I’m gonna get Ben Raines.”

“Well, he’s headin’ west, that’s for sure. You ready to pitch in with me, now?”

“Yeah.”

“I wish I knew what Raines was up to,” Jake said. “He was travelin’ by himself “til he hooked with that brother-and-sister team. You ride with me from now on, West. We’ll get him, boy, don’t you worry none.”

The double-barreled shotgun was just about as big as the boy holding it. Ben cut his eyes upward and could see the shotgun was an old side-hammer type. And the hammers had not been cocked.

“Oh, my,” Ben said. “I guess you got the drop on me, son.”

“I sure do, partner,” the boy replied. “So don’t you try nothin” funny.”

“Oh, I won’t. Could I ask a favor of you before you shoot me?”

“What is it?”’

“You mind if I fix some breakfast? I hate to get shot on an empty stomach.”

“What you got to eat?” the boy asked. “I ain’t et in two, three days.”

“Oh, I have bacon and beans and crackers. How about it?”

The boy backed up and lowered the muzzle of the shotgun. “I reckon that’ll be all right, mister. Just be careful.”

The shotgun, Ben concluded, was at least a hundred years old. An old Damascus steel barrel. If the boy tried to fire any type of modern ammunition in the ancient weapon, he would probably end up killing himself, the twist barrel exploding and folding back.

Ben smiled as he laced up his boots and pumped up the stove. “You don’t need to hold that shotgun on me, son. By the time you could cock that thing, I would have taken it away from you. And even if it could fire, you’d hurt yourself with it.”

The boy’s shoulders sagged. He propped the shotgun against a wall of the porch. “You knowed all along, didn’t you, mister?”

“Yes. But I can’t short you on courage, son. You from around here?”’

“I don’t know where I’m from, mister. I’m just… just here.”

“You travel a lot, then. Right?”’

“All the time. I been on my own since I was …” His face screwed up in thought. “Since I was real little. I seen four season goings and comin’s since then.”

“I’d guess you about ten.”

The boy shrugged.

“You have a name, son?”

“Jordy.”

Ben stuck out his hand. “I’m Ben Raines.”

Jordy recoiled backward as if struck by a rattlesnake. “You ain’t, neither!” Jordy hissed.

“Yes, I am, Jordy.”

“You kilt a Beast with your bare hands! Cain’t no human do that.”

“I used a knife, Jordy, after I shot the thing with a .45. Besides,” he smiled, “Daniel Boone kilt a b’ar, too.”

“Who?” the boy asked.

Ben sighed. “Sit down and eat, Jordy. We’ll talk. Looks like I found me a traveling companion.”

The boy’s pinched face wrinkled in a broad smile. “You mean that? Truly?”’

“I truly do, Jordy.”

The boy looked at the knife, fork, and spoon in his tin plate. “What’s them things for?”

“It should be an interesting journey,” Ben said. “Very interesting.”

Ben had sat, fascinated, listening to the boy talk. While he ate with his fingers, stuffing his mouth with food as if it might be his last for days, Jordy told of people who lived in caves, deep underground, only venturing out during the night to hunt for food. There were others who lived in caves who would only venture out during the day, for they believed the night held evil spirits. He told Ben of a dozen warlords between the big river to the east and the flat ground to the west.

The Mississippi River and Kansas, Ben assumed.

Jordy told Ben of the many shrines he had seen, all erected toward the god Ben Raines.

“I am not a god, Jordy. And it’s wrong for people who believe that I am.”

The boy fixed young-old eyes on him. “You fell off a mountain and lived, didn’t you?”

“It was a small mountain.”

“You been shot a hundred times, ain’t you?”

“Not quite that many times.”

“The rats couldn’t kill you. The Beasts couldn’t kill you. Nobody can kill you. You’re a leader of people. People do what you tell them to do. You knew my shotgun wouldn’t fire, didn’t you?”

“Well, yes, but…”

“You just don’t wanna be a god, that’s all. That’s all right with me, if that’s what you want. I’ll play like you’re like everybody else.”

Ben sorted out Jordy’s rush of words and said, “Thank you.”

Jordy had not ridden in many vehicles and he was fascinated by the truck and all its gadgets.

“What happens if I turn this thing?” the boy asked.

“The radio comes on,” Ben explained.

“The what?”’

Ben’s smile was very sad. Jordy would have been about five years old when what was left of the U.s. collapsed. He would have absolutely no memory of television, and would have to have lived near a populated center to have any knowledge of radio.

“I know what a radio is!” Jordy blurted. “I think.”

“Tell me.”

“Voices come outta them things from a long way off, right?”’

“That’s… a reasonable assessment, I suppose. Jordy, do you have any memories of your parents?”

He shook his head. “No. But I had a sister. She was older. I haven’t seen her in a long time. That was four seasons ago.”

“How did you two separate?”

“Huh?”’

“What happened to your sister?”

“Some men grabbed her. She yelled for me to run. I took off. When I went back, she was gone and so was the men.”

No point in asking where it happened, Ben thought. “Can you read or write, Jordy?”

“No, sir. I never had no schoolin”dis”

But you can survive, Ben thought. He thought of the young people who had joined his command, some of them as young as six. But already woods-wise, and not hesitant to kill if faced with danger.

Quite a generation we have upcoming, he thought. Just a step away from being savages.

“Town called Thayer just up ahead, Jordy. There should be some people in the town.”

“Yes, sir. A pretty good bunch of them. And they all got guns, too.”

“Have they tried to hurt you?”

“Oh, no, sir. But they have tried to catch me a time or two.”

“Why did they want to catch you?”

“They said they wanted me to live with them. Go to school and all that shit. But they said I’d have to take a bath. With soap,” he added, disgust in his voice.

“Well, Jordy, I hate to tell you this, but you’re going to have to take a bath if you want to travel with me. Son,” Ben said, scratching himself, “I think you have fleas.”

Chapter 9

Ben was conscious of eyes on them as he drove through the Missouri town. But no one tried to stop them or harm them in any way.

Jordy seemed relieved to get through the town and Ben smiled at that. “Were there lots of kids back there, Jordy?”’

“Oh, yes, sir. I used to slip in there and talk to some of them. I never could figure out why they were happy all the time. They had chores to do. They had to take baths. They had to go to school and do lots of figurin” and such. Don’t sound like much fun to me.”

Wait, Ben cautioned himself. Don’t tell the boy that is exactly what’s in store for him later on.

It was rough going for the next thirty miles, with Ben and the boy having to stop a dozen times to clear the road of debris. At the tiny town of Bakersfield, Ben decided to call it a day. He inspected a dozen deserted homes before he found one that was even halfway presentable. The home had a brick barbecue in the back yard, and Ben built a fire and began heating water in all the pots he could find in the house.

“What you gonna do with all that water?” Jordy asked suspiciously. “We are going to take a bath, boy.”

“Shhittt!” Jordy said.

While Jordy was bathing, Ben boiled the boy’s clothing and hung it up to dry. “Have to get him some clothes soon,” he muttered.

“I’m done!” Jordy called from the house.

“Did you wash your hair?” Ben called.

“Shhitt!”

Ben had thought the boy’s hair was brown. As it turned out, it was blond. The boy also had scars on his back and legs. Ben asked him about the marks.

“Warlord caught me two seasons ago,” Jordy explained. “Wanted me to be his servant-person. He beat me with a whip. I finally got my chance and run off. I’ll kill him if I ever see him again.”

Ben suspected the boy had also been sexually abused. But if he did not wish to talk about it, Ben would not force him to relive those memories.

“I ain’t got no last name, you know, Mr. Raines?” Jordy said.

“Call me Ben. I know, Jordy.”

“I thought of one.”

Ben smiled, knowing what was coming. “Oh?”

“Raines. If you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind a bit, Jordy. Jordy Raines. Has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, sir-Ben.”

Ben cut north on Highway 101 the next morning, connecting with U.s. 160. He turned west. He stopped at every house along the way, searching for clothing for Jordy. He found a winter jacket in a cedar chest at one house, some jeans packed in a trunk at another, underwear and shirts at another home. At the last house, Ben found a .22-caliber pistol and several boxes of long rifle ammunition for the weapon. There was a holster and belt with loops for the weapon. Ben rubbed oil into the old leather and gave the weapon to Jordy.

“I’ll teach you how to use this, Jordy. You’re young, but you need to be armed.”

Jordy smiled and stepped out onto the porch of the home. He skillfully loaded the weapon and took aim at a box in the yard. He put all six slugs into the small box.

“Well, now,” Ben said with a smile. “Looks like I found a backup, partner.”

The next few days passed uneventfully, with Ben and Jordy traveling slowly westward, staying on Highway 160 until reaching the junction of State Highway 76. They took that through the Mark Twain National Forest, and it was slow going, for the road was badly deteriorated, with many downed trees and limbs that had to be removed. Ben began playing a game with Jordy, teaching him his ABO’S by associating each letter with an object. Ben was feeling proud of himself until he pointed out a “possum.

“Opossum,” Ben said.

“Huh?”

“The letter O. Opossum.”

Jordy looked at him. “Sir, that there is a plain of ‘possum.”

“Get the dictionary, Jordy.”

“What for? I can’t read the damn thing.”

“Perhaps there will be a picture beside the word and I can point it out to you.”

Jordy reached for the sack on the floorboard.

“That’s the Bible, Jordy.”

The boy’s eyes took on a funny glint.

“Something the matter, Jordy?”

“The Bible. That sure means something to me. But I can’t quite figure it out.”

“I’m sure you went to church with your parents, Jordy.”

“You can say that again. A bunch.”

“Maybe your father was a minister-a preacher?”

“I don’t know, Ben. Maybe so. I just can’t remember. Let me think about that for a little bit, huh?”

“All right.”

It was almost an hour later when Ben realized with a grin that Jordy had skillfully and smoothly conned him, escaping the task of learning his ABC’S.

“Pretty smooth, Jordy,” Ben complimented the boy.

They were on Highway 90, nearing the Oklahoma line, just south of the Huckleberry Ridge State Forest.

Jordy smiled. “What do you mean, sir?”

“You know what I mean.” He pointed to the north. “Pineville is that way. What letter of the alphabet does the word begin with?”

Jordy laughed. “PI Like in Possum!”

They were on Highway 59 heading south through Oklahoma when they had their first real trouble. Just before they reached the junction of Highway 10, Jordy pointed.

“Roadblock up ahead, Ben.”

“I see it.” Ben braked the truck some distance from the blockade. “Stay in the truck,” he told Jordy.

Ben got out and stood behind the open door. He waited for whomever, or whatever it was behind the blockade to make the first hostile move.

“Why don’t you just bust right through?” Jordy asked.

“Because I don’t know if they’re unfriendly or just cautious. People have the right to be cautious, boy. But their rights end when they get unfriendly, or dangerous.”

He turned back to the blockade. “We’re just passing through!” he yelled. “We don’t mean anyone any harm.”

“Leave the truck and start walkin” back toward where you came!” the voice called.

“Fuck you!” Ben muttered.

“Right!” Jordy said.

“You weren’t supposed to hear that, boy.”

“I’ve heard worse.”

Ben jumped back into the truck, banged his knee on the steering wheel, said a few very ugly words, and dropped the truck into reverse, swiftly backing up a couple of hundred yards. He pulled off the road, around a slight bend in the road, and got out, walking to the rear of the truck. He took out his .30-06, slung a shell belt over his shoulder, and sighted in the blockade through the scope.

He waited for them to open the dance.

“Get the son of a bitch!” a man called, his voice faint.

“I want that fancy truck and the kid. Kill that tall bastard.”

“Scoot out of the truck and bring me that M-16, Jordy,” Ben said. “Lay it in the seat with some extra clips.”

An old Ford barged its way onto the road from behind the blockade. Ben sighted it on the driver and pulled the trigger. With no front window, the slug went true, hitting the man in the face. The Ford swapped ends in the road and slid into the ditch. A man jumped out and Ben shot him in the side, spinning the man around, jerking and cursing in pain. The man fell to the road and was still.

A second vehicle roared onto the road and Ben put two fast rounds through the windshield. The car slewed to one side and the driver fell out, a hole in his throat.

Ben ran to the camper, jerked out his rocket launcher, and cocked the hammer of the RPG. He inserted the rocket and rolled it until the grenade was locked in, mated with the U-cut. He stepped out from behind the truck, dropped to one knee, and sighted through the telescopic sight with its built-in range-finding scale. There was no wind, and the distance was three hundred and fifty meters. Ben’s first shot hit true. The 85mm rocket grenade, capable of penetrating up to thirteen inches of rolled steel armor, exploded the blockade in a burst of flames and debris and human bodies.

There was a hole in the blockade large enough to drive a tank through.

Not wanting to waste his rockets, Ben stowed the RPG and the M-16 back into the camper, along with his sniper rifle, and waited outside the truck, listening to the fading moans of the badly wounded.

Ben dropped the truck into four-wheel drive and skirted the burning, smoking ruins of the blockade. He left the carnage behind without so much as a second glance.

“Reckon why they wanted to kill you, Ben?” the boy asked.

“I don’t know, Jordy. But I just don’t like unfriendly folks.”

“Yes, sir,” the boy replied solemnly. “I picked up on that right off.”

Ben took a county road and skirted the town of Tahlequah. There had once been a university there, but Ben did not want to see the place in ruins. He had personally witnessed too many institutions of higher learning in ruin. It was depressing.

He and Jordy made camp on an eastern finger of Tenkiller Ferry Lake and fished for their supper. Jordy had never sport-fished before, but he was a fast learner. Once he got the hang of casting, he was all smiles, especially when he hooked what was at least a five-pound bass and fought him to the shore.

“Supper, Ben!” the boy yelled.

“Supper, Jordy,” Ben replied, smiling at the boy’s happiness.

And his own.

They slept that night in a deserted old fishing cabin, with Ben getting up twice in the night to add wood to the fire.

“Cold as a witch’s tit,” Jordy spoke from his sleeping bag on the floor.

“We are going to have to do something about your language, Jordy,” Ben told him. “It isn’t right for a ten-year-old to speak like you do.”

“Why?” the boy asked.

“It just isn’t.”

“OK, Ben. Whatever you say. But all the kids my age that I know talk like that.”

“Do you hear me talking like that?”

“No, sir.”

“Bear that in mind.”

“OK. Does that mean when you cuss, I can cuss?”

Ben smiled, tossing another log on the fire. The wind had picked up, howling around the old cabin. “No, it doesn’t. But I’ll try to watch my language, too. Deal?”

“Deal.”

They had just crossed Interstate 40, heading south on Highway 2 when Ben’s CB radio suddenly popped into vocal life, almost scaring the piss out of Jordy.

“Son of a bitch!” the boy yelled.

Ben fixed him with a stern look. “I’ll forgive that. This time.” He reached for the mike. “Come on,” he said to the unknown caller.

“You in the fancy pickup,” the voice said. “Pull it over and you won’t get hurt. We got you blocked front and back.”

Ben glanced at his map and cut the wheel hard to his right, heading west on a badly rutted old blacktop road. “Hang on, Jordy,” Ben told him. “And keep watch for me.”

“Yes, sir.”

Ben drove as fast as he dared, but had a sinking feeling that it wasn’t going to be fast enough to elude his unknown pursuers.

“Trucks and motorcycles comin’ up fast behind us, Ben!” Jordy called.

Eufaula Lake was looming up large in front of him, but Ben didn’t want to get caught on the long bridge with no place to run.

Ben slid onto a dirt road with a farmhouse and falling-down barn, brought the truck to a halt, and jumped out, Thompson in hand. He leveled the old submachine gun and pulled the trigger, fighting the rise of the weapon as the bolt worked at full auto.

A windshield of a truck exploded in a shower of glass and two motorcyclists were flung backward as bloody, smoking holes appeared in their jackets. The motorcycles slammed into a car and the car slewed sideways, ending in a ditch. Ben riddled the car with .45-caliber slugs, took time out to change drums, then jumped back in the truck and backed out onto the rutted road. He pulled the pin on a Firefrag grenade and tossed it under the bullet-riddled truck. Ben was a hundred yards up the road when the grenade did its work. The truck exploded, sending burning metal and parts of human bodies all over the place.

“Slocum!” Ben’s CB radio squawked. “What’s happenin’, man?”

“The son of a bitch has blocked the road on us!” the voice of who Ben guessed was Slocum yelled over the air. “Cut him off at the bridge.”

“10-4.”

“We got to hunt a hole, Jordy,” Ben said. “Hang on, boy.”

Ben chanced a quick look at the map and made up his mind. He cut off the road the first chance he got, dropped the truck into four-wheel drive, and drove for a mile straight north. He then turned back east, keeping the black smoke from the burning truck to his right. He fought the steering wheel as the pickup dug and spun through the brush-covered ground. When the smoke was at least two miles behind them, Ben cut south, both he and the boy bouncing up and down in the seats as they roared on.

“Fasten your seat belt, Jordy!” Ben yelled.

“My what?” Jordy yelled over the roaring of the engine.

“Forget it, boy. Just hang on.”

The road appeared just in front of them, but a deep ditch was between them and blacktop. Ben raced along, the road to their right until he found a place where he could try. He spun the wheel, goosed the engine, and they were across, the rear tires on rutted blacktop. Ben slipped the truck out of four-wheel drive. At the junction of Highway 2, Ben cut north, driving as fast as he dared until intersecting with Highway 266 and Interstate 40. He elected to stay with 266, turning west once more.

“The bastards got away!” the CB squawked. “But I got “em in sight. They’re on 266 headin” west.”

“Keep them in sight. We’re about fifteen minutes behind you.”

“We have to make a stand someplace, Jordy. And this interchange right up here looks just dandy for it.”

“What are you goin’ do, Ben?”

“I’m going to ambush them, boy.” He turned off 266 and tucked the truck behind an old service station. Ben grabbed his rocket launcher, told Jordy to grab a couple of rockets, and took his M-16 and sniper rifle, draping a bandoleer of ammo over his shoulder for both weapons. Jordy stuffed his jacket pockets with hand grenades without being told. Ben grinned at the boy.

They both were panting when they reached the top of the overpass.

Ben hurriedly loaded the RPG, checked to see that Jordy was out of the way of the back-blast, which could be lethal, and sighted in the lead truck that had been following them.

Ben sighted in the truck at six hundred meters, but he knew he had to hold his fire until they were within three hundred meters, maximum. There was a slight wind blowing, and firing the RPG would be tricky, since the finned rocket grenade could be thrown off course by a crosswind. Several of Ben’s Rebels, unfamiliar with the RPG, had found this out the hard way.

Ben triggered the round and the truck exploded in a ball of flames. The explosion literally tore the truck from its wheels, leaving the smoking frame, with its melted tires, welded to the concrete.

“Holy shit!” Jordy said.

“I’ll agree with that, too, Jordy,” Ben said. He looked at the slender boy. “Can you fire a rifle, Jordy?”

“Yes, sir. That warlord that grabbed me? All his men had M-16’s. I know how to work them.”

“Well, get ready, son. “Cause here they come.”

Chapter 10

The chase vehicles were on the interstate, paralleling 266. Ben smiled, for the first time thinking he and the boy might get out of this box without too much trouble.

The vehicles were coming at them in a knot, all bunched up, and rolling very fast. Ben sighted in the RPG, tracked the lead vehicle, a king-cab truck, through the range-finder, and triggered off a rocket.

The rocket struck the truck dead center, the aftereffects turning the interstate into a flaming hell for those in the vehicles behind the truck. They could not brake in time and a monumental pile-up was created. Ben reloaded and fired, adding more burning hell to the confusion and death below them.

Jordy’s M-16 began barking, the boy coolly firing the weapon, picking his targets and hitting them a good two out of three times.

Ben picked up his .30-06 and joined the boy, with Jordy taking the left side of the interstate, Ben the right side.

More vehicles began exploding as the flames reached the gas tanks. Men and women began running from the wreckage, human torches screaming as flesh cooked and sizzled.

“Back to the truck, Jordy,” Ben called. “Now’s the time to split.”

The man and the boy ran for safety as black smoke poured into the sky. They roared off down the interstate, leaving behind them the foul stench of burning human bodies and the howling of the soon-to-be dead.

If there were any survivors in Henryetta, Oklahoma, Ben didn’t stop to check them out. He stayed on the interstate all the way to the junction of Highway 99, and there cut south. Ben began to breathe a little bit easier when they crossed the Canadian River. He bypassed Ada and turned west on 19, staying on that highway until they were halfway between Pauls Valley and Chickasha. At a clump of trees by the Washita River, Ben cut off the highway.

“We’ll spend the night here, Jordy. I think we deserve a good hot meal and some rest, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir,” the boy replied. “But I got to change clothes first.”

“What’s the matter? Your clothes don’t look that dirty.”

The boy blushed. “I peed my pants back there, Ben.”

Putting together bits and pieces of information gathered along the way, plus the reports from their scouts that had fanned out north, south, and west, Jake and West tracked Ben’s movements. But they were always three to four days behind.

Jake Campo stood looking at the ashes of a campfire for a moment. Then he checked the tire tracks left in the earth.

“He picked up company,” West said, hobbling up on his crutch. “Got him a woman.”

“I don’t think so,” Jake said. “More like a small kid. Some underwear over there in the bushes. Boy’s drawers.” He was thoughtful for a moment. “That’s good, West. Goddamn punk will slow him down. He’ll be worryin” about the boy; might drop his guard.”

“The man who kills Ben Raines,” West mused aloud, “will be able to just about write his own ticket. You know that, Jake?”

“Yeah, West. I know it. Or the men who kill him.”

“That’s what I meant, Jake.”

“Uh-huh,” Campo said. Campo was an outlaw, and a man with few principles. But West was even worse than Jake. Jake knew the man had put his own sister into a whorehouse back in ‘95. Low was low, but that was the pits.

Have to watch West, Campo concluded.

Jake Campo was a no-good bastard, West was thinking. Would shoot a man in the back if given half a chance. Jake had teamed up with men over the past. His partners always met a very bad end. Son of a bitch was just no good. Killed his best friend, West recalled. Back in ‘97 or ‘98.

Have to keep an eye on Jake, West concluded.

“Somehow I got it in my mind Raines was headin’ to Texas,” Jake was speaking. “He ought to be cuttin’ southwest; but he ain’t. What the hell is the man up to?”

“Scouts callin’ in, Jake!” a man shouted.

Jake took the mike. “Yeah?”

“Big shoot out just west of Siloam Springs, Jake,” the scout reported. “Man and a kid in a fancy, duded-up pickup truck raised hell at a local roadblock. Scouts south of us reported a lot of smoke and flames around Eufaula Lake.”

“Ten-four. Keep on his tail and call in every day. Jake out.”

“Now the bastard is headin’ southwest,” Jake said with a smile. “Roll “em, boys! Let’s go get Ben Raines.”

She couldn’t let the children know it, but she was scared-plenty scared. Her old bus had broken down and she didn’t know Jack-shit about fixing engines.

She crouched in the old warehouse in Lubbock, Texas, and looked at the kids. An even dozen. The youngest was three, the oldest, twelve. She had started out from north Oklahoma with fifteen. One had died of something along the way. She never had known what it was, except that the boy had coughed a lot and had finally began spitting up blood and running a very high fever. He had died ten hours later. They’d gotten caught in a storm between Dalhart and Interstate 40. That’s when the little girl had wandered off.

Hadn’t turned my back for more than a minute, Rani thought. And the kid was gone. Just like that. Called and called. But she couldn’t leave the others to go and look. She had thought there were no more tears left in her. But she’d found more when she had to drive off after waiting a full twenty-four hours.

Then in Amarillo she’d lost the oldest girl to those goddamned outlaws. And the human filth had wanted the young boys, too. Perverted bastards. Somehow she had managed to elude them, the rattletrap old bus on its last legs. Just south of New Deal, the old bus had finally given up the ghost. She and the kids had walked to the outskirts of Lubbock, seeking shelter at the old Lubbock International Airport. There was a bob truck behind some crates in the building next to where she’d hidden the kids. The empty crates looked like they’d been deliberately placed around the truck, but a long time back. She had replaced the battery-she knew how to do that much-and she’d found some drums of what she hoped was gasoline, carefully hidden in the far side of the warehouse, or whatever the hell this building used to be. In the morning, she’d prime the carburetor and try to start the damn thing. She knew she had to get south for the winter. The kids already had colds, and without any medication at all, she’d have cases of pneumonia on her hands.

And there was the not-so-small matter of that goddamned self-proclaimed warlord who called himself Vic.

Crazy Vic.

And his men were just as nutty. She thought they were all escapees from a nuthouse.

She had started her little orphanage up in north Oklahoma, taking in wandering kids. Some stayed with her, though most had left, the lure and pull of the road having been all they’d ever known. She’d worked very hard on her little wayside home for kids. And at one time she’d had almost forty kids to care for. She loved doing it.

Then Vic and his men had arrived.

They had taken her guns, and then raped her. Vic had told her if she didn’t become his woman, he’d pass the kids around to his men and Rani could damn well have what was left of them after his boys got done butt-fucking them.

Rani had endured Vic’s perversions for a week, until she got her chance to escape. Most of the kids had already run off.

Now she had Crazy Vic and his bunch following her.

But she also had a pistol and a rifle she’d found in a house along the way, and lots of ammunition. And Rani was a good shot.

If that truck will just start, she thought, we might make it.

If.

“Crossing into Texas, Jordy.”

“I never been so far, Ben. But I sure am glad we got away from them outlaws.”

“You running out of underwear?” Ben kidded him.

Jordy blushed.

The pair had stayed not one night, but four nights, camped along the river. The weather had abated, actually turning rather warm. They fished, rested, and Ben told the boy stories of how it used to be, back when the Tri-States had been in operation.

“You really mean nobody went hungry and you wasn’t always scared somebody was goin” to get you?” the boy asked.

“Nobody went hungry, Jordy. Not if we knew about it. And no, you didn’t have to be scared. We didn’t have crime in Tri-States, Jordy. The cost to the criminal was just too high. Besides, everybody that wanted to work,

could work. There was no need to steal.”

“That must have been a nice place to live,” Jordy said wistfully.

“Oh, it was, if a person obeyed the law and respected the rights of others.”

“What happened if they didn’t?”’

“There was somebody around to bury them.”

Ben and Jordy had rambled around on county roads, picking up Highway 62 at Lawton and taking that into Texas. They turned south and headed for Childress, crossing the Red River.

This was an area of the once-proud-and-mighty nation the rats had hit hard. Ben had not expected to see many survivors, but he hadn’t thought it would be this bad.

There just wasn’t anybody.

Or anything.

“What happened around here, Ben?” Jordy asked. “There ain’t a go.a … darn thing alive.”

“Rats, Jordy. For some reason-and I don’t know why-the rats hit this part of the country hard. Very few people made it out alive.”

The boy looked nervously around him. “We ain’t stoppin”, are we-, Ben?”

“Not even to pee, Jordy.”

At Paducah, Texas, Ben spotted the first human being he’d seen in a hundred miles of absolute desolation.

He pulled off the highway and drove slowly up to the small group of people. Ben let a white handkerchief flutter from his left hand, held out the window.

Ben called, “We’re friendly, folks.”

A man smiled and waved at him. “Then come on out and sit and talk, friend.”

“The last hundred miles looked a little grim,” Ben said, accepting a cup of coffee-or what presently passed for coffee.

“To say the least,” a woman said. “The rats have been long gone, died out, but everybody in that area was killed. We try to stay out of that part of the country.”

“What’s your name, friend?” a cowboy asked.

Jordy grinned.

“Ben Raines.”

The knot of people grew still and silent. The man who had first waved and spoken to Ben shuffled his booted feet. “General Ben Raines?”

“Yes. But why don’t we just keep it Ben?”’

“Mr. Raines,” a woman stepped forward, “you like stew?”

“I sure do, ma’am.”

“Then let’s eat.”

Rani looked at the body of the man she’d just shot through the head. She recognized him as one of Crazy Vic’s men. And she knew Vic and the rest of his gang would not be far behind.

“Robert, Kathy!” she called to the two oldest of her adopted brood. “Help me drag this body over there and hide it.”

She gave Robert, twelve years old, the man’s pistol, and Kathy, also twelve, the man’s rifle. Rani was working so fast she wasn’t thinking properly.

“Rani?” Kathy said. “This man had to get here someway. He sure didn’t fly. He probably hid his car or truck.”

Rani gently ruffled the girl’s hair. “Good thinking, Kathy. Pray it’s a truck.”

It was a king-cab pickup. And best of all, the pickup started at the first touch of the ignition. Rani put her forehead on the steering wheel and said a little prayer.

“Prayin” ain’t gonna help none, cunt!” the man’s voice said.

Rani raised her head and looked into the mean eyes of a man.

“You kill Harry?” the man asked.

Rani nodded her head.

The man grinned. His teeth were no more than blackened stumps. “Didn’t lak him noway. Git outta the truck, bitch, and take me to that fine-lookin’ little big girl travelin’ with you. I want me a taste of young pussy. Then I’ll get to you.”

The man’s entire lower jaw disappeared in a roaring boom and gush of blood and bone. He was flung to one side, the blood from his wound staining the concrete floor.

Rani, temporarily deafened by the gunshot, looked around. Kathy was standing by the rear of the pickup, the .30-30 rifle in her hands. She had shot the man from a distance of no more than six or seven feet.

The man flopped on the floor, his boot heels drumming in agony. He tried to speak. Only horrible bubbling sounds came from his ruined face.

In normal times, the child would have probably been sick after what she’d done. But these were not normal times. Normal times would probably never come again. At least not in her lifetime. Kathy looked at the jerking, bleeding man.

“Get his guns and bullets, Miss Rani,” she said. “We got to stay ready for Vic when he comes. And you know he’ll be comin’ after us.”

“Yes,” Rani came out of her fog of shock. She took several deep breaths, calming herself. The kids had gathered around. God! she thought. What a pitiful looking crew. Her eyes touched Robert. “Robert, you find all the gas cans you can round up, start filling them with gas from those drums.” She looked at eleven-year-old Jane, pale and too thin, always susceptible to colds. “You help Robert, honey.”

“Yes, ma’am.” The kids scurried off.

Sarah and Becky, the three-year-olds, stood off to one side, eyes big as they looked at the dying man on the concrete. “Lisa,” Rani said. “You look after Sarah and Becky. Come on, kids, we’ve got to get busy.”

“Is Crazy Vic gonna get us, Rani?” Six-year-old Danny asked.

“No!” Rani said. “I swear to you all-no!”

Chapter 11

“Be like my great granddad,” one of the men said, after Ben touched on his outpost idea. “Back when they was fightin’ the Indians.”

Another man, obviously with strong Indian blood flowing in his veins, looked at the spokesman and smiled. “But now we’re all in it together. Right, Frank?”’

“Thank God,” his friend said, returning the smile. “I’d hate to think we had to fight you heathens, too, Roland.”

A woman said, “Don’t pay them no mind, General. They’ve been friends for forty years.”

The man jerked his thumb toward the Indian. “His ancestors scalped my ancestors.”

“Your ancestors stole our land,” Roland retorted. “Besides, Indians didn’t invent scalping. They got it from the white man.”

“And away they go,” the woman said.

“Been doing it for forty years,” another man said.

“I think the Indians are winnin”,” another man said.

“If we have enough time,” Roland said. Then he laughed. “And enough Indians.”

The people in the small town warned Ben that there were outlaw gangs roaming about everywhere, and that they were vicious, cutting another page from the dark history of the Texas Comancheros, the band of Mexicans, half-breeds, and Caucasian Americans who had looted and raped and killed until finally being wiped out when the citizens of Texas and Mexico got their guts’ full of the outlaws.

Ben and Jordy pulled out early in the morning, heading south on Highway 83.

Guthrie was a ghost town, with anything of value having been looted long ago.

Without having any good reason to do so, other than the fact Ben was on no timetable, he cut west at Guthrie, heading for Lubbock. He did not see one human being until reaching the town of Rails, and his curiosity almost got them both killed.

“Yeah,” Campo said, surveying all the carnage Ben had left behind. “Raines was here, all right.” He laughed, an ugly bark of derisiveness. “These pecker-woods thought ol’ Ben would be an easy touch. I could have told them different.”

“Me, too,” West said sorrowfully, looking at his stump. “I don’t know, Jake. Sometimes I get a plumb spooky feeling thinkin’ “bout Raines.” He looked around at the charred bodies lying on the Oklahoma highway. “You know what I mean?”

Campo didn’t want to admit it, but he knew very well what West was talking about. He just didn’t like to think about it.

Campo chose not to answer West’s question. He turned away from the scene and walked back to his van. He told one of his men, “Somebody who lives around here saw something. You get some boys and scatter. Find out what you can; especially which direction Raines went from here. G.”

Standing by his van, Campo looked toward the west. “You may think you’re a god, Raines. But I’m gonna prove people wrong. ‘Cause I’m gonna kill you, mister. I’m gonna kill you and hang your scalp on my belt buckle. Bet on it.”

Rani got as far as Lamesa before running into trouble. But she had vowed the next time she was confronted with trouble, she would shoot first and take her chances with her conscience later.

There was a CB radio in the truck, along with some sort of military-looking short-wave radio. She was amazed at the traffic on the CB radio, most of it very unfriendly and extremely vulgar.

And it was the CB radio that warned her of impending trouble.

“Blue king-cab rollin” south on 87,” the voice sprang out of the speaker. “Fine-lookin’ cunt behind the wheel. Truck’s packed with kids.”

“Stay out of this,” a man’s voice blasted the cab, obviously pushed by a booster. “That’s Vic’s woman.”

“Vic who?”’

“Cowboy Vic. Warlord of the West.”

The first voice laughed. “Never heard of the son of a bitch. Tell him to keep ass out of this part of Texas or we’ll feed him to the rattlers.”

Rani pulled off the highway and drove behind a falling-down old farm and ranch complex of buildings.

“Lost her!” the first voice said. “She’s somewhere between O’Donnell and Arvana.”

“Keep lookin”,” a new voice was added. “She won’t be that hard to find.”

Another voice was added to the growing number of voices. “If you’re hiding, lady,” a man’s voice spoke, “stay down. We’re sending out a patrol from Lamesa to help you. Don’t reply to this transmission. Just stay quiet.”

“It’s them Christian mother-fuckers,” the first voice said contemptuously.

“Yeah,” yet another voice said. “You asshole Jesus freaks come on. We’ll run your psalm-singin’ asses back to Lamesa.”

“You’ve tried that before, Red,” the calm, steady voice replied. “The Lord will forgive me for saying this, but this time I intend to kick your worthless ass all the way up to the Red River.”

“You the warlord called Texas Red?” Vic’s man asked.

“Yeah.”

“Pull it over, Red. Let’s talk. We might stand a better chance if we joined forces. You know what I mean?”

“Yeah. Mayhaps you’re right, friend. Me and my boys will meet you on the south side of O’Donnell. Be there in about fifteen minutes.”

“Ten-four.”

Rani sat it out, watching the highway from behind a shattered window in what had once been a nice home. She saw a dozen vehicles pass by her position, all heading north. She did not move for several minutes. Then she smiled as she saw a dozen more vehicles drive slowly past, heading north. The second line of cars and trucks, she concluded, belonged to the folks from Lamesa.

It was not that Rani didn’t want good homes for those kids in her car. It was just that she didn’t trust people. She’d been burned too many times by people professing to be this, that, or the other.

Her thoughts were interrupted by an excited Robert.

“Miss Rani!” the boy said. “They’s cases and cases and cases of food down in the basement of this place.”

“What were you doing in the basement?” she spoke, more sharply than she intended.

“Exploring,” the boy said, hanging his head.

She went to him and put her arms around his slender shoulders. “I’m sorry, Robert. I didn’t mean to be cross with you. Let’s look at this food.” She kissed his cheek. “I’m proud of you, Robert.”

Ben caught the movement to his right and twisted the steering wheel just as the man fired. The slug whined off the camper of the truck. Ben floorboarded the truck and ducked behind a building. Grabbing his Thompson, he said, “Shoot anybody that sticks their head up, Jordy. Understand?”

“Yes, sir. I’ll blow their ass off.”

“That’s as good a place as any to shoot them, I suppose,” Ben said, not able to hide his grin.

Ben slipped along the rear of the old store. He heard boots scraping the pea gravel near the corner and smiled, raising the Thompson, finger on the trigger.

“Easy, now,” a voice came to him. “I don’t want that fancy truck all shot up. And take the kid alive.”

“Yeah,” a second voice said in a hoarse whisper. “Clean-lookin’ kid lak “at’s worth a lot of guns.”

Ben’s smile turned savage at the vocal implications of what lay in store for Jordy if the men took him. The men rounded the corner and Ben pulled the trigger, firing at almost point-blank range, and he deliberately held the muzzle low, at crotch-level.

He took the men’s guns and ammo, and left them screaming and bleeding on the gravel. Here were two who would molest no more children. And Ben hoped they would live a long and totally sexless life. Pissing through a hose.

Dumping the guns and ammo in the rear of the camper, Ben picked up an M-16 and a pouch of clips. Slipping to the front corner of the building, Ben located a gun in the second story of an old building; the glint of cold sunlight flashing off a stainless steel barrel gave the man’s position away. Ben flipped his M-16 to semiauto and sighted the man in. He shot the man in the center of his face, the man dropping his rifle to the ground. The fancy rifle landed butt first and went off, discharging half a clip of ammo, the lead slamming into trees and buildings and into the air.

“Lennie got ‘im!” came the excited shout. “Come on, boys.”

Ben slipped his M-16 to full auto and waited. A knot of men came charging around a corner. They stopped, confused looks on their faces. They stood all bunched up, standing over Lennie’s carbine.

“Lennie didn’t git him, neither,” a man said.

That was the last thing any of them would say or hear, except for the stuttering of an M-16 on full auto.

And they would hear that only briefly.

Ben let them flop on the ground for a few minutes, then he slipped the M-16 onto select fire and put two rounds into each of the bodies. He waited another full minute before zigzagging across the street to gather up their ammo. Only one of the men had been carrying an M-16 that looked worth a shit, and Ben took that. Each man was carrying several full clips of 5.56 ammo. Ben tossed the rifle and ammo in the camper and looked at Jordy.

“How’s it going, little man?”

“Hangin” in, Ben.”

Ben checked his map and took a county road out of Rails, heading south. He flipped on his CB radio and was startled to hear all the chatter jumping out at him. He listened carefully, knowing those CB radios must have been jacked up with boosters, giving them a tremendous range.

What he heard was disturbing. Someone named Texas Red, a warlord, was teaming up with another warlord named Cowboy Vic, or some such stupid name.

“Like I said, Ben,” Jordy said. “Warlords is everywhere.”

“Yes. But who, or what, is Rani?”

“Sounds like a dumb girl to me.”

“Listen.”

“… and I hear tell that Jake Campo is headin’ this way, too,” the voice spoke. “He’s teamed up with some guy named West.”

Ben grunted. “I knew I should have killed that bastard when I had the chance.”

“West?” Jordy asked.

“Yes. He’s scum.”

“They chasin’ General Ben Raines, so I hear,” another voice offered an opinion.

“Raines and his Rebels are in Texas?”

“No. Way I heared it, it’s just Raines and some snot-nosed punk kid he picked up along the way.”

“Fuck you!” Jordy said to the radio.

“How would you like for me to wash your mouth out with soap, boy?” Ben said, looking at him.

“Yukkk!” Jordy said.

“Then watch your language.”

“By hisself, or with a bunch,” a man said, “Ben Raines is a bad one. I don’t want to fool with him. Not none at all.”

“You don’t believe all that shit about him being some kind of god, do you?”’

“I don’t know,” the man’s voice was serious. “I heard too many tales about him for some of them not to be true.”

“Well, then, you just tuck your tail between your legs and scamper on back home, then. Carry your boys home with you if none of you’s got the guts to face up to one skinny, middle-aged man. I’ll break that son of a bitch in half like a toothpick.”

Ben looked at the radio. “Fuck you!” he said.

Jordy shook his head. “For shame, for shame,” he said with a grin.

Chapter 12

Ben wound around dirt roads until coming to Highway 84. He took that down to Post and there connected with 669. He stayed on that, constantly monitoring his CB, all the way to a tiny town just north of Big Spring. The traffic on his CB had faded into silence by the time he hid his truck behind a falling-down building and decided to call back to Base Camp. He knew perfectly well that Colonel Gray had bugged his truck-and probably some of his personal gear as well-so he could keep tabs on Ben, but Ben had expected that. It was rather a comforting feeling, Ben had to admit.

“General!” the radio operator almost knocked Ben’s head off with the shouted word. “It’s good to hear from you, sir.”

“How are things back home, son?” Ben asked.

“Hello, you old bastard!” Ike’s voice boomed out of the speaker. “You been behavin” yourself?”

Ben decided to level with his old and good friend. “It’s rough out here, Ike,” he admitted. “Damn warlords are everywhere.”

“And naturally you’ve been avoiding them whenever possible?”

Ben could not have possibly missed the sarcasm in Ike’s voice. “Of course, Ike.”

“Bullshit. You always was a terrible liar. I won’t pull your leg, brother. You must know we’ve got a full combat platoon tracking you. Captain Nolan commandin’.”

“I expected as much.” Nolan was part of Colonel Gray’s Scouts. Nolan and his people did not believe in taking prisoners.

“Contrary to what you believe, Ben,” Ike said, “we can’t track you from here. But Captain Nolan can from his position. He’s giving us daily radio reports on how you and that little boy been kickin’ ass along the way. Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas. Ben, you got some rough ol’ boys trackin’ you. Three-four hundred strong. And pickin’ up more along the way. Don’t get yourself overloaded.”

“Give me Nolan’s frequency just in case,” Ben said. “I promise if I get in a bind, I’ll yell for help.”

“I’ll believe that when I see pigs flyin’,” Ike said to the radio operator. He gave Ben jthe frequency and the mike to Cecil, who had been summoned by a runner.

“I don’t like what I’ve been hearing, Ben,” Cecil said. “Let me send just a squad to your location. They won’t get in your way, I promise.”

“I won’t be nurse-maided, Cec,” Ben said. “Bring me up to date on what’s happening at home.”

“Told you,” Ike said to Cecil, after making sure the mike was off.

“That hard-headed bastard!” Cecil said. “Ike, get in touch with Colonel Gray. I want a fully equipped combat company of Gray’s Scouts, with Dan leading them, on the way to Texas by first light.”

“Done.” Ike left the radio room at a lope.

In the truck Ben winked at Jordy. “They’re plotting something, son. I can feel it over the miles.”

“If they are,” the boy replied, “it’s because they love you.”

That sobered Ben. “I guess so, Jordy.”

Cecil brought Ben up to date on the building of a new community and how things were progressing in Dyersburg. He said the people from Southeast Missouri had contacted the Base Camp and had requested a team of Rebels in. He had sent them. There had been no serious trouble to speak of.

“All right, Cec,” Ben said. “You take care.”

Before Cecil could respond, Ben clicked the set off.

“How come you’re runnin’ away from them people, Ben?”

“I’m not running away from them.”

“You sure could have fooled me,” the boy replied.

The house had obviously belonged to a practicing survivalist. Rani found cases of freeze-dried foods, and as many cases of military canned rations. The canned Crations were dated 1996, with an expiration date that had years to go before running out.

She founds cans of water and purification tablets, tents and sleeping bags and blankets and clothing. She turned to Robert.

“How did you find this place, Robert? It obviously was well-concealed.”

“The floor didn’t sound right when I walked over it,”

the boy said. “Then I noticed that some of the tile didn’t look right.” He shrugged. “I pulled them up and there was the trapdoor.”

She hugged him. “Thank you, Robert. You’ve probably saved our lives.”

A more careful inspection of the bunker-type room below the house revealed a steel locker set in concrete. They looked all over the already ransacked house for the keys. Sandra, the seven-year-old, finally pointed to the keys, hanging on a peg by the side of the locker.

The locker was filled with rifles, shotguns, pistols, and boxes of ammunition.

“God bless survivalists,” Rani said.

Cotton, a four-year-old boy, came stumbling down the steps, dragging a radio antenna behind him.

“Did you take that from the truck, Cotton?” Rani asked.

“No, ma’am,” the cotton-headed little boy said. “Got it from the ground.”

“You got it from the ground?” Rani asked. “Show me, Cotton.”

They trooped up the stairs and back into the sunlight. Cotton marched the group to a barren spot in the back yard.

“Weeds and grass everywhere else,” Rani said. “But none on this spot. This is the spot, Cotton?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The area he had pointed out was shoebox shaped, about twenty feet long and ten feet wide. And it was barren of grass or weeds.

Rani walked across the spot several times. The ground felt soft beneath her shoes; it had a completely different feel from the ground around it.

“Get me a shovel, somebody,” Rani said.

She began digging and soon struck something solid. Further investigation revealed a sheet-metal top of some sort.

“Help me, kids,” Rani said.

The sheet-metal top covered the entire pit, and it took all of them to pry it up and tip it over. Rani started laughing at what the sunlight revealed.

“The man actually buried a small truck,” Rani said.

The compact pickup was covered with sheets of thick plastic. It sat almost-new-looking inside the wooden walls of the boxlike hole, concrete blocks holding the tires off the ground.

Rani found a jack and took the truck down from its blocks. She checked the oil and battery and gas. The keys were in the ignition. She pumped the pedal a few times, once more for luck, then turned the key. The engine fired, caught, then died. She tried again. This time it roared into life. She dropped the truck into gear and went up the gradual incline the man had built.

“We’re gonna make it, kids,” she said to herself. “We’re gonna make it. Please, God, let us make it.”

“Yeah, tell “em OK,” Campo said, speaking into his mike. “The more the merrier.”

“What’s up?” West asked.

“More fodder for the fire,” Campo told him. “Some ol” boys named Cowboy Vic and Texas Red want to link up with us. We’re gonna meet tomorrow between Plainview and Lubbock, on the interstate.”

“Not a bad idea,” West agreed. “We can cover a hell of a lot more ground this way. Send teams out all over the place. Then when we find Raines, we kill him-or maybe take him alive for trade-and get rid of the new guys.”

“Sometimes you can make sense, West.”

While Rani and the kids, with Robert driving the small truck, wound around county roads, finally coming to 669 and taking that south, Ben and Jordy bypassed Big Spring and set up camp for the night just a mile or so from the junction of Highways 669 and 350. Rani and the kids decided to spend the night at the deserted town of Luther.

Ben and Rani, two of the most hunted people in Texas, were camped just six miles apart.

“What do we head for next, Ben?” Jordy asked, warming his hands over a small fire.

“Oh, I think we’ll head southwest, Jordy. Get on Interstate 20 and see where it takes us. That sound all right to you?”

“Yes, sir.”

Man and boy retired to their blankets early, both of them staring up into the starry skies.

“Reckon what’s up there, Ben? You think they’s other people up there?”

“Yes, I do, Jordy. I always have. Maybe not like us, but other life-forms.”

“If there is, reckon what they think about us? I mean, what we done to this world?”

“They probably think we’re a bunch of damned idiots.”

“I “bout got the hang of drivin” that truck, Miss Rani,” Robert said. “Where do we head for in the morning?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “But I do want to get us down into south Texas for the winter. Get you kids healthy again.”

“We’ll make it, Miss Rani,” the boy assured her. “What did you make of all that talk on the radio about Mister Ben Raines, Rani?”

“I don’t know. I can’t imagine General Raines out traveling by himself. I thought he and his people were in Tennessee or Georgia, setting up a new government out there.”

“Well, even if he is out here, can’t nothing hurt Ben Raines,” Robert said.

“He is flesh and blood, Robert,” Rani tried to dispel the rumors about Ben. “He is a human being. Not a god.”

She knew what was coming next, and the boy did not disappoint her. “Then how come we seen all them shrines and things to Mister Raines?”

The other children had gathered around, listening. For all except the very youngest had heard of the exploits of Ben Raines and his seemingly undefeatable Rebels.

Rani had just completed her second year of college when the bottom had dropped out back in 1988, and for a moment, she was flung back in time.

She had awakened that morning with a terrible headache. She was disoriented and unsteady on her feet. She looked across the bedroom she was sharing with her sister, and a scream boiled out of her throat.

Her younger sister was on the floor, stiff and cold in death. Her face was twisted and blackened in death. She looked as though she had been dead for some time.

Rani got to her feet and promptly fell down, her legs unable to support her. She crawled from the room, down the hall. The house was so still and quiet. She staggered to her feet and lurched into her parents’ bedroom. She had steeled herself as to what she might find.

Both mother and father were dead, lying in bed. Blood had poured from nose, ears, and mouth, staining the whiteness of pillow.

She backed out of the room, fear gripping her like a band across her chest.

She jerked on a housecoat and stumbled into the living room, then out onto the porch. The scene that lay before her eyes was something out of a sci-fi thriller.

Men and women and children lay scrawled on the street, all twisted in various shapes as death struck them and dropped them.

Rani ran back into her house and, keeping her eyes averted from her sister’s body, she slipped into blue jeans, tennis shoes, and blouse. She backed her parents’ car out of the drive and slowly drove the streets. She could find no one alive.

She still, after all these years, was not certain exactly what happened after that first day. Not for some time. She remembered driving until she ran out of gas. Then she wandered for days, maybe weeks; she still wasn’t certain. The death that lay in stinking heaps around her had numbed her mind. Perhaps that was the most merciful thing that could have happened to her. She had only very dim memories of being raped and abused. And she had no idea how she arrived a thousand miles from her home. But she did. Only then did she begin to be aware of her surrounding.

And she never fully understood why she was spared when so many others died.

“People lost faith,” Rani said quietly. “They just couldn’t believe that God would do something this awful to the human race. Many of them needed someone

…

something they could see to worship. They found Ben Raines. This one human man that rose up out of the ashes and built a nation within a nation. Against all odds, he did it. He fought mutants, warlords, outlaws, and the entire central government of the United States … and won. A lot of people thought him blessed, so to speak. But he is not a god, children. He is flesh and blood and bone. Just like us.”

But she could tell by the expression on the children’s faces they were not convinced.

“Have you ever met Ben Raines, Miss Rani?” Paul asked.

“No.” She shook her head.

“Then you don’t know for sure, do you?”

“No,” Rani admitted. “I don’t know for sure.”

Chapter 13

For just a fleeting moment, Ben thought of turning off the interstate and checking out Webb AFB at Big Spring. But he knew from experience what he would find. Nothing. The place would have been picked over a hundred times. And, he smiled, more than likely, most of the gear taken by my own people.

Was it Webb AFB that Sergeant Buck Osgood and his small band of men had barricaded themselves in a concrete bunker against the hordes of mutant rats8*

Ben couldn’t remember. He knew it had been someplace in Texas.

He drove on past the exit sign for Webb AFB.

“Got anyplace in particular you’d like to see, Jordy?” he asked.

“Don’t know no place, Ben. Don’t make no difference, long as I’m seein’ it with you.”

Ben grinned. “OK. Now say your ABC’S for me.” *Fire in the Ashes

The boy got them all right-first try.

Already, with three squares a day, the boy was gaining weight, filling out. The pinched look of poverty was leaving his face, and the boy was smiling more.

“We make a pretty good team, don’t we, Jordy?”

“Sure do, Ben. Are you gonna keep me?”

“Am I going to what?”

“Keep me.”

Ben laughed. “Why, I haven’t given anything other than “keeping you” any thought, Jordy. What did you think I was going to do-toss you out by the side of the road?”

“Naw. I didn’t figure you’d do that. But nothing good ever lasts long. Not for nobody livin’ out here, anyways.”

“Well, we’re going to last, Jordy. You and me. We’ll hole up this winter and I’ll teach you how to read and write-as best I can. Then, in the spring, we’ll head on back to Georgia and you’ll have a permanent home.”

“With you, Ben?”

“With me, Jordy.”

“Is that a promise, Ben?”

Ben ruffled his hair. “That’s a promise, boy.”

“Close to five hundred men, Jake,” West said. “With more comin’ in. With five-six hundred salty ol’ boys, we could rule half of Texas if we played our cards right.”

“That’s what I’m thinking, too,” Jake said. “And I know where to get more.”

“Oh?” West looked at him.

Jake motioned for his radioman to come over. “Get on the horn, Emmett. Tell the boys back in Tennessee to pack it up and come on out. Bring everything with them. We’ll set up a base camp right here and wait for them.”

“The big push, boss?” Emmett said, an ugly smile on his face.

“The big push, Emmett. And when we’re done using Ben Raines’ ass to wipe the sidewalk, we’re gonna rule Texas.”

Rani and her bunch avoided the main highways, electing to stay on the secondary roads. They took Highway 33 south, but only managed to make about thirty miles the first day. A tire had blown out on the small truck, and Rani was forced to call a halt until she could locate a spare, then a hand pump to inflate the tube.

Then bad gas forced them to spend a full day blowing out gas lines and siphoning the tanks dry. They were a weary and discouraged little band of travelers when they pulled into the outskirts of Ozona, Texas, to make camp for the night.

Rani was very wary of towns, preferring the open skies for a roof whenever the weather permitted. Even though the nearby town appeared deserted, Rani was not going to take any chances. Not when they were this close to their final destination.! She had made up her mind where they were going to winter. She had absolutely no idea what she might find there. But she was betting on one thing: there would be no people.

And the winter would be mild. She picked up her map and looked at it.

“Yes,” she said aloud.

“You know where we’re goin’ now, Miss Rani?” Robert asked. “Terlingua,” she said.

“What’s them things, Ben?” Jordy asked, pointing to a group of skeletal objects in what had once been a productive field.

They were on Interstate 10, just outside of Fort Stockton, Texas.

“Irrigation systems, Jordy. Not enough rainfall in this area, so the farmers brought water up from the ground for their crops.”

“Why didn’t they just move where there was enough water?” the boy asked.

“Lots of reasons, Jordy. This was their home, for one thing. And nobody likes to be forced from their home. For whatever reason.”

“Even now, Ben? With all the land and houses just there? Would that still be true?”

“Even now, Jordy.”

The man and boy saw no one. Not one living human being. Not for miles and miles. It was as if this part of the country had been abandoned. Ben knew this part of the state had been hard hit by the disease-bearing rats, but he had not expected anything like this.

At the junction of Highway 17, Ben turned off the interstate and headed north, toward Pecos. Ben traveled warily now, for he knew that even before the great war of ‘88, the land west of the Pecos had been filled with the last of the truly tough, old-fashioned folks; good people, but secure in their beliefs and self-sufficient. They were of pioneer stock, and were boot-tough when pushed.

Before Ben reached Pecos, a sign suspended over the highway pulled him up short:

IF YOU’RE FRIENDLY, WELCOME, FRIEND.

IF YOU WANT TROUBLE, YOU GOT X.

Ben clicked on his CB and keyed the mike. “I’m Ben Raines,” he said. “I’m traveling with a small boy. And we’re friendly.”

Someone on the other end of the airwaves laughed. “Come on in, General. We’ve been trackin’ you since you cut off the interstate. Ya’ll just in time for lunch.”

“Son of a bitch!” Colonel Dan Gray cursed. “Now what?”’

“Road is blocked, sir,” a scout radioed back to the main column. “And someone has blown the bridge. We’re gonna have to cut farther south; go across Mississippi and Louisiana.”

“All right,” the Englishman radioed. “Backtrack. We’ll wait for you here.”

Gray’s Scouts had been attempting to move across the top of Alabama on Highway 72. They had been forced off that highway after only fifty or so miles. They had wound around country roads until linking up with alternate 72 at Huntsville. That had ended just before reaching Decatur.

When his recon teams had returned, Gray ordered the column south on Interstate 65. They knew from other reports that 278 west was closed; someone had blown the bridge over the East Fork.

“Find us a way around Birmingham,” Dan told his recon teams. “I don’t want to get in a firefight unless it’s absolutely necessary. The KKK has taken over that city, and it would be terribly difficult for me to restrain myself if confronted.” It was a typical understated British remark from Dan. “We’ll hook up with 20/59 and take that into Mississippi. We’ll stay with 20 all the way across Louisiana. Recon teams-go!”

“Way we’re movin”,” a young Rebel said sadly, “time we get to West Texas, General Raines will have already killed all the outlaws.”

“Quite,” Dan replied.

“Sure you won’t stay with us, General?” a cowboy asked Ben. “You’re sure welcome to.”

“I thank you, but I’m traveling; showing Jordy the country.”

“And getting away from the reins of leadership while you’re at it, huh, General?” a silver-haired man said with a grin.

“Sounds like you know about the headaches, too?” Ben said.

“Very much so,” the man said. “I was elected leader of this hardy little band. I’m stuck with it. Ben, we like your idea of outposts. When you’ve got it all worked out, come back. You can count on us.”

“I’ll be back,” Ben assured. “Or someone from my command will.”

“Be careful out there.” The man jerked his thumb. “The outlaws, warlords, and assorted scum have tried to move in on us many times. They finally quit early this year. We were killing too many of them. But they’re still roaming around like packs of scavengers.”

“How well I know,” Ben said. He shook hands with a few of the people and pulled out onto Interstate 20.

The people of Pecos had warned him that south of Interstate 10 was no-man’s land. The only holdouts were a few people at Alpine, Fort Davis, and Marfa. South of those towns?… He had only shaken his head.

Ben and Jordy drove as far as Van Horn. It was a ghost town, having been looted and ravaged many times, and then burned. The burning of the small town seemed to Ben to be more an act of vandalism; senseless, pointless.

He turned north on 54, heading for New Mexico. Halfway to the border, Ben found the highway impassable and was forced to backtrack to Van Horn.

Ben checked his map. He was hesitant about going to El Paso, for he had heard many stories about the destruction there. He looked at Jordy.

“Where to, little Man?”’

“I’m with you, Ben.” The boy smiled. “But I’ve already seen where we’ve been.”

Ben laughed. “It’s too dangerous to head south, Jordy. We-was

A bullet whined off the top of the cab. Another slug slammed into the camper. Ben twisted the steering wheel, pointing the nose of the truck west. A bullet ripped through the windshield, just missing Jordy’s head.

“Get on the floorboards, Jordy!” Ben yelled, spinning the wheel, heading south. West and east were blocked with unseen snipers; north was impassable.

“That doesn’t leave us much choice, boy,” Ben muttered.

Slugs clanged and slammed into the rear of the truck as Ben floorboarded the pickup, the big engine roaring, back tires biting into the road. The pickup fishtailed, then straightened out as Ben found the highway marker for 90 and headed southeast, toward Marfa.

“Going to get tough, Jordy,” Ben said, as the boy crawled off the floorboards and back into the seat.

“We’ll make it,” Jordy said. “I been in tougher spots than this.”

Ben didn’t doubt that at all.

Chapter 14

Rani carefully checked both trucks as best she knew how. She had filled the gas tanks of the vehicles and had ten five-gallon gas cans filled and stored. In Ozona, she had found a small, two-wheeled trailer, and that was now loaded with food, blankets, clothing, and cans and bottles of water. She would pull that behind her truck.

“Who’s Davy Crockett?” Robert asked, pointing to the monument of the man.

Rani snapped her fingers. “Books!” she said. “Got to get some books and pencils and paper so you kids can study and do homework.”

But she had seen scurrying shapes of humans ducking in and out of the ruined stores of the town, and did not wish to linger long in the town proper.

“Later,” she said. “But I’ve got to do it.”

She breathed a little easier when she was outside of the town, on the interstate. She had carefully plotted her route, writing the directions down and pinning them to the sun visor.

Interstate 20 west to Sheffield. Highway 349 south to

Dryden. 90 west to Marathon. 385 south, then west to Terlingua.

She said a silent prayer the roads would all be open and no outlaws would spot them.

If there was a God, that is, she thought.

She shook that blasphemy from her mind. Of course there is a God.

And it wasn’t Ben Raines.

Was it?

Twelve miles out of Van Horn, at the tiny deserted town of Lobo, Ben pulled off the highway.

“Close back there, Jordy.”

“I must be gettin” used to it, Ben.”

“Oh?”

“I don’t need to change underwear.”

Ben laughed and he and Jordy got out of the truck. Ben lit one of the few cigarettes he allowed himself per day. After a few moments of silence, man and boy enjoying their closeness and the silence of nature, Ben stirred.

“I think I got us in a box, boy. I have a bad feeling about that.”

Jordy stood and looked at the man.

“Folks back there where we stopped told me the town of Valentine was deserted; all the people there having moved to Marfa. They’ve formed a sort of a triangle of safety. You know what a triangle is, Jordy?”

“No, sir.”

Using his map, Ben showed Jordy the rough triangle, with Fort Davis at the top, Marfa and Alpine at the bottom corners.

“The folks are shooting first and asking questions later, boy. And I don’t blame them. So we’re not going to risk getting shot. See this county road here, Jordy, just before you get to Marfa?” The boy nodded his head. “We’re going to take that all the way to the Mexican border and link up with 170, gradually work our way out of this mess.” I hope, Ben silently added.

Ben radioed in to Captain Nolan and informed the captain of his route.

Ben looked at his map. “I’ll meet you boys at Terlingua,” he said.

“Ten-four, General.”

Nolan’s radio operator tried to contact Colonel Gray, but for some reason she could not get through to the column. She really didn’t think too much of the difficulty, for any traffic of late had been scratchy. The belt of radioactivity that had encircled the globe since the wars of ‘88 had affected weather and communications. The winters were getting much harsher and longer,” and the growing season shorter.

She reported the difficulty to Captain Nolan.

“First high range we come to, try again,” he told her. “Right now, we’ve got to move and move fast. The general’s getting in even over his head.”

He turned to his command, who were gathered around.

“We roll,” Nolan said flatly. “Day and night, we roll. If you’re not driving, sleep. We’re not going to fuck around with anybody or anything. Move out.”

“What the hell do you mean, you can’t get in touch with Colonel Gray or Captain Nolan?” Ike asked, an edge to his voice. “Goddamn it, we have the finest communications equipment in the world!”

The communications expert backed up a step. The ex-Navy SEAL’S abilities as a cut, slash, and stomp guerrilla fighter were almost as much a legend as General Raines. “I’m sorry, sir. But it’s impossible to reach them. At least for the next couple of days. Maybe longer than that.”

“Why?” Cecil Jefferys asked, in a much calmer tone of voice. The black man possessed the ability to remain calm under the worst of circumstances.

“Radioactivity, sir. The only way I can explain it is like this: The belt of radioactivity that has surrounded the earth since the bombings of “88 appears to have tightened, firmed, become more of a mass.”

“I understand tightened, son,” Cecil said. The ex-teacher and former Green Beret had been with Ben since the outset. During Ben’s short tenure as President of the United States, Cecil had been sworn in as Vice President. The first black vice-president in the nation’s history.

And the two of them had almost pulled the nation further still out of the ashes of war. They came very close. But the gods of fate had chosen that time to laugh and howl at the efforts of those who chose democracy over anarchy, freedom over slavery, enlightenment over ignorance.*

“Keep trying,” Cecil told the communications technician.

“Yes, sir.” He left the room.

Cecil and Ike walked to the big window of the *Fire in the Ashes commanding general’s office and looked out. People were working dawn to dusk rebuilding and renovating the once-deserted town, building schools and clinics, stores and warehouses.

“All we can hope is that short-range transmissions are getting through,” Cecil said.

“Yeah,” Ike said glumly.

Cecil looked at the man. “Don’t start getting it in your mind that you’re hitting the rescue trail after Ben. I need you here, and you know it.”

“I know that, buddy,” Ike said. “But that don’t keep me from worryin’.”

“You’re not alone in that,” Cecil said.

Ben and Jordy prowled through what was left of Valentine, Texas. Ben knew he was about to take them through an area of the country that was often short of water. Ben told Jordy to start looking for containers.

Ben found an old two-wheeled open-topped trailer and spent the rest of the day working on it. He found two tires in fairly good shape that would fit and a spare that looked as though it might have a few more miles left on it. Using his siphoning pump, Ben brought up enough gas to top his tanks and refill his cans. In a ransacked store, he found some cans and bottles of food. Most of the cans were swollen with contamination, but he found about two cases that still looked good. He wondered, after all the years, how much nutrition remained in the food?

Ben used some water to prime a hand pump, and after a few futile tries, out came water, clear and cold and good tasting. They filled up every can and bottle they had with them and those they could find among the ruins, carefully wrapping the bottles with rags to prevent breakage.

In the entire once-thriving little town, Ben and Jordy could find only six blankets and two big tarps that had escaped the ravages of looters. Ben found a few articles of clothing that would fit Jordy, and a good pair of boy’s lace-up boots.

Several times during the afternoon, Ben would look up and catch the glint of sunlight from lenses of binoculars from the hills. He knew they were being watched, but the question was: by whom?

As dusk began spreading purple fingers over the land, creating shadows throughout the town, Ben pulled his truck and trailer behind a store on the west side of the town.

“I’m hungry, Ben,” Jordy said.

“No fires, Jordy,” Ben told him, handing him a can of Crations. “Eat this. We’ll be pulling out as soon as it’s full dark.”

“You think we got trouble?”