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!
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Alone in the Ashes
  BY WILLIAM W. JOHNSTONE
  ZEBRA BOOKS
  KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.
ZEBRA BOOKS are published by
Kensington Publishing Corp.
475 Park Avenue South
New York, NY 10016
Copyright [*copygg'1985 by William W.
Johnstone
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reproduced in any form or by any means without the
prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting
brief quotes used in reviews.
Fourth printing: June, 1992
Printed in the United States of America
To Charles and Linda Abraham
  All I want of you is a little servility, and that
of the commonest goddamnest kind.
  Anonymous
  Them's my sentiments.
  Thackeray
  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters and
incidents are either the product of the author's
imagination or are used fictitiously, and any
resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,
events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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 lard-assed 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

  "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 floor-boarded 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 semi-auto 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 C-rations 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
fire-fight 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 floor-boarded 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 C-rations. "Eat this. We'll be
pulling out as soon as it's full dark."
  "You think we got trouble?"
  "Yes."
  At full dark, Ben cranked his truck.
Running without lights, he drove carefully and
slowly out of the town. He drove almost ten miles
without headlights. He found a dirt road leading
off to the southwest and took it, driving almost a mile
before pulling over.
  "We'll camp here, Jordy. No fires.
We'll have our big meal at noon while we're
traveling. That way the fire won't be so
noticeable. We'll gather dry wood that makes
little smoke. You go on to sleep now. I'll stand
guard for a few hours."
  The boy was asleep a few seconds after he
slipped into his blankets and closed his eyes.
Ben began his lonely vigil.
  Rani heard the men coming, walking as quietly as
they could through the night. She reached for the AR-15 she
had taken from the survivalist's basement cache and
slipped it off safety. She cut her eyes
to Robert, just a few feet away from her. The boy
held a shotgun in his hands, ready. To her left,
Kathy was alert and waiting, the lever action .30-30
ready.
  The outlaws had tracked her little convoy all day;
she had listened to them talk back and forth on the
CB. And the things they said had been perverted, ranging
far past filthy.
  She had told the kids that when she opened fire,
to do the same. She had absolute faith in them to do
just that. With the exception of the very youngest, they all knew
what lay in store for them should the outlaws take them;
all of the older kids were victims of sexual
abuse from adults.
  The shapes of the men became more distinct, looming
ominously out of the night.
  Rani waited.
  When they were no more than thirty yards
away, she raised her weapon and opened fire. The
booming of the shotgun and the bark of the .30-30 joined the
crack of Rani's AR-15. Muzzle flashes
lashed and leaped into the night.
  "Kill them all!" Rani screamed.
  Each of the three had a spare weapon on the ground
  beside them. As the weapons they were using ran out of
ammo, they dropped their empties and jerked up the
spares.
  Rani, Kathy, and Robert gave no mercy to the
outlaws. They didn't delude themselves into believing
they killed them all, but they knew they had inflicted
heavy losses upon the men.
  The sounds of engines cranking up and the spinning of
rear tires in the dirt and sand came to the woman and the
kids.
  "Take all the guns and bullets!" Rani
shouted. "And be careful. Some of them might still be
alive."
  The weapons and ammo collected from the dead and
dying, Rani yelled for the kids to head for the trucks.
By the road, they discovered another truck and a Jeep
wagon. Both vehicles were filled with gas, with
spare gas cans front and back, in frames. The
vehicles held food and blankets and
other gear she could not identify in the dark.
  "Kathy, Jane! You're going to have to drive these
vehicles. We need these supplies. Can you do it,
kids?" Rani asked.
  The girls nodded their heads.
  "Let's go. I'll take the lead. Robert, you
bring up the rear. Kathy and Jane, you'll be in the
middle. We've got to get out of here."
  The girls-really already young adults, for their
lives had been hard, with little time for the joys of youth-
got behind the wheels of their respective vehicles,
adjusted the seats, and cranked the engines.
  "We're ready, Miss Rani," they called.
  The short convoy pulled out into the darkness.
  Rani led them for thirty miles before pulling over
  behind a farm house. There, she set up guards
while the rest slept. At first light she would
inspect their newly acquired booty and travel
on. According to her old map, they had a hundred and
seventy miles to go.
  A hundred and seventy miles.
  She shook her head. God, she was tired.
Chapter 15
  Ben and Jordy hit Highway 2810-96 it could
still be called a highway-an hour after first
light. With any kind of luck at all, they would
make Ruidosa before dark. Or, correcting that, the
outskirts of the town, for Ben wanted to drive through
towns during the day. At least during the day he could
see what he was shooting at. And who was shooting at
him.
  They were traveling through desolate country, and the
going had been slowed considerably by the trailer they were
pulling. Damn thing wasn't tracking properly,
wobbling and wriggling behind them. But at least it was still with
them.
  No sooner had that thought passed through Ben's mind
than a tire blew on the trailer.
  Thinking some extremely vulgar phrases, Ben
changed the flat and silently prayed the old spare
would hold until he reached a town and could search for
another tire.
  They reached Ruidosa with plenty of daylight
left them; to his surprise, Ben located a
tire in the looted,
  burned, and deserted little town that would fit the
trailer.
  Something about this part of Texas was jogging memories
in Ben's mind, but as yet, he could not bring them to the
fore. He knew it was something he'd found
doing research years back, when he had made his
living as a writer.
  Then it came to him.
  Near Redford, still many miles away, there was a
huge private library. If he could just recall
where it was. If he could bring the location to mind, he
wanted to visit the place; hopefully, it had
escaped looters. He knew that people who looted were not
interested in literary flights of fancy; theirs was a
much more baser regard.
  Ben and Jordy made camp during the daylight
hours just outside Ruidosa, ate dinner, and then
moved on to a different location to camp for the night,
halfway between Ruidosa and Indio. Ben had
spotted no one, but the short hairs on the back of
his neck were beginning to stand up-or so it seemed
to Ben-like the hair on a dog's back upon sensing
danger.
  Ben would sleep lightly this night.
  "Got about a platoon of Raines' Rebels
bearing down hard south," one of Campo's scouts
reported in. "They're travelin' in a hell of a
hurry."
  "How you know they're Rebels?" West asked.
  "Tiger stripe," the scout replied.
  "Huh?"
  "Raines' people wear tiger stripe," Campo
told the man. "Black berets." He looked at
his scout. "Leave
  them be," he ordered. "Tanglin' with sixty of
those people is like tanglin' with six hundred other
folks. Fuckers are crazy. And they travel with
enough mortars and artillery to cause a lot of trouble."
  Campo was quiet for a few moments, slurping at
his coffee. Then he smiled.
  West caught the smile in the light of the camp
fire. "What is it?"
  "Even short-range transmissions are gettin'
pretty scratchy, right?"'
  "Yeah. So what?"
  "Asshole! Think about it. If we can't get
through on the radios, then neither can Raines or his people.
They don't know where he is neither."
  West grinned, the light from the fire giving his
face an evil cast. "Oh, I got it. Right."
He rose from his chair and hobbled off to his tent.
  "He ain't the sharpest fellow I ever met,
Jake," a man said.
  "Yeah. Did you guys round up any women?"
  "Found a half a dozen."
  "Bring me the best-lookin" one. Then you pass
the others around to the boys."
  And the screaming began in the outlaw camp. It would
last all night long.
  The night passed quietly and uneventfully for
Ben and Jordy. At first light, Ben tried his
radio. He could reach no one. The air was filled
with static, overpowering all else.
  And that left him with an uneasy feeling. Not for
himself, but because of Jordy. Ben was not afraid of
  fighting one, or ten, or a hundred; he had
been in so many fire-fights over the years since the
collapse of the government, it was second nature
to him. But he didn't want any harm to come
to Jordy.
  He pondered his options.
  He could hunt a hole and stay down. But smoke
from campfires would eventually be spotted by some
sharp-eyed outlaw. And he didn't know how long this
radio interference would continue.
  He made up his mind.
  "We're pulling out, Jordy. We'll take
our chances on the road."
  Rani had reached the outskirts of Marathon and was
desperately searching for a road that would
bypass the town. She found an unpaved road
leading off to the south and turned on it. After only a
short distance, that road connected with the old scenic
route. A few miles down that road, and she came
to the bodies.
  The naked men and women had been staked out on a
flat rise. Wild dogs and coyotes were feasting
on the cadavers. Using her binoculars, she viewed
the ugliness. She could tell the bodies had not been
dead for very long.
  She reached for her CB mike, then pulled back
her hand. Best to warn the kids in person, for even
if she could send a clear transmission for no more
than five hundred yards, someone else might be
listening.
  And they were getting too close to their destination
to fail now.
  She rolled down the window and waved the short
convoy on past the hideousness. Leaving the dogs and
coyotes to continue their feasting.
  Overhead, lazily circling in the sky, ever
patient, the carrion birds were waiting their turn
at lunch.
  Rani and the kids put some distance between the bodies
and themselves.
  Ben switched over to the scenic route, avoiding the
town of Presidio. The going was slower than ever,
now. The highway was choppy and littered with the rusting,
broken frames of cars and trucks. And there was death
in the air. It came to the nostrils of Ben and
Jordy clear and pungent.
  "Ben? ..."
  "Death, Jordy," Ben told the boy. "And that
other smell is gunsmoke. Been a battle around
here, and damn recently, too."
  "Between who?"
  "I don't know. If I had to guess, it was between
the good guys and the bad."
  "We're in trouble, aren't we, Ben?"'
  "Kind of, Jordy. But we'll get out of it."
  The boy shook his head. "I don't know. I
dreamed about that old man again last night."
  Ben felt a chill in his guts. He knew, he
knew
what old man Jordy was speaking of. But he had
to ask. "What old man, boy?"'
  "I seen this real old guy last year, Ben.
God! He looked like he was maybe a hundred
years old. Wore a robe and carried a big
stick. Had a long beard. He pointed that
stick at me and said, "Make good use of the time
left you, boy." Then when I looked up again, he
was gone."
  Ben had seen the old man, too. Back in Little
Rock.* He hadn't known what to make of him
then, didn't know what to make of him now.
  "What do you think that old fellow was trying to tell
you, Jordy?"
  The boy looked at Ben. His eyes were somber.
"That I ain't gonna live to be very old."
  "Nothing?" Colonel Gray asked his radio
operator.
  "Nothing, sir. Nothing but a solid wall of
static, and it's getting worse by the hour."
  Colonel Dan Gray's eyes were worried as
he looked toward the west. "That belt of
radioactivity above us is causing it. And it might
continue for weeks. It might never clear up."
  The young Rebel looked up. "I hope that shit
stays up there."
  Another Rebel said, "I hope it goes
away. Will it, Colonel?"'
  "Yes," Dan said. The Rebel's face
brightened. "In about five hundred years." The young
Rebel looked stunned.
  The convoy was on the interstate, just outside
Meridian, Mississippi, waiting for scouts
to report back. Radio contact was impossible.
  "You're sure Nolan's last broadcast said the
general was heading for West Texas?" Dan asked.
  "Southwest Texas, sir," the radio operator
corrected. "I'll bet my life on it."
  "Or General Raines is betting his," the
Englishman said softly.
*Fire in the Ashes
Chapter 16
  Rani and her kids called it a day about
twenty-five miles inside the Big Bend
National Park, with Croton Peak to their west,
Sue Peaks to their east. The Tornillo lay to the
north. If their luck held, they would be in
Terlingua the following day.
  Ben and Jordy pulled into Redford in the middle
of the afternoon. The town was, to Ben's eyes, amazingly
intact. For some reason, it had escaped the greedy,
lawless hands of looters, those shiftless, lazy people who
would rather steal than work-whether there is a working
civilization or not.
  Then the elusive memory became fresh in
Ben's mind, and he drove up to the general
store, got out, and entered the store. The front
door had been broken in, but still swayed on one
hinge.
  First impressions had been incorrect. The store
had been looted. But the hundreds of books in what
had probably been the largest private lending
library in the state were still on the shelves.
  "So much for the mentality of looters," Ben said.
  He selected a dozen or so books. Several
classics for him, some works of history and English,
and, with a smile, a book on civics.
  "Nothing like reviewing the past-that didn't work,"
he said.
  "What didn't work, Ben?" Jordy asked.
  "Democracy, socialism, communism-none of
it. Those were forms of government, Jordy," he added,
seeing the confusion in the boy's eyes. "Here in the
United States, we practiced a form of
democracy. It didn't work, either."
  "Why, Ben?"'
  "That, Jordy, will be argued and debated in homes
and caves and what-have-you for years to come."
  Man and boy went back outside into the light, and
sat down on the front porch of the old general
store.
  "We were too ..." He started to say
"diverse," then bit the word off. Jordy would not
understand and Ben wasn't sure diverse was the right word.
"Jordy, I'm not sure I can even explain why
it didn't work. Too many wanted too much from the
central government-and they wanted it for nothing. For
free. And there were a few who wanted to run
everybody else's business. Oh, Jordy, it was
a complex thing. People kept demanding more money for less
work. Our personal way of life and living went
up, while our moral values went down." Ben
laughed and looked at the boy, sitting on the steps,
looking at him.
  "Jordy, do you understand what I'm talking about?"
  "No, sir."
  Ben laughed again and stood up. "Come on,
Jordy. We'll put off discussing shoes and ships
and sealing wax. Of cabbages and kings. And why the
sea is boiling hot. And whether pigs have wings."
  The boy laughed and walked along beside the man.
"You're funny, Ben."
  "A regular clown-that's me."
  "What's a clown, Ben?"'
  At midmorning, Rani and her kids reached the
old mining town of Tres
Lenguas-translated, it meant three tongues-the
name had been shortened to
  Terlingua by an unknown party. With the exception of a
caretaker, it had been a ghost town since about
1950. Once boasting a population of over two
thousand people, the quicksilver mining boomtown had quietly
died out.
  For a number of years, however, on a Saturday
in the fall of the year, as many as five thousand
contestants, jokers, hecklers, and spectators
had converged on "downtown Terlingua" for what they
called the World's Championship Chili
Cook-Off, a mostly unpredictable event. This
yearly event had lasted as long as the nation was whole,
and was one big party.
  But now the silence was all that greeted Rani and the
kids.
  The hundreds of wooden shacks were long gone,
crumbling into and once more joining the earth.
  But the imposing mansion on the hill overlooking the
once-bustling mining town still stood, as silent as the
rusting equipment and memories that drifted through the
ruins. There were dozens of open holes dotting the
area; an old sign that held the ominous warning of
dangerous, open shafts. The holes
dropped for hundreds of feet-sure death for its
victims.
  Ordering the kids to stay in the vehicles, Rani
made a walk-around inspection of the mansion and the land
immediately around it. It was clear of holes. Then,
rifle in hand, she inspected the home for outlaws and
rattlesnakes, something she considered to be of the same
breed.
  There was not a window remaining in the mansion, not even
a shard of glass to denote there had once been any
windows. But there was a fireplace in the rooms.
  And there was enough rotting wood in the old town
to insure a comfortable blaze against the chilly nights of
winter.
  She got the kids out of the vehicles and onto the
brick-lined breezeway on the east side of the
mansion. She ordered them to stay put, doing so with enough
warning in her voice that she knew they would obey.
They were good children, and Rani was all they had to cling
to.
  She dug into her supplies and found a hammer and
long nails. With Robert's and Kathy's help,
she nailed tarps over the windows in one huge
room, then another. One room for the boys, one for the
girls.
  She had no broom, so she and the kids used rags
to clean the rooms of dust and dirt. Then they
tackled the upstairs. There would have to be a lookout
up here at all times. The view was commanding, and she
could see for miles.
  She off-loaded the supplies from the trucks and
hid them, then removed the distributor caps from the
trucks, carefully storing them in the mansion. Then
she and the kids took handfuls of sand and sprinkled the
sand over the tracks left by the tires. Rani and
Robert and Kathy spent the rest of the afternoon gathering
wood and stacking it in one of the rooms of the mansion.
Smoke was going to be a problem, she knew, but they
had to have heat and something to cook over. She would have
to chance it.
  She gathered the kids around her and began setting
down the rules.
  Ben and Jordy loafed that day, driving awhile,
then
  stopping and getting out, viewing the countryside. The
tiny community of Lajitas now existed only on
maps. Whatever had been there had been burned.
  They drove on, finally deciding to make camp
for the night a few miles west of Terlingua. Long
after Ben had extinguished their campfire and
Jordy had fallen asleep, he walked around their
area; something was bothering him. Then he stopped and
sniffed the cool night air. There it was.
  Smoke.
  Campo and West and Texas Red and Crazy
Vic had gathered their bands of misfits and crud and
assorted assholes and sent-out five man teams
to comb the countryside, west, east, and south.
Hundreds of outlaws were now on the trail of Ben.
Their orders were to take him alive if at all
possible. If they had to kill him, bring back the
body for public display.
  West had tried to wear a peg on his stump, but the
leg was still too sore for that. He hobbled around on his
crutch, filling the air with curses, all of them
directed toward Ben Raines.
  Big Jake Campo sat in his camp chair, just
moments before dawn broke, and dreamed of being king of
America. He would be, too, if he could just get
Ben Raines. He laughed in the predawn darkness.
  Texas Red squatted by the fire and warmed his
hands. Getting colder, he thought. And it was that fact
that prompted him to believe it was stupid sending men in
any direction other than south. But Big Jake was
known throughout the country as a man who had some
smarts. Best not cross him. Yet.
  Crazy Vic paced the sands in his high-heeled
cowboy boots. He was dressed as he believed an
old west gunfighter must have dressed: ten-gallon
hat, red silk shirt, fringed buckskin jacket,
wide belt with an enormous buckle, and dark
jeans. He wore two six-guns, Colt
.45's, around his waist, hanging low for a quick draw.
  He mumbled to himself as he paced. Slobber leaked
from his mouth. He was glad when the country finally went
down back in "98 or '99. Whenever the hell it
was. Got him out of that fuckin' nuthouse for
sure. People didn't have no right to stick him in there with
all them crazies. Vic ain't crazy. Just
different. Now Texas Red, he thought.
There
is a real crazy.
Texas Red,
he thought, his musings silently sarcastic. What a
stupid name. All that goddamn red hair on his
head must have cooked his brains.
  "All right!" Campo's yell cut into his
thoughts. "Break camp, boys. We're moving out."
  Tents were jerked down, blankets and sleeping
bags folded and rolled up, and stored.
Fires were doused. The sounds of many engines cranking
up, roaring into life, filling the air with smoke.
  "West," Campo said. "You and your boys head
west to Carlsbad and then cut south to the greaser
border at Presido.texas Red, you and your
bunch will turn south at Seminole. That'll take
you all the way down to the Big Bend. Vic, you and
your boys will work your way over to San Angelo and
then cut south down to Del Rio. Me and my boys
will head straight south from here. Work fast, but right.
Radio contact is shit, so we'll be on our own
for about a week. We'll all regroup in the Big
Bend, on Highway 385, just west of
  Marvillas Canyon. If none of us has got
Raines by then, we'll know he's down there and we'll
have him boxed. Everybody got all that? Good."
  "How "bout when we meet other warlords?
his
Texas Red asked.
  "Ask 'em to throw in with us," Campo said. "If
they don't wanna, kill them."
  "How 'bout women?" Vic asked, pulling at his
crotch.
  "Gather up all the decent-lookin" broads you
find," Campo said. "Especially young
girls. I like young girls. Kill the old cunts.
They ain't good for nothing. Take as many slaves as
you possibly can. We'll need a lot of workers for the
farms. Everything from San Angelo west is gonna
belong to us, boys. The whole goddamn enchilada.
Move out and good huntin'."
Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bander snatch!
Chapter 17
  The gunfire jerked Ben out of a deep, dreamless
sleep. Bright sunlight flooded his eyes as he
opened them, looking around. He motioned Jordy
back into his blankets and held a finger to his
lips, silently telling the boy to be quiet.
  Ben slipped out of his blankets, rubbed his eyes
and shook his head to clear away the fog of sleep,
slipped his boots on and laced them up. He put
on his field jacket and picked up his Thompson,
clicking the submachine gun off safety.
  They had camped behind an outcropping of rocks, just
off the highway, effectively concealing themselves from any
passersby on the road side of their camp. Ben
slipped up to a natural notch in the
rocks and silently cursed at the sight before him.
  A young boy, no more than nine or ten years
old, lay still in the center of the road. The child was
dressed in rags, and was, or had been, painfully
thin. From malnutrition, Ben was sure. Four men
stood perhaps two hundred yards from the dead child, west
and
  slightly south of Ben's location. Too far
away for Ben's Thompson. A hundred yards was
straining it for the Thompson, even though Ben's
Thompson was a newer, more rapid fire model
than the old 1921 Chicago Piano, as the
gangsters used to call them. The older model
Thompson spat out between 40 and 50 rounds a
minute; a person could almost take a breath between
rounds. Ben's newer submachine gun was capable of
about 60 to 70 RPM'S.
  Ben looked behind him at Jordy, and once more
motioned for the boy to lie very still and not make a sound.
  Jordy nodded his head.
  The men began walking toward the body of the child. They
were all armed, and were laughing, as if a dead child was a
big joke to them.
  "You shot that little shit right square in the back of the
head, Also," a man complimented the
rifleman. "Damn good shootin'."
  "Yeah. But I'm gonna miss the little bastard.
He sure had some tight asshole."
  "Shore did," another man said. "But what the
hell. We'll find us some more kids."
  Ben silently cursed the perverted bastards for
what they were and slipped from the notch, working his way
closer to the boy, keeping the rocks between himself and the
road. He closed the distance to about sixty yards and
waited until the men reached the boy.
  Then he stood up, the rocks partially protecting
him from the two-legged filth.
  The men spotted him and pulled up short. They
wore confused looks on their faces. Then the man
who had shot the boy grinned.
  "What the fuck do you want, buddy?" he asked.
Before Ben could reply, the man added, "And what the
fuck are you lookin' at us so funny for, you skinny
bastard?"
  Ben's frame often fooled people. Those so inclined
to do so, usually guessed him a full thirty pounds
under his actual weight. Ben smiled a grim
grimace. "What I'm looking at is a quartet
of horseshit, sorry, trashy mother-fuckers," he
replied, his voice low, but carrying to the
men.
  The men stirred. The bearded rifleman said, "I
don't know who you think you are, mister, to talk to me
like that. But you about five seconds away from dyin'."
  Ben met the man look for look. He shifted his
eyes for a second to the dead child. "Why did you kill
that boy?"
  The man laughed and looked at his friends. The four
of them stood almost shoulder to shoulder, facing Ben.
""Cause he were my slave and my private
fuck mate. He heared about that there Rani havin"
lef Oklahoma and maybe comin' this away. He
run off tryin' to find her. I kilt him. My right
to do so. He belonged to me. He were my property to do
with as I seen fit."
  "No human being has the right to enslave another
human being," Ben said. "Not even if the person being
enslaved is filth like you. I've heard the name
Rani. What about her?"
  "You ask a lot of questions for a man about to die,
mister."
  Ben stood quietly, meeting the man's gaze.
  "Rani's a broad that takes in homeless
kids. Used to be up in Oklahoma "til some
warlord got to want to fuck her steady-her
and the kids." He grinned. "We
  think she's took up livin" over to Terlingua.
Now me and my boys are goin' over there and git her
and them sweet young kids of her'n."
  "No," Ben said softly.
"No!
Whut the hell you talkin' "bout now, boy?
Huh?"'
  "I said no."
  "Well, just how in the hell are you figurin' on
stoppin' us, mister?"
  Ben smiled. "When you human trash meet the
devil, tell him Ben Raines sent you."
  "Ben Raines!" one man shouted.
  Ben stepped from behind cover and lifted the
Thompson, pulling the trigger, working the weapon from
left to right, spraying the filth, fighting the natural
rise of the powerful submachine gun.
  The .45-caliber, hollow-point ACP slugs
slammed the men around in the road and sprayed blood
into the air and onto the sands. The men fell to the
highway, dying in their own blood.
  Ben inspected the bodies and took two of their
M-16's and two of their pistols. He removed
all their ammo belts and left them where they
had fallen, their features twisted in that one last
hot moment of dying.
  He pulled the boy off the highway and then went
to find the men's vehicles. The trucks were about
five hundred yards up the road. Using one of his
blankets to wrap the boy (ben could not bear the thought
of wrapping the boy in one of the outlaws' blankets;
he could give the boy that much, anyway), Ben dug
a shallow grave and covered it with rocks to keep the
coyotes and dogs from digging up the remains and eating
them.
  He and Jordy broke camp and loaded up,
driving back up the road to the dead men's
pickups. There, Ben found boxes of ammo and
cans of water; several cases of food and five
five-gallon cans of gasoline.
  Ben looked at Jordy and grinned. "Think you
could drive one of these trucks, Jordy?"
  "I reckon I could if I set my mind to it,
Ben."
  "Well, all right, then. Let's just spend the
morning having you practicing, then. How does that
sound?"
  "Better than a kick in the ass with a steel-toed
boot, Ben," the boy replied with a grin.
  Just after the sun had broken Over the horizon,
Rani had thought she heard the faint sounds of
gunfire. She thought they came from the west, but she
couldn't be certain of either the shots or the direction.
  Rani ran her fingers through her light brown
hair, cut short. She was glad there were no
mirrors in the old house; she must look like the
devil.
  She walked outside and stood for a time on the
breezeway of the home.
  Where have the years gone? she silently questioned. It
seemed to her that she had been fighting for survival
all her life-even though she knew that wasn't
true. She turned her green eyes toward the west
and wondered how many tms she had left?
  That's stupid! she thought. No one has the power
to know that.
  In her early thirties, Rani was more beautiful
now than when she had been a cheerleader in high
school. Only now, hers was a mature woman's
beauty. She was, she often thought with a smile, just
vaguely
  remembering the old TV commercial, a
full-breasted woman. She leaned her five foot,
four inch frame against one of the columns of the
old house and once more looked out over the quiet
ruins, her arms folded under her breasts.
  She thought: I still don't have enough books or paper
and pencils for the kids. Have to make do with what I have.
I can't chance another run outside this area.
  She shook her head and walked inside to make a
pot of tea. Tea, it seemed, was still relatively
easy to come by. People would pass up the little tins of
tea in their search for coffee.
  The kids were still asleep.
  She quietly fixed her tea, andwitha handful of
crackers, walked back outside to sit on the
porch.
  She was certain she had heard gunshots. And that
made her very uneasy.
  Jordy practiced for several hours behind the wheel
of the smaller truck. For a kid who had never driven
in his life, the boy caught on very fast. He, of
course, was no expert, but he could keep it between the
ditches. And the going was very slow, anyway, the
highways in such bad shape. Averaging thirty mph
was doing very well.
  They pulled out at eleven o'clock that morning.
Terlingua was only about three miles away.
  On the outskirts of the ghost town, Ben
pulled over and told Jordy to stay in his truck
while he prowled a bit. Smiling, Ben thought the
warning a bit unnecessary. It would have taken a team of
mules to forcibly
  remove the boy from behind the wheel.
  Ben's trained eyes soon picked up on
someone's attempts to hide vehicle tracks. It
had been a pretty good job, but not done by an
expert. And after fifteen minutes of looking, Ben
straightened up, a puzzled look on his face. The
footprints he'd found were all small.
  He searched the ruins, suddenly sensing he was not
alone. His eyes kept drifting to the big house
overlooking the ruins. He walked toward the house.
  Just the faintest finger of smoke came from the
chimney.
  The small footprints led straight to the house.
  Standing beside a crumbling old adobe building,
Ben called, "Hello, the house. I'm friendly.
Anybody home?"
  A bullet whined off the adobe, sending chunks of
it flying. The slug missed Ben's head by only a
couple of inches. He ducked back.
  "Now, Vic!" a woman's voice came to him.
"Now, I've got you. And this time I'm
going to kill you."
Chapter 18
  "Madam," Ben called. "My name is not
Vic. If you will put away that cannon you're
firing at me, I'll sling my weapon and step out with
my hands in the air. I'm traveling with a small
boy named Jordy. He's with the trucks about a
quarter of mile west of here. My name is Ben
Raines."
  "You're a goddamned liar!" Rani yelled.
"General Raines is a thousand miles east of
here."
  "Is your name Rani?" Ben called.
  "Yes." This time, the reply was softer.
  Briefly, Ben told her, from his hiding place
behind the adobe, the events of that morning. He ended
with, "... I killed the men who had kept the boy
enslaved. They were thoroughly despicable types."
  "Oh, God!" he heard her say. "The whole
world's gone mad."
  "Not all of us, Rani. Believe me, there are
pockets of civilized behavior still to be found."
  "Step out, Mr. Raines."
  Taking a deep breath, Ben slung his
Thompson and
  stepped out from behind the old building, his hands in the
air.
  A very shapely lady stepped out onto the long
porch. She held an AR-1S in her hands.
  "Ben!" Jordy called. "Are you all right?"
  "I'm fine, Jordy," Ben called. "Stay
where you are until I come for you."
  "Yes, sir."
  Rani lowered the rifle. She walked from the porch
to the old stone fence around the mansion and stood looking
down at Ben. "I'm Rani Jordan, Mr.
Raines. Nice to meet you."
  "You might change your mind, Miss Jordan.
I think I've got about half the outlaws and
warlords in the southwest chasing me."
  "I think I know the feeling," Rani told him.
"I don't know the other warlords after me, but I do
know Crazy Vic. Cowboy Vic. And he is
crazy. Dresses like Sunset Carson, or one
of those old-time cowboys. But don't sell him
short. He looks stupid with those six-guns
hanging left and right; but he's rattlesnake quick with
them, and a dead shot with rifle or pistol. Do you know
how many men we have chasing us?"
  "I'd say about six hundred," Ben
informed her.
  Rani paled under her summer tan. "Six
hundred?
Are you serious?"
  "Oh, yes. So I would suggest we join forces
and try to stay alive."
  "But there's only two of us!" she protested.
"We can't fight six hundred men."
  "Sure, we can," Ben said brightly. "Unless you
want to surrender to them."
  "No way!" she said grimly.
  "Then we fight to stay alive and free. There is
no other way."
  Colonel Gray and his company of Rebels were
literally fighting their way across Mississippi, then
into Louisiana. It seemed they were in a firefight
every twenty-five miles.
  And race had once more reared up.
  Everybody, or so it seemed, was fighting
everybody else.
  "Madness!" Colonel Gray said. "If there was
ever a time for everyone to work together, this is it. Why can't
they see that?"
  Every thirty or forty miles, the heavily armed
convoy of Rebels would enter some new
warlord's territory, and the fighting would begin anew.
  So far, the Rebels had suffered no deaths among
their ranks; but several had been wounded, one
seriously. About thirty-fives miles inside
Louisiana, scouts reported a pocket of
resistance; a group of people just trying to survive and
get on with the business of living. The wounded Rebel
was left at the small clinic there and Colonel
Gray and his company moved on westward.
  Captain Nolan and his platoon were dug in,
fighting what appeared to be several hundred
outlaws. Nolan was not worried about being overrun
by the outlaws, for they appeared to be disorganized and very
undisciplined. The Rebels were occupying a half
block of brick buildings in a small Central
Texas town. They
  had plenty of food and water and ammo. But they were
stuck.
  "Nothing?" Cecil asked the radio operator.
  "Not a thing except heavy static, sir. Nothing
from General Raines, Colonel Gray, or
Captain Nolan."
  "Does the wall of static appear to be
worsening?" Ike asked.
  "Yes, sir. I can't even reach our
guard towers."
  "Shit!" Ike said.
  "My sentiments exactly," Cecil said.
  Ben repositioned the trucks Rani had hidden,
this time putting all of them into the building to the side
of the house.
  "We may have to make a break for it," Ben
explained. "We'll want the vehicles as close
as possible."
  Ben studied the town and the surrounding terrain.
"We're in a good defensive position," he finally
said.
  All the supplies except for a three-day
supply of food, water, and gasoline were removed
from the trucks. Ben and Rani, with the bigger kids
helping, began stockpiling wood, finally filling up
one room of the house with fuel.
  Ben left four M-16's and plenty of ammo
for each upstairs, one rifle at each end of the
house, another at the front and one at the back.
  "I don't know why," Ben said to Rani, "but I
have yet to see a warlord who had any artillery of
any sort."
  "It could be," Rani said with a wry grin, "that they
  can't
find
any. Probably due to the fact your Rebels
took it all."
  Ben returned her grin. "Now you just may have a
point there, lady. We have been known to commandeer
certain items necessary for survival and
self-defense."
  "Uh-huh."
  Both felt that tiny elusive spark begin bouncing
around between them. And with personalities as volatile as
those of Ben and Rani, that spark was sure to ignite
something. Very soon.
  While Ben and Rani were cooking supper,
Jordy sat with the other young people. Jordy was held in
young awe by the others for being the traveling companion of
Ben Raines.
  Ben and Rani both noticed the kids were conversing
in very low tones.
  "Talking about you, Ben," she said.
  "Yes. And I can just imagine what they're
saying."
  "They think you're a god, you know?"
  "I know. I have some among my own people-
adults-who believe that. I've done everything I
know to do to dispel that crap."
  "You haven't seen the shrines that were built in your
name?"
  "No. And if I ever do, I'll tear the
goddamned things down."
  "The people might shoot you if you try that."
  "Not me," Ben said with a laugh. "I'm a god,
haven't you heard?"
  "Get serious!"
  Ben did not tell her about the old man he-and many
others-had seen. The man who called himself The
Prophet. Rani, Ben felt, had enough to occupy
her
  mind without that added mystery.
  Unless she had already encountered the old man. If
she had, though, she wasn't mentioning it.
  Ben pitched his tent in a clear spot between the
house and the storage shed. He left Jordy to spend
the night inside the house, with the other kids.
  In his blankets, before sleep touched him with a soft
velvet hand, Ben reviewed the situation. There was
always a chance they would not be found hiding out in the old
ghost town, but those chances were slim. He guessed
correctly that Jake Campo and West had teamed
up with other smaller bands of outlaws and warlords and
had spread out, searching for them. It might
take them several weeks, but they would eventually reach
the ghost town.
  He turned in his blankets, listening to the wind
sing around the canvas.
  There wasn't a town within a hundred miles of
Terlingua where he could go to find materials to make more
bombs. So that was out.
  Ben smiled in the darkness. It was a warrior's
grim upturning of the corners of his mouth as a plan
came into his mind.
  Maybe he could even the odds a bit more. Yes.
He'd get on that first thing in the morning.
  He closed his eyes and let sleep gently
take him into that long dark slide. The face of
Rani stayed with him in sleep.
  Lovely.
  "Both of us will have to stress the importance of staying
within the area outlined," he told Rani.
  They sat on the edge of the porch; there were no
chairs in the ghost town. They ate cold beans and
crackers and sipped hot tea.
  "You have a strange mind, Ben," Rani said.
"And I suppose mine is, too. Here we sit,
sipping tea and discussing how best
to kill-hideously-several dozen men."
  "Get used to it, Rani. Civilization as we
both knew it is gone. Probably forever. From now
on, for as long as we live, for as long as those kids
in the house live, it will be pure survival of the
strongest. Those who are best prepared-mentally and
physically-will have the better chances for a long life.
The others will die. It's just that simple."
  She shuddered beside him.
  "Cold?"'
  "No," she said. She cut her green eyes and
stared at Ben. "You enjoy it, don't you, Ben?"
  Ben knew what she meant. He had been asked
the question many times before, by many other women he was either
involved with, or about to be. "Enjoy what,
Rani?"'
  Shades of Jerre, Rosita, Gale, Dawn
... how many others?
  "The fighting," she said simply.
  "When I was a young man, Rani-not even out of my
teens-back during the closing days of the Vietnam
War, I, along with many other men, discovered there is
a
high,
so to speak, to be found in combat. Yes, I
suppose I do enjoy the fighting, in a
perverse sort of way. I am a man of order and
discipline, Rani. I have no patience with those who
steal, loot, rape, molest, kill wantonly.
And, to make a contradictory statement,
  I will do my best to dispose of those types of people
whenever I find them."
  "When this is over, Ben, if we come out of this
alive ..."
  "We will," Ben assured her.
  "... I want to join your people."
  "You'd certainly be welcome, dear. You and the
kids."
  She again stared at the man, sitting calmly on the
porch, munching on a cracker. "You're not even
worried about our ... our problem, are you?"
  "Worrying puts gray in the hair, dear. I have
enough of that. No, Rani, all we can do is prepare
for what's coming at us, then lay back and stay alert.
Chewing our fingernails won't help a bit."
  "You're incredible!"
  "Thank you," Ben said with a grin.
Chapter 19
  With Rani carefully mapping out each open pit
Ben covered, the two of them-with Jordy, Robert,
and Kathy helping-began rigging his deadly
traps.
  First, Ben spent two hours gathering thin poles
and strips of wood, just long enough to cover the yawning
holes. Then, using bits of canvas, rags, old
newspapers-whatever he could find to serve the
purpose- Ben covered the support poles. He
then sprinkled those with a very thin layer of sand and pebbles.
When he was finished with each hole, it looked as
natural as the terrain surrounding it.
  "Robert, Kathy, Jordy," Ben said. "This
is no-man's-land out here. It'll be up to you three
to see that the other kids don't come near here. You
all understand that?"'
  They did.
  The five of them spent the next two days gathering
material for Ben to make his booby traps. They
worked from dawn to dusk, taking few breaks. When they
had finished, they had covered the opening of dozens of
deep shafts.
  "How far do these things go down into the ground, Ben?"
Jordy asked.
  "Some of them might drop for as much as a thousand
feet, son," Ben told him. "Now that this is
done, I've got to find and map out a bunny
hole."
  "A what?" Rani asked.
  "No animal has just one hole to run into,
Rani," Ben explained. "They'll have several more
holes, escape routes, all camouflaged."
  Leaving Rani to guard the kids, Ben packed a
small rucksack with emergency gear and began his
exploration of the terrain around the ghost town. He worked
in an ever-widening circle until he found a narrow
ravine running northeast from the town, toward
Highway 118.
  Back at the house, Ben packed up several
sacks of food, water, blankets, and
groundsheets. With Jordy and Robert helping, he
cached those supplies and several spare weapons near
the ravine, carefully hiding them. He then took the
small truck the survivalist had buried and
Rani had found, and tucked it into the ravine, with
spare cans of gas in the back. The truck was
brown, and dirty from road use, and it blended in with the
surroundings.
  With Rani walking with him, Ben showed her the
location of the supplies and the truck. "See that
small ridge beginning just behind the house?" he asked,
pointing.
  "Yes."
  "If I sense the situation is turning bad,"
he said, "I want you and the kids to head out. Get the
truck and head in the direction it's pointed. It'll
be rough, but
  you should make it to Highway 118."
  "Ben?..."
  "Listen to me! We have no radio contact at
all. None. We're in a very bad situation.
We're going to be outgunned a hundred to one. At
least. I don't know where Captain Nolan and his
platoon might be. But they know I'm here.
They'll fight through hell to reach me; that's our only
hope. But if and when I say
Go,
you and the kids go. You understand?"
  She slowly nodded her head.
  "All right. That's settled. And I don't
expect any argument from you when I give the word."
He faced her, putting his hands on her shoulders.
"Now listen very carefully to me, Rani. Forget
all vestiges of civilized behavior. They no
longer apply. You cannot afford the luxury of mercy
or pity for those two-legged filth coming at us. I do
not take prisoners, Rani. And neither do any of
my personnel." Her eyes widened at
this, but she said nothing. "I have neither the time,
facilities, nor inclination for attempted
rehabilitation. For the most part, it didn't work
back when we had a civilization, and could spend
millions of taxpayer dollars fucking around with
criminals, when the biggest part of them should have been
put up against a wall and shot to begin with. If you ever
fail to shoot, and that action results in our position
being overrun, I will find the time, believe me,
to put a bullet in your head."
  Her summer tan paled at his words. "You ..."
she stammered. "You don't mean that!"
  "The hell I don't, honey."
  "We're stuck!" a sergeant said to Captain
Nolan.
  "It appears that way," Nolan replied. "And
it looks like it's being done deliberately."
  "Our people on the roofs say we're pretty well
evenly matched, person for person. I don't think
they want to meet us nose on."
  "I get the same impression. But we may have
to force the issue. But if we do, we're going
to take some losses. Those people are well placed. I
think our best bet is to keep our heads down for a
couple more days. See what develops.
But we're no going to set around with our thumb up our
ass while we wait. We command the high ground. And
that's going to defeat those assholes out there. Have your
mortar people start ranging in the key locations. Make
goddamn sure our trucks in the alley behind us are
protected at all times. When we decide to go,
we're going to do it fast and hard. Take off."
  Jake Campo was traveling fast, only giving
the area he assigned himself a perfunctory once
over at best. No, Jake was in a hurry, for he
wanted Ben Raines all to himself, and he thought he
knew where Raines might be holed up.
  West was highballing it south, cursing and hollering
for his driver to hurry up. Raines had headed south;
he just
knew
it. And he wanted that son of a bitch all to himself.
  Texas Red had studied Raines" movements
up to when those other assholes had lost him, and had
reached the conclusion Ben had headed due south. That would
put him right smack in the Big Bend
  National Park. And Texas Red was going to get
there first.
  Cowboy Vic had said, on the second day out,
"Fuck Del Rio!" He had ordered his
people to head for the Big Bend. He didn't want Ben
Raines nearly as bad as he wanted Rani and them
tight little cunts with her. Gettin' Raines would just
be some icin' on the cake.
  Colonel Gray studied the maps and made up
his mind. With the roads as bad as they were, those
stupid warlords popping up all over the place, like
crazed jackrabbits, it was going to be a hard four
to five day push to southwest Texas.
  "Dallas to Abilene to Pecos, and then we'll
cut south," he gave the orders. "Two squads
out ranging a full twenty miles ahead of the main
column. Clear the way for us. No quarter, no
prisoners. Move out."
  Ben ordered every available container of water inside
the house. He then began boarding up ground-level
windows. He cleared the area around the house of any
object that might afford the enemy protection from
bullets, leaving the scrub bushes as they were, still
giving the place a long-deserted look.
  "Now comes the hardest part," he said.
  Rani looked at him.
  "Waiting."
  Ben looked around him and had to smile. He had
commanded some ragtag troops in his lifetime,
but this bunch would have to take the cake. Robert and
Kathy, twelve years old. Jane, eleven
years old. Jordy and
  Paul, ten years old. All armed. All
grim-faced. All ready for a fight.
  Two adults and five kids against five or
six hundred outlaws.
  On Ben's sixth day in the old ghost town, the
first band of outlaws hit them.
Chapter 20
  "We're breaking out of this box, Sergeant,"
Captain Nolan said. He looked at his watch.
0630. It would be full light in twenty to thirty
minutes. "Are the troops ready?"'
  "Yes, sir. Chompin" at the bit to go."
  Nolan lowered his binoculars. "Very little movement
from the other side. Most of them are probably still
sleeping. Tell the mortar teams to start laying down
fire."
  "Yes,
sir!"
the sergeant said with a grin.
  The mortar barrage caught the outlaws
by surprise. For several days the only reply from the
trapped Rebels had been some
small-arms fire. The HE and WP rounds from the
Rebels caught the outlaws with their pants down-in
many cases, literally.
  The white phosphorus hit just after the high
explosive rounds, searing through leather and steel and
flesh and bone. The outlaws did not have time to recover
from their initial shock before looking up into
  the hard faces of the Rebels as the tiger-striped
men and women charged the outlaws' positions. In most
cases, that one look was their last look at anything
pertaining to this life.
  Captain Nolan's people took no prisoners.
  The Rebels suffered two dead and five wounded.
Of the wounded, only one was serious, but she was on her
booted feet, refusing to be left behind.
  Raines' Rebels broke out of the small town,
barreling south. They still had several miles to go before
reaching the General.
  "A lot of dust coming from the west, Ben!" Jordy
shouted from his post on the second floor of the old
house.
  "How many vehicles, Jordy?" Ben called,
then realized the boy still could not count past ten.
  "Bunches, Ben." The boy looked through the
binoculars Ben had given him. He
laboriously counted to ten, made a mark in the dust
of the floor, and started again. "Ten and seven, Ben!"
he called.
  "Good boy!" Ben shouted. "Now stay down."
  "Yes, sir."
  Turning to Rani, Ben said, "Figuring four to a
vehicle, we're up against sixty-five to seventy
outlaws." He grinned. "That's good."
  "That's
good?"
she asked.
  "Yeah. We have them outnumbered."
  She looked at him as if he had gone mad.
  Ben called his "troops" around him. "Now
listen, kids. Don't fire until I tell you
to fire. All the young
  people into the room we fixed up for you. Stay down and
stay quiet. It's going to be very noisy, kids.
But we're going to make it. OK? Take off."
He looked at the remaining kids and at Rani.
"You all know your positions; get to them."
  "How come you so damn sure Raines is hidin'
out down here?" an outlaw asked West.
  "I feel it in my guts, that's why," the
stump-legged West replied. "All them people
we talked to said he was headin' south. All signs
point south. That there Rani cunt was headin' south.
Remember that piece of map Texas Red found?
It had Terlingua circled in pencil. They
here.
I know it."
  The outlaw column halted about a half-mile from
the ghost town.
  "Why we stoppin'?" West was asked by his
driver.
  "To rec ... recon ... look the situation
over, you idiot. We ain't gonna make no rash
moves this time around."
  ""At makes sense."
  "Course it do. Gimme them field glasses."
  While West was viewing the town through binoculars,
he was unaware that Ben was looking at him.
  "West," Ben said to Rani. "He's trash, just
like the others. Maybe even worse than some. I should
have killed him when I had the chance."
  "Why didn't you?" she asked.
  "I gave my word. And that is something I won't
break."
  "Not even to an outlaw?"
  "Not even then."
  "Ben!" Jordy called in a hoarse whisper.
  "Right here, son."
  "More cars and trucks comin" at us from the east."
  "OK. Stay alert."
  "Yes, sir."
  Ben moved to the other end of the house and lifted his
binoculars. That short column, ten cars and
trucks, halted their movement about a mile from town.
Through the long lenses, Ben caught a flash of bright
red hair.
  "Has to be Texas Red," he muttered.
  "Let me see," Rani asked, holding out her
hand for the binoculars. She lifted them to her eyes,
focused them in, and said, "Yes. That's him.
He's filth."
  "Then that makes our job easier, doesn't it?"
  "What do you mean, Ben?"
  "I don't take prisoners," he reminded
her.
  "Ben, we're outnumbered, or soon will be, a
hundred to one. And
you're
talking about taking prisoners!"
  Ben grinned. "Always think positive, darling."
  She walked back to her position, shaking
her head.
  "Texas Red and his boys is on the other side
of town, West," one of the outlaw's henchmen informed
him.
  "That was all that dust we seen comin' down."
  "Yeah."
  "Skirt the town to the south. Make contact with
Red. We gotta plan this out. We don't wanna
be shootin' each other tryin' to get Raines."
  From the second floor, Ben watched the lone man
  leave West's column and begin his skirting of the
town. He picked up his .30-06 and adjusted the
scope for range. The man was a good thousand yards
away. Too far. Ben let him work a little closer.
The ammo Ben was using was, of course,
hand-loaded, but this was beefed up to the max by his
ordinance people. If the situation had been life and
death, Ben would have chanced the thousand-yard shot. But he
was in no hurry. He let the man get within seven
hundred yards. Ben sighted him in, took a
breath, released part of it, and gently squeezed the
trigger, allowing the rifle to fire itself.
  The man stood straight up in his boots, grabbed
at his chest, then fell forward on his face.
  "Shot high," Ben muttered. "I was
shooting at his stomach."
  "The son of a bitch!" West yelled.
  "Bastard can shoot," Texas Red said. He
turned to a man standing by the truck. "Is them boys
part of West's bunch?"
  The man lowered his binoculars. "Yeah. I can
see that stump-legged bastard sitting in his van."
  Ben grinned. He called, "Everybody pick
up your spare weapon. Stick both of them out the
window and pull the trigger. Half of you east, the
other half west. Do it!"
  The old dusty littered streets of the ghost town
reverberated to the drum of AR-15'S,
M-16's, 30-cj's, and AK-47'S.
  "Holy shit!" West shouted as the windshield of
his van exploded under the impact of a very lucky shot
  from Ben's rifle. West stared in horror at his
driver. The man was slowly slumping down in the
seat, a bloody hole in his forehead. Fluid and
gray matter oozed out.
  Texas Red did not move from his position by his
truck. "Relax," he called. "Not even
Raines is good enough to make a shot at this distance.
He's just showing us he's got enough firepower behind him
to make a stand of it."
  "Red!" a man called. Red turned at the sound
of the voice. "I can't even raise West's people at
this distance. Radio has really gone to shit."
  Red nodded. "Hull? You head out to West's
position. Keep them slag piles in front of you.
Or whatever them things are. When you reach the end of that
last heap, zigzag into the ruins of them buildings.
Stay down and you'll make it. Take off."
  Hull wasn't exactly thrilled with his
assignment, but he obeyed. He zigzagged and
crawled and ran, expecting any moment to feel the
hot impact of a slug. When he reached the
high-piled waste dumps, he began to breathe a little
easier. He stopped to catch his breath and looked
around him.
  He grinned, his mouth a mass of rotting teeth.
He slipped into a littered alleyway, looked
around him, and stepped forward.
  His screams seemed to linger in the air of the ghost
town, adding to the ghosts of miners who had fallen to their
deaths in the long, seemingly endless pits.
  Hull bounced from side to side in the old shaft,
breaking nearly all the bones in his arms, hands, and
legs long before he reached the dark bottom of the
shaft. Had he been able to see, he would have
seen he
  landed among the bones of others who had taken that one
long step into nothingness.
  "Shit!" Texas Red said, as Hull's
screams finally faded away. "Raines has got people
scattered around in the town, too. This ain't gonna
be as easy as I first thought."
The rattlesnakes that lived deep in the old mine
shafts began crawling over Hull's broken and
bleeding body
...
  "I think we better wait for more men, Red," an
outlaw suggested.
  ...
the snakes opened their fanged mouths and struck at the
still-warm body, sensing food in their presence. The
old mine shafts contained thousands of snakes; they
slithered and rattled in the darkness ...
  "Who the fuck axed you?" Red snarled at the
man.
  ...
Hull's body was rapidly turning black from the
massive amounts of venom being injected into his dead
flesh
...
  "Jesus!" West whispered. He had banged his
still-sore stump getting away from the dead driver.
"What was all that hollerin'?"
  ...
The rattlers, some of them eight and ten feet long,
wound and coiled around Hull's body. One stuck
its head into Hull's open mouth and sank its fangs
into the dead man's tongue ...
  "Let's back off "bout another half-mile,
West," a man suggested. "We'll cut 'cross
country and link up with Texas Red that away."
  "Damn good idea," West said.
  ...
Hull's body was now completely covered by the
rattlesnakes. The swelling carcass seemed
to expand with new life.
And the snakes waited for yet more food to fall their
way.
  "One group is pullin" back, Ben!"
Jordy called.
  "Good boy. Keep a sharp lookout, kids,"
Ben called. He turned to Rani. "We won the
first round."
  "The fight isn't over yet," she reminded him.
  "Think positive, dear. Think
positive."
Chapter 21
  Ben watched the column headed by West pull
back. Shortly afterward, he noticed dust from the
north, tracking east, heading toward Texas Red's
location.
  "That screaming a few moments ago?" Rani
asked.
  "Someone stepped into one of the old shafts," Ben
told her. "We shortened the odds some the first
go-around."
  "We're going to need more than that," Rani said
glumly.
  Ben laughed. "Go tell the kids to stand easy but
not to leave their posts. We're going to have a few
hours respite."
  "And then?" she asked.
  "Then all hell breaks loose." He looked
toward the east. "Be interesting to know what those
crap-heads are talking about," he muttered.
  "Jake's gonna be plenty pissed about this,"
West said.
  "Fuck Campo!" Texas Red said. "He
don't spell Jack-shit to me."
  But West thought, and thought correctly,
most of that was pure macho bravado. West had yet
to meet anyone who wasn't, at best, leery of
Jake Campo-at worst, terrified of the big
outlaw.
  "We gonna have to approach this usin' some sense,"
Texas Red said. "I guess them Rebs of
Raines must have fire-balled down here to join him.
He's got them scattered around the ruins of the town.
Problem is, I don't know how many of them they
is."
  "I can't see how that's possible," West
countered. "Our guys was supposed to find them and box
them in, wasn't they?"
  "Findin' Raines' Rebs is one thing,"
Texas Red said. "Boxin' them in is something
else."
  "So what do we do?"'
  "We wait and think this thing out."
  Jake knew what had happened when Red and West
were not at the prearranged meeting place. No
honor among thieves, he thought.
  He looked up at the sound of engines. Cowboy
Vic's column roared into view.
  "Where's the rest of the boys?" Vic asked.
  "I would imagine they've gone on into that
old ghost town just west of the Big Bend," Campo
said. "That's what you had in mind, too, wasn't
it?"'
  "Yep," Vic said honestly. "I was thinkin' that
whoever got Raines first, could write his own
ticket. Wasn't you thinkin' the same, Jake?"'
  Jake laughed. "Sure was."
  "Thought so. That's why we all got down here a
little early, wasn't it?"'
  "That's it. Well, maybe this isn't such a bad
thing after all," Jake mused aloud.
  "How you figure that?"
  "We'll just lay back and let West and Texas
Red soften up Raines and his bunch. Let them
take the heaviest losses. Then we'll move in and
pick up the pieces."
  "And the glory," Cowboy Vic said, a trickle
of slobber leaking out of one corner of his mouth.
"Right?"
  "You got it." And then I'll kill you, Campo
thought.
  "Good plan," Cowboy Vic said. And when that's
done, then I'll kill you, he thought.
  The men looked at each other. Vic said, "You
got anything to fuck with you? We picked up
a few cunts but they give us so much trouble we
kilt them."
  "Yeah," Campo said absently. "We picked
up a shit-pot full of women. Help yourself."
  "Here they come, Ben!" Jordy shouted from the
second floor. "A whole big bunch of them."
  "Hold your fire!" Ben called. "We have
to let them get into town."
  "There ain't nobody in this damn old place!"
Ben heard the voice drift faintly to him. "The
goddamned place is deserted."
  "Hull fell in a hole in the ground!" another
man shouted. "Hell, there ain't no Rebs here."
  "Charge the house!" Texas Red's voice
ripped the air. "There ain't nobody up there
"cept Raines and the woman and kids. Go, boys,
go!"
  A dozen or more outlaws, thinking they had
victory in the palm of their hands, came charging from the
southeast. Ben waited until the panting,
out-of-shape men were just beyond the stone fence before yelling the
orders to fire.
  The dozen went down under a hail of lead.
  "Finish them!" Ben yelled.
  The yelling of the wounded was silenced by single
shots to the head.
  West looked at Texas Red. "Thought you said this
was gonna be easy?"
  "Shut up, West. If you had any sense, you'd
have been counting the rifles that was firing. I did. I
figure no more than seven or eight people in there
firing. Nine at the most. Shit, man! They's
two hundred and fifty of us." He waved his hand,
signaling the others to gather around him.
  "Harrison, you take your bunch to the back of the
house. Lee, you and your boys take the near side.
Jess, take the far side. Rest of you follow
me, we're takin" the front. We can't burn
them out, so we're gonna have to shoot them out of there.
Just keep up a steady fire. We get enough lead in
there bouncin' around, we'll drive them out. Move
out."
  Ben picked up on their plans before the outlaws
had a chance to put it into full operation.
  "Don't let them surround us!" he called.
"Stop them now!"
  Texas Red's plan was only half
accomplished. Both ends of the house were covered, but the
intense fire from the house kept the front and back
open, the gunfire driving the outlaws
back time after time.
  Roaming from top to bottom, one end of the house to the
other, Ben counted thirty-five dead lying around the
old house on the hill.
  He told Rani, "If we can hold on through the
night, this bunch will have a lot of quitters in it.
These men won't put up with losses like we've
given them. They're not soldiers; they're trash,
undisciplined gutter-slime. We've got
to hang on."
  Rani stuck out her chin. "My kids will do their
best."
  "I'm damn proud of them. Every last one of them,"
Ben told her. Then he surprised her by leaning
down and kissing her mouth. "And I'm proud of you,
Rani. I'll soldier with you anytime,
anyplace."
  She touched her lips with her fingertips. Kneeling
there, in the dust of the floor, her face blackened
by gunsmoke and dirt, she smiled at him.
"We'll have to continue this later on, Ben."
  "Looking forward to it, Rani."
  "Here they come, Miss Rani!" Robert
called.
  The lines of men that ran at them were not
nearly so full of bravado this time around. Ben could
sense that many of the outlaws had already had a gutful of
this fighting.
  "Adjust your fire!" Ben yelled. "Shoot them
in the guts. Aim for the center of the belly!"
  The house rocked with gunfire; the air became
smoky and hard to breathe; involuntary tears sprang
into the eyes of the defenders, young and older alike.
  The lines of men wavered, then broke completely
and ran back to safety.
  "Reload!" Ben called. "Reload all
empty clips and stand ready."
  Rani came to him. "Why did you tell us
to shoot the men in the stomach, Ben?"
  His smile was not pretty. "Listen closely,
Rani."
  The soul-wrenching screams of the gut-shot men on the
outside were hideous to hear. They lay in pools of
their own blood and howled in agony. Some were calling
for mother to help them; others called for God to put an
end to their suffering; others lay dying and cursed God.
  Still others cursed Ben Raines.
  "Can you imagine how demoralizing that is to their
buddies?" Ben said, grim satisfaction in his
voice.
  "I never want you for an enemy, Ben," Rani
told him.
  "Why, darling," Ben replied. "I'm just doing
what Uncle Sammy taught me to do-years ago."
  Dusk began draping purple curtains over the
land. As the first fingers of darkness touched the old ghost
town, Ben carefully checked each child's position.
He checked each weapon, making sure every available
clip was full. He talked with each young warrior
for a few moments, patting them on the shoulder,
reassuring them. With several, he stood their post
while they went to the bathroom.
  He told Rani, "You take the upstairs and
I'll take it down here. The kids have got to get
some sleep. Keep changing positions but do so staying
low. I think they'll be sending in commando teams tonight
to get inside the house. So if you see anything
moving, don't shout the warning. Come to the stairs and
tell me. OK?"
  For a reply, she kissed him and then was gone in the
gloom of the old house.
  Ben laid the M-16 aside and picked up his
Thompson. He was almost certain a few of the
outlaws would get inside the house this night. While
he really had nothing against the M-16, he
knew the big, slow .45-caliber slug packed more
of a wallop than the smaller, lighter, but faster
5.56 round. He knew that if the .45 slug hit
a man, anywhere, that man was going down.
  Full dark came suddenly, almost too quickly.
One second it was still light enough to see, the next
instant darkness had completely enveloped the ghost
town.
  The outlaws wasted no time in slipping around the
house on the hill. Those badly wounded outlaws that
lay moaning and crying and dying around the house gave
their buddies away.
  Rani whistled softly for Ben. He looked up
through the gloom of the old stairs.
  "They're slipping in all around us, Ben," she
said softly.
  "The kids up?"
  "And ready."
  "Pick your targets and open fire."
  It was rock-and-roll time around the house on the
hill overlooking the ghost town. The night became
pocked with muzzle flashes, punctuated with yelling
from the now-discovered outlaws, and filled with the screaming
of the wounded as the young defenders of the house found their
targets and opened fire.
  Over the banging and roaring of gunshots and bolts
slamming back and forth, Ben heard the faint sounds of
boot heels on the old brick of the front porch.
He stepped back into the darkness until his back
touched the wall. He lifted the Thompson as his
eyes found the
  shapes of men slipping quietly up to the sightless
empty windows that faced the porch.
  He cleared one window of three dark shapes, the
Thompson jumping and bucking and roaring in his hands.
The men were flung backward as the lead struck them in
belly and chest.
  Ben quickly changed positions, moving from one end
of the room to the other. He heard one of the young people
yell. He had no way of knowing if the cry was out of
fear or if the young person had been hit
by gunfire. Ben suspected the latter.
  He looked up just in time to hurl himself to the
floor. Gunfire ripped the dark room, the
slugs striking where Ben had been. On the floor,
Ben lifted the Thompson and pulled the trigger,
clearing yet another window of outlaws.
  Someone was in the room with him. No! More than one
person. Two, maybe three men. Ben lay on the
floor and listened. A boot scraped the
floor. Ben crawled noiselessly away, lifted
the submachine gun, and poured the lead toward the sound.
  As the muzzle flashes from the Thompson gave
sparking light to the room, Ben saw three men jerk
and dance grotesquely as the .45-caliber
equalizers hit flesh and bone. The odor of piss
and shit and vomit and sweat was strong in the room, as
dying bladders and bowels emptied.
  "Back, back!" someone from the outside called.
"Fall back."
  "Fuck this crap!" a man yelled. "I've had
it. I'm cuttin' out."
  "Yeah," another voice said. "Me, too."
  "I'm with you, guys," yet another voice was
added.
  "Let's get the hell out of here," a fourth
voice said.
  Those voices were joined by others.
  "You yellow mother-fuckers!" a man screamed.
"You bastards runnin' away from kids and cunts and
one man!"
  "You goddamn right!"
  "I'll see you dead first!" the commanding voice
shouted.
  Then what Ben had hoped would happen
began taking place.
  Gunfire ripped the night. But the fire was not
directed toward the house. The outlaws were fighting
among themselves.
  The sounds of heavy gunfire coughed out of the night.
Trucks and cars and vans cranked up, and
headlights cut the dust and gunsmoke that had
settled over the ghost town.
  The gunfire died away. The sounds of roaring
motors faded into the night. Only the moaning and
howling and screaming and cursing of the wounded could be heard.
  Ben crawled around the room, making certain all
of the outlaws were dead. Ben found one still alive.
Using his long-bladed knife, Ben cut the man's
throat.
  He crawled to a window and looked out. Far in the
distance, he could see the light from escaping
vehicles.
  Against all odds, the small band of defenders,
alone in the ashes, had won this fight.
Chapter 22
  Robert had been hit in the arm. The wound was
painful, but not serious. Miraculously, that was their
only casualty.
  At first light, with everyone giving him
cover if it was needed, Ben slipped outside and
began gathering up weapons and ammo.
  He counted ninety dead. He smiled amid the
gore and dead and shook his head. If ninety had
been killed, at least that many more had been wounded.
  "Lucky," Ben muttered. "We were so very, very
lucky."
  "Oh, goddamn it, Ben!" Rani said, when
Ben told her what he planned to do.
  Ben stood firm. "You going to help me, or do
I do it myself?"'
  Her green eyes touched him. They were emotionless,
unreadable. "I'll help you, Ben. If you think
it's necessary, then let's do it. But I think it's the
most hideous thing I have ever heard of."
  "When they start soaking up the bullets meant for
  you and me and the kids," Ben countered, "you just might
change your mind."
  They began stacking the bodies of the dead outlaws
around certain parts of the yard, and closing in the porch with
them.
  It was grisly work, and Ben didn't like it any more
than Rani-although he would never let on to her that he
didn't. But he knew the grisly sight would make
a lot of outlaws very uneasy, and would
probably cause a few of them to give up the
fight altogether. Also, most of the outlaws would be very
reluctant to climb over the stinking, stiffening dead
to get onto the porch.
  He told Rani that.
  "I still think it's barbaric!" she snapped at
him.
  Ben met her hot eyes. "Would you prefer to see
eleven-year-old Jane held down on the ground and
butt-fucked?"'
  She shut her mouth and continued working.
  Colonel Gray's column got as far as west
central Texas before they started hitting any further
major trouble. There, more small bands of looters,
outlaws, and warlords began popping up, slowing down
Gray's advance. Almost always, when the outlaws saw
what they were up against, they pulled back and let the
column go through.
  But it was slowing their progress considerably.
  Captain Nolan's platoon advanced
to midway between Fort Stockton and Marathon. They
had all refilled their water containers back at the
Imperial Reservoir, but were in such a hurry they
did not check the water for impurities. Dysentery
laid them all down
  flat. They carried the proper medication to treat the
illness, but that was small comfort to the suffering Rebels,
who all knew it would be a full twenty-four
to thirty-six hours before any of them would be able to do
anything other than moan and squirt.
  West and Texas Red had managed to gather some
sixty-odd members of their outlaw band together. The
rest had split for parts unknown, all vowing they would
not be back.
  It was a sorry-looking bunch that met Cowboy
Vic and Jake Campo on the east side of
Study Butte at midmorning.
  Jake started laughing when he saw who it was.
West and Texas Red flushed with anger, but wisely
kept their mouths closed.
  Jake waved the leaders to one side and said,
"All right, tough-boys. What happened?"
  Jake stopped laughing as the story unfolded.
He began getting madder by the second. Finally he
waved the men silent.
  Jake glared at the outlaws. "Do you mean
to tell me-honestly-that
one
man, and
one
woman, along with a handful of
snot-nosed brats,
managed to beat back two hundred and fifty
grown, fully-armed men?"
  "That's about it, Jake," West said.
  Texas Red said, "All that talk about Ben
Raines being some sort of god, Jake. I don't
know. But something is damn sure spooky about him, and
those that follow him."
  "I don't believe that shit!" Jake snapped.
But after this? ... He shook that thought away. "You
boys look
  like crap. Get some food in you and some sleep.
We hit that skinny son of a bitch, that uppity
broad, and them kids at first light."
  Ben and Rani sat in the yard of the old mine
owner's home. Rani did her best to keep her
eyes from the piled-up bodies in the yard and on the
porch.
  "And you really think you and your followers can bring a
return to civilization?" she asked him.
  "The way it was?" Ben looked at her. "Oh,
no. Never in our lifetime, Rani. Probably not
even the grandchildren of those kids in the house will know
civilization the way we knew it. But those
of us who believe strongly enough can carve something out of the
ashes. We don't have to be alone in that, either.
Sometime within the next few months, we'll start
setting up the outposts I told you about. It's a
start," he said philosophically.
  "Where would the dream have been if you had not come
along?"
  "Oh, Rani, don't give me more credit than
I'm due. Believe me when I say I didn't
want the damned job to begin with."
  "You mean you tried to get out of it?"
  "I sure did."
  She sat by his side on the stone fence and stared out
at the emptiness around them. "Where will you go if ...
when," she corrected, "we get out of this bind?"
  "Wandering, probably."
  She abruptly stood up. "I've got to check
on the kids."
  And you'd like to go wandering, too, Ben thought.
  Like me, you're tired of the responsibility. But
you're also tired of hunger and danger and of the feeling that
you are the only person in the entire country who
gives a damn about the kids.
"When
we get out of this," Ben muttered. "You were
right, Rani.
If is
the word."
  Ben spent the rest of the day checking weapons. He
unpacked his rocket launcher and checked the
grenades. Then, with a shovel in his hand, he prowled
the area around the house, digging a dozen and a half
punji pits, rigging the bottom of the pits with
sharpened stakes, then camouflaging the opening the same
way he'd done the shaft openings.
  Using old wire he found, he rigged another
dozen and a half ankle traps.
  He emptied out several boxes of shotgun
shells and made some crude bombs, filling them with
rusty nails and the shot from the shells.
  It was nearly dusk when he finished. He could not
think of anything he'd missed in his preparation for war.
  Other than wishing he knew of some way to keep the
piled-up bodies from stinking.
  "Nothing?" Ike asked, standing in the door of the
communications building.
  "Nothing, sir," the young woman told him. "But
for some reason, the static is not as bad as it was
yesterday." She looked at a chart. "It's down
by twenty percent."
  Gale and Tina entered the room.
  "What's the word on Dad?" Tina asked.
  Ike shook his head.
  "Ike," Gale said, "you look like an old hound
dog. Come on! You've known Ben for years. You know
he's an expert at getting out of tight spots."
  Ike grinned. "Gettin'
into
them is a speciality of his, too."
  "Why does this Mississippi redneck always have
to make something sexual out of everything people say?"
Gale asked, winking at Tina.
  "What'd I say?" Ike asked, rolling his
eyes. "What'd I say?"'
  "Uncle Ike," Ben's adopted daughter said,
"you're impossible."
  Cecil stepped into the room. "We have a
revival in here?" the black man asked.
  "Yeah," Gale said. "With preachin" and singin' and
dinner on the grounds. That'd be a first for me, let
me tell you."
  Ike put his arm around Gale's slender
shoulders. "I'll make a Baptist outta you
yet, darlin'."
  Gale looked at him, feigning great
horror. "Do I look like a
yold
to you?" she asked him.
  "Say that in American, darlin'," Ike
grinned. "My French never was very good."
  Ben opened his eyes and looked at the luminous
hands of his watch. Four o'clock. He could not believe
the night had passed without an attack from the
outlaws.
  He rolled from his blankets and pulled on his
boots.
  He climbed upstairs and relieved Kathy at
her lonely lookout, sending her to bed.
  Ben checked the dark terrain surrounding the house.
He could not see any movement in the inkiness, but his
senses were working overtime.
  Something, or somebody, was out there. Waiting.
Watching.
  He didn't need anyone to step down from the Mount
to tell him who it was and what they were about to do. He
waited and watched until five thirty.
  He shook Rani awake. "We have company,"
he told her. "Get up and very quietly wake the
kids. Get them to their posts. I think they're going
to hit us-for some reason-at first light."
  The last thing Ben had done before calling it a day the
afternoon before was to take the belts from some of the dead men and
rig suspended harnesses for the M-16's. From the
ceiling, the harnesses would hold the M-16's at the
right height for the young people manning them; from the floor, the
harnesses would prevent the weapons from jumping out of their
young hands on full auto, and still keep the weapons
aligned-more or less.
  The gun slits Ben had built had been
constructed with each young person in mind; just to the right
height to afford the maximum protection from
bullets.
  Now, each person, with Ben being the exception, had
twin M-16's suspended and ready to go.
  Ben was ready with his homemade bombs, his RPG
launcher, and his stack of fully loaded automatic
shotguns taken from the dead men; along with several
automatic weapons and, of course, his old
faithful .45-caliber Thompson.
  Rani joined him on the ground floor with a cup of
  steaming hot tea. Together, they sipped tea and
watched the horizon begin to lighten in the east.
  Ben was impassive as the sky grew brighter,
allowing them to view what lay before them.
  Rani sucked in a hard gulp of air
and let it out with a hiss. She clutched at his arm.
  "I see them," Ben said.
  They were totally surrounded. Cars, trucks,
vans, and motorcycles lined the area around the ghost
town. What seemed to be hundreds of men stood
quietly in a circle, facing the house from all
conceivable directions.
  "I've tracked you across five states,
Raines," Jake spoke through a bullhorn, his
electronically magnified voice booming out of the
dawn.
  "Four states," Ben calmly corrected.
  Rani looked up at him. "Please excuse
him," she said sarcastically.
  "But I'm open to a deal," Jake said.
  "I can just imagine what it might be," Ben
muttered.
  "Yes," Rani said.
  "You hear me, you skinny son of a bitch!"
Jake roared.
  Rani looked Ben up and down andwitha smile,
said, "You could stand to put on a few more pounds."
  "I'm very comfortable the way I am, thank you."
  "You hear me, you asshole!" Jake roared.
  "Yes, I hear you, fatso!" Ben
yelled. "No deals."
  Some of Campo's men giggled and Jake frosted
them silent with a hard look.
  "I'm gonna skin that son of a bitch alive!"
Jake growled. "After I make him watch while
I fuck his woman and
all
them kids, right in front of his eyes. Boys
and
girls."
  "Jesus, Jake!" one of his men yelled. "Them
ain't sandbags he's got piled around the house.
Them's dead
bodies."
  West lifted his binoculars and looked, as did
Texas Red and Cowboy Vic. The three of them
exchanged uneasy glances.
  Even Jake swallowed hard after viewing the scene
through field glasses. He shook his head. "Some people
just ain't got no class at all," he said.
"That's unholy. He'll go to hell for that."
  Even Crazy Cowboy Vic looked at Jake
oddly after that remark.
  Many of the outlaws standing in the circle around the
house shuffled their feet and exchanged
glances of indecision. It would not take much for some of
them to split the scene and say to hell with Ben
Raines.
  "Your life for them kids and the woman!" Jake
lied.
  Ben looked at Rani. "I wish I had a
81-mm mortar," he said. "I'd give that
lardass an answer he'd never forget."
  "Without taking anything away from your request,
Ben," Rani replied. "I'd like to see that
platoon of your Rebels come riding up."
  "Well, yes. I suppose I'd settle for
that."
  Those Rebels of Ben's were on the way, but about
half of them were in no condition for a fight.
  Using a range-finder, Ben plotted the distance
at nine hundred yards. He picked up his
bolt-action rifle and thumbed it off safety,
adjusting the huge scope. Campo stood with an
open van door in front of him. At this range,
a head shot would be nearly impossible to make.
  But one outlaw, with more guts than sense-or
maybe he was just plain stupid, that was probably it-
was standing on top of the cab of a pickup truck. Ben
sighted him in.
  "If you make that shot, Ben," Rani said,
"I'll give you a present."
  Ben looked at her and waggled his eyebrows.
"Oh?"
  She grinned and patted him on the arm. "Calm
yourself, old man. Heavy breathing will throw off your
aim. Besides, are you sure you can handle me?"
  Ben gave her his best lewd grin.
  "Uh-huh," she said.
  Ben propped the rifle on the sill for
support, took aim, and gently squeezed the
trigger. The outlaw flew off the top of the cab, a
bloody hole in the center of his chest.
  "Now come and get us," Jordy yelled from the top
floor. "You fat-ass!"
Chapter 23
  The circle of outlaws moved as if controlled
by one mind. The outlaws were growling and snarling like the
animals they were. They were shouting obscenities at
the house and its occupants.
  "Hold your fire!" Ben called just loud enough for the
kids to hear.
  The bolts of the twin M-16's were pulled. The
kids gripped the pistol grips, pressing the
stocks against young shoulders, getting ready
for the jar and slam of double-16's on full auto.
  The circle drew nearer.
  Ben noticed that Campo, West, Texas Red,
and Cowboy Vic had stayed back, well out of
conventional rifle range.
  "True leaders of men," Ben muttered.
  He picked up his .30-06 and clicked it off
safety, lifting the stock to his shoulder and sighting
in one particularly ugly outlaw.
  The part of the circle that had gathered at the rear of the
old town had vanished into the ruins of the ghost town.
  Ben smiled, thinking: Only a few more seconds
before one of them takes that one last long step.
  A hideous scream cut the air as an outlaw
stepped into a mine shaft and went tumbling
into eternity, howling as he fell.
  Ben pulled the trigger and blew off a man's
jaw. The man was flung backward, landing on his
ass in the sand.
  "Fire!" Ben yelled.
  Twelve M-16's, all older models,
all fully automatic, began singing their death
songs, yammering and spitting out lead.
  Ben was firing an AK-47 on full auto, the
7.62 ammo cutting great holes in the
now-broken circle of outlaws.
  A man stepped into a punji trap, the sharpened
stake driven through his foot, trapping him on the
sands. He howled and beat his fists on the ground,
all the fight gone from him.
  Ben let him howl.
  Behind Ben, on the other end of the first floor,
Rani was manning her twin 16's, the 16's
jumping in their harness, the floor around her twinkling with
brass.
  Over the rattling and cracking of gunfire, the
pinging of brass bouncing off the floor, Ben heard the
faint screams of another man as he stepped onto
the thin covering over a deep shaft. The man went
howling into his frightened death.
  The circle of outlaws broke, splintering like an
egg shell, leaving a half-dozen men trapped on
the porch, their hands slick with the gore from the bodies
they were forced to climb over getting to the porch.
  Ben dropped the empty AK and jerked up a
sawed-
  off shotgun, an automatic that held nine
three-inch magnums.
  Ben cleared the porch of all living things, the
shotgun roaring in his hands.
  "Cease fire!" Ben yelled.
  The house fell silent. Now, only the moaning
and crying and cursing and screaming of the wounded outlaws
could be heard.
  "Sound off!" Ben called.
  A couple of the kids had scratches and splinters
from the wood barricades in front of them; all had
sore shoulders from the pounding of the twin 16's, but again,
against all odds, no one was seriously hurt.
  The area surrounding the house was littered with the dead
and dying. The screaming from men caught in the punji
traps was now hoarse, more animal than human.
  "Take the upstairs, Rani," Ben said.
"Tell the kids to go to the bathroom, get some water
and food in them, and then you do the same. I'll look
after things down here."
  Ben reloaded clips and checked his AK. He
reloaded the sawed-off shotgun and then, with one eye
toward the outside, he checked Rani's twin
M-16's and reloaded some clips for her. When
Rani returned from the upstairs, Ben went up and
checked out the weapons, patting each young person on
the shoulder, speaking calmly to them, complimenting them, and
assuring them that it was almost over. Just hang in there,
he told them.
  "Will we get to go back to your people when this is over,
Mr. Raines?" Kathy asked.
  "You sure will, kids," Ben told them. "And when
you're there, you'll never have to be afraid again. And
that's a promise."
  Jake Campo didn't want to admit it, but the
first tentative fingers of fear were lightly touching him.
It was not a feeling he liked. Fear was almost unknown
to the man. He had had his way all his life; even
back in grade school, he had taken whatever he
wanted, whenever he wanted it. The laws of a
liberal society being what they were-when there was a
government, with laws (as silly as many of them were),
many of them catering to the punk, the lawless, the
bully-boys like Jake had a field day with other
kids less inclined to bully.
  Even when Jake had received three to five in
prison for rape, he ran the joint (back
when joint
was jail and not something to smoke). Jake did that time
(he was out in eighteen months) with ease. When he was
charged with almost killing a man with his fists-he never
did go to jail for that crime, the jails, at that time,
being too crowded and federal judges not wanting to tax
the sensitive criminal psyche-he began
to have nothing but contempt for the legal system of
America.
  Jake wasn't alone in that contempt. Almost any
law-abiding citizen with a modicum of intelligence
felt nothing but contempt for America's legal
system.
  Jake looked at the house on the hill and
knew, he
knew,
for the first time that he could remember, raw fear.
  West sat on a broken down chair and rubbed his
aching stump. Would the goddamn thing
ever
heal?
  West hated Ben Raines. Loathed him. But he
was afraid of Ben Raines. Scared to death of him.
West wished they could just call this thing off and go on
back to Tennessee. Jesus Christ! He couldn't
get over the sight of those bodies piled around the
house and on the porch. And Raines had
booby-trapped the town, too. West shuddered at the
thought of falling into one of those mine shafts.
  God, what a way to die.
  He bet there were snakes down there in them pits,
too. Snakes and rats eatin' on the
bodies.
  "Shit!" he muttered.
  Texas Red ran his fingers through his long red
hair. He sat off by himself and engaged in, what was
to him, heavy thinking.
  This whole operation was screwed up. Everything about it
was screwed up. But he wasn't gonna give up.
No way.
  If any of them did that, word would get around the
whole southwest that they let one man, one woman,
and a handful of kids kick the shit out of three or
four hundred men. Couldn't let that happen.
  "So," Red muttered, "that only leaves us one
choice. Kill them all."
  Crazy Cowboy Vic wasn't scared of Ben
Raines. Cowboy Vic wasn't afraid of
nothing. Cowboy Vic didn't have sense enough to be
afraid of anybody. He grinned as he pulled
at his crotch. Thought about all them young girls in the
house. Smooth tight pussies.
  Vic liked to hear the girls holler when he
hurt them. That's when he really got his rocks off.
And Vic liked to kill. Didn't make no
difference to Vic who or what it was. Human or
animal. He liked to kill; liked
to torture.
  Far back as he could remember, he liked
to torture animals. Skin them alive. Cut the
paws off dogs and cats.
  Of course his parents knew about his aberrations. Of
course his parents didn't report him to the
authorities. Victor was their darling little pride and
joy.
  Not even when Little Victor buried the
neighbor's pet up to its neck and ran over it with a
power mower did his parents report it. They concealed
the fact. Heaven forbid anyone should learn they had a
nut for a kid.
  They thought they were doing Victor a favor
by keeping quiet about his ... strange behavior.
  There are a great many stupid parents in the world.
  Vic slobbered on himself as he thought about the kids
in the house. And Ben Raines. He'd like
to torture Ben Raines. Make him holler.
  Yeah! Good fun!
  "I wonder what they're thinking?" Rani asked.
  "A lot of them are thinking about quitting," Ben
told her. "But the majority of them know they can't
quit. Word would get around that they were whipped by a
handful of kids and one man and one woman.
They can't allow that to happen. They have to try to kill
us to shut our mouths."
  "We must have killed half of them," she observed.
  "Or a lot of them have run away."
  "We've wasted quite a few. But you're right. A
lot of them have hit the air."
  Ben sat eating a can of cold beans, washing it
down with water from his canteen.
  Rani looked at him, calmly eating amid the
gore, and shook her head.
  "Hungry?" Ben asked.
  "No. How can you just sit there, with dead bodies
all around us, and
eat?"
  "Because I'm hungry," Ben answered simply.
  "You know what I mean."
  Ben jerked his thumb toward the outside. "Because of
them, you mean?"
  "Yes."
  "I don't view them as human beings, Rani.
It's very doubtful any of those dead men ever, in their
entire lives, did one decent thing-even back when
we had a civilization. They were thieves, bully
boys, thugs, rapists, muggers, street slime,
rednecks, white trash, racists-you name
it. If they had their choice between stealing and working, they
stole. They beat their wives and girlfriends and abused
their kids. They cheated on their income tax-if they
even bothered to file-and the rest of us paid for it. To a
man, they considered themselves smarter than the law and
above obeying the laws the rest of us lived by. They
filled every cheap honky-tonk in the country whenever they
had a few bucks in their pockets and were looking for
trouble. Their idea of fun was stomping somebody's
head in; usually somebody who just happened to come in
for a quiet drink and hadn't bothered a soul. They were
loud-mouthed, profane, obnoxious, ignorant,
  crude, and rude. And when they died, if the
undertaker would shove a tube up their rectum and
give them an enema, they could have been buried in a
matchbox. I don't give any more thought to killing
them than I would stepping on a roach or kicking a
dried piece of dog shit off the sidewalk. That
answer your question, dear?"
  She looked at him for a long moment before speaking.
"There is a lot of arrogance in you, Mr. Ben
Raines. Are you aware of that?"
  "A lot of people confuse a desire for order and
discipline with arrogance, Rani. I went for a good many
years in the Tri-States without firing a
shot at anything other than a paper pop-up
target. We who made up the Tri-States
proved that a society totally void of crime is
not only possible but very easy to attain."
  "By trading one type of fear for another, Ben?"'
  Ben smiled at that. "It's a funny thing,
Rani. But in all my years, I've never been
afraid of the cops. If one obeys the law, there
is no need to be fearful of authority."
  She turned around, scanned her perimeter, and
looked back at Ben. "And I bet you drove
55, too, didn't you, Ben?"'
  "Yes, I did. I didn't like it; thought it was
a stupid law. But it was the law, so I obeyed it.
I never got a ticket, either."
  She once more turned around, looking at the
body-littered area around the house on the hill,
overlooking the ghost town. With her back to Ben, she
said, "You people in the Tri-States got a lot of
negative publicity."
  "Yes, we did, Rani. Our system of
justice was harsh. It was a one-mistake society.
But no one went hungry
  in the Tri-States. Not one person. No one was
denied proper medical care. Everybody
had a job. The taxes were fair. We didn't
allow huge corporations to swallow up the small
farmer. We had damn few complaints from the people who
chose to live in the Tri-States."
  "You people also had quick trials, too, Ben."
  "We sure did," Ben said, giving his perimeter
a once-over. "The legal profession, as you knew
it, wasn't the same in Tri-States. But there
again, I don't recall a single complaint from any
legal resident of the Tri-States."
  She shook her head. "What's the point of
arguing, Ben. It will never be again."
  He looked at her, surprise on his face.
"Of course, it will be, Rani. Not as big as before.
But it will be."
  "You really believe that, don't you, Ben? God,
you're a dreamer, you know that?"
  "If we don't put it back together, Rani,
I firmly believe civilization will die."
  She looked around her and reached for her twin
16's. "If we don't start paying attention,
Ben,
we're
going to die. Here they come again."
Chapter 24
  This time the outlaws were much more cautious in their
attack. They did not attempt to overwhelm the
house by sheer numbers, electing to reach the crumbling
buildings of the town and settle in.
  "War of nerves," Ben said. "They're going
to try to wear us down."
  "Mr. Ben!" Jordy called in a whisper from
upstairs. "Your radio is talking!"
  On the second floor, Ben listened to his
radio. The static was still there, but he was able to understand
the transmission.
  "This is Eagle One," Ben said. "Repeat,
please."
  "Eagle One, this is Captain Nolan.
We're two hours away from your location.
Colonel Gray is less than a day from your
position. Our forward scouts have you in visual. Do
you copy this, General?"'
  "I'm copying five by five, Captain. We can
hold until you reach us."
  "Dysentery hit us hard, General. I'm at
no more than half strength. How do you want me
to launch my attack?"
  "Get as close as you can and set up mortar
teams. We're holed up in the big house
overlooking the town."
  "Ten-four, General. Hang on."
  Ben winked at Rani. "Didn't I tell you
to think positively?"
  "I got a bad feelin" "bout all this,
Jake," Texas Red said. "I think we're
damned if we do, and damned if we don't. Know
what I mean?"
  Jake felt the same way. But before he could
reply, one of his men raced to his side, sliding
behind the old building.
  "We're bein" watched, Jake!" he panted.
"I've caught sunlight off field glasses to the
northeast." He pointed.
  The three leaders (west was behind the lines, sitting
it out by his van) looked. Jake grunted as he
caught the glint of light off lenses.
  "It don't make no difference," Cowboy Vic
said. "There can't be no more of them than there is of us.
Right, Jake?"
  Jake looked at the screwball. It was then he
realized just how stupid the man appeared. He
looked like a cross between Tom Mix, Gorgeous
George, and the Rhinestone Cowboy. Fuckin'
idiot!
  "And I suppose you have a plan?" Jake said.
  Before Vic could reply, Texas Red said, "I
do. Get the hell out of here. We won't be losin'
no face by doin' it. Not with Raines' Rebels
breathin' down our necks."
  Jake nixed that. "Then, go, goddamnit. If
you and your boys ain't got the balls for this, take
off. And to hell with you!"
  "You can count on me, Big Jake," Cowboy
Vic said.
  "Wonderful," Jake muttered.
  "Think about it, Jake," Texas Red said, not
taking umbrage at Jake's anger. "Ben
Raines ain't gonna stay holed up in there forever.
Soon as his Rebs come-and they ain't far
away-he'll be sprung. He'll stick around for
awhile, then he'll hit the trail again. All we
got to do is set up outposts on the three roads
leading out of this place, then ambush the son of a
bitch."
  Jake looked at the man. "For a person that's
redheaded and ugly to boot, you got some sense. That
there's a right nice plan. Let's do "er. Tell
the boys to fall back."
  "Damn, Ben!" Jordy called from the
upstairs. "They's pullin" out. Shit!"
  Rani laughed. "That's quite a little tiger you have there,
Ben."
  "There's no back-up in him, that's for sure."
Ben lifted his binoculars and watched the outlaws
begin their bugout.
  T. S. Eliot came to Ben's mind. He
muttered, "Not with a bang but with a whimper."
  "Did you say something, Ben?" Rani asked.
  "A cold coming we had of it, just the worst time of the
year."
  "What?"'
  Ben shook his head. "Nothing. Just recalling some
verse from a long time ago."
  Ben again lifted his binoculars, watching the
outlaws haul their asses. "Tell the kids to stand
down, Rani. I think it's over."
  But it was not over. Not quite. Crouching in one of the old
crumbling buildings, Crazy Cowboy Vic
  waited, slobber dribbling down his chin. He had
refused to leave with the others. He was gonna get
Ben Raines, and have all of them young cunts for
hisself. And when that was done, he'd be king of the
west. That's what Big Jake and Texas Red
promised him when he said he was staying behind.
He didn't want them boys; just the girls.
He'd kill them boys. He shifted positions
carefully and lifted his rifle.
  "You know Raines is gonna put it together,
don't you?" Red asked Jake. "I mean, he's
gonna know we set Cowboy Vic up to kill that
kid Raines has been traveling with."
  "Yeah," Jake grinned. "I know it. And that's
gonna make Raines so goddamn mad he'll come
buckin" and a-snortin' after us, revenge in his
eyes. That's what I want him to do."
  "I gotta hand it to you, Jake. You got some
smarts."
  "Thank you," Jake said modestly.
  For the fifteenth time Ben scanned the old town through
binoculars. For the fifteenth time he saw nothing out
of the ordinary.
  Still, he hesitated in letting the kids out of the
house.
  He had kicked over the pile of bodies around the
porch, clearing the way. He could see the dust from the
approaching Rebels, but something bothered him.
  He lowered his binoculars when Rani came to his
side.
  "I don't want to stay here, Ben,"
she said. "I want to go with you when you leave. Can we
send the kids back to your base camp?"
  "Sure. I think that would be best. Colonel
Gray and his wild bunch will be here by midnight.
I'll make arrangements with him."
  "That surprised your people when you called in and told
them the outlaws had pulled out, didn't it?"'
  "Not really, Rani. My people have a reputation for
being rough in any kind of a fight. But this isn't
over. The outlaws might have monitored our radio
transmissions; they might have had scouts out who saw
the Rebels coming in. Either way, they found themselves in
a no-win situation and pulled out. But it isn't
over."
  Captain Nolan and his platoon pulled in.
"Jesus, General," the captain said, eyeballing
all the bodies, "you folks did a number on
them, didn't you?"'
  Ben gave a sergeant the map of the town, showing where
the camouflaged open mine shafts were located, the
trip wires, and the punji pits. The sergeant sent
a team out to neutralize the traps.
  The bodies of the outlaws were dumped down a mine
shaft and the opening sealed.
  The harnesses and the twin M-16's were
taken down and stored in the back of a truck.
  And the kids were finally freed from the old house
overlooking the ghost town.
  "General!" Captain Nolan's radio
operator called. "Colonel Gray just called
in. He's about two hours away."
  "Thank you," Ben said. Ben longed for a hot tub
of water and a long soak. The smell of gunpowder,
sweat, and death clung to them all.
  Jordy stood by the stone fence around the old house.
  "A damn gutsy bunch of kids, General,"
Captain Nolan said.
  "They are that," Ben agreed.
  Jordy thought he detected some movement in one
of the old broken-down buildings in town. He
looked again. Nothing. Must have been mistaken, he
thought.
  "You kids don't leave the immediate area," Ben
cautioned them.
  There it was again! Jordy thought, looking at the old
building. He turned around. "Ben!" he called.
  "Yes, son?"'
  A rifle cracked. Jordy was flung forward,
a hole in his chest.
  Roaring with rage, Ben ran to the boy's
side and knelt down in the gathering blood. The
bullet had cut the spine, angled off, and exited
out through a lung. Pink froth bubbled from the boy's
mouth.
  "Take that son of a bitch alive!" Ben growled
at Captain Nolan.
  "Ben?" Jordy said.
  "I'm right here, son."
  "What's my name, Ben?"
  "Jordy Raines." Ben could not keep the tears
from spilling out of his eyes.
  "Told you I didn't have very long to go, didn't
I, Ben?"'
  "Yes, you did, boy."
  "But I done good, didn't I, Ben?"
  "You done good, son."
  "It don't hurt none, Ben. I'm just cold."
  The boy closed his eyes and died.
Chapter 25
  Ben covered the boy with his jacket. He stood
up, looking down at the boy he had grown to love
in just a short time. Waves of emotions splashed
over him.
  Ben took several deep breaths, calming himself.
He turned to Captain Nolan. "Wrap
the boy carefully, Captain. Assign a burial
detail. There is a Bible in my truck. Have
someone get it for me." His words were tiny bits of
chipped ice flying from his inner soul, steaming the air.
  "Yes, sir. What name goes on the marker?"
  "Jordy Raines. Age ten."
  "Yes, sir."
  Ben looked toward the knot of Rebels gathered
around a small crumbling building. They had
captured Cowboy Vic.
  No one spoke; no one made any attempt
to stop Ben as he walked to the house, got his
Thompson, and walked down to the building. He
stopped in front of Cowboy Vic.
  "Got the little son of a bitch, didn't I?"
Cowboy Vic
  yelled. "Just like Jake and Texas Red tole
me to do." Slobber ran in ropy rivers from both
sides of his mouth. "I knowed what they was up to all
the time, Raines. Kill the kid, says they. Be
shore to kill the kid travelin' with Raines.
Well, I done "er." He laughed in Ben's
face.
  Ben resisted an almost-overpowering urge to smash the
butt of the Thompson into the man's face.
He turned his head and looked at the head-frame
of the structure that supported the old cable system that
operated the cages into the mines.
  "Hang him from
that!"
Ben said, pointing. "Now!"
  Ben read a passage from the Bible, and then
remembered a passage from
Pilgrim's Way.
He thought it appropriate.
  "Our roll of honor is long, but it holds no
nobler figure. He will stand to those of us who are left
as an incarnation of the spirit of the land he loved. He
loved his youth, and his youth has become eternal."
  Ben sat alone for a time on the stone fence around the
house. He watched as Colonel Gray's company
of Gray's Scouts pulled in. But he did not
leave his place on the fence.
  Captain Nolan brought the colonel up
to date.
  "Filthy swine," Dan Gray said.
"To cold-bloodedly kill a child." His eyes found
the dangling figure of Cowboy Vic. "Is that the
bugger?"
  "Yes, sir."
  "The general will be wanting revenge," Dan said.
  "And I don't blame him. I have to find out
what's going on."
  Dan walked to Ben's side.
  "General."
  "Dan. How's it going?"
  "Very well, sir. Do I stand the men down for a
rest?"
  "Yes. Tell them to pitch their tents and relax.
We'll be here for a couple of days."
  Dan knew what was next, but he had to ask.
"And then, sir?"'
  "We are going on a search-and-destroy mission,
Dan. We are going to deal with the enemy with extreme
prejudice."
  "We track down the warlords and outlaws and kill
all the fuckers."
  "Precisely."
Whom unmerciful Disaster Followed fast and followed
faster.
  Poe
Chapter 26
  "Your plan ain't workin' for shit!" Jake told
Texas Red. He had shaken him out of a deep
sleep and jerked him out of the blankets.
  "Huh?" Red asked, rubbing sleep from his eyes.
  "All them damned Rebels is still in the town.
Scouts report they're eating and sleeping and
resting. They're checking equipment and getting ready
to move out."
  "Well, goddamn! That's what we wanted,
wasn't it?"
  "Raines is leading them. Two squads of
Rebs pulled out yesterday with the kids. They're
headin' back east. Boy, we got
big
troubles."
  "Maybe," Red said, pulling on his boots.
"What about Cowboy Vic?"
  Jake snorted derisively. "Raines hung
the bastard from a tower. He's still hangin' there."
  "Way I see this thing, Jake, we ain't got
but one option left us."
  "Oh? And what's that?"'
  Texas Red met the man's hard look.
"Run!"
  Ben lingered for a moment in the cold dawn, his eyes
on the cross above Jordy's grave. "There is
nothing left to say, Jordy. Nothing at all."
  He turned away from the grave.
  "Colonel Gray?"'
  "Sir!"
  "Are your forward teams in position?"'
  "Yes, sir. Ten miles out and holding."
  "Radio contact with the team holding east with the
kids?"'
  "Yes, sir. Making good progress and
reporting no trouble."
  Ben nodded. He removed his beret and ran his
fingers through graying hair. He looked at the beret
and smiled. He walked to the grave of Jordy and
hung the beret on the cross. "You were a good
soldier, son. I never served with any better."
  Rani stood and watched Ben, tears running down
her cheeks.
  Colonel Dan Gray cleared his throat and
wiped his eyes. "Damn dust," he said.
  Ben broke the sad spell.
  "Move out!"
  "Dan says Ben is calm," Ike said
to Cecil. "To use his words, "Too damn
calm.""
  "You've known Ben as long as I have, Ike. You
know that when Ben gets this way he's killing mad.
This campaign will be a scorched-earth
policy. He'll kill anybody who gives any
type of aid to those outlaws."
  "Not only that," Tina said, walking up. "Dad
will burn the damned towns down. You remember how
he was up in Missouri."
  "Only too well," Ike said.
  Cecil turned to the young woman manning the
radio. "And what was Ben's last transmission,
again?"
  "He said, when I gave him your message
to please return to Base Camp One, quoting
George Bernard Shaw, "Not bloody
likely!""
  Tina summed up the feelings of them all. "Oh,
shit! Dad is really
pissed!"
  "Scouts report a little town just up ahead has
given sanctuary to some outlaws, General," Dan
called in on the CB. "It's some sort of
hippie place. To use a very outdated word."
  "You're certain the ... hippies gave them
sanctuary voluntarily?"'
  "Yes, sir. With open arms."
  "Any kids involved?" Ben asked.
  "Therein lies the rub, sir."
  "Shit!" Ben said. "All right, Dan.
Surround the town and we'll play it by ear."
  "It's not exactly a town, sir," a scout
broke in. "It's a ... a commune."
  "Haven't heard that word in a good many years,"
Ben said.
  The column was traveling north on Highway
169. What was left of a tiny village just south of
Cienega Mountain had been taken over by a new
generation of Love Children. Most of the "Flower Children" were
about Ben's age-at least. It was the most ludicrous
sight Ben had witnessed in a long time.
  A man who had to be at least sixty years old
  approached Ben's truck. He was dressed in
a dress.
  "Is that man dressed in a
dress?"
Rani asked.
  "Sure looks that way to me," Ben said.
  "Baby killers!" the man yelled, waving a
plastic flower at Dan Gray."
  "I beg your pardon!" the Englishman said.
  Another group of Love Kids appeared.
Average age, mid-fifties. They were chanting as
they marched. "Hell, no. We won't go.
Hell, no. We won't go!"
  "I think they have the wrong war," Ben said.
  "Ben, they're pitiful," Rani said.
  "No," Ben said. "They're just middle-aged
dropouts, that's all."
  Ben got out of his truck and walked to the group of
men and women. There were a few younger people mixed in, some
of them with children by their side. It was the damndest
mish-mash Ben had ever seen.
  "What the hell is with you people?" Ben asked.
  "Impeach Nixon!" a man cried. "Make
love, not war."
  "Jane Fonda for President!" a woman
yelled.
  "You people are hiding some outlaws," Ben roared,
quieting the group of ... whatever the hell it was.
  "They are under a protective shield of the Children
of the Orb," a man informed Ben. "They have renounced
their evil past and wish to partake of nature's
blessings. Now take your baby killers and child rapers
and destroyers of the land and leave!" The man stamped his
foot on the ground.
  "Folks," Ben said, "I don't want to hurt
any of you ... citizens. Just hand over the outlaws
and we'll be on our way."
  "One, two, three, four!" a woman who had
to be in
  her late sixties yelled. "We don't want
your fucking war!"
  Dan Gray turned his back so Ben could not see
him laughing.
  A man wearing pink pedal pushers and a see-through
blouse ran up to them. "Stop acid rain!" he
screamed. He ran back into the crowd.
  "Colonel Gray," Ben called.
  Wiping his eyes, his face red from suppressed
laughter, Gray turned around. "Sir!"
  "Send a team into the ... commune. Find the
outlaws and bring them out. Do not-repeat-do not hurt
anyone of these ... people."
  "Yes, sir. Sergeant Morse, front and
center."
  The sergeant ran to Gray's side. "Sir, these
people are
whacko!"
  "Quite right. What puzzles me is why the outlaws
have left them alone for so long."
  "Shit, Colonel. They ain't got nothing for
them to steal."
  "That's probably it. Bring the outlaws
out, sergeant."
  "Yes, sir."
  "Sir!" a voice called. "They're slipping
out the back way."
  "Watergate sucks!" a man yelled.
  Even Ben was grinning as he got back into his
truck and slipped it into gear. Rani had her face
turned so Ben could not see her grin.
  Composing herself, she said, "Is there a lunatic
asylum close by?"
  "Surely there must be. Either that or they all
came from California."
  "Oh, Ben!"
  It did not take the Rebels long to round up the
outlaws. They caught up with them a few miles
outside of the commune, heading north.
  They were a sorry-looking, shifty-eyed, and
scummy bunch.
  "You have two choices," Ben informed them
bluntly. "Either way, you die. Tell me where
Jake Campo, Texas Red, and West are hiding
and what they're up to, and you get a bullet-fast
and quick. If you don't cooperate, I take you to the
next town and hang you. You have one minute to think about
it."
  "Fuck you, Raines!" a burly, pus-gutted
man said.
  "Sergeant!" Ben said. "Take that man," he
pointed. "And tie him securely. Toss him in the
back of a truck for hanging."
  "I'll make a deal with you, Raines," another
outlaw offered.
  The toughness that had enabled Ben to build a thriving
Tri-States out of the ashes of total world war
surfaced. "No deals. You have all heard my
only offer."
  "That ain't much of an offer, Mister Raines," a
third outlaw spoke.
  "It's about the same as you people offered us back in the
ghost town," Ben countered.
  "I ain't no snitch," the man said.
  He was tied up and tossed in the back of a truck
with his buddy.
  One outlaw broke and ran. Ben lifted his
Thompson and stitched him to the ground.
  "I'll tell you all I know," another outlaw
said. "But it ain't much."
  Fifteen minutes later, the column pulled out.
The
  dead outlaws were left for the coyotes and
wild dogs and vultures.
  At a long-deserted ranch, Ben hanged the
so-called tough boys ... and left them dangling at
the final end of their rope.
  Once more on the road, heading for the first group of
outlaws who were bunched up, waiting to ambush Ben and
Rani, Rani looked at him.
  "You're a hard man, Mister Raines," she
said.
  "Hard times, Miss Jordan."
  "Approximately a hundred outlaws holed
up and hiding out in the foothills of the Davis
Mountains," Dan told Ben. "Scouts report
they're dug in for a long fight." He put a
fingertip on the map. "Right here, sir."
  "Any idea what bunch it is?" Ben asked.
  "Man with one foot seems to be the leader."
  "West. Tell your mortar teams to go in and begin
setting up. We'll start softening them up at first
light."
  "Yes, sir."
  Rani came to Ben's blankets that night. But
as soon as she did, she realized that sex was not on
Ben's mind. She was far too intelligent a
person to think it was something she had done, or
to believe that sex was the answer to every problem. She was
content to lay in Ben's arms.
  "This may sound like a foolish question, Ben. But how
long do you think this ... this campaign will last?"
  "This particular one won't last long. Funny you
should ask that, Rani."
  "Oh?"
  "Yes. Dan Gray said something very interesting to me
just after we bivouacked. I had thought of it several
times, but never with much enthusiasm. It appears,
Rani, that the Rebels are the only organized
force currently operating in North America with
anything other than the looting and raping and killing of
innocents in mind. It looks like my Rebels have
yet another job facing them."
  "Clearing the land of warlords and outlaws and the like,"
Rani said, not putting it in question form.
  "Yes."
  "Why, Ben?" she asked, raising up on one
elbow to look at him in the darkness. "Why does it
always have to be Ben Raines and his people?"
  Ben was silent for a time. "Rani, after the war of
"88, my people were the only ones who had the courage
to stand up to the central government and say to them: No!
No, you will not take our guns. No, you will
not dictate terms to us. No, we will not bow down and
kiss your ass. We were the only ones to build
something constructive out of the ashes of war. The only
ones, Rani. Our kids grew up with a different
set of values. We stressed order and discipline
and obeying the laws of our Tri-States. We
didn't stifle free speech or forbid a free
press-as a lot of people accused us of doing. Instead
we simply imposed a new set of guidelines.
If a newspaper in the Tri-States printed
something about somebody, you can bet they researched their
facts very carefully. Sly innuendo and
half-truths and "protected sources" were not
allowed. Everything was open and aboveboard, clearly
visible for all to see. I think you know more about the
Tri-States than you let on. You know what we
did out there."
  "Yes," she said softly.
  Ben sighed. "Well, Rani, those kids that we
took in to raise, hundreds of them, back in '88
and '89, are now grown men and women. We
proved
that a body of government can effectively teach young people
to obey the law. I don't know how historians will
treat what we did, and to tell the truth,
I really don't care. But thousands of men and women
came together, and together, we erased bigotry and
prejudice and most other manmade sins, and proved
it could be done. I suppose, Rani, that's why
it's up to us to take on this new job."
  "And you're going to take it on, aren't you, Mister
Ben Raines?"'
  "I don't think Mister Ben Raines has a
choice in the matter, Rani."
Chapter

  Ben stood on a rise and viewed the terrain where
the outlaws were dug in. Lowering his binoculars, he
said, "They know we're not taking prisoners, Dan.
Either way it goes, they know they're dead men. There
won't be any offer of surrender from either side. And
I will not lose good men and women fighting these scum."
  "No, sir."
  Ben reached down and pulled up a handful of
grass. Sparse grass, at best. What there was of
it was bone dry. "Ring the area with gasoline and
kerosene," Ben said. "As much as you can find. Burn
them out and shoot them."
  "Yes, sir."
  The Rebels began lobbing in heavy
mortar fire, using HE and WP rounds. The
Rebels were as expert with the mortars as any
organized fighting force presently operating anywhere
in the world. They dropped in the rounds with deadly
accuracy, walking them in behind the outlaws, driving
them out of their holes, sending them running toward the
thinly burning fires.
  Then the Rebels opened up with heavy
.50-caliber machine guns, continuing the deadly
fire until not an outlaw could be seen standing.
  "Finish them," Ben ordered, lowering his
binoculars. Turning to Dan Gray, he said,
"That's one for Jordy."
  "West and his people is finished," Texas Red told
Jake.
  The men had had scouts watching the action from a
distance.
  "West was a fool," Jake said. "We maybe
could have whipped them if we'd all stayed together."
  Both outlaws knew that statement was a crock of
crap.
  "Now what, Jake?" Texas Red asked.
  "Straight out?"
  "Straight out."
  "We tuck our tails between our legs and
carry our asses just as far away from here as we can.
That's what we do."
  "What are we waitin" for?"
  "If Jake Campo and Texas Red are in
Texas, General," Dan said, "they've found
themselves a hell of a hideout."
  Ben shook his head. "They've gone. It's been
ten days since we finished West and his bunch. I
think the others heard the news-probably had people
watching it- and hauled out. No telling where they
went."
  "That's my philosophy, too, General.
Well, we've found something else, though. There are
warlords and
  outlaws cropping up everywhere we look. A great
many people have asked us for help in dealing with them. I
told them I would take it up with you."
  "I won't order you to do it, Dan. Not without
taking it up with the folks back at Base Camp
One."
  "You know what Cecil and Ike would say, Ben,"
the Englishman said, calling Ben by his first name,
something he rarely did. He was British born and
British military trained. Familiarity with
superior officers just wasn't done.
  "It's up to you, Dan. I'm pulling out in the
morning, taking Rani with me."
  That did not come as any surprise to Dan.
"May I assign a squad to accompany you,
sir?"'
  "No, you may not, Dan. But I'll tell you
where I'm going. Back to the old Tri-States.
We'll winter there." He outlined their route on a
map. "I won't say we won't deviate from that
route, but it'll be close most of the way. The
static has eased considerably, so we'll be able
to keep some sort of communications open between us."
  Dan opened his mouth to protest, and Ben waved him
silent.
  "If we hit a snag, I give you my word
we'll head for cover and call in for help." Ben
stuck out his hand. "And we'll shake on it to seal the
bargain."
  The men shook hands, and that was that. But Ben knew
he wasn't fooling Dan Gray. He knew that
Dan knew Ben was going headhunting-alone. But
Dan also knew that if Ben said he'd call in if
too much trouble faced him, he would do just that.
  "Take care of yourself, General," Dan said.
  "And good hunting to you, Dan."
  You, too, General, Dan thought.
  Ben and Rani pulled out the next morning,
early. They took two trucks, Ben pulling a
small trailer behind his. The pickups were loaded
with supplies. And this time Ben was going to be ready for
almost anything that might come their way. He carried a
mortar and several cases of rounds; an M-60
machine gun; and enough C-4 to blow up anything he
might feel like blowing up-with timers and detonators.
Between them, they had enough food to last several months.
Gray's communications people had installed a military
radio in Rani's truck and checked out both of their
CB'S. They had installed boosters in both of them.
The CB'S could be operated at three different
levels: extremely low power, with a range of no
more than a mile, for use when they felt
transmissions might be monitored; normal
range; andwitha flick of a toggle switch, jacked
up to four hundred watts, giving them an enormous
range.
  Ben had watched, amused, as Colonel Gray
surreptitiously-so he thought-checked out Ben's and
Rani's trucks.
  Ben slipped up behind the Englishman and touched him
on the shoulder.
"Great God!"
Dan roared, almost separating his feet from his boots.
  "Do you have a guilty conscience, Dan?" Ben
asked.
  "Heavens, no, General. You just startled me,
that's all."
  "Uh-huh," Ben said. "Certainly."
  Ben knew he had been planting fresh bugs in
their
  trucks. He let it ride. Humor the man.
  With Ben leading the way, they drove first to Hobbs,
New Mexico, then took state roads east
to Artesia, spending the night just north of the small
city. It was then that Ben made love to her, and she
could not help but think how incredibly gentle the man
was.
  When she awakened the next morning, she awakened
to the sounds of pecking. She opened sleepy eyes and
saw Ben pecking away at his portable
typewriter. He was sitting by a window, the
sunlight managing to penetrate the dusty glass.
  "Are all writers crazy?" she asked.
  "It helps to be," Ben admitted, not looking
up from his labors. "It sure does."
  The two of them puttered around that day, first
exploring the few deserted towns they found between
Artesia and Roswell, then viewing the looted and
ruined remains of the museum and art center in
Roswell.
  "Why?" Rani asked, looking at the
desecration.
  "No reason," Ben told her. "Just like all
vandalism- mindless."
  It was afternoon when they began the lonely drive between
Roswell and Vaughn, and they found it slow going.
The highway was littered with deserted cars and
trucks, now no more than rusting hulks blocking the
way. They could see the shining bones of skeletons in
a few of the cars. Ben got out to inspect some of the
vehicles and their gruesome contents.
  "Shot through the head," Ben told Rani. He
pointed. "That car is the mausoleum for an entire
family. Man,
  woman, and two small kids. All shot through the
head."
  "I wonder why?" Rani asked.
  "We'll never know."
  They stopped for the night at what remained of the tiny
village of Ramon. The place had been picked
clean, and done so with deliberate care,
Ben noted.
  "It's ... eerie," Rani said.
  "No," Ben answered slowly. "I don't think
so. Most of what we've seen so far, since leaving
Aftesia, reminds me of what my people did back
in "89.1 think there just might be a group of people,
probably a large group, doing what we
did-setting up a community, somewhere."
  "Mormons?"
  "Probably. Most of what we've seen I would
not call looting. It wasn't done with damage in
mind. But done carefully."
  "I hope you're right, Ben."
  "So do I. And that might explain why we
haven't seen any thugs or outlaws or bandits
since we entered this state."
  "I don't understand."
  "The Mormons are extremely fine people; very
self-sufficient. I'm told that during the great
depression- and that happened years before you or I
made an appearance on this earth-the Mormons really
took care of their own, without, for the most part,
government assistance. And they also won't put up
with a bunch of crap from people. They are deeply
religious, but will defend to the death what is
theirs." He shrugged. "So I've been told."
  They pulled out early the next morning and were in
  Vaughn an hour later. The town was empty and
still, and it had been systematically taken apart. Even
down to the last drop of gasoline in the storage
tanks.
  Ben smiled, looking around him. "I think we shall
avoid Utah," he said. "Unless we just
absolutely have to enter the state. I will leave those people
alone if they'll do the same for us."
  Ben stopped on the outskirts of Santa Fe,
pulling off the road. He studied maps, trying
to determine the best way to avoid the city. There was
something disturbing about the quiet of the place, something that
set the hairs on the back of Ben's neck
to tingling.
  Rani walked up to his truck. "What's
wrong, Ben?"
  "Too quiet. I feel eyes on us. Whether
they're friendly or unfriendly, I don't know. But I
don't feel like taking any chances. Cities have
always been a problem since the Great War. They
seem to attract the scum of the land."
  "So we do what?"
  "Backtrack and take 41 until we
reach this county road, which we take over to 14. We
head south until we hit this other secondary road
that will take us over to Interstate 25. We'll
connect with Highway 44 there and take that northwest
to Aztec. It's going to be slow going, so let's be
careful not to get separated. I don't like the feel
of this country. If we're stopped, Rani, be
ready to shoot first and apologize later."
  "I finally got that message through my head,
Ben."
  They backtracked on 285 until coming to their
cutoff. Then the going was slowed down to no more than a
crawl. The road had deteriorated badly, and was
littered with junked vehicles.
  Their radios on low power, Ben said to Rani,
"If a
  paved road is this bad, Rani, an unpaved
road will probably be impassable. So forget the
road over to Interstate 25. We'll stay on this
all the way down to Interstate 40 and then try
to plot a new route."
  "One thing about it, baby," Rani radioed
back. "We're sure going to see some new
country."
  "That's a big ten-four," Ben said with a
grin.
  "It worked, Jake," Texas Red said, smiling.
"Our scouts just pulled in. Raines and the cunt
left the Rebels, travelin' in two pickups."
  The one hundred and fifty-odd outlaws were
camped along the banks of the Conchas Lake,
west-northwest of Tucumcari. Jake and Red had
ordered their men to keep their heads down and stay
quiet.
  "Which way the Rebs heading?" Jake asked.
  "Scouts report they're goin' to help some
folks up around Odessa. Something about settin' up
outposts."
  "Raines and the broad?"'
  "They headed west for a time, then cut toward the
north."
  Jake's grin broadened. "OK. I know where
he's heading, now."
  "Oh?"
  "Yeah. Back to his old stompin" grounds.
The Tri-States. Him and the cunt is plannin'
on wintering there. Bet on it."
  "So we take them now?"
  "No, you dummy! We send out scouts-our best
people. Haircuts, shaved, clean clothes-a
good appearance in case they accidentally run
into Raines. But they don't have to do that." He spat
on the ground.
  "We can track them."
"How?"
Texas Red asked, exasperation in his voice.
  ""Cause, my good man," Jake said,
smiling, patting his fellow outlaw on the back, "that
goddamn Englishman didn't change the
frequency on them bugs he put in Raines"
pickup. And our radioman just figured it out."
  "Oohhh," Texas Red said. "That's slick,
Jake. Real slick."
  "So in about a week, we move out in teams, real
quiet like. No more than four or five guys at a
pop. By then, we'll have a pretty good idea where
Raines and Rani is going. Then we'll just slow-like
gather up there in the old Tri-States, and do it
real professional-like."
  "And then we kill Raines," Texas Red said.
  "Yeah," Jake said dreamily. "I want you
to send out some boys. Find two-three cameras and
lots of film."
  "What you gonna take pitchers of, Jake?"
  "Raines. He thinks he's a god, so
I'm gonna treat him like one."
  "Huh?"
  "I'm gonna crucify the bastard."
Chapter 28
  Ben and Rani stayed on Highway 41 all the
way south to Highway 60. There they cut west over
to Interstate 25. Just before reaching the interstate, they
pulled off the highway and made camp.
  "Ben?"
  "Uh-huh?"
  "I thought New Mexico had a lot of
Indians in it?"
  "Probably still does. But they're keeping their
heads down. Like a lot of other Indians. You
see, Rani, back when we were building the
Tri-States, we-the Rebels-helped many of the
Indian tribes, too. We helped them move out
of and off of those goddamned disgraceful reservations and
onto better land where they could farm and build and
grow. Then when the government decided to move against
us, they went against the Indians first. Thousands of
Indians were killed-slaughtered. Men, women,
kids. It was senseless. Totally senseless. My
God, but there was plenty of land for everybody." Ben
sighed. "It was my fault."
  "How in the hell was it your fault!"
  "President Logan had a hard-on for me.
He hated me. Just about as bad as I hated him.
I wouldn't kowtow to him; him or the Supreme
Court or that august body known as the Congress of the
United States. If the Indians hadn't thrown
in with us, maybe there wouldn't have been a slaughter.
I don't know."
  Rani smiled at him. Then she laughed. "I
guess all the things I've heard about you are true,
then."
  "What do you mean?"
  "Well, I heard that when the Supreme Court
ruled that everything you and your Rebels were doing out in the
Tri-States was unconstitutional, you wrote them
a letter and told them all to kiss your ass."
  "That is correct. I did just that. That was after the
first threat from the central government. We were not
guilty of harming
any
law-abiding citizen. Not one. What we did was
take a mixing bowl full of people of all races,
all religions, and make it work. We had some of the
toughest laws anywhere in the world and stuck to them. And
ninety-nine point nine percent of the people of the
Tri-States liked it that way. That one-tenth of one
percent who didn't, left. They went back to a
society where, if they stole, they usually got
away with it. Hell, if they broke
any
law, the odds were they would never serve any time for it.
We just viewed matters in a different light, that's
all."
  "So the government sent troops in to destroy the
Tri-States."
  "Yes. And split the country in half by doing
so." Ben looked far into the distance. "We will
rebuild. We will rise out of the ashes and rebuild.
We've got to."
  She put her hand in his and gently squeezed.
  South of Albuquerque, they turned northwest,
bypassing the city. An hour later, after twisting and
turning and dodging obstacles in the old road, they
rolled onto Interstate 40 and continued westward.
They made camp for the night halfway between
Albuquerque and Gallup.
  Ben had been driving the nation's highways for the
past few years; he was accustomed to the strain of
backtracking, detouring, and winching fallen trees and
junked cars out of the way. Rani was not.
She was so tired she was trembling from exhaustion.
  Ben pitched camp, made a quick supper over a
low fire, and fed Rani. She fell asleep before
she was finished eating. Ben led her to the tent and got
her into the big, double sleeping bag. They had packed
their blankets away, for it was turning colder by the
day, and the down-filled sleeping bag was warmer and
easier to handle.
  Ben sat by the little fire, sipping hot tea and
listening to the night animals prowl the land in search of
food. Soon the cold drove him into the tent,
to crawl in beside Rani. They reached for each other in
the darkness.
  Now there were two alone in the ashes.
  "I would like to take a bath!" Rani said. "I
feel grimy."
  "Well," Ben said with a smile. "I figure
it's about 30dgth morning, and getting colder.
There's a stream back a few miles. Want
to bathe there?"
  She flipped him the Rigid Digit.
  With the silence of the Cibola National Forest their
companion to the south, Ben and Rani traveled the
  interstate, stopping at every small town along the
way. At Thoreau, they found an old
service station whose tanks had not been drained. Using
his pump, Ben filled their tanks and topped off their
spare cans.
  Both had been monitoring their CB'S, listening
to the increasing chatter. Gallup, it appeared, had
been taken over by half a dozen gangs of punks,
thugs, and various gangs of what appeared to be
Hispanics, all fighting each other for control of
what was left of the small city. And ambushing and
killing anybody else who happened to blunder onto
their "turf."
  Rani could see that Ben was getting angry. She
questioned him about it.
  "I'm getting tired of detouring around street
gangs who seem to possess shit for brains."
  She put the needle to Ben. "You don't like
Hispanics, Ben?"
  "Don't be stupid! Colonel Hector
Ramos was one of the best friends I ever had. He was
killed fighting the IFP. I don't like street
gangs no matter what nationality they might be."
  "I'm only kidding, Ben," she said softly.
  "I know. Sorry I spoke harshly to you. But
if I have an overriding hatred of anything in this world,
it's punks. Secondly would be the
goddamn liberals who made excuses for the
behavior of street gangs-for years."
  She looked confused.
  "Liberal is probably not a word you're
familiar with, right, Rani?"
  "I've heard it. But I'm not sure what it
means."
  "It was going out of vogue about the time you got out
  of high school. I guess the simplest way
to say it would be that a liberal made excuses for the
criminal while a conservative punished the
criminal. While neither one made any great effort
to pursue a middle ground. Now it's too late."
  "You are a confusing man, Ben. I can't peg
you." Ben smiled. "You are not the first person to say
that to me, Rani."
  "So what road do we take to bypass
Gallup?"
  "We don't," Ben said, a hard glint in his
eyes. "We go right through."
  "Why am I not in the least surprised to hear you
say that?"
  "You will pay a toll," the hard-eyed young man said
to Ben. "And we will take what we like from your
truck."
  "Oh, my!" Ben said, feigning great shock and
fear, keeping his left hand hidden from the young punk.
"Do you do this to all visitors to your lovely city?"
  ""At's right, pops. And if they're lucky,
we let them live."
  Ben smiled at the street hood. "You know
what?"
  "I know I don" like you."
  "Oohhh," Ben said. "You're hurting my
feelings."
  "I don' care. I think I keel you."
  "I don't think so." Ben released the spoon
of the grenade he held in his left hand and reached out the
window, stuffing the live grenade down the front of the
punk's open shirt. The street-slime recoiled
in horror, tearing at his shirt in vain. Ben
lifted his right hand
  and emptied his .45 into the knot of garbage
gathered around the truck, all of them grinning and
scratching themselves.
  They stopped grinning when Ben started shooting.
  Grenades being what they are, the punk's body
absorbed most of the impact. It spread him all
over the littered street as Ben and Rani raced through
the punk blockade.
  Ben picked up another fully loaded .45 from
the seat beside him and shot at anything resembling a
punk as the pickups roared through what remained of
Gallup. Ben had a pile of loaded pistols on
the seat beside him. Driving one-handed, both windows
down, Ben cleared the streets of all living
things-if they had two legs, greasy hair, fruit
boots, rings full of fingers, tight jeans, and
jackets with a club name on the back.
  Rani spent most of her time just keeping up with
Ben and screaming at him. She called him every
uncomplimentary name in her vocabulary. And made
up a few new names she felt applied to this
particular situation.
  Just outside of Gallup, Ben whipped off the
interstate and roared up onto an overpass.
Jumping out, Ben grabbed his RPG and quickly inserted
a rocket into the tube, and locked it in place.
He looked around for Rani.
  "Stand over there," he told her. "The
back-blast from this thing is dangerous."
  "You're fucking
crazy!"
she screamed at him.
  "I believe we settled all that the
other morning, didn't we?"
  The street punks came roaring up the interstate
in their low-rider cars. Ben felt sure the
interiors would be of crushed velvet, red or
black. And the drivers would
  have one hand on the wheel, the other holding a comb.
They came in a knot of fancy machines,
hubcaps gleaming in the sunlight.
  The rocket welded the first two macho cars to the
concrete, those behind slamming, sliding, crashing, and
exploding into the mass of burning fancy metal.
  Those who did not become part of the burning interstate
did their best imitations of a State Trooper
turn-around and carried their asses back to Gallup.
Wiser, but not a damn bit smarter.
  Picking up his M-16, Ben shot any
survivors who staggered from the inferno.
  He stood up and looked at Rani. "Now we
can continue with our journey, dear."
  "And what the hell do you think you accomplished
by doing this?" she demanded.
  "Making the world a little bit safer for innocent
travelers, darling," he told her. "And I got
rid of a lot of crud."
  "You could have been
killed!"
she squalled at him. "Now I see why your people
think you need a keeper!"
  "The world would have been in a hell of a shape if the
Rangers on D-Day and the Marines on Wake
Island had shared your sentiments."
  "What the hell is Wake Island?" she asked.
Chapter 29
  Ben managed to calm Rani down and get them
once more pointed west, heading toward Flagstaff.
They could see the smoke from the burning pyre in their
mirrors for miles.
  And Rani didn't let him forget it, yapping
at him over the CB.
  Ben took it good-naturedly, with a lot of
"Yes, Dear's," and "No, Dear's," as they
drove along. He also agitated a lot.
  "I bet you thought Hilton Logan was cute,"
Ben needled her.*
  "Stop changing the subject! And no, I
didn't think President Logan to be
cute.
And by the way, what part did you have in the death of that
man?"
  "I ordered his death by our Zero
Squads. A very brave young man gave his own
life to kill that bastard."
  The CB was silent for a few miles. When
Rani again
*
Out of the Ashes
  transmitted, she had wisely changed the
subject.
  "How far is it to the Tri-States, Ben?"
  "Well, we're going to see some country first,
Rani. We'll be there in a week or ten days.
I'm going to lead those following us on a goose
chase for a time."
  "Those following us?"
  "Sure. Campo and Texas Red. I read those
two like a good book. They pulled their people out of
Texas and let us rush around like crazy, looking for
them. All the time they were probably holed up three
or four hundred miles away, getting information on
us from scouts. All the time waiting for you and I
to pull out. They're behind us."
  "And they would know you were heading for the Tri-States?"
  "I'm sure."
  "Ben?"
  "Yes, Rani."
  "Is the story true? Did you really kill a
mutant with your bare hands?"'
  "No," Ben said flatly. "I shot the damned
thing seven times with a .45 and then split its skull
with a Bowie knife."
  "I see."
  I wonder.
  "Ben?"
  "Yes, Rani."
  "You don't seem the least bit worried about the
outlaws following us."
  "I'm not in the least worried. Let me put your
mind at ease, dear. I know the old
Tri-States like the back of my own hand. We
left enough bombs, guns, ammo, and materials
cached out there to outfit a small army.
  And I know where it all is. Relax, Rani.
They'll probably find us, but they'll wish they
hadn't."
  "I do wish I could share your confidence, Ben,"
she said, the dryness coming through the speaker.
  Ben just chuckled and kept on driving.
  It took them the rest of the day to travel between
Gallup and Flagstaff. Ben had never seen an
interstate so cluttered with junked
vehicles.
  "The first thing we have to do," he said aloud, "is
to clear the highways. That will give the people something to do;
take their minds off their troubles. Or are you just
kidding yourself, Raines?"
  Probably, he concluded.
  He knew people only too well. Ten out often would
volunteer at first. Two out of ten would end up doing
most of the actual work. The others would find some
excuse not to work. They would bitch and moan and
eventually walk away.
  Not even the most destructive war known
to humankind had changed that undesirable aspect of
human nature.
  A few miles outside of Flagstaff, Ben
began monitoring his CB closely. There was some
air traffic coming out of the city, but unlike
Gallup, this chatter wasn't, or at least did not
appear to be, hostile.
  Ben slowed and pulled off onto the shoulder,
Rani right behind him.
  He got out and walked to her truck. "You been
listening to the chatter on your CB?"
  "Yes. It sounds friendly."
  "Yeah. A Tasmanian Devil is
cute, too. But have you ever tried to pet one?"
  "I've never even
seen
one, Ben."
  Ben nodded absently and reached across her for the
mike. "Hello, Flagstaff. Anybody copying
this transmission?"
  After a brief quiet pause, a voice
replied. "You 'bout blew my doors off with that
transmission, friend. You wanna cut it down some?
You're distorting real bad."
  Ben adjusted his output, flipping the switch,
putting his CB on normal power. "That better,
Flagstaff?"
  "Much better. Which direction you comin" from?"'
  "East."
  "How'd you get through Gallup?"'
  "Quickly and shooting at anything that looked like a
punk," Ben told the voice.
  The voice laughed. "Well, I hope you got
a bunch of them, friend. Come on in, we're friendly.
We'll meet you on the outskirts of town."
  "Ben Raines," Ben said, holding out his hand to the
man.
"The
Ben Raines?" the man asked, pumping Ben's hand.
  Ben could never get used to that reaction from people. "I
guess so."
  "Thank God!" a woman said. "Where is your
army?"
  "Most of them are back in Georgia," Ben
told her. "I've got one company still in Texas,
helping the law-abiding folks in that state hunt
down outlaws and warlords."
  The woman looked horrified. "You mean you and this
lady are out traveling
alone?"
  Ben smiled at her. "Yes. But doing so
carefully."
  "I heard that," a man said. "You're lucky you
got through, Mr. Raines. Outlaws working all over
the damn place. Good folks up in Utah cleaned
up that state, but it seems the scum they didn't
get just moved south. They've been giving us fits
around here."
  "Get organized and hunt them down," Ben said.
  "Easier said than done, Mr. Raines. You ever
tried to ...?" He grinned sheepishly. "Yeah.
I guess you have at that. Good Lord, folks! Where
did we misplace our manners? Come
on, Mr. Raines, ma'am. Please." He
motioned Ben and Rani toward the town. "Spend some
time with us. You'll find Flagstaff a lot different
from Gallup."
  Like between daylight and dark, Ben mentally noted as
they followed the local vehicles into the small
city. The streets had been cleared and cleaned.
Most of the stores had no show windows, but there was no
broken glass sparkling on the sidewalks and
streets. Ben could not see any rusting, junked
cars, which were not only an eyesore, but a hazard.
  As the small caravan wound out of the city proper and
into the suburbs, Ben could see what remained of many
large gardens. The homes they passed had been
properly maintained, the lawns kept up and clean.
  Ben guessed about five to six hundred people were
living in the city. The adults were all armed-and well
armed, at that.
  At the home of the man and woman who appeared
to be the spokespersons for the group, over
coffee-real coffee-Ben complimented the gathering.
  "It wasn't easy, and it wasn't pleasant,"
Jim Blanning
  told Ben. "I guess there was probably over
a thousand of us starting out. About four hundred
left when we really started getting tough with the punks
and street gangs and criminal element."
  All those gathered in the large home shook their
heads in agreement with that statement.
  Carolyn Blanning said, "We did try the old
way, Mr. Raines ..."
  "Ben, please."
  "Ben. Good. You know what I mean by the old
way. We began making excuses for the gangs, not
coming down hard on them; mouthing all the old B.s.
from before the Great War. Well," she said with a shrug,
"it didn't work back then, and it wasn't working for us
now. Finally, and this only happened about... oh,
fifteen months ago, we banded together and formed our own
police force." She smiled. "We put your ideas
in play. The ones you used up in the Tri-States.
We weren't going to tolerate lazy, sorry,
good-for-nothing people; especially the gangs and the thugs and the
punks." She paused, shook her head, and looked
at a tall, rangy man sitting across the huge den
from her.
  "Evan Reynolds," the man said. "I guess
I'm in charge of the militia here, General
Raines. I was the first one to shoot to kill. We had
spent months cleaning up the town. Hard,
back-breaking work. All the while certain ...
types,
stood around and jeered at us, refusing to work. After
we'd cleared and swept one particularly filthy
block-where the crud lived, by the way-we came
back the next day and they had trashed it. They ..."
He struggled with his emotions for a few seconds.
"They dared us to do something about it. There was this one ...
person.
A big, swaggering,
  dirty-looking type. You know the type."
  Ben nodded his head. "Only too well."
  Evan said, "He was called Stud. A gang
leader. He told me we couldn't make him or his
people do a goddamn thing. Spat at my feet."
Evan paused and rolled a cigarette. He lit
it and smoked in silence for a few seconds. "I
looked at him, walked back to my truck, got a
shotgun, and blew his goddamn worthless head off."
  Ben and Rani waited, each of them knowing it was a
terrible memory for the man to dredge up.
  "It turned bloody after that," Evan continued.
He looked at another man.
  "What was so ridiculous about it," the
Mexican-American said, "was them
accusing us of being bigots and anti this, that, and the other
thing." He laughed bitterly. "As you can see
by looking around the room, General Raines, we are
a real mixing bowl of people here. Dan," he said,
pointing, "is Apache. Mrs. Yee is Chinese.
You have eyes, you can see. We just took all we were
going to take of it. Following the initial shooting, it
was a bloody week. But we made this community a
nice place to live." He inspected his
fingernails for a moment, silently reflecting. "I
won't say that innocents did not die needlessly.
That would be a lie. But there comes a time when one must
choose a side, a cause, if you will, and stand by it.
While it is not safe once one ventures ten
miles outside the city, it is
quite
safe in the city."
  "And if you were stronger, better armed?" Ben
asked.
  "Let us say," the man who would be later
introduced as Mr. Reyes continued, "we would not be
adverse to carrying the message outside the city."
  The group all smiled.
  Ben got the message. He returned the
smile. "Well, then," he said. "I
believe we can work something out that would be mutually
advantageous." He told the gathering of his idea
of an outpost system.
  "It could be the start of a return to civilization,"
Mrs. Yee said. "And just in time, too. We're
having a difficult time getting schools started for
our children."
  "It isn't easy," Ben said, and for a flashing
moment, his thoughts were full of Jordy.
  "To use a clich`e, General," Evan said.
"Nothing worthwhile is ever easy, right?"
  "You're going to take losses," Ben brought them
back to reality. "I've lost many good friends along the
way."
  "As we all have, sir," a woman said. "My
husband died fighting the street punks."
  Ben stood up. "I'll contact my base
camp, get the ball rolling."
  Ben and Rani once more set out, once more alone
in the ashes.
Chapter 30
  Ben and Rani headed north out of Flagstaff,
on Highway 89. They swung west at Cameron
and camped in the Kaibab National Forest. The
following morning, Ben gave Rani her
first glimpse of the Grand Canyon. As it does with
anybody who does not possess the soul of a
grub-worm and the imagination of a corpse, her first
sighting took her breath away.
  "It's ... it's ..." she stammered.
  "Magnificent. Awesome. Indescribable,"
Ben finished it.
  "Yes," she said, taking his hand and holding on
tightly. "You've seen it before?"
  "Probably a dozen times. It evokes something
quite new and different within me with each sighting."
  "I can see why." She was thoughtful for a moment,
gazing down into what had once been described as the
greatest example of erosion and the most sublime
spectacle in the world. "Wasn't there a song or
something written about this place?"'
  Ben got a good laugh out of that, then spent the
next
  few minutes calming Rani, assuring her he
wasn't laughing at her, just at what she said.
  "Ferde Grofe wrote the Grand Canyon
Suite; just one of his many works. By golly, I just
might have that cassette in my truck. I think I
do. You'll love it."
  Back at the campsite, which had not been
used as such for many years, Ben found the old
cassette and played it for her. She sat enthralled
as the loveliness rolled and soared from the speakers.
  "It's so lovely," she whispered. "I
remember it now, from listening to it in high school. I
didn't like it then."
  Ben elected to keep his mouth shut at that.
Beginning about 1970, Ben had refused to listen
to commercial radio, except for news and weather when
traveling. As far as he was concerned, what passed for
music- except for classical-from that period up
until the Great War, had gone from bad to worse to the
pits.
  Rani looked at him and smiled. As if having
the power to read his mind, she said, "I gather you
didn't think much of the music I grew up with, right,
Ben?"'
  "That is certainly one way of putting it, dear."
  She laughed. "Looking back, I don't think
much of it, myself."
  "That's a relief. There is hope for music
lovers yet."
  A roar came from the deep and tangled forest to the
south of the camp site. Rani jumped about half a
foot off the ground.
  "A new rock-and-roll singer," Ben said
drily. "Give him a mike and a dress and you'd have
a rising new star. For sure."
  "Ben, Jesus! Don't joke. What in the name
of God was that?"
  "Mutant, probably. That one, and the others like it
  in the woods around here, have probably never seen a
human. We'd best move into one of the Ranger
cabins for the night. Unless you'd like to wake up in the
middle of the night with one of them looking at you."
  A minute and a half later, Ben was complimenting
Rani on the swiftness with which she could pack.
  No mutants had made an appearance during the
night, but they let Ben and Rani know they were around,
and not liking the human intrusion into their territory.
At first light, Ben and Rani left the park area,
connecting once more with Highway 89, following that up
to alternate 89, turning west across the Colorado
River, traveling through the northern area of the
Kaibab National Park, and skirting the now
deserted Kaibab Indian Reservation.
  "I wonder what happened to them?" Rani asked
over the CB.
  "Slaughtered," Ben told her. "They were one of the
tribes that joined us. In the hopes of
achieving a better life standard. And I got them
killed."
  "I wish you would stop blaming yourself, Ben. I
doubt that you forced them to join you at gunpoint."
  Ben was grim as he said, "I'm pulling over and
backtracking. We'll take 389 through the
reservation. I want to see if the government
troops left anything standing."
  It was even worse than Ben had imagined. The
stories of the Old West he had read as a child came
into his mind. Big government's vindictiveness had
been awesome. There was not a building left standing that
Ben or Rani could see as they drove slowly through
  the reservation.
  "It's terrible," she said in a whisper.
  "Yes. I think you'll say the same thing when you
see what they did to the Tri-States. And while
I'm thinking about it, Rani," Ben radioed, "when
we get to the Tri-States, don't leave my
side. We booby-trapped almost everything we left
behind: houses, barns, vehicles, buildings. You
name it, and we wired it to explode. So when we get
there, stay close to me."
  "Thank you for remembering," she replied.
  They made camp that evening in what
remained of the small town of Colorado City. The
town had been stripped clean, right down to the doors,
windows, screens, and anything else that wasn't
nailed down or welded in place.
  But, as in so many other places, using his pump,
Ben managed to fill their gas tanks from underground
reservoirs.
  "How long will this gas remain good?" Rani
asked.
  "Years, if water doesn't get into it. Even
then, we have the capacity to separate water from gas-so
my engineers tell me. We're going to build a
small refinery come next spring. We-was
  A bullet smashed into the side of the building, just
missing Ben's head. Bits of broken brick
struck Rani in the side of the face, drawing
blood. They both hit the ground, weapons at the
ready.
  "Take the broad alive!" a hoarse voice
shouted. "We can use her and then swap her ass for
something."
  Rani burned half a clip in the direction of the
voice. A man yelled, his voice echoing throughout the
emptiness. Whether from shock or pain, Ben couldn't
tell.
  "You OK, Elgin?" another voice was added.
  Ben pinpointed the location of that one.
  "Yeah. Circle around. We got "em in a
box."
  "You think," Ben muttered. He carefully
shifted positions, slipping into the deserted, windowless
service station, pulling Rani in behind him.
  "The trucks?" she whispered.
  "They won't bother them. They want them running.
Take the front. I'll handle that guy slipping
up behind us."
  Slugs began slamming into the building, but Ben
sensed they were carefully placed; whoever was firing at
them wanted Rani alive and well. ,
  Ben spotted movement in the alleyway. He
lifted his Thompson, exposing as little of himself as
possible. He waited.
  He heard the quiet crunch of boots on
gravel. Then a man's leg was exposed, from upper
thigh to foot.
  Ben stitched the leg, the big beblede-caliber
slugs shattering knee, ankle, and foot. The man
screamed in pain and fell forward, losing his shotgun,
the weapon clattering to the ground.
  "Dave? Dave? Did you get him?"
  "Yeah," Ben hollered. "Come on."
  The man named Elgin ran out of a building,
zigzagging across the street. He got halfway before
Rani cut him down. He flopped in the street,
both hands holding his lead-punctured belly.
  He screamed in pain.
  "Shoot him in the head and shut him up," Ben
told Rani.
  Before she could raise her M-16, a woman
came running out of the building that faced the old
service station.
  "Damn you!" she squalled. "You kilt my old
man." She lifted a rifle.
  Ben leveled his Thompson and cut the woman
down. She landed only a few feet from the wounded
man in the street.
  Ben slipped out the back way and ran to the man
he'd shot in the alley. The man's face was shiny
with shock and pain. He had taken at least six
.45-caliber slugs in the leg, and in falling he
had broken his right arm, the bone sticking out, stark
white in the cold light of December.
  "Least tell me your name 'fore you kill me," the
man panted.
  "Ben Raines."
  The man forced a laugh. "We shore can pick
'em. All the folks travelin" "bout, and we
got to pick on Ben Raines. Shit! I'm
bleedin" to death, General. Finish me."
  Ben shot him between the eyes.
  Back in the service station, Ben squatted down
beside Rani. "Stay put. I think there might be one
more."
  The minutes ticked by. Ben and Rani waited
in silence. Finally, impatience drove the last
outlaw of the bunch to yell.
  "Lemme go!" he yelled. "You go your way, and
I'll go mine. How "bout it?"
  "You got him spotted?" Ben asked.
  "Almost directly across the street," Rani said.
"But he's staying low."
  "Start putting fire into the building," Ben told
her. "I'm going to circle around and drop a
grenade in on him. Start now."
  With Rani laying down a slow, steady fire,
Ben ran
  down the alleyway and came out on the far end of the
street, crossing over until he was by the open
windowless storefront. He motioned to Rani,
pulled the pin on a grenade, and dropped
it in, ducking back.
  The grenade must have landed directly on top of the
man, for when the dust had settled, Ben looked in and
could see bits and pieces of the man scattered around
the store.
  He walked to the center of the street and stood
looking down at the man and woman, sprawled near
death in the street.
  "What's your name?" the woman gasped.
  "Ben Raines."
  She laughed, exposing stubs of broken and rotted
teeth. "Know'd our luck would run out some day."
  "How many travelers have you and your men ambushed and
killed?" Ben asked.
  "Fifty. Two hundred. Five hundred.
Hell, I don't know," she said
matter-of-factly. "Had a lot of fun for
awhile, though."
  Ben looked at her wounds. She might live
another two hours, at best. He just didn't
feel like wasting a bullet on her. He kicked their
weapons away from the man and woman and left them in
the street.
  "Hey!" the woman gasped as Ben walked
away. "Ain't you gonna do nothin" fer
us?"'
  Ben's laugh was short and ugly. He did not
reply to her question. Just kept walking.
  She began cursing him, her mouth spewing out more
filth than a sewer contained.
  Ben motioned Rani into her truck. "Let's
get the hell out of here."
  "Hartline's gonna get you, Raines!" the
woman squalled at them.
  Ben turned slowly and looked at the woman.
"What did you say?"
  Her laughter was taunting. "Sam Hartline.
He's who we work for. We take women to him and that
uppity Russian."
  "Where are they?"
  "Northern California. They got some kind of
real fancy hospital there. Hartline meets us
up in Reno. 'At's where we deliver the women
to him."
  "What kind of women?" Ben asked, a sick
feeling in his stomach. He knew. Oh, God, he
knew only too well.
  "Niggers, spies, Jews, all the inferior
breeds, you know?"'
  "When are you supposed to meet Hartline
again?" Ben asked.
  "What'll you gimme to tell you that?" the woman
asked, a sly look in her beady eyes.
  "A bullet in the head to put you out of your
misery."
  ""At's fair, I reckon. Better'n
dyin" slow. Next spring. Don't know when. We
just wait."
  "You have any women you're now holding prisoner?"
  The woman coughed up blood. "Naw. We jist
got back from deliverin' a load of greasers."
  Ben walked over to her, pulled his cocked and
locked .45 from leather, and shot her in the head.
  "You going to tell me about Sam Hartline,
Ben?" Rani asked.
  "Later. It's a long story."*
*Fire in the Ashes
Chapter 31
  "You mean they're
experimenting
on human beings?" Rani asked, horror in her
voice.
  "Among other things," Ben said. He then told
her of the Russian general, Striganov, and the
battles they had fought, hammering away at
each other along a mile-long no-man's-land.
  "Hideous!" she said, looking at her plate of
food and electing not to eat.
  Ben and Rani had traveled a few miles
outside of Colorado City and re-pitched their
camp, in extreme southern Utah.
  Ben stared moodily into the dancing flames of the
small fire.
  "And you and this Hartline have been enemies for a long
time?" Rani asked.
  "It seems like forever. But only for a couple of
years, actually." He sighed. "I may as well
make up my mind that until Striganov and
Hartline are dead, we can't even begin to think of a
return to civilization. I suppose that had best be
our first priority of business next
  spring. I guess we-the Rebels-have been kidding
ourselves; putting the horror back in the dark reaches
of our brains; trying to delude ourselves that
Striganov and Hartline were out of sight, so therefore
they didn't exist."
  Ben tossed a few more sticks into the circle of
rocks containing the campfire.
  "Ben?"
  "Uh-huh?"
  "Hadn't we better rearrange things so we can
carry a load of wood with us?"
  He looked at her in the flickering light. "I
beg your pardon?"
  "For the campfire and the cooking fires," she said.
  Confusion swept across Ben's face. "Have I
been asleep? I seem to have missed something
terribly important here."
  "Nevada," she said.
  "Yes. What about Nevada?"
  "Well, damn it, Ben, it's all desert,
isn't it?"
  "Oh! I see what you're getting at. No,
Rani, it isn't all desert. There are a few
trees in the state. We don't have to carry
firewood with us." He opened his map case.
"We'll be heading out on Highway 59, connecting
with the interstate here," he said, pointing, "then south
to 18. That will take us over to 56 and 319.
We'll pick up U.s. 93 here, and follow that
all the way up into Idaho. After that, we're home
free."
  "Except for Jake Campo and Texas Red,"
she reminded him glumly.
  "Piece of cake," he said with a grin.
  Both were conscious of eyes on them as they
traveled through southern Utah, eyes that followed and
tracked their every movement.
  "Don't make any hostile moves," Ben
cautioned her over the CB. "I think we'll be
met at St. George. The people will be cautious, but
not unfriendly. We'll know in a few minutes."
  The two-vehicle convoy hit a barricade on
the outskirts of St. George, with armed men stationed
behind the barricade.
  The men were neatly dressed, and for the most part, clean
shaven. They were not ugly or hostile in their
movements with their rifles-just cautiously curious.
  Ben got out of his pickup, his hands empty and
held away from his body.
  "My name is Ben Raines," he called. "The
lady in the other pickup is Rani Jordan.
We mean no harm to any law-abiding people. We are
traveling up to the old Tri-States."
  "Then pass on through, General Raines," a man
said with a smile, motioning for the barricade to be opened.
"With all the godless outlaws roaming the land, you
understand our caution."
  "Very well," Ben said.
  Past the barricade, the spokesman
said, "Do you need food or other supplies,
Mister Raines?"
  "No. But thank you. We're well equipped for
our travels. There might be a company of my
soldiers pass through this way. They'll be commanded by a
Colonel Dan Gray. They mean you no harm."
  "Then they will not be harmed," Ben was assured.
  When Ben and Rani made camp at the Echo
Canyon State Recreation Area, just inside
Nevada, Rani said,
  "I feel sorry for anybody who tries
to ride roughshod over those people back in Utah."
  "They won't try it but once," Ben said. "Those
folks won't put up with
any
crap. And I sure want them on our side if and
when any shooting starts."
  "They looked very ... competent."
  "Believe me, they are."
  Jake Campo and Texas Red knew to stay out
of Utah. Too many stories had drifted back
to the warlords about what happened to outlaws who
foolishly ventured into that state. They began moving
their people out, in small teams of five and six. All
the outlaws had cleaned up their vehicles
and themselves. They sported fresh haircuts and clean
clothes. All carried side-arms, but that would
attract no attention; almost everybody with any
sense went armed.
  The outlaws moved out slowly, first heading straight
north, up through the panhandle of Texas, then
crossing the panhandle of Oklahoma into Kansas.
Once there, they veered northwest, into Colorado.
They took their time, for they were in no hurry. They
would travel through Colorado, into Wyoming-giving
Utah a wide berth-and then the final leg
into Idaho, finally fanning out, encircling what had
once been the capital of Tri-States.
  Both Jake and Texas Red had heard about the
man called Sam Hartline; heard that he paid
well for men and women of the inferior breeds.
Hartline paid in gold and guns.
  And they had heard the man Hartline worked for, the
Russian General Striganov, was offering sacks
of gold for the head of Ben Raines.
  So this time they would not go in with bluff and bluster
against Raines. This time they would be much more cautious,
with carefully thought-out plans.
  And they would get Ben Raines.
  "We're not going to Las Vegas and
play the slot machines?" Rani asked, her lips
curving into a smile.
  "Nothing left," Ben told her. "Oddly enough,
the place was among the first to be looted. Whiskey and
money. Even though the people didn't know whether the money
was any good or not, they took it. Wrecked the
place in doing so. Lots of infighting among the
looters. We'll avoid that place."
  "It must have been grand when it was going, though,"
Rani said.
  Ben said nothing in response. He had never cared
much for the place. Not knowing day from night had never
appealed to him.
  The one-hundred-mile jump up to Ely took
all of the next day. The highway was blocked in a
dozen places, causing detours and backtracking and
delays. Ben had not expected this highway to be so
cluttered with junked vehicles. When they finally
arrived in Ely, the place was a mess.
  "My God!" Rani said, viewing the
destruction. "What happened here?"'
  The town looked as though a giant child had slapped
it in youthful frustration, tumbling the buildings about like
huge playing blocks.
  "I don't know," Ben admitted. "But
I'm getting some strange vibes about this place."
  "Shall we leave?" she asked.
  "With all deliberate haste."
  A few miles outside of town, Rani
radioed, "We're being followed, Ben."
  Ben glanced in both his mirrors. He could see
nothing. "You sure?"
  "Positive. I double-checked. Wait until
we're around this next curve. Maybe the road will
straighten out for a time. Uh-oh. Here they come, Ben.
Four or five cars and trucks."
  Ben chanced a quick glance at his road map.
Pulling a trailer, he had no hope of outrunning
those following him. He figured another six or
seven miles to the town of McGill. Couldn't
make that, either.
  "Hang on and follow me, Rani," he
radioed. "We're cutting off on this road to the
left. Watch my brake lights and be ready for a
quick stop. Get out ready to shoot."
  Ben and Rani whipped off onto the dirt and
gravel road in a cloud of dust. A
quarter-mile down the road, Ben braked, motioning
Rani t6 come around him. He backed up until
his pickup was blocking the road. He got
out on the passenger side, choosing an M-16 for
this fight, since the weapon had much more range than his
Thompson.
  The vehicles, three pickup trucks and two
cars, stopped some two to three hundred yards away
from them.
  Ben laid the M-16 on the seat and got his
.30-06, checking to see if the weapon was fully
loaded. It was.
  Ben jacked a round into the chamber and, using the
hood for support, sighted in the lead truck. A
man's face leaped into view through his powerful scope.
  Dirty, unshaven, mean-looking, and ugly.
  "That son of a bitch could sit behind tombstones and
raise ha'nts," Ben muttered.
  "Hey, you!" the man shouted, his voice just carrying
to Ben and Rani.
  Ben did not want to take him out of sight.
"Ask him what he wants," he said to Rani.
  She did and the man shouted, "Whatever you got,
missy. Give us your due for passin" on this
road and you can head on out."
  "You believe him?" Ben asked,
  "Hell, no!"
  Ben shot the man in the center of the chest,
the slug knocking him backward, sprawling on the
dirt road.
  "Get me my RPG and a rocket," Ben said.
"I'm not going to jack around with these road scum."
  Amid a ragged hail of gunfire from the
outlaws' vehicles, Ben locked a grenade in
place, checked to see if Rani was clear of the
back-blast, sighted in the trucks, and fired.
  The lead truck must have been carrying several
hundred pounds of explosives, and the trucks behind it
must have also been loaded with dynamite, for when the
rocket struck, the force of the explosion knocked
Rani to the ground and flung Ben to his knees.
  The blast momentarily impaired hearing, and the two
of them could only stand and stare in awe and utter silence
as bits and pieces of cars and trucks were tossed
literally hundreds of feet into the air.
  Ben and Rani stared at the destruction that lay in
front of them. Burning metal and mangled bodies
littered the road in smoking heaps. There were no
survivors among the outlaws.
  "Can you hear?" Ben asked her, shaking his head.
  "In a hollow, echoing sort of way," she
replied. "It's weird. Ben, what in the world was in
those trucks-an atomic bomb?"
  "Whatever it was, we sure can't go back the
way we came." He looked at his maps. "This
road makes a half circle and then connects with
93, some miles north of McGill. We'll
take it and chance it. Check your truck; see if
any lead hit anything vital."
  Ben's truck had taken most of the bullets from the
outlaws' rifles, none of them doing any real harm
to the truck. They headed out, driving slowly up the
bumpy road. It took them almost two hours
to make the run on the rutted road. When they once
more pulled onto Highway 93, it felt like a
superhighway. They made camp and spent the night
out in the open, far from dead towns with unblinking empty
windows that seemed to remind Ben that life and love and
hopes and dreams had once lived behind those silent
walls.
  Even after all these years, the feeling was
disconcerting.
  The eastern part of Nevada seemed to be void of
human life-at least human fife that longed for a
productive, orderly, civilized society.
  The empty trend continued as Ben and Rani
pulled up to the outskirts of Wells. Silence
greeted them. It was also very cold.
  "Idaho going to be colder than this?" Rani
asked.
  "Somewhat," Ben said, in classic understatement.
  "Ben, what happened to all the
people?"
  "I can't answer that, Rani. I just don't know.
I've
  never seen it this desolate. Hopefully, the people
banded together and moved out, probably to the west, where the
climate is more conducive to growing gardens. But that's
just a guess. They might all be dead."
  She shivered in the cold wind. Ben put his arm
around her shoulders. "How many people lived in this state
before the bombings, Ben?"
  "Oh, seven or eight hundred thousand, I would
imagine."
  "Where in the hell did they all
go?"
she once more flung, the question to the winds.
  Ben let the winds take it. He sure didn't
know the answer.
Chapter 32
  They rolled through Jackpot, Nevada, at
midmorning. A short time later, Ben radioed
back to Rani.
  "The old Tri-States, Rani. Welcome
to a bit of history."
  "Jesus, Ben! It's
cold."
  "It's also something else," he reminded her.
  "What?"
  "Christmas."
  She was silent for half a mile, the tires
humming on the concrete. "You're right. My God,
I had completely forgotten. Merry Christmas,
darling."
  Ben knew they would encounter few, if any, people in
the old Tri-States. While many had tried
to move into the area, almost all had either left very quickly
or been killed, for the Rebels had booby-trapped
hundreds, thousands, of cars, trucks, homes.
They had mined the timber and placed explosives in
empty buildings. They had blown bridges and
overpasses, poisoned a lot of the water sources.
  The
Rebels
knew what had been rigged to blow. The
Rebels
knew what water was safe to drink. The
Rebels
knew what to touch and what to leave alone. The
Rebels
knew where guns and ammo and explosives were cached.
  No one else did.
  Ben led the way north at a fast clip. He was
home. He had masterminded the Tri-States, and
knew the highway system as well as he knew his
right and left hands.
  When they crossed Interstate 86, Ben
traveled some twenty-odd miles and pulled over
at a house he remembered. A close friend of
Ben's had lived in this ranch-style home. He, his
wife, and their three kids had been killed
by government troops during the assault of the
Tri-States.
  "Stay in the truck," Ben told Rani. "And
I mean,
stay
in the truck."
  She did not have to be told again.
  Consulting a thick ledger, Ben moved around the
home, neutralizing the traps. He cautiously
entered the home and cut the trip wires. He
lifted the top of the range in the kitchen and removed
a half-pound of explosives. Smiling,
he walked back outside and waved Rani in.
  "It's safe now," he assured her.
"Everything's been neutralized."
  She looked at the mass of explosives in his
hands. "Are you sure?"
  He laughed at her. "Positive. Go on in and
start setting up for the night. Firewood is stacked
by the fireplace. It's dry, but it'll give us a
good, quick, hot fire. I'm going to find us something."
  "What?"
  Ben grinned. "A Christmas tree, darling."
  The first of Jake Campo's teams arrived in the
old Tri-States.
  "Spooky," one of the men observed. "Where the
hell is all the people?"'
  "Yeah," another outlaw said, looking around him.
"Man, we ain't seen
nobody
since crossing the state line."
  "Weird," the leader of the team agreed. He
spotted a nice home sitting just off the highway.
"We'll bunk over there for tonight. I ain't never
seen so many nice houses."
  "I was told that in the Tri-States you
had
to keep your place lookin" good. If you didn't
mow the lawn, people would come in and mow it for you--then send
you the bill!"
  "It don't make no difference, no more," the
leader said. "There ain't no more Tri-States and
pretty soon there ain't gonna be no more Ben
Raines, neither."
  He opened the front door. It was not locked,
since the former residents of Tri-States had never
locked their doors or taken the keys out of their cars
or trucks (remember, folks,
always
take the keys out of the ignition. Don't let a good
boy go bad)!
  The opening of the door tripped an acid-delay
switch, tipping the glass vial to allow the acid
to eat through a thin wire.
  The entire team of Campo's outlaws crowded
into the den of the home.
  "Nice place," one said. "Lookie there!"
He pointed. "Farwood all stacked up and ready
for us to burn."
  The wire parted with a soft ping.
  "What the hell was that?"
  "Your imagination, probably. Come on.
Let's get settled in and fix some grub."
  Fifteen pounds of high explosives blew.
One entire wall collapsed on the outlaws;
beams fell from the ceiling, crushing the life from two
of the outlaws. One man crawled out of the wreckage
of the home, pulling himself along with his hands. Both his
legs were broken.
  He passed out from the pain.
  He would be frozen stiff by morning.
  Another team rolled into what had been southern
Wyoming before Ben Raines and his Rebels renamed the
entire area the Tri-States, years back.
  The outlaws spotted a lovely rock home
sitting on a hill. That would be ideal for a
headquarters. Or a grave. They settled in and
built a roaring fire in the fireplace. Had they
been just a bit more observant, they might have noticed
the logs were too heavy for wood that had been allowed
to dry, inside, for almost two years.
  The logs had been hollowed out and packed full of
extremely high explosives. The explosives
would detonate after reaching the temperature of ninety
degrees.
  When the fireplace blew, the impact scattered
debris-wood, brick, stone, and various
parts of human bodies-all over the small hill.
  Another team of outlaws came down from the north,
  into Montana. They thought it would be amusing to spend
the night in what had once been Ben Raines'
residence.
  Their amusement was very short-lived.
  Ben had deliberately left sealed tins of what
was labeled pure water on the kitchen counter, along
with sealed tins of emergency rations. The water was
poisoned and so was the food.
  Ben and his Rebels, just before the government
assault on Tri-States had begun, had warned
the government that if they chose to interfere with a peaceful
way of life, they would soon discover what Hell
must be like.
  The outlaws ate and drank their fill, and then
died horribly, their bodies and faces and hands
swelling and blackening in death.
  Another group of Texas Red's boys found a
small, very intimate cocktail lounge where,
by golly, the bar was still stocked with sealed bottles of
booze. They had a high ol' time and got
rip-roaring drunk. They didn't notice the
slight sweet fragrance coming from the bottles of
whiskey.
  Poison.
  One by one they closed their eyes. One by one they
went to sleep. One by one they slumped to the floor.
One by one ... they died.
  "Anything?" Jake asked his radio operator.
"Nothin', Big Jake. Not a peep. And they was
callin' in regular "til yesterday."
  Again, Big Jake Campo felt a shiver of
fear touch him. He knew, he
knew
the boys were dead. But how in the hell had Raines
managed to do it? How had he found them out so soon?
And how in the hell could one man and one woman kill
so many so quickly?
Jesus Flipping Christ!
  Jake looked into Texas Red's eyes. He
saw open fear there.
  "We can't quit now," Jake said, after taking the
man's elbow and leading him away from the other men.
"We got to go on."
  "I don't like it," Texas Red honestly
admitted his fear. "I'm scared, man. And I
mean, really, fucking
scared!"
  "Get a grip on yourself.
Goddamnit, he's just one man.
One man!"
  "Is he?" Red asked.
  "Is he what?"'
  "Is Ben Raines just a mortal man?"
  Jake Campo opened his mouth to cuss the outlaw,
then closed it. He walked away. Dammit it
to hell-he didn't know. He just plain didn't
know!
  Ben had found some old popcorn and, together, they
popped the corn and dyed it all different colors,
using food coloring from the kitchen pantry.
  Rani found some thread and strung the brightly
colored popcorn around the small tree Ben had
cut.
  But something was missing.
  Rani said, "You take that end of the house, Ben.
And I'll take the other. You find something for me, and
I'll find something for you. We have to have some presents
  under the tree."
  Giggling and laughing like children, they went their ways and
each returned with a gift, Rani's wrapped in a
piece of old grocery bag, Ben's wrapped in a
piece of newspaper.
  They put them under the tree and began
preparing dinner. They ate C-rations by candle light
and then opened their gifts.
  Ben had found a pair of diamond earrings for
her, and she had found a pocket watch for him. She
fitted the earrings and Ben wound the old watch.
  "Perfect Christmas," Ben said.
Chapter 33
  Jake Campo sat straight up in his
blankets. He knew what had gotten his boys,
and it hadn't been Ben Raines.
  Throwing his blankets aside, he jerked on his
boots and ran to the communications truck, startling the
sleepy man.
  "Get the boys on the horn!" he snapped.
"Right now."
  His teams contacted, Jake said, "Stay out of the
homes, the bars, the buildings. Don't touch
nothing.
Everything is booby-trapped. I "member
somebody telling me about it. You guys copy all
this?"
  "Yeah. When you gonna get here?"
  "Soon," Jake radioed. "Real soon. For
now, you guys hunt a hole and stay put."
  He told Texas Red what had gone
down. "You see, Red. Raines ain't no god.
But I tell you what he's gonna be, real
soon."
  "What?"
  "Goddamn
dead!"
  The morning after Christmas, Ben and Rani
pulled out and headed north. Before leaving, Ben had
loaded both trucks with as much emergency gear as
possible, including ammunition and explosives from
one of many hidden caches.
  "Where are we going, Ben?" Rani asked.
  "Into the wilderness area. We'll winter there and
set up traps for Campo and his crud."
  "Are you going to call Colonel Gray and ask
him to send in help?"
  "Nope."
  "We were awfully lucky down in Texas, Ben.
But you know luck has a nasty habit of running out.
Usually at the worst of times."
  "This is something I have to do by myself, Rani. If you
want to help, fine. If not, I can call in and have
a team come and get you. It's all up to you."
  "You know I'm staying with you right to the end, Ben. But
why is this so important to you?"
  "Call it macho, male pride, stubborn,
stupid; it's probably a mixture of all those
things. It's ..."
  Ben seemed to be at a loss for words.
  "It's for Jordy, isn't it, Ben?"
  "Yes."
  She took his hand. "Then we'll do it together."
  They drove until the paved roads ran out.
Then Ben off-loaded the supplies from Rani's
truck and carefully hid the vehicle and his small
trailer. With Rani by his side, Ben drove
deep into what had been known as the Boise National
Forest, to the southern branch of the Middle Fork
Salmon. It took them three days to get all
  the supplies to the cabin deep in the timber.
  She noticed Ben kept looking up at the sky.
  "Ben, I know you're checking the skies for snow
warnings. But even if it snows ten feet, you're
leaving a trail a blind man could follow. Broken
limbs and marked trees that the truck has rubbed
against. You've deliberately tossed crap on the
ground. You
want
them to find us, don't you?"
  "I want them to know I've gone into the
deep timber, yes. Finding our exact location is
something else, though. You've seen the placement of that
cabin, Rani. You know a person could walk within
fifty feet of it and not see it unless they knew
exactly
where to look. Ike built it, years ago. Well,
that's not entirely true. He found what was left of
it and renovated it. I'm going to stash you in the cabin
and leave the truck some miles from the cabin. While
I'm backtracking to the cabin, I'll begin setting
up traps."
  "Ben," she said with great patience, "you could call
in Colonel Gray and his Scouts and be done with this
matter in no time."
  "Of course I could." He smiled grimly.
"But it's much more personally satisfying this way."
  "And men say women are complicated."
  The snug little cabin was built against a rather large
hill, or a small mountain, as Rani called it.
Only a small part of the cabin showed; the rest was part
of the terrain itself, with the back rooms built into the
earth. Ike was convinced that outlaws had built the
place, back during the wild west days. Trees
hid the cabin, the trees so close to the small
porch they could be touched while sitting on the
porch.
  The cabin had a large combination den and kitchen.
One big bedroom with a small fireplace. The
smoke from both fireplaces was angled out into the
rear, toward the cave at the back of the cabin, finally
filtering out only-God-knew-where-probably
miles away.
  Part of the cave was used as a storage area. Ike
had followed the cave for, as he put it, "One
hell of an uncomfortable distance." He had followed
it until it branched off in three different
directions, becoming so narrow and small a cat would
have trouble getting through.
  So Ben and Rani were safe from the rear, from both
sides, and from above.
  Ben and Rani worked three full days cutting and
hauling and stacking wood for the fireplaces, most of the
wood coming from downed trees. They only cut green
wood when absolutely necessary. They filled up the
storage area with enough wood to last them the winter, for the
cabin was very snug, built as it was into the hill.
  Ben killed two deer and dried most of the meat,
storing it. For the first time in weeks, he and Rani
enjoyed fresh meat, Rani fixing a roast for
several meals, and a stew out of the rest.
  The first of the new year, the weather turned rough, with
cold winds and rain that quickly turned into sleet and
then snow.
  When they awakened on the second day of
January, they were snowed in tight.
Chapter 34
  Jake Campo stood in the blowing snow, his big
hands balled into fists. He stood looking first to the
north, then at the obvious clues standing out like neon
signs.
  "He's baiting us," Texas Red said. "He's
daring us to come after him."
  "That's the way I read it, too," Jake
agreed. "Throwing down the glove and challenging us
to pick it up."
  "Huh?" Red said.
  Jake looked at the man. Dumb son of a
bitch! he thought. "All right, boys. You start
cuttin" sign," he ordered a dozen men. "Rest
of you make damn sure the trucks and jeeps are
ready to go. Can't nothin' but a four-wheel make it
in there. This weather ain't gonna last. They'll be
blizzards and then it'll warm up enough for us to move.
We might be able to move one day and be holed up for a
week. But we're gonna get Ben
Raines. This time, we're gonna get him."
  Ben radioed in to Base Camp One and gave
Cecil his map coordinates on scramble.
"Ike's hidey-hole," he told them.
  Ike grinned at the message. "Man, he's
way
back in the timber. It'd take a full
battalion to dig them out of there. Shit. I stashed
enough ammo back there to fight a whole war."
  "I think we should contact Colonel Gray,"
Gale said.
  "No," Cecil nixed that. "If Ben wants
Dan in on this, he'll contact him. I get the
feeling this is, well, personal with Ben."
  None of them liked it, but that was the way it was going
to be.
  Ben told them about Sam Hartline and the
Russian.
  Gale tensed at the news. Her dark eyes
filled with hatred at Ben's report.
  Tina put her hand on the smaller woman's
shoulder.
  "We're going to have to do something about that situation,"
Ben concluded his report. "Just as soon as I can
pinpoint the location, we'll begin making
plans to put an end to the obscenity. Raines out."
  Ben turned his set off before Base Camp One
had a chance to say anything else.
  "It's a vendetta," Gale said. "It's for and
because of that little boy."
  "I hadn't thought of that," Ike said. "But you're
right. Some of the people who brought that bunch of kids back
said they'd never seen anything like the sight of those
bodies Ben piled up around that old house. I'd
hate to be in those outlaws' boots when they do catch
up with Ben."
  Ben stepped out on the small porch. Under a
clear blue sky, the land lay white and cold before
him. Ben's lips curved in a warrior's smile
as he lifted his eyes above the tree line.
  Smoke from half a dozen fires plumed into the
sky. They were miles away. But there they were,
lines of silvery gray lancing into the blue.
  He called Rani outside and pointed to the
smoke.
  "So they're here," she said.
  "No," Ben corrected. "They're
there.
A long way from finding this place." He smiled.
"They'll be stumbling around the deep timber
for a week. And taking heavy losses as they do."
  "From your traps?"
  "And from me. Did you finish with those sheets yet?"
  She sighed. "Yes. But I don't like it,
Ben."
  "I used to fish in this area, Rani. Back when
we knew some semblance of peace. Before the central
government elected to make war against us. I fished
up here many times, with Ike and Pal and Cecil."
And with our wives, he thought in silent memory.
Salina, Lila, Valerie, Megan. All
dead. Most of them never buried. Their monuments the
majesty of the timber where they lay. "I know this land,
Rani. Know it well."
  She had picked up on Ben's hesitation. She
opened her mouth to speak, then thought better of it.
Sometimes old memories are best left alone.
  "Come on," she said, tugging at his arm. "Let's
see how good a seamstress I am."
  Rani had taken insulated coveralls and cut and
sewn a snow suit over the coveralls, making it out
of bed sheets. Using white shoe polish, Ben had
made snow boots out of insulated hunting boots.
His small pack
  was also covered with white fabric, as were his
web belt, canteens, and ammo pouches.
  "When are you leaving, Ben?"
  "An hour before first light in the morning. I want
to watch the smoke today, try to judge where they're
going."
  She smiled despite her fears. "Then let's
make it a memorable evening, General."
  "Delighted, Miss Jordan."
  "Ms."
  "But of course."
  Jake Campo squatted in front of a roaring
fire, trying his best to get warm while his men
struggled with tarps and tents. He looked over at
Texas Red. They touched glances and understood each
other.
  Both knew coming into the snow and deep timber after
Raines had been a terrible mistake. But they
couldn't back out now. That would cause them the loss of
respect from their men. The outlaws couldn't afford that.
They had to finish this thing once and for all.
  Forty men, Campo was thinking. We lost eight
teams of men and Raines didn't have to fire one
lousy shot. And the desertions.
Jesus.
Guys were just quitting them left and right.
  He looked around him at the cold camp.
Maybe, maybe if they were lucky, there was a
hundred and twenty, maybe thirty guys left.
But he knew these were the hardcore men. Murderers and
rapists and nut cases. Most didn't have enough sense
to quit.
  This would be the base camp for a week, maybe
longer. They would search every square inch of these
  woods, chart it on a map, and then, if they
didn't turn up Raines, move on. Jake
knew they had plenty of food and sleeping bags and
ammo. It was just a matter of finding Raines.
  They would start in the morning.
  Ben walked some twenty miles from the cabin before
he began head-hunting. It was going to snow again that
night, so he wasn't worried about tracks.
  He drew close to the smoke that made up the
western edge of the outlaws' perimeter and squatted
down, uncasing his binoculars. Very carefully and
slowly, he scanned the area that lay before him. He
picked up the movements of a few men. He focused
his binoculars and brought the men in closer. They were
walking with their heads down, searching the snow for sign.
  Ben eased back into the deep timber, watching the
men walk through the small valley. He was
careful to shield his field glasses so the sun would
not bounce off the lenses, giving away his position.
He watched them draw closer, than fan out,
several hundred yards between each man.
  He waited by the edge of the forest. He was not aware
of it, but he was smiling.
  The man working the most eastern area drew closer.
He was talking to himself. Obviously, he was not
happy with his job.
  "Son of a bitch," the man muttered, his voice
carrying to Ben. "I'm gonna enjoy watchin'
Jake nail that bastard to a cross. I hope it
takes him days to die.
Jesus!
it's cold out here."
  So Jake has plans to crucify me, Ben
thought. I don't
  think I'd like that very much. I'll just see if I
can't put a crimp in Big Jake's plans.
  The outlaw came to the woods' edge and stood for a
moment. The deep timber gave him some relief from
the cold winds singing around the valley.
  "I sure would like to take a piss," the outlaw
muttered. "But I'm afraid my pecker would
freeze and fall off."
  Then he cussed Ben Raines loud and long.
  Ben hoped he enjoyed cursing him, for it was to be
the last sound he would ever hear.
  Ben was silent and deadly with his knife, slicing the
man's throat with the heavy, razor-sharp blade.
He dragged the man into the timber and dropped him in
the snow, his warm, pumping blood staining the whiteness
scarlet.
  "Halp!" Ben hollered, disguising his voice.
"Halp! I'm stuck, boys, Halp!"
  "Leroy, you stupid ox!" a man's call
drifted over the valley. "What the shit is the
matter with you now?"'
  "Caught my foot in a wedge!" Ben hollered.
"Come help me."
  "All right, all right! Just don't pee on yourself.
We're
  a-comin"dis"
  Ben heard the man say, "You two keep on
a-lookin'. Simmons, you and Bobby come with me.
Let's see what that dumbass's got hisself
into now."
  The three outlaws approached Ben's position,
walking clumsily through the snow.
  "Leroy, you spastic bastard!" the point
man said. "Sing out. Where is you?"
  "Ooohhh!" Ben groaned.
  "You hurt bad, Leroy?"
  "Ooohhh!"
  "Hang on, boy, we's comin'."
  The point man was the first to step into the dimly lit
timber, and for a few seconds, he was unable to see.
Ben took him out silently, plunging his knife
into the man's chest, feeling the blade grind and grit
through and past bone, driving into the man's heart.
  Standing up, Ben reversed the dead man's
sawed-off shotgun and used it for a club. He
smashed the butt into one man's face, hearing bones
crunch and splinter under the impact. Before the third
man could unsling his weapon, Ben shattered the man's
skull with the butt of the shotgun, hitting him so hard
the butt broke off.
  Ben dropped the broken shotgun, grabbed his
.30-06, and uncapped the scope lenses. Quickly,
he sighted an outlaw and pulled the trigger. Without
bothering to see if he hit the man-Ben knew he
didn't miss, not at this distance-Ben had sighted the
last man in and had downed him before the echoing report
of the rifle had died away.
  Ben slipped quietly back into the
timber, heading for the next plume of smoke. He was
not aware of it, but his smile was still locked in place,
giving him a death's-head look.
  A look of hard-taken revenge.
  Jake's head jerked up at the sounds of the
gunfire. A tiny bit more of confidence ebbed within the
man. He somehow knew the shots had not come from any
of his men. He somehow knew that Raines had struck
again.
  He sat on a log before the fire, waiting for the
pot of coffee to boil. Not coffee, really. But a
mixture of tea
  and coffee and chicory. Tasted like shit, but at
least it was hot.
  Seemed like it was taking forever for the crap to boil.
  One of the warlord's men came and squatted down by the
fire, rubbing his gloved hands together. "Reckon one
of our boys got Raines, Jake?"
  "Could be."
  "Hope they didn't kill him. I wanna see
how much pain Raines can take. I hate that son
of a bitch."
  "Why?" Jake heard himself ask. The one-word question
surprised him, leaping from his mouth. He really
didn't know why he'd asked it. Or, he
mentally corrected that, didn't want to admit why
he asked it.
  "Huh?" the outlaw asked, looking at Campo.
  "Why do you hate Raines?"
  "Wai, shit, Jake! "Cause the man is
... the guy is ... all he is is ...
Shit!
I don't know. I jist do, that's all."
  "Don't you, Jake?" another outlaw asked
quietly.
  Without taking his eyes from the just-bubbling liquid in
the battered old pot, Jake said, "No. I
don't hate him. I just wish to shit all this crap
was over."
  "You wanna quit, Jake?" yet another man
asked.
  Jake shook his big shaggy head. "No. Can't
none of us quit, and you all know why. We got
to see this thing through."
  Jake leaned forward, reaching for the pot. Ben
squeezed the trigger. The slug that was meant for
Jake Campo struck the man squatted next
to Jake, the force of the impacting bullet slamming the
man forward, into the fire. His fur-lined parka
caught fire, and was quickly blazing. The
odor of cooked human flesh filled the air.
  The camp panicked.
  Ben fired again, the slug striking an outlaw in the
center of the back, pitching the man into the snow, face
down. Another outlaw went down, the bullet entering
the left side of his head and exiting out the right, blowing
brains and fluid and bits of bone out with it.
  Ben hurled a grenade into the camp, the
shrapnel-filled little bomb exploding next to a
pickup truck that was stuck in the heavy snow. The
gas tank of the truck blew, sending flames
billowing in the air, adding more confusion to an already
chaotic situation. Men were running awkwardly in the
snow, shouting and screaming in fear and panic, slamming
into each other, knocking one another down, kicking and
squalling in the snowy cold of the timber.
  At the sound of the first shot, Jake had thrown himself
to one side, scurrying like a big crab for cover.
But as the situation worsened, Jake realized that there
was no cover safe from the revengeful barking of the
rifle and Raines.
  Then, as quickly and savagely as it had begun, the
firing stopped. Jake lay behind a log, listening for
some sound,
any
sound, of Raines leaving.
  Nothing.
  The damned man moves like a ghost! Jake thought.
  And that thought did nothing for Jake's mental
state.
Chapter 35
  Ben slipped through the green and white forest like an
armed avenging ghost. He was paralleling the second
team of outlaws that morning, waiting for one of them
to get careless.
  Finally one did.
  He called out, "I'm gonna step in them
woods yonder and take me a piss. I'll catch
up with ya'll directly."
  "Don't let it freeze off!" an outlaw
called.
  "Yeah," another yelled. "You ain't got enough
dick now to do no woman no good."
  He stepped into the timber and Ben swung the heavy
knife. The cold metal suddenly turned hot with
gushing blood, the big blade cutting through bone,
muscle, and tendons. The head plopped to the snow,
the eyes wide open and staring in shock and disbelief.
The headless torso flopped and kicked on the snow,
blood squirting from the severed neck.
  Ben didn't want to try the same ruse twice
in the same day. He lay behind a log, using the
fallen timber for a rifle support. He sighted
in the man who was furthest
  away, and squeezed the trigger. The force of the
slug knocked the man off his feet, the slug
catching him squarely in the center of the chest. Ben
shifted the rifle and shot another in the stomach. He
managed to drop one more before the remaining two hit the
snow and burrowed in like frightened rats.
  Ben rolled away from the log, rolling backward,
deeper into the timber, and began easing his way out of that
area.
  He was still smiling.
  It began snowing heavily long before Ben reached the
warmth of the cabin. The snow would hide his tracks, but
he didn't believe Jake or Texas Red or
any of the outlaws could be stupid enough to venture out in this
weather.
  The sky had changed from a brilliant blue to a
dirty gray, and Ben suspected a blizzard was
building. If that was the case, more of the outlaws would be
leaving, pulling out, deserting the warlords.
  And some of them would probably freeze to death.
  Ben was still smiling as he stepped up on
the porch.
  Jake's fear had left him, as it had left
Texas Red and many of the outlaws. The numbing cold
had chased the fear away, replacing it with pure raw
savagery. A dozen outlaws had given up the
chase, quietly packing their gear and pulling out, with
Jake and Texas Red hurling obscenities and
threats at them as they left.
  The outlaws that remained had finally wised up,
building lean-to's and crude shelters against the
  freezing winds and blowing snow. To a man, they
all realized they had to kill Ben Raines and the
woman, for those men who had left would surely
spread the word, and the outlaws would be the subjects of
much ridicule and scorn if they gave up the chase
now.
  No, Ben and Rani had to die. The outlaws had
no choice in the matter now. None at all. It was
fish-or-cut-bait time. And that was that.
  The blizzard raged and howled and roared down from
Canada with all the fury it could muster. The weather
prevented the outlaws from moving against Ben, and kept
Ben at home.
  But while Ben and Rani were warm and dry and
well-fed-indeed, both of them picking up a
few pounds from no activity and hearty eating-the
outlaws suffered during the extreme weather, many of
them catching colds, which turned into pneumonia.
Frostbite became infected, and turned
gangrenous. Dispositions turned surly and fights
broke out, then fistfights turned to gunplay.
  Just as Jake was ready to pack it in and call it
quits, and to hell with what other warlords and outlaws
might think, the weather broke.
  Jake awakened one morning to the sounds of water
dripping. He lay in his blankets and tried
to figure out what in the hell was going on.
  Then he realized he was actually
warm.
Warm? How could that be?
  He stepped out of his crudely built one-room
shack and looked around him in amazement.
  The sun was shining brightly and the temperature,
  even this early in the morning, was in the upper
forties, at least.
  "All right!" he said. "All
right!"
he shouted.
  Men began pouring out of lean-tos and shacks and
tents, to stand and stare in confusion at the sudden
change of weather.
  "OK, boys!" Jake shouted. "Let's go
get Ben Raines and the broad."
  Ben kicked out of his blankets and walked to the
window of the shack, throwing open the shutters. The
chinooks were blowing. Andwiththe unusually warm winds, would
come the outlaws. In full force.
  "My God, Ben," Rani said. "It's the
middle of winter and it feels like spring."
  "Chinooks," Ben said. "They won't last. But
it might last three or four days-maybe longer.
But the outlaws are going to be crawling all over the
damned place. It's time for me to get moving.
I've got to rig more traps around the place. And
I've got to do it now. While I'm getting
dressed, honey, would you get me those bear traps from
back in the storage area, please?"'
  Making several trips, Rani carried out several
dozen of the heavy, cruel-jawed, long-outlawed bear
traps. The jaws were capable of crushing a man's
leg if he was unfortunate enough to step into one, and Ben
was planning on breaking a lot of legs with the traps.
  Ben was gone within the hour, loaded down with
equipment. He was back in two hours, gathering up
the last of the traps and packing enough emergency
rations to last several days.
  He kissed Rani and said, "They can't burn you
out of
  this place. And it would take a battering ram
to knock down that door. You know how to use that
M-60 machine gun. I'll try to have this thing over
and done with in two days. Three max. You be careful
and
don't
go outside for any reason. OK?"
  "You come back to me, old man, OK?"
  "Yes, Miss Jordan."
  "Ms."
  "Right!" Ben grinned. He was gone into the timber.
  Rani locked and barred the heavy door. She
sat down to wait.
  Ben lay on a ridge and watched the outlaws
approach. The outlaws were in a good mood, the break
in the weather having buoyed their spirits, filling them with a
false confidence.
  And he noticed their ranks had been thinned
considerably. But still they were in a good mood, many of
them laughing and speaking very profanely as to what they were
going to do to Rani when they caught her.
  Ben put an end to the party spirit by shooting
an outlaw in the stomach with his M-16. That seemed
to take all the joy from their moment.
  "On the ridge!" an outlaw shouted. "I seen
the bastard. Get him, boys!"
  Ben had moved back into the timber before the sound of
his shot had died away. He deliberately held
his fire, wanted the man to step into the timber. He
had some nasty surprises waiting for them.
  The outlaw in the lead lumbered into the timber, not
watching for sign. He tripped the first of many swing
  traps, the eighteen-inch sharpened stake driving
into his stomach. He hung suspended on the stake,
howling out his agony, screaming for someone to please
help him.
  Ben let him howl. It was good for his morale and very
demoralizing for the outlaw's buddies.
  The outlaws continued their headlong rush into the
timber, all caution tossed to the wind, with one
central thought: Get Ben Raines!
  Ben heard the sickening sounds of the bear trap
spring, the man's leg breaking and crushing under the
impact of the heavy jaws. The outlaw fell forward,
screamed once, and then passed out from the intense pain.
  Another outlaw failed to see the wire strung
ankle-high in the timber. The wire
tripped him, throwing him face forward into the snow, the
sharpened stake imbedded in the hard ground driving all
the way through the man's chest, the sharpened end tearing out
the man's back.
  Ben raised his M-16 and dropped three more
outlaws before the men got it through their heads that the chase
was not working out to their advantage.
  "Fall back!" the command was shouted. "Jesus
Christ-get out of these fuckin' woods. The man's
a damned army all by hisself."
  Ben was moving before the words left the man's mouth,
moving deeper into the woods and circling, angling
toward the edge of the clearing to the outlaw's southern
position.
  A burly, unshaven, smelly outlaw was running
wildly, his mouth open, gasping for air in the cold
thinness. Another thug who had had quite enough of
  one Ben Raines. Ben decided to give him one
final taste of combat, for this man was one Ben
recognized as having said some perfectly disgusting
things about what he wanted to do to Rani.
  Ben shot him in the knees, pitching the man howling
to the snowy, muddy ground.
  Ben pulled back into the timber, leaving the man
yowling for help.
  Ben waited for that help to arrive.
  "Garfield!" the shout came drifting to Ben.
"Luther Garfield! Where are you, man?"
  "Here!" Luther yelled, his voice pain-filled.
"The bastard shot me in the knees. Oh, Jesus,
man. It hurts."
  The outlaw's buddy came running, staying close
to the timber's edge.
  Ben slipped forward, his big Bowie knife in his
hand. "Here, asshole," Ben called, then moved
to one side.
  The man slid to a halt, his shotgun raised, the
muzzle pointing toward where Ben had been. "Come out
and fight like a man, you sneaky son of a bitch!" the
outlaw said, panting and gasping for breath.
  Ben came up behind the man and drove the big
blade into the man's skull, the blade penetrating
halfway through the man's brain.
  Ben see-sawed the blade out and ducked back
into the timber. He looked out into the small clearing.
Those outlaws remaining had given up the fight and were
running across the clearing, heading out.
  The taste for battle had left this bunch. They
wanted no more of Ben Raines.
  Ben squatted in the mud and snow. His
battle-tested and proven grin was still firmly locked
in place.
Chapter 36
  "Take your campaign and shove it up your ass,
Jake!" the big outlaw's second-in-command
told him bluntly. "I've had it!"
  "All right," Jake said calmly. "Carry your
asses on out of here, then."
  More than half of Jake Campo's men-those that were
left-walked to their vehicles and pulled out.
  "We're leavin', Red," Texas Red's
second-in-command told him. "Right now."
  The warlord nodded slowly. "OK. Just don't ever
let me see any of you again, though. "Cause
I'll sure kill you if n I do."
  "Screw you, Red!"
  The battered and hobo-looking base camp of the
outlaws became quiet as the men began pulling out.
Jake Campo and Texas Red looked around them
at the men remaining.
  Jake had fifteen men left. Texas Red had
ten who had elected to remain with him.
  "There's a pattern to Raines" movements,"
Jake
  said. "I been thinkin' about it. And the
circle keeps gettin' smaller." He looked
at a tattered and greasy map. "They ain't too
far from this river," he said, poking at the map with a
big, dirty finger. The others gathered around. "Our
boys was ambushed here, here, here, and here. Then right
here." He jammed a hole in the map in his
frustration. "You boys get some food and rest.
We'll take him tomorrow, for sure."
  Ben knew Jake was not stupid. Texas Red was
the next thing to a cretin, but Jake was intelligent.
Ben guessed, and guessed accurately, that Jake
would have very nearly pinpointed the cabin. Ben began
removing and resetting his traps. He spent all the
rest of that day relocating the bear traps, tearing
down and rebuilding the swing traps, removing and
resetting tripwires.
  He spent that night some four miles from the cabin,
then used part of the next morning finalizing his trap
locations. He guessed, and once more guessed
accurately, that most of the outlaws would be hightailing
it out of the state by now. At best, Ben felt,
Jake and Texas Red would be able to fluster no more
than thirty-five to forty men.
  By noon, he was finished and standing on the small
porch of the cabin.
  "Getting down to the wire now, isn't it, Ben?"
Rani asked, looking at him.
  "They'll be here in three or four hours,
probably. I'm going to clean up and take a
nap. By this time tomorrow it'll be all over."
  Once again, Rani was astonished at the calmness
of the man. There was no more emotion in his voice than a
man discussing the price of apples.
  Jake looked at the boot print in the mud. It
had frozen in place during the night, and had thawed
under the heat of the winter sun. It was the fifth track
the outlaws had found, along with a few broken
branches, a carelessly moved small log, and a
wrapper from emergency food rations.
  The obvious signs did not fool Jake. He
knew Ben had deliberately left them; was
deliberately leading them straight to him.
  And Jake knew-
knew
-Raines was going to win the final battle.
  Well, the man thought with a suppressed sigh, at
least it'll be Ben Raines killing me. Not some
goddamned housewife with a shotgun.
  "More sign up here, Jake!" the call echoed through
the woods.
  Jake walked up to the man and looked, a small
smile creasing his ugly face. But it was not a
smile of victory; more a smile of resignation.
  Raines had deliberately stepped into a muddy
spot and walked for ten or fifteen yards.
  Jake sat down on a log and took a can of
beans out of his jacket pocket. Using a military
can opener, he opened the can and began calmly spooning
beans into his mouth. His men looked at him, not knowing
what to make of this.
  "Better eat while we can," Jake said. One
last meal, he thought bitterly. Should have stayed east
of the Mississippi, he thought. Should have never set
Cowboy Vic up to kill that punk kid. That's
what all this is
  all about. All this shit is about that skinny little
kid. Raines has destroyed everything I built
over that one goddamned little kid. Christ! What
kind of man is he, anyway?
  Ben opened his eyes and swung his feet off the
bunk, pulling on his boots. "Get some rest,"
he told Rani. "I'll wake you in an hour.
Go on. We might not be able to sleep tonight."
  While Rani slept, Ben munched on
biscuits and sat looking out the one window
of the cabin. Soon, he thought. They'll be here
soon.
  Ben cut his eyes to look at the sleeping shape
of Rani. I feel something for this woman. Something
I thought I would never feel again. When this winter is
over, and we've been alone for several months, I
will know if this woman is the one I choose to spend the
rest of my life with. I think so. Even now, I
believe she is the one. Those eyes can hold me;
she has an inner strength that I find appealing.
Maybe, just maybe, this is the one.
  He shook those thoughts away and returned his
attention to the window.
  The sound of a trap springing shut slammed through the
quiet air. The horrible howling of a man with a
crushed leg ripped the afternoon.
  Rani came off the bunk, grabbing her rifle,
coming to Ben's side.
  "Goddamn, Jake!" a man yelled.
"Lookee there. A damned cabin built into that
rise."
  "They're here," Rani said.
  "I believe that would be an accurate statement,
dear," Ben replied.
Chapter 37
  "We're gonna blow you out of there, Raines!"
Jake's voice came through the timber. "This time,
we
got explosives."
  "But first you have to get close enough to use them," Ben
said to Rani.
  "You hear me, Raines?"
  "Yeah, I heard you, fat-ass," Ben shouted.
"Don't stand out there and brag about what you're going
to do-do it!"
  Jake flushed. He turned to his men and said,
"Charge the fuckin' house. Stay in the timber; it
leads all the way up there." He turned to Texas
Red's men. "You boys lay down a covering fire.
Now
go!"
  Jake and Texas Red had indeed brought several
cases of grenades with them. But grenades are
useful only if one gets close enough to throw them.
And what none of the outlaws knew was that Ike had
stashed several crates of deadly Claymore mines
in the cave behind the cabin-and Ben had brought enough wire
to battery-activate them from the house.
  That smile was on Ben's lips once more as he
sat behind the shuttered window, looking through a
peephole, the detonator box in his hand. The
shadowy figures of the outlaws flitted from tree
to tree, approaching the cabin.
  Ben pushed the switch activating the THIS SIDE
TOWARD ENEMY mines. The TSTE warning had always
amused Ben.
  The Claymores were not amusing to the outlaws. Before
the reverberating sounds of the explosions had died
away, the mangled bodies of half a dozen
outlaws lay on the ground. Ben hit the second
switch, and Jake was almost out of personnel.
  "Jake!" an outlaw slid to a stop in the
snowy, muddy ground. "Them's Claymores. I
remember them from "Nam. He's got 'em all
over the damn place. Think about this situation,
Jake. We can't win. You know how Raines plans
things out. The guy's like a screwin" computer or
something. He don't miss nothing. You know?"
  "Get to the point, Jimmy." But Jake knew
what the point was. He'd already thought about it.
  "We can't win, Jake. Look at that damn
place. No way we could burn them out, even if
we could get close enough to do it. It's built into the
hill. Raines has probably got food in there
to last for months. The guys is afraid
to go on, afraid to do nothing "cept go back
exactly the way we come. Raines has them traps
everywhere.
I-was
  Texas Red's insane yelling startled them all.
The outlaw jumped to his feet, a grenade in each
hand. He had pulled the pins and was holding the
spoons down. "Cowards!" Red screamed. "You're
all cowards. Ever
  damn one of you. "I'll take Raines out.
Me!
People will talk about me around campfires for centuries
to come."
  "Son of a bitch is crazy," one of Red's own
men muttered.
  "I heard that," a buddy said. "I'm gettin"
the hell outta here. You comin'?"
  "Right behind you, partner."
  And two more were gone, slipping quietly away,
unnoticed.
  Texas Red charged the cabin, yelling and cursing
as he ducked from tree to tree. He took his last
step in this life and stepped into a bear trap, the
jaws clamping shut, dropping him to the ground, his
left leg crushed.
  He fell hard, his hands under him, and for a moment was
stunned. Then the pain hit him, the grenades
forgotten. They were under his chest, the spoons gone.
  "I hate your guts, Raines!" Texas Red
squalled. "I hate you so bad I-was
  Two grenades exploded within a millisecond
of each other, the blasts shredding the outlaw, flinging
bits and pieces of him all around the timber. The
blast tore his crushed leg free of the jaws, tearing
it off at the knee. All that remained of Texas
Red was part of a leg and one boot, still trapped in the
jaws.
  "Jesus Christ!" an outlaw said. "That's it for
me, boys. I'm gonna go be a farmer or
something."
  Jake sat behind a thick tree and watched and
listened to the men leave, running for their lives. After
a time, he knew, without looking around him, he was
alone.
  Ben looked at what was left of Texas Red,
and the remains of him, splattered all over the ground.
Parts of him hung from low branches. "That's two for
Jordy," Ben called.
  "That's what it's all about, ain't it, Raines?"
Jake called, still hidden behind the tree.
"All these men dead, just for one lousy punk-ass
kid. You're crazy, Raines. You know that?
Crazy!"
  "Jordy was worth more than the whole bag of you
filth," Ben called.
  "You're probably right," Jake muttered, not
loud enough for Ben to hear. He shouted, "Just you and me,
now, Raines. How's it gonna be?"
  "Call it," Ben said.
  "I'll think about it some, Raines. You and the
broad ain't going nowhere long as I'm out here."
  Ben said nothing to that.
  "You was a writer, wasn't you, Raines?"
Jake yelled.
  "That's right."
  "Yeah. I read some of them. You wrote pretty
good adventure stuff. I used to be a school
teacher. Did you know that?"'
  "A school teacher?" Rani said to Ben.
  "I didn't know that, Jake," Ben said, raising
his voice. "What'd you teach?"
  "I was a coach."
  "That figures," Ben muttered. He didn't
know whether to believe the outlaw or not. He decided
Campo was lying. "You're stalling,
Campo!"
  "Sure, I am, Raines," came the
almost-cheerful reply. "Hell, nobody wants
to die."
  "But everybody wants to go to Heaven," Ben said with
his grin still locked in place.
  Jake laughed at that. "You believe in all that
shit, Raines?"
  "I believe in a higher power, yes." Ben
looked up at
  the sky, checking the sun. It would be dark in about
an hour. He wanted this over with before dark.
  "I don't believe in God, Raines. Too
many different versions of it around for me to accept.
Catholics believe one thing, Jews believe
another. Islam, Hindu. Hell, even the
Indians believed in a Higher Power. Too much
dogma bouncing around for this ol" boy, Raines."
  Hell, Ben thought. Maybe the guy had been a
school teacher.
  "So what do you believe in, Jake?" Ben
reached for his Thompson.
  "Myself, Raines. And maybe you," he added,
almost reluctantly.
"Me?"
  "Yeah. Maybe there is something to all those
stories. I don't know. I do know this: You don't
behave like a normal man. No normal man would
even think of taking on a hundred and fifty men.
Much less
winning."
  "His speech has improved," Rani
observed.
  "Yes," Ben agreed. "So?" he called.
  "You're not going to fight me fair, are you,
Raines?"
  "Not likely."
  Jake once more laughed. "Yeah. I damn
sure believe that."
  "Get on with it, Campo," Ben said, growing
tired of the dialogue.
  "OK," Jake said. "One more thing, Raines.
You believe gods are fair?"
  "What do you mean,
fair?"
  "Well, not possessing dishonesty or injustice.
Behaving in a proper manner."
  Ben's eyes grew cold. He knew then what
Jake was
  going to do. And Jake-all three
hundred pounds of him-was going to be in for a very ugly
surprise.
  "Not always, Jake."
  "But you do, Raines. You do."
  "I do
what,
Campo?"
  "I read about you, Raines, when you was fronting the
Tri-States. You're a man of honor, and
order, and discipline, right?"
  "To a certain degree, Jake."
  Jake laughed. "Yeah, you are, Ben. That's why
I'm going to win this fight. I just figured it out,
boy."
  But Ben was one step ahead of the outlaw.
  "You see, Raines." Jake stood up and
stepped away from the protection of the tree. He
unbuckled his web belt and let it fall to the
ground. "I'm unarmed. And you won't shoot an
unarmed man. Not Ben Raines. Ben Raines has
too much macho pride in him to do that."
  Jake stepped closer, into the very small clearing in
front of the cabin.
  Ben moved to the door and opened it, stepping out
onto the small porch.
  "Oh, you disappoint me, Ben," Jake said, his
eyes on Ben's Thompson.
  Ben laid the Thompson on the porch and stepped
onto the ground.
  Jake laughed. "I'm gonna tear your fuckin'
head off, Raines." He lifted his big fists.
"Just you and me, boy. A stand-up, duke-it-out,
fistfight. Just you and me."
  He moved closer to Ben. A hard glint of
victory was shining in his eyes. He spat on the
muddy, snowy ground and shuffled his booted feet in
some semblance of a prize fighter.
  Ben lifted his fists and stepped closer.
  Jake grunted, then laughed. He stepped in and
swung a huge right fist.
  Ben ducked and side-stepped. He kicked out with
his boot and caught Campo flush on the knee,
knocking the bigger, heavier man to the ground. Campo
shook his head and crawled to his knees. Ben
kicked the man in the face with the toe of his jump
boot. Teeth popped out of the man's mouth and rolled
around on the ground. Blood dripped from a smashed
mouth.
  Jake lifted his head, disbelief in his eyes.
He tried to rise to his feet. Ben
kicked him in the side, hearing ribs break under the
heavy toe of the boot. Jake screamed and fell to the
ground, white-hot pain lancing through him.
  Ben kicked him twice more in the head, one
savage kick tearing an ear from the man. Blood
streamed from the man's head.
  "Fight fair, you son of a bitch!" Jake
spoke through his ruined mouth, the words mushy, pushing
past torn lips.
  "No such thing, Campo," Ben told him. "Just
a winner and a loser."
  Jake rushed Ben, scrambling to his feet.
Ben stepped aside and the man ran headfirst into a
tree, splitting his head wide open. Blood
stained the man's face, pouring from his badly mangled
head.
  Ben picked up a wrist-sized stick from the ground
and brought it down hard on Campo's back, the force
of the blow driving the man to the ground.
  "Seems like I ain't been able to do nothing right the
past few months," Jake said. He suddenly
rolled and came up with a knife in his hand.
  Ben had never lost his savage, cold grin. He
pulled his .45 from leather, cocked it, and began
pulling the trigger. One in the chamber, six
in the clip. He put all seven rounds in the big
man's chest, each round knocking the huge man
backward. Jake Campo, outlaw, self-styled
warlord, died with his bloody eyes wide open and
staring.
  "That's three for Jordy," Ben said.
Chapter 38
  The warm spell broke on the third day, with
winter locking Ben and Rani in. Before the new
snows came, the pair had worked, dragging off the
bodies of the dead outlaws and dumping them into a deep
ravine, shoveling dirt and gravel over them.
  Now, as the cold winds howled around the snug little
cabin in the deep woods, and the snow piled up around
them, they sat in front of a fire and played chess.
  With Rani regularly beating Ben.
  "I don't know how you're doing it," Ben
grumbled. "But you're cheating. I just know you are."
  Rani laughed at him. "Checkmate," she said.
  "Crap!" Ben said.
  "How did you learn to fight like you did, Ben?"
she asked. "The way you fought Jake Campo."
  "There is no such thing as a fair fight, Rani.
Not outside the ring. I've never believed in those
so-called fair fights. One goes in
to win. Period. The trick is knowing you're right and
sticking by your convictions."
  "Did you always fight like that, Ben. I mean, even
when things were ...
normal?"
  "Yes," he said, putting away the board and
getting a deck of cards. "Strip poker,
maybe?" he grinned.
  "You're going to look awfully funny sitting there
on the cold floor, stark naked."
  "You have a point." He put away the cards.
  "Were you a loner as a boy, Ben?"
  Ben wore a reflective look for a moment.
"Yes. I guess I was. I never followed the
usual drummer. I think I marched to my own beat
even when it was socially unacceptable. Looking
back, I guess I really enjoyed being alone. I
know
I did. I tried not to bother anyone, and didn't
want anybody bothering me. Didn't always work that
way, though."
  She was curious about this man, this founder of the
Tri-States, the man that so many chose to follow.
"You had a normal childhood, though?"
  Ben laughed at her serious expression.
"Oh, sure. I played baseball and
basketball. But I never took them very seriously.
How does one take a
game
seriously? I spent most of my time working and chasing
girls."
  "Were you successful?" she asked, a twinkle in
her green eyes.
  "Well, I spent more time working than catching the
girls," he admitted.
  "But you caught your share of the girls?"
  "Yes," he said slowly. "Looking back,
I'll have to say I did. I wasn't a jock, so
that was a definite minus for me. But I had a
happy, very normal childhood, I guess.
I've never been a person who sought many material
things, Rani. I've always been content with just enough
to get by, and perhaps a tiny bit more. I never cared
much for
  a lot of pomp. I was never a joiner. Never
belonged to a country club; never cared much what people
thought of me. Like I said, I guess I marched to the
beat of another drummer."
  "Where have I heard that before?"'
  "Henry David Thoreau," Ben said,
his memory working hard to recall the line. "I
didn't agree with all that Thoreau said, but I
loved much of it."
  "Say it."
  "The line?"
  "Yes."
  "If a man does not keep pace with his
companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different
drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears,
however measured or far away."
  She looked at the man for a long moment. "I
guess that fits you rather well, Ben."
  "I guess it does, Rani."
  "I think I'm in love with you."
  "Be sure, Rani."
  "I'm sure, Ben."
  "Yes. I guess I am, too."
  The days spun and drifted and wound into weeks,
while the two in the cabin grew closer, mentally,
emotionally, and physically. To them, it was as if the world
gone mad around them did not exist. They built
snowmen, had snowball fights, explored, and fell
in love.
  January drifted into February and February
became March, but Ben and Rani really
didn't notice the passing months. March whispered
into April, then
  began roaring with the last major winter storm of the
season. As the storm abated, howling eastward to blow
itself out, Rani lay in Ben's arms before the
fireplace. Both of them were nearly asleep.
  Rani stirred and said, "It'll be full spring
soon, Ben."
  "Uh-huh."
  "Hadn't we better be thinking about pulling out
pretty soon?"
  Ben opened his eyes and looked around. "Did you
hear anything?"
  "What?"
  "I don't know. It was an ... well, it
wasn't a natural sound for the woods."
  "You're imagining things, old man."
  "I guess so. About pulling out. Where do you want
to go?"
  "You have to start making plans about setting up those
outposts, right?"
  Ben groaned and stretched. "Don't remind me
of that, please."
  "And you have to start thinking about your plans for the
Russian and Hartline, right?"'
  "Yes, dear."
  There was that noise again. Ben cut his eyes toward
the door. He was sure the mutants knew they were in
the deep woods, but so far none had shown any
willingness to attack.
  Was that a mutant out there? Ben wasn't sure.
  He listened. The noise-whatever it was-was not
repeated.
  Ben looked at his watch. Two o'clock in the afternoon.
The winds had ceased, and the temperature was once more
on the rise. He looked at Rani. She was
  looking at the closed cabin door.
  "Something wrong?" Ben asked.
  "Something's out there, Ben," she whispered. "And it
isn't an animal."
  Ben pulled on his boots and picked up his
.45, jacking back the hammer. "I'll go have a
look around."
  The cabin door splintered open. Men filled the
room. Ben cleared the room of the invaders, the
booming of the .45 almost deafening in the closed space.
Ben didn't know these men; they weren't outlaws, for
they were dressed in military field clothes, and they
were disciplined.
  Ben felt the shock as a bullet
struck him in the left shoulder, knocking him
backward. He fell heavily and grabbed his
Thompson. Holding it one-handed, he pulled the
trigger.
  The heavy weapon bucked and roared in his hand. The
slugs knocked and tore great chunks of wood out
of the walls and ceiling. It also cleared the doorway
of uniformed men, splattering blood and brains and
bits of bone all over the porch and small yard.
  Ben got to his feet just in time to catch a
bullet in his leg. The shock and force of the slug
knocked him sprawling. He lost his Thompson.
He grabbed a shotgun leaning against the wall in a
corner, and lifted it just as Sam Hartline stepped
into the doorway. The mercenary saw the shotgun and
jumped to one side as Ben pulled the trigger. Most
of the buckshot missed the man, but enough hit him
to knock him off the porch.
  Rani's screaming had, for some reason, stopped
echoing around the cabin. Ben cut his eyes,
frantically searching. She was gone.
  "Kill the son of a bitch!" Sam Hartline's
voice yelled
  the command. "Take the woman and get the hell
moving out of here."
  A bullet struck Ben's side, once more
slamming him to the cabin floor. He hit the floor
and rolled, coming up firing the sawed-off shotgun. The
full load struck a man dead-center in the head,
taking his head off his shoulders. The man flopped on
the floor, half in and half out of the cabin.
  Ben saw the grenade come flying through the doorway.
It landed on the floor and rolled. Ben dove for the
storage area, hit hard and bleeding. The grenade
exploded just as Ben reached the cave, the force of it
throwing him into the cave, shrapnel peppering his legs
and back.
  Something struck Ben on the back of the head,
dropping him into darkness just as the front part of the cabin
collapsed, sealing him in.
Chapter 39
  Cold. Ben was cold. And confused. And hurting.
All six feet plus of him was hurting. He
opened his eyes and found darkness surrounding him.
Slowly, tentatively, he moved the fingers of his
right hand. They worked. At least he was alive. He
tried moving his left hand. Pain shot white-hot
through the arm. He cut his eyes and looked at the
luminous hands of his wrist watch. One o'clock. He
struggled to remember ... remember something
very important. But what was it?
  Yeah. It had been two o'clock when the attack
came. So Ben had been out for ten or eleven
hours.
  But where was Rani?
  Hartline. Sam Hartline had taken her. He
remembered the man's shout about them having the woman.
  Slowly, cautiously, Ben moved all his
extremities. His left arm and right leg hurt.
But it was the pain in his stomach that worried him. Then
he remembered. Not his stomach, but his side. The
bullet had hit him just as he was turning. He
remembered the bullet entering and exiting. All right,
he could deal with that.
  But do it quietly! Survival leaped into his
mind. Take one thing at a time, Raines.
  Warmth. Got to get warm to reduce the chances of
killing shock.
  He lay very still, mentally reviewing every corner of the
cave//orage area. He put out his hand and felt
shelves to his right. OK. He knew where he
was. He pulled a tarp from the bottom shelf and
wrapped it around him. He lay for a time, listening for
any alien sounds. Nothing. He felt sure he was
alone.
  Painfully extending his arm, he felt on the
third shelf for candles and matches, knocking everything
on the shelf on top of him. He fumbled around and
found the candles and matches. He lit a candle and
placed it on the floor. Even that simple action
exhausted him. He lay still, gathering more strength.
  Food! As nauseous as it sounded, Ben knew
he had to have food-and liquids.
  He felt himself fading. Just before he passed out,
he blew out the candle.
  Then he dropped into unconsciousness.
  "You're a fine-looking cunt, lady," one of
Hartline's men told Rani. "OP Sam get
on his feet, he's gonna have a fine time with you."
  Rani spat in the man's face.
  The man drew back his fist.
  "You hit her and Sam'll have your ass roasted for
breakfast, Denning," a man warned him.
  The man dropped his fist. "My turn will come,
bitch!" he told her.
  Rani looked around her. She had no idea where
she
  was. She had been carried out of the woods and
dumped into the back of a truck, bound hands and feet.
But she knew one thing for certain: she was in
trouble.
  Ben opened his eyes, turned his head, and looked
at his watch. Seven o'clock. Should be daylight out. But
where was the light?
  Then he remembered the grenade, the explosion, the
walls caving in.
  Was he trapped?
  He didn't know. First things first. He had to tend
to his wounds and get something to eat.
  Summoning all his strength, Ben pushed the tarp from
him and sat up, his back to the shelving behind him. The
movement hurt him, the wound in his side opening up.
Couldn't be helped.
  He lit a half-dozen candles, placing them in
spots where, if he did pass out, they would not trap
him in fire. He found a large first-aid kit and
took off his shirt. He poured raw alcohol on
the wound in his side, front and back, then crudely
bandaged it. It wouldn't win any prizes for neatness,
but it was firm. He treated the wound in his arm,
bandaged it, then went to work on his leg. That was the wound
that worried him the most. The lead was still in his leg.
And he knew it had to come out.
  He drank some water from a tin and ate several
hard crackers. He poured iodine on the
wound and began probing with his fingers, outside the wound,
searching for the bullet.
  He breathed a sigh of relief when he found the
slug. It
  was just under the skin, on the outside of his upper
thigh.
  He heated the blade of a knife in the flickering
flames of a candle. Taking a deep breath, Ben
carefully sliced open his flesh and popped the slug
out. It bounced on the floor.
  With pain-sweat popping out and dripping from his face,
Ben fumbled in the first-aid kit and found a bottle
of penicillin. He took a half-dozen of the
pills, washing them down with sips of water. He
coated the wound with iodine and carefully bandaged it.
  He dozed for a few moments, resting, gathering his
strength.
  Opening his eyes, he felt better, a bit
refreshed. He began his crawl out of the storage
cave. He crawled carefully, for he had no
idea how much structural damage the large
grenade had done to the cabin. He didn't want a
beam falling on him.
  The shrapnel in his back irritated him, but there
was no way he could do anything about that. He
had poured raw alcohol down his back, and that would have
to do for the moment.
  The going was very slow. He would crawl a few
inches, carefully move lumber out of the way, then inch
forward. He found his Thompson, checked it, and found
it unharmed.
  Then he saw daylight. A thin line of sunlight
seeping through the ruined cabin's front wall. Or
what was left of the wall.
  But before he could reach the light, he passed out.
  It was a few minutes before noon when Ben opened
  his eyes. He knew then that he was hurt much
worse than he had thought at first. Have to take it very
easy, he cautioned. Very easy.
  He saw the pot hanging above the cold ashes in
the fireplace and inched toward it. Using his fingers,
he dug into the cold stew Rani had fixed and ate
greedily. He cleared the fallen lumber from around the
fireplace and built a fire. The warmth filled
him, soothed him, seemed to lessen the pain from his
wounds. Pulling a blanket over him, Ben lay
on the floor for a few moments, resting. He began
drifting in and out of consciousness. His mind was filled
with old memories. He tried to fight them away,
but they persisted.
  "What are your plans, Ben?" Salina had
asked him on that cool, misty morning outside the
motel in Indiana.
  He told her all his plans, his dreams, his
schedule he had worked out in his mind. He told her
of his home in Morrison and how he had literally
slept through the horror after being stung by wasps.
  "The stings probably saved your life," she
told him.
  They talked for a few moments more, than she
unexpectedly kissed him. She turned and walked
away.
  Ben had looked up into the face of Kasim, the
face filled with raw hatred.
  "I'll kill you someday," Kasim hissed the
hate at him.
  "I doubt it," Ben had replied.
  But Salina was dead, along with their child. Killed
by government troops during the assault on
Tri-States.
  Later, Ben had seen the first of many billboard
signs:
  BEN RAINES-IF YOU'RE ALIVE AND
READING THIS, OR IF ANYBODY KNOWS
THE WHEREABOUTS OF BEN RAINES, HAVE
HIM CONTACT US ON MILITARY 39.2.
KEEP TRYING. WE'LL BE LISTENING. WE
NEED ORDERS.
  But Ben didn't want to be anybody's commanding
general. He just wanted to be left alone.
To travel the ruined nation, to write his journal.
  It was not to be.
  Jerre. He had found her wandering alone on a
highway in Virginia. She had traveled with him
for a time. Finally left him to join others her own
age. To save the world from itself. A sort of
after-the-bombs flower child.
  When they parted she had left him a letter. Ben still
had it. He remembered the last paragraph.
  You've got places to go and things to do before you find
yourself-your goal, preset, I believe-and start to do
great things. And you will, Ben. You will. I hope I
see you again, General.
  Jerre.
  Ben had found Ike amid a bevy of
bikini-clad lovely young ladies in Florida.
The ex-navy SEAL had built a radio station-of
sorts. KUNT, Ike called it.
  Ben had been the "minister" at Ike and
Megan's wedding.
  But now Megan was dead. Killed when the
government of the United States had grown
vindictive and mounted their deadly assault against the
Tri-States.
  Juno, Ben's big husky, growled deep in his
throat.
  "We're friendly," the voice came out of the brush.
"I have some children with me."
  "Come on in," Ben said, keeping one hand on the
butt of his pistol.
  A black man and woman, with four kids,
walked up to the cabin porch by the lake. Pal
Elliot, Valerie, and the kids. Two blacks,
one Oriental, one Indian.
  Pal had been an airline pilot, Valerie a
top NYC fashion model. They had picked up
the kids, homeless, along the way.
  Now they were all dead. Part of the earth. Part of
Ben's dream of a society where all were truly
equal. Where medical care was denied to no one. Where
all had a job. Where crime was virtually
non-existent. Called Tri-States. And it
worked.
  Ben moaned in his pain-filled coma-like sleep as the
memories kept coming, and coming, and coming.
  Cecil Jeffery's New Africa never got
off the ground before the government crushed it, killing it,
grinding it under the heel of democracy turned
authoritarian. Cecil and Lila, and a handful of
others, had joined Ben's Tri-States.
  Lila was dead, with their children. Dissolved into the earth
of Tri-States.
  And when it was all over, and the nation had once more
been torn apart, and Tri-States lay smoking from
the massive government assault, Ben had gathered
a few hundred survivors around him.
  Ike, Ben's adopted daughter, Tina,
Judith, Doctor Chase, Jerre, and James.
Ben had looked at the handful of survivors, his
Rebels, the people ready to die for what they felt was
right and just. And looking at them, Ben knew the dream
would never die. Tri-States would live again. Ben
had picked up his Thompson.
  "All right, people," he'd said. "Let's do it."
Chapter 40
  Ben awakened once more that day, to eat what was
left of the stew and drink water. Lots of water.
He knew then that he was getting feverish. He
began taking aspirin along with the antibiotics.
He dropped back into his painful, coma-like
sleep.
  All during the next twenty-four to thirty-six
hours- Ben didn't know for sure, losing all
track of time-he drifted in and out of consciousness.
He would awaken just long enough to keep a small fire
going, and to force himself to eat and drink something. Then he
would fall back into blackness.
  When he awakened on what he thought was the third
day after the assault on the cabin, he knew he was
going to make it. He was weak as a sick baby, but
his fever was gone and his wounds showed no signs of
infection.
  But he knew he was not strong enough to make it to where
he had hidden his truck. Not by a long shot.
  For several days he was virtually helpless. Just
strong enough to keep a small fire going, feed himself,
and change the dressings on his wounds. He was not
  going to chance the deep timber yet. He knew it
was cold-blooded on his part, but maybe, just maybe,
he could help Rani alive. Dead would do her no
good.
  A week after the attack, Ben tried for his
truck. He gave up before he got any distance at
all, and returned to the cabin.
  The bodies of Hartline's men were
stinking, fouling the air. But he was too weak to try
to move them.
  Then, as it so often happens, it seemed like Ben
began gaining strength hourly. His wounds were healing
well, and he was eating like that much-talked-about horse.
  He had been walking around the woods near the
cabin daily, each day increasing the distance. Now he
felt he was ready to try for the truck and the radio.
  He packed a very light rucksack, with rations for
two days, just in case he didn't make it, and a
ground sheet and blanket.
  He set out for his truck. He wondered what was
happening with Rani.
  "My, you are a pretty one, aren't you, dear?"
General Striganov said, stroking Rani's cheek.
  She tried to bite his hand, the Russian jerking it
back just in time to avoid those strong white teeth.
Striganov laughed at her.
  "I'm glad you think it's funny," Rani said.
  "Oh, I do, dear," the general said. "But
unfortunately, poor Sam isn't in any condition
to find anything amusing. Your Ben Raines almost
killed him."
  "Where is Ben?"
  The Russian's smile was ugly.
"I'm really not sorry to say he's dead, Miss
Jordan. My last formidable enemy in the late
great country of America. Now I can make plans
to enlarge my ... ah ... operation."
  "Who was your idol as a boy,
General-Hitler?" Rani snapped at him.
  "He did have some good ideas, I will admit that.
He just didn't carry them far enough."
  "God, you're a monster!" she hissed the words
at him.
  Striganov laughed at her.
  "And if you think Ben Raines is dead, you're
badly mistaken. It would take a hell of a lot
better man than Sam Hartline to kill Ben
Raines. And I think you know it."
  The Russian's eyes clouded. "So you thought the
man to be a god, too, eh?"
  "No. I never did. There is but one God."
  "There is no God, you stupid woman! As you shall
soon discover. I don't believe I shall allow
Sam to have you, Miss Jordan."
  "Ms."
  "Umm."
  "Forget it."
  "Ms? Oh-yes. Of course. I do so
enjoy a strong-willed woman. I enjoy breaking
them. I didn't used to. I suppose my
association with Hartline is responsible for that
change. A most welcome change, too. Although
I don't carry it to the extreme as my friend
Hartline does."
  The Russian reached out, fondling Rani's
breasts. She slapped his hand away.
  "I do so enjoy a big-breasted woman,"
Striganov said.
  She spat at him.
  He knocked her off the chair.
  Through a red, teary haze, Rani screamed and
kicked at the man.
  He stepped back and removed his wide leather
belt. "The first step is submission," Striganov
said, swinging the belt. "The very first step toward total
submission."
  The leather cracked across Rani's jeans.
  "Take off your clothes."
  "Fuck you!"
  "Oh, that will come later, my dear. I assure you
of that."
  "Not if I can help it, it won't!"
  The leather cracked again. "Take off your
clothes, bitch!"
  "No way."
  The Russian raised the belt. "I believe you
shall, dear," he said with a smile. "I really believe
that you shall."
  When his arm had grown weary, and Rani's
screams were reduced to a pitiful whimper, the
Russian stepped back and looked at the woman,
huddled on the floor. "Strong-willed," he said.
"But I'll break you, dear. Body and mind,
I'll break you."
  Ben! Rani thought. Where are you, Ben?
Chapter 41
  Ben scrambled the upcoming transmissions and
picked up the mike. "Eagle One to Base
Camp. Eagle One to Base Camp."
  "This is Base," the voice cracked. "We've
been trying to reach you for days, General. Are you all
right?"
  Before Ben could reply, Ike's voice roared through
the speaker. "Where in the goddamn hell have you been,
Ben?"
  "Under attack," Ben radioed. "Rani and I
fought the outlaws and won. Then Hartline and his people
showed up. Caught us by surprise. I
got lead in Hartline, but he got more in me. He
took Rani. I'm hard hit, Ike, but I'm
going to make it. It was touch-and-go there for awhile.
Ike, I believe I can make it out of here, now.
So I'm going to head for the old capital of Vista.
You get the troops ready and-was
  The set went dead, the ON light blinking off.
  "Shit!" Ben said. Ben could make a bomb out of
almost anything at hand; he could gather great armies
together and command them to victory against
  overwhelming odds; he could take chaos and confusion
and turn it into calmness and order.
  But he didn't know a damn thing about radios.
  He sat on the tailgate of the truck and
cussed, turning the warm spring air blue.
  "Goddamn it!" Ike roared, after doing everything
except kicking the set at Base Camp.
  "Calm down, Ike," Cecil said. "Ben's
all right."
  "I'm calm, I'm calm!" Ike yelled,
scaring the young radio operator. his
You
calm down. I'm
calm,

he roared.
  "Yes," Cecil said with a smile. "I can
certainly see that." He turned to the operator.
"Get Dan Gray on the horn, please."
  Cecil brought the Englishman up to date on
Ben's situation, concluding with, "Drop whatever
you're doing and get out to Vista. Make certain
everything there is secure. Check out the old
airport. If it's suitable for prop landings,
I'll airlift a battalion out with others
to follow in trucks. Do that for me, will you, Dan?"
  "Moving within the hour, General," Dan radioed
back.
  "I'm leading the airborne troops," Ike
said. Cecil knew there would be no point in arguing
with the man.
  "All right, Ike. Of course. Get your people
together and equipped. It will probably be several days
before we get a report from Dan. Be ready to go."
  Ben did not return to the cabin. He had
emergency supplies in the pickup and knew where more
were buried. The pickup started at the first touch of the
key
  and Ben pulled out, driving slowly, careful
to avoid as many bumps as possible, not
wanting to open his healing wounds.
  He made it to the paved highway that first day.
There, he made camp and rested. By afternoon of the
second day, he was in the old Tri-States
capital of Vista.
  He did not look at the split-level home
he and Salina and Tina and Jack had called home
for many years. He deliberately kept his eyes from
the home. Too many memories there. Too many.
  It was in that front yard that Ben had killed his own
brother in a gunfight, after his brother had joined a
Nazi group and had tried to ambush Ben.
  Too many memories.
  The littered and ruined town just held too many
memories for Ben.
  He drove to the old airport.
  There, Ben set up camp in a small building
just off the strip. He rested, and began a walk-around
of the strip. Surprisingly, it was in fairly good
shape.
  He had a strong hunch that Ike had called
Colonel Gray after their own transmissions had
abruptly ended. Dan would break all records
getting here, Ben felt sure. And Cecil had
probably ordered someone, Ike, he
felt sure-he had probably insisted-to lead some
sort of airborne assault. As soon as Dan
and his people arrived, they would begin clearing the strip for the
Rebels' old prop planes.
  But for now, Ben could do nothing except wait.
  "Are you certain General Raines is dead?" the
Russian asked Hartline.
  Sam Hartline was in the hospital, his, side
and chest bandaged. The operation had been long, with the
buckshot from Ben's shotgun almost killing the man.
  "I'm ninety-nine-percent certain," the mercenary
replied. "He was hit three times before the grenade
was tossed into the cabin. The explosion wrecked the
place. I just don't see how anybody could have
lived through that."
  "Ben Raines is not just
anybody,"
General Striganov reminded his friend and
associate. "Far from it."
  "Yeah, I know it. But he's dead, General.
Or dying. Bet on it."
  "We are, my friend," Striganov said. "We are
both betting our lives."
  Dan Gray and his Scouts pulled in after a
grueling two-and-a-half-day forced drive
from east Texas, where they had been working with
civilians, mapping out plans for the upcoming outpost
systems.
  "You boys look beat," Ben told them. "Get
some rest. There's nothing happening around here."
  The chief combat medic with Gray's Scouts
inspected Ben's healing wounds and told Ben he had
been very lucky.
  "I know that, Sergeant," Ben said.
  Colonel Dan Gray was standing about, a frown of
disapproval on his face. Ben cut him off before he
could speak.
  "I know what you're going to say, Dan. But I
was just weary of being nurse-maided, that's all."
  "General, you
are
the Rebels. You
are
the movement. You-was
  Ben waved him silent. "That is what I am
trying to overcome, Dan. That type of feeling. And
you're wrong. We are
all
the Rebels. The movement cannot, must not, revolve
around one man or one woman. I won't
have that. I will
not
have that. Is that clear?"
  "Yes, sir."
  "Fine. Then we won't speak of it again."
  "No, sir."
  Ike and his patched-up aircraft landed two days
later. Ike had brought a battalion of Rebels
with him, with another battalion coming in trucks,
along with heavy artillery and light tanks. A
third battalion would be held in reserve. They
would arrive in the old Tri-States within the month.
  Ben and Ike shook hands and embraced, Ike
saying, "You lucked out again, old buddy."
  "Skill, Ike," Ben kidded him. "Just plain
ol' know-how."
"Shhittt!"
Ike said. He sobered and said, "Tell me about
Miss Jordan."
  "Hartline's got her, and I'm going to get her
back. It's that simple."
  Ben brought the men and women of his Rebels up
to date on General Striganov's experiments and
Hart-line's involvement with them.
  There was silence after Ben finished speaking.
Colonel Dan Gray broke the silence. "Our
duty is very clear, General. We have to put the
Russian out of business."
  "That is exactly what I intend to do, people," Ben
said.
Chapter 42
  General Striganov stepped out of his office and
looked toward the east. He did not believe for one
instant that Raines was dead. And the scouts he had
sent out a week ago should be returning with the confirmation
of that suspicion any hour.
  The trail-worn Russian scouts of the IPF
returned and gave their general the bad news.
  "General Ben Raines is alive and doing quite
well," they told Striganov. "He is massing
troops in the old Tri-States."
  Striganov did not have to have a picture drawn for
him to know what that meant.
  "How many troops?"
  "At least two battalions. Some are
airborne. We believe more men and machines are coming
shortly."
  Striganov dismissed his people. He again looked
toward the east.
  "So, General Raines," he muttered.
"We shall once more clash. But this time there will be no
gentleman's agreement about fairness and the code of
honor among fighting men. So be it. One of us will
know total victory this time. And one of us will know the
taste of death."
Chapter 43
  Ben had ordered two more battalions of
Rebels to be readied and sent westward. He was
planning to move against Hartline and the Russian on
the sixth of June. Already he had sent teams of
Scouts out to reconnoiter the Russian's
position, and first reports indicated the
Russian's position was a strong one.
  Cecil was furious about being left behind, and Ben
knew that someway, somehow, Cecil would figure out a
way to get into the fight. Ben smiled. He didn't
blame him. He would have done the same thing.
  Ben had ordered his people out into the countryside, on the
off chance that Striganov might launch a first strike
and catch them all bunched up.
  Ben turned cold eyes toward the west. He was
not aware of it, but he was smiling that wolfs smile.
  "This time, Hartline, I'm going to kill you. This
time, General Striganov, I will wipe your lousy
IPF from the face of the earth. And I will
return Rani to me. You're too smart to have harmed
her. I'm coming to get you, Rani."
  The sighing winds seemed to ask if that was a
promise.
  "That's a promise," Ben said.