“My God, Ben!” Lucas said. “You’ve killed Henry.”
Ben looked at the man. “You think I wanted to, Lucas?”
“I think you were mighty quick to shoot,” another man said.
“You maybe wanted him to shoot me before I opened fire?”
The men walked away without answering. They left Henry’s body where it lay on the street.
Ben shook away the memories of years past and forced himself to return to the smoky air outside of the ruins of Oklahoma City. Buddy spotted him and walked over. “What are we going to do with these gang members, Dad?”
“I don’t know, son. I don’t see that we have much choice except turn them loose and hope for the best. Have any of them professed any desire to join us?”
“No. For the most part, they are a sullen and uncooperative bunch.”
“We’ll have to fight them someday. Or someone will.”
“What were you thinking about, Father? You appeared to be deep in thought.”
“Oh, of events long past. Racial hatred. Social injustice—real and imagined. Problems the Great War should have solved, but didn’t.”
His son smiled. “Heavy mental ponderings, Father. Did you arrive at any solutions?”
“Unfortunately, no.”
“Father . . .” Buddy hesitated. “Have you ever considered clearing out perhaps half a dozen states in our southern area and just letting the rest of the country go to hell?”
Ben laughed. “Oh, yes. Many times. I was thinking about that just the other day.”
“And?”
“It wouldn’t work. We would be fighting a never-ending series of hit and run raids all along our borders. It would be another case of the so-called have-nots against the so-called haves. And that’s one of the reasons this country went down the toilet in the first place. We elected a socialist for a president and a bunch of wishy-washy assholes in Congress. They mandated that big government be all things for all people all the time.”
“A classless society, Father?”
“Something like that.”
“That won’t work.”
“Of course, it won’t work. Looks good on paper, but try to put it in practice and it tears the country apart. In any society there will always be those who have more than others. Either by luck, inheritance, or just plain hard work. And there will always be those who will attempt to take what is not theirs.”
“Not down in Base Camp One,” Buddy said.
Ben chuckled softly as he rolled a cigarette under the disapproving eyes of his son. “And do you know why we have so little of that in any Rebel controlled area?”
“Because we won’t admit just anybody who comes along.”
“That’s right. So consequently, we are not a democracy. You know as well as I of the hundreds of thousands of people scattered throughout this country who refuse to join with us; who would rather live without protection, without medical care, without hope, because they refuse to follow the few laws we have on the books.”
“And it never ceases to baffle me,” Buddy said.
“You know something, son? It never ceases to baffle me, either.”
NINE
The Rebels pulled out, leaving behind them a confused and very disarmed bunch of gang members. Some of them would heed Ben’s warning and try to live a life free of crime, but Ben knew that most would not.
The last thing Ben did before leaving the still-blazing ruins of Oklahoma City was to blow up the old shopping mall.
“Shit, General!” Mookie said. “I ain’t got no home.”
Ben looked at him in disgust and walked away.
The long Rebel column headed west for a few miles, then turned north on 87. The highways had deteriorated badly and if the Rebels could average twenty miles per hour they considered themselves lucky. They saw no signs of human life. The Creeps had been ranging out farther and farther in their hunt for food, and those people who had not been taken for brunch had cleared out.
All along the route, towns had been destroyed, much of that having been done by the Rebels, several years back. Vance A.F.B. had been looted so many times the Rebels did not even stop. Enid was in ruins. The Rebels were only a few miles south of the Kansas line before they spotted the first signs of human life.
“Scouts report smoke coming from the houses up ahead,” Corrie said. “The townspeople have a pretty good defensive line thrown up around the town and the scouts say they are prepared to defend.”
“Tell the scouts to back off and make no hostile moves. Wait for me.”
Ben reached for a map case and Beth said, “Just about fifteen hundred population before the war, General. Approximately ten miles south of the Kansas line.”
“Thank you, Beth,” he said with a smile.
“You’re welcome, sir.”
“Scouts report about three hundred men, women, and children in the town,” Corrie said. “Men and women heavily armed.”
“Any flags flying?”
“No, sir.”
Ben halted the long column about a mile from town and drove on up to the scouts’ position, about three hundred yards from the first barricade. He took a bull horn.
“This is General Ben Raines of the Rebels. We mean you no harm. We have doctors with us if you need medical attention. I repeat: we mean you no harm. We’re Rebels.”
There was no response from those behind the barricades. The Rebels could see where a dirt road had been worn in the earth, leaving the main highway and circling the small town.
“They’re talking on CB,” Corrie said. “Channel sixteen. They don’t believe we’re the Rebels.”
Ben listened to the people talk back and forth.
“I tell you, I heard General Raines was taken prisoner and shot down in Mexico,” a man said.
“If that’s those damn Nazis,” another said, “I’d rather die right here than join them.”
Ben cut in. “Listen to me, people. I am Ben Raines. Field Marshal Hoffman and all his top people are dead. The Nazis have been defeated and are no longer any threat. But the Night People and the roaming gangs of thugs are a problem. We just cleared Dallas/Fort Worth and Oklahoma City of those types. My battalions are working all over this nation cleaning it up, again. If we were unfriendly, with all the firepower we have, don’t you think I would have already opened fire? Now, I don’t know what else I can do to prove to you that I am Ben Raines.”
A man’s voice came over the CB. “Back before this nation fell into the hands of democrats, what was the first book you wrote?”
Ben laughed. “The first book I wrote, or the first book I had published?”
The voice chuckled. “Spoken like a true writer. Come on in, General Raines.”
Ben and his team walked the few hundred yards to the now opened gate. A man stepped out and Ben narrowed his eyes. “Well, I’ll just be damned! Bill Block.” He jogged up and stuck out his hand.
The man laughed and took the hand. “Good to see you, Ben. My God, man, it’s been years.”
“Ten years, at least. The last writers’ convention, I believe. Down in . . . San Antonio, I guess.”
“That’s it. Tell your people to come on in.” He pointed. “Good place to set up tents right over there on the flats. Come on, you old hoss thief. Let’s talk western books for a time.”
Bill Block had been a very successful writer of men’s adventure and was just hitting his stride when the world blew up. Like Ben and a few other writers who had the courage to stand up to a fast-growing socialistic government in America, Bill Block had been hassled more than once by federal agents.
“I tried to call you after you didn’t show up at the last convention down in Beaumont,” Ben said. The men were sitting in the den of a small, but very neat home. “But your phone had been disconnected.”
“Goddamn government fell on me, Ben. After I wrote The Fall of Freedom, I really started getting hassled. Federal agents came in and seized all my records, all my manuscripts, all my equipme
nt. Bastards charged me with sedition and held me in federal custody for weeks. No bail, no communications with anybody. You remember Nickie, over in Missouri? They did the same thing to him. And they were coming after you, too, Ben. But the bastards were afraid of you. They knew you were armed and would shoot if they got too heavy-handed. Then, too, you had a hell of a following. The government was afraid of you, Ben.” He grinned. “You stuck it to those bastards, Ben. I’m proud of you.”
“What ever happened to Langhorn?”
“The government shut him down, Ben. During the last days before the Great War, the federal bully boys went after every writer who dared preach rebellion. They always came at night, kicking in doors, slapping people around. They shut down Bob. They jailed Mike. Hell, they killed Clet. Then they were coming after you. But it’s the funniest thing, Ben. All the senators and representatives and appointees who kissed the ass of the last president and went along with all his gun-grabbing and socialistic programs . . . what’s happened to them?”
“Those that aren’t dead are in hiding.”
“In hiding?”
“Yeah. From me. I swore I’d nail every son of a bitch that voted for those programs that crippled this nation.”
“Have you found any of them?”
“Eight, so far.”
“And?”
Ben’s eyes were humor-filled. “I dealt with them.”
Rebel intelligence was the best in the world, but due to their relatively small numbers, they could not be everywhere at once. What the Rebels did not know was that many of the nation’s senators and representatives had survived the bloody years and were living and working in upstate New York, in the Adirondacks. Unfortunately, few conservatives had survived and those men were not included in the gathering. Senators Hanrahan, Benidict, Arnold, Ferry, Ditto, Goahy, and others of their left-wing ilk, along with Representatives Fox, Crapums, Rivers, Hooter, Lightheart, Holey, and a host of others who leaned so far to the left it was unbelievable they could even stand upright, were just about ready to implement their grand plan of putting the nation back together.
A mercenary army had been training in very isolated spots in Canada for several years. Their commanders said they were now ready to take on the hated Rebel army and their most despised leader, Ben Raines.
“I just hate Ben Raines,” Lightheart said, stamping his foot.
“I do too,” Harriet Hooter said, stamping her foot.
“Racist, sexist, honky son of a bitch!” Rita Rivers said, stamping her foot.
“I just hope to hell MacDonald’s gets back in business soon,” the only surviving ex-president of the now defunct United States bitched.
“I now officially call the first joint session of the new Congress of the United States to order,” I.M. Holey solemnly intoned, banging the gavel. “First order of business is . . .”
“Kill Ben Raines,” an avowed liberal shouted.
“Publicly crucify Ben Raines!” another liberal squalled. “Make him suffer!” This one was on record as stating that any kind of violence sickened him.
“Pull out all his fingernails and toenails and then hang him by the neck and let the vultures eat him!” a former representative from Massachusetts screamed. He had been the first one to sign the bill outlawing all violence on American TV.
“Drive a stake through Ben Raines’s heart!” one of the former senators from New Jersey shouted.
The speaker let the men and women vent their spleens for a time and then once more banged the session to order. “The question is this: are we prepared to declare war against Ben Raines and the Rebels?”
“Yes!” the gathering of men and women shouted.
The speaker adjourned the session and everybody went outside to grill hamburgers under a replica of the Golden Arches.
Now, just how a group of avowed liberals, who all their lives had espoused non-violence, could justify putting together a mercenary army to wage bloody war is anybody’s guess. But since most liberals think of themselves as a reborn combination of Joan of Arc, Jesus Christ, Carrie Nation, and Aristotle, and firmly believe they sit on the left side of God, it’s not that difficult to figure.
Ben Raines, on the other hand, was more in step with Diogenes the Cynic.
The next few months were going to be very interesting.
General Paul Revere smiled when he received orders to make ready to march against Ben Raines. He’d been waiting for this moment for several years. He was ready, and his army was ready. There was no doubt in Revere’s mind that his army could and would crush Ben Raines and his stupid Rebels. Revere did not share the lofty thoughts of the men and women down in what used to be called America. He was a professional soldier, among other things, and had been all his life.
This war was to be a very personal affair with Revere. He knew Ben Raines; had known him for years, although the two men had not seen one another for nearly twenty-five years. Had soldiered with him in ’Nam—under his real name. Ben Raines had been responsible for him getting court-martialed and pulling stockade time.
It had never occurred to Revere that Ben Raines would object so strenuously to his knocking off some Vietnamese tramp. Truth was, Ben didn’t care how many grown Vietnamese women he bedded down, but raping and sodomizing a nine-year-old girl was more than Ben could take. He had pistol-whipped Revere and handed him over to the MPs.
Revere had sworn to someday kill Ben Raines. He had busted out of the stockade before they could ship him back Stateside for hard prison time, and made it over into Thailand. There he ran a black-market operation until the war ended and then drifted to Africa, working as a mercenary. He had fought all over the world: Central America, South America, Africa, the Middle East, Northern Ireland, and was fighting in Eastern Europe when the Great War came.
Revere was a sorry excuse for a human being, but he was a damn good soldier. Those dimwits down in the Adirondacks had promised him he could be general of all armed forces after he defeated Ben Raines and the country was restored to order.
Revere had gotten a big kick out of that. He knew America would never be what it was. Not in two lifetimes. He shared that much with Raines.
Those silly ninnies down in the mountains actually thought that if Ben Raines was defeated, all the people in what used to be called America would come rushing to them, bowing and scraping and kowtowing and asking them to “Please lead us out of this terrible mess.”
Revere had plans of his own for America. After Raines was dead and buried, he’d kill those stupid politicians and he would be King of America.
There was only one little hitch to those plans of Paul Revere. One small obstacle standing in the way.
Ben Raines and fifteen battalions of Rebels.
“It may not be the thugs and punks you should be worried about, Ben,” Bill Block told him at supper.
“Oh?”
“We had some people come through here last week. Came down from Canada. They told some pretty wild tales about this huge army being formed up in the eastern part of the country. Thousands and thousands of men, under the command of someone called Paul Revere. You heard anything about that?”
“Not a word. Did these people seem stable to you?”
“Oh, yes. Very much so. The only thing that I didn’t put any credence to was the story that a bunch of liberal politicians who escaped the bombing of Washington and then the fall of Richmond was running the whole show out of a place in the Adirondacks.”
Ben shook his head. “My people scan every known frequency, Bill. Twenty-four hours a day. We’d have heard something.”
“Maybe not, Ben. Everybody knows you people have the most sophisticated equipment in the world. Anyone smart enough to put together a huge army would have enough sense to stay off the air, except for short-range CB talk.”
Ben finished the meal in silence. Over coffee, he said, “So that’s where they went.”
“Who went where?” Bill asked.
“All those goddamned liberal politic
ians that I couldn’t find to hassle like they did me, that’s who. Everyone knows that after the military kicked the president out of the White House, he went hard underground with about fifty of those bastards and bitches who helped destroy this nation. He, and they, never surfaced in Richmond, either.”
“I can’t say that I blame them,” Bill said drily. “Knowing that you had a noose for them.”
“Oh, hell, Bill. I didn’t kill them. Most of them were too old for me to kick their ass, so I just told them what I thought about them and warned them if they ever set foot in any Rebel-controlled area, I would hang them.”
“Did they believe you?”
“Oh, yes, indeed.”
Ben excused himself and returned to his temporary CP, informing Corrie what Bill had said. “Check it out, Corrie. Drop scouts in at the edges of the Adirondacks, north, south, east, and west, and have them work inward. Burst transmission only and only at pre-set times. Get them moving, Corrie. I have a bad feeling about this.”
TEN
Ben told the batt coms with him to stand their troops down and rest. Corrie got on the horn and brought in all of Ben’s commanders.
“Funny thing,” Ike said, as he and Dan Gray rode back with Ben to the CP. Ben’s Rebels had quickly cleared a strip for the planes just outside of the small town. “All the gangs just seem to have dropped out of sight.”
“Uh-huh,” Ben replied.
Dan Gray said, “And not a sign of the Creepies. One day we are fighting gangs and Creeps, the next day—nothing.”
“Uh-huh,” Ben said. Then he smiled. “Just because a group of people is slightly out of step with the norm doesn’t make them bad people.”
“I beg your pardon?” Dan asked.
“Just thinking out loud, Dan.”
“Another cargo plane coming in,” Corrie said.
“That’d be Georgi and Rebet,” Ben said. “Tina and West should be here within the hour.”
“Do you have any idea what is going on, Ben?” Ike asked.
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