The man shrugged. “Why go to all that bother if someone else is gonna do it for you?”
Anna shook her head at that.
“Anyways, when I seen what Ray Brown done to your dogs, I ’bout puked. I’ve always like dogs; don’t like to see no harm come to ’em. I knew right then and there I’d better haul my ass outta there. And I done ’er, too. But on the way out, I come up on Tommy Monroe. He had him some prisoners. Him and his people had raped the women—some of ’em no more than children—and they used ’em bad, too. Tommy, he just lined up the folks and shot ’em dead. He tossed me that there gold bracelet he took off a man’s wrist. That’s how I come by it. And that’s the truth.”
Ben looked over at Corrie and she nodded her head. She was wearing a headset and was monitoring what the PSE operator in the next room was saying. The prisoner was telling the truth.
“How’d you get up here?” Ben asked.
“Started out walkin.’ These old boys come along in cars and trucks and give me a ride. Then y’all showed up.”
“And you plan to do what?”
“Drift, I reckon.”
“You have no plans, no thoughts of the future?”
The man shrugged his shoulders. “I quit high school in the ninth grade. Finally got me a job drivin’ a pulp-wood truck. But I couldn’t stay out of trouble. I like to drink. I was in jail when the Great War blew everything to hell and gone. Then it was just hand to mouth for a long time. I’ll just bum around, I reckon.”
“Do it outside of Rebel-controlled territory,” Ben told him.
“You can count on that.” Some fire returned to the man’s eyes. He glared at Ben for a moment. “Who the hell do you think you are, General? You ain’t got no right to tell me I got to work.”
“And you have no right to expect us to feed you and house you and clothe you and see to your medical needs while you lay up on your ass and do nothing,” Ben countered.
“That’s the way it used to be.”
“No more.”
“I can see that plain.”
“All right. You can go,” Ben told him. “Hit the trail. North. And keep going until you’re out of our territory. Then you can keep going north, or turn east or west; makes no difference to me. Just get gone.”
“You’re a cold, mean son-of-a-bitch, Ben Raines.”
“I’ve been called worse.”
“I ’spect you have.” The man stood up and stared at Ben for a few seconds. “You’ll never make your rules work nationwide, Ben Raines. The American people won’t stand for it.”
“I have no plans for the entire nation.”
“Lemme ax you this, General: so you get all set up here again. All your rules and such. What are you gonna do when hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of folks, come floodin’ ’crost your borders again? Shoot ’em all?”
“It might come to that. But I hope not.”
“Then y’all better get ready to fight for the rest of your lives. They’s millions of folks around that ain’t got no jobs and ain’t got no hope of ever gettin’ none. And they ain’t gonna live under your laws, General.”
“Then they’ve got a real problem.”
“I ain’t never, ever, seen no one like you, General.”
“Thank you.”
The man blinked. Shook his head. “Can I go now?”
“Please do.”
Ben sat quietly for a time after the man had left, the only voice in the room that of Corrie, touching base with the other battalions in the field.
She finally told the team working the main communication truck to take it. She took off her headset and leaned back. “They’re all reporting the same thing, boss. Wherever they go, hundreds of people just milling around. Not doing anything, just looking for something to eat. Walking around in rags, picking through the rubble, living in filth. We’re going to have some real health problems before long.”
“Probably billions of chickens wandering around, laying eggs everywhere,” Ben said, just barely hanging on to his temper. “Untold thousands of cattle and hogs and sheep. Can’t these goddamn people do anything for themselves? We started from scratch, why can’t they?”
Corrie waited until Ben had ceased his angry muttering. She smiled and said, “However, there is one small bit of news you’d better know now.”
Ben cut his eyes. “I don’t know whether I want to hear it. But go ahead.”
“Remember you said that leaving that little con artist Emil Hite in Europe was the one bright spot in our returning to the States?”
Ben sighed. “All right, Corrie. What has that little bastard done now?”
“Nick Stafford just radioed Cecil at Base Camp One. Seems that Emil Hite has just proclaimed himself to be the SUSA’s ambassador to Hungary.”
Ben put his forehead down on the cool surface of the old table he was using for a desk. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “Ask Cecil to please recall our, ah . . . new ambassador and bring him home.”
“Where do you want him assigned?”
“How about the moon?”
“Not feasible at this time.”
“How about assigning him to Thermopolis?”
“Rosebud said she’d shoot him.”
“Emil or Therm?”
“Both of them.”
Ben raised his head and smiled. “Then assign him to Cecil’s 22 Batt.”
“Cecil is your best friend!”
“That’s what friends are for.”
Corrie was busy for a few moments, the speaker turned off so Ben could not hear the transmissions. “Cecil says he’ll be happy to recall Emil. But he is strictly your baby.”
“How about assigning both Emil and Cooper to a two-man observation post in the Rockies?” Jersey suggested.
“Now, now, my little cactus flower,” Cooper said.
Jersey tossed him the bird. “Screw you, Cooper!”
“You have just put into words my one burning desire, you lovely little Apache princess.” Cooper was moving toward the door before the words left his mouth, Jersey right behind him. Fortunately for Cooper, he could always outrun Jersey. But this day, when he had outdistanced the shorter-legged Jersey, he made the mistake of hiding in an old two-old outhouse. The outhouse had just recently been abandoned as a secondary relief station and the pit was still rather fragrant.
Jersey began rocking the old privy, with Cooper screaming like a banshee, and finally turned it over. Cooper fell a few feet. Into the pit.
It was quite an operation getting Cooper out, involving the use of a Hummer with a winch and the Rebels all wearing gas masks.
Jersey made herself scarce. She knew Cooper was going to get her for this.
“You like snakes in your sleeping bag, Jersey?” Ben asked with a smile.
“I really didn’t mean for him to fall into the shit pit,” Jersey said.
“How about a dead skunk in your sleeping bag?” Corrie asked her.
“It was an accident, I tell you!”
“He’ll probably put dead mice in your canteens,” Anna suggested.
“Look, you guys,” Jersey moaned. “Cooper has an inventive enough mind. He doesn’t need any help from you. Just keep your suggestions to yourselves, huh?”
But Cooper was all forgiving and sweet (after he took several showers), and that made Jersey even more nervous.
“He’s plotting to get you,” Ben said with a smile.
“Yeah, when you least expect it,” Beth said.
“This is going to be something to see,” Corrie remarked.
“I can hardly wait,” Anna said.
“Will you for Christ’s sake do something, Cooper!” Jersey yelled at him.
But Cooper would only smile and say, “All is forgiven, my little desert blossom.”
“In a pig’s ass, it is,” Jersey snarled at him.
“This is a lot more fun that actually doing something,” Cooper told Ben one evening after chow.
“Are you going to pull someth
ing on her?”
Cooper shook his head. “No. But Jersey thinks I am. That’s why it’s so much fun.”
As the column slowly advanced north, in a zig-zag route, taking various highways, they began to see signs of a massive and hurried exodus by the punks and rabble. But still no signs of Jethro Jim Bob Musseldine or his army.
“Do they even exist?” Ben asked one late afternoon, as the Rebels were making camp for the evening.
“If they do, they’re staying off the radio,” Corrie said. “I have a hunch they’re using CBs in a very limited way. We’ve intercepted nothing.”
Ben sipped his coffee and then said, “I swear I’ve felt eyes on me.”
“Me, too,” Jersey agreed.
“Oh, hell, Jersey,” Ben told her. “That’s Cooper, lusting after your body.”
Cooper waggled his eyebrows and grinned, nodding his head in agreement.
Jersey gave him a dirty look.
Corrie held up a hand for silence. She listened, and then said, “Scouts have made contact with Musseldine’s people. We are being warned to turn back now or die.”
“Wonderful,” Cooper said.
Beth yawned at the warning.
Anna spat on the ground in contempt.
Ben drank his coffee and said nothing.
“Boss,” Corrie said. “I have contact with Mussel-dine.”
Ben took the mic. “Musseldine?”
“What do you want, Raines?”
“We need to talk, Musseldine. Before we start butting heads in a needless war.”
“I have only this to say to you, Raines: leave our territory at once or die.”
“You’re an idiot, Musseldine.” Ben tossed the mic back to Corrie and went off to find the mess tent.
NINE
Rebel tanks blew the roadblock and guards apart at first light, sending various body parts flying all over the place.
Musseldine’s men returned fire, mostly in the form of small arms. The bullets clanged off the tanks and went whining away into the warm and humid summer air.
“FO’s have their positions spotted,” Corrie said, standing beside Ben.
“Mortars,” Ben said.
Mortar crews began laying down a devastating walk-in of 81 and 60mm rounds. Musseldine’s forward positions soon fell silent. The Rebels advanced to find shattered bodies and smashed weapons.
“Stupid,” Ben said, looking down at one foxhole, and at what was left of several men after a 60mm round had landed directly in their midst. “So far as we know, these people aren’t thieves or murderers or criminals of any type. Why won’t they at least sit down with me and talk this thing out?”
No one said anything because they all knew that Ben was not expecting any reply.
“Corrie, see if you can make contact with this Mussel-dine. Arrange a meeting. This bloodshed is not necessary.”
The column was about thirty-five miles south of the ruins of Little Rock, on highway 167.
“Boss, Musseldine wants to know if you are ready to surrender.” Corrie asked, struggling to hide her smile.
Ben looked at her, then took off his helmet and scratched his head. “Bring me one those prisoners. I’ve got to find out something more about this squirrel.”
“Right, boss. Ah . . . there is something you should know . . .”
Ben arched an eyebrow.
“Every man we captured was carrying a Bible.”
“Oh, me,” Ben said. “I really hope we aren’t dealing with a bunch of religious nuts.”
“I wouldn’t want to bet against it,” Beth said.
“We’ll soon know.”
The prisoner’s eyes shone with the light of a fanatic. “We are the Army of the Salvation, the Sword, and the Hand of the Lord!” the man shouted at Ben. “And you, sir, are an abomination.”
“Is that a fact?”
“Yes! You are the Great Satan! And Brother Mussel-dine has decreed that you must be destroyed.”
“Sorry if I don’t wish you luck.” Ben was beginning to put it all together. “And what church did he pastor before the Great War?”
“The Church of the Salvation, the Sword, and the Hand of the Lord, of course.”
“Naturally. How silly of me to ask.”
“God is on our side!”
How many men had mouthed that same phrase over the long and bloody centuries? How many had died with those words on their lips? How many really believed it?
“This bloodshed is not necessary,” Ben told the man. “I believe we can talk this matter through and reach some sort of settlement.”
“Never!” the man shouted, startling everybody standing close-by. “The Rebels are the scourge of the earth and must be destroyed!”
“This guy’s not totin’ a full load, boss,” Cooper said. “He’s about two bricks shy.”
“Degenerate!” the man shouted at Cooper, the veins in his neck standing out. He was red-faced and sweating. “Filthy follower of the Great Satan!”
“Where in the hell do all these dodos come from?” Jersey asked.
“Whore!” the prisoner shouted at her. “Dirty harlot of the devil!”
“Get this crackpot out of here,” Ben ordered, before Jersey could butt-stroke him with her rifle. The man was led away, shouting Biblical phrases, more or less.
“Boss, Musseldine says he has nothing to say to you,” Corrie said. “He says we all have the mark of the beast on us.”
“Revelation. “Ben sighed. “I’m sorry to say that we’re dealing with religious fanatics—true believers. There probably won’t be any compromise from these people. They are one hundred percent right, and everybody else is one hundred percent wrong. There is no middle ground with them.” Ben expelled air, his face grim.
“For the sake of peace, I’d back out and give them the state,” Ben said. “But that wouldn’t satisfy them for long—nothing ever does. They want it all.”
“That’s just half the story, boss,” Corrie said. “Communications has just begun to pick up transmissions out of Missouri between Issac Africa and some general who calls himself Mobutomamba.”
Ben blinked. “What the hell was that last name?”
Corrie smiled. “Mobutomamba. According to our intel, this Issac Africa has four divisions of troops. Their divisions are about three times the size of our battalions. First division is commanded by General Mobutomamba. The other commanders are Colonel Cugumba, Colonel Kenyata, and Colonel Zandar.”
“You have got to be kidding!”
Everyone started laughing at the expression on Ben’s face.
Ben looked at one of his sergeants. “Do you know anything about this Issac Africa, Lewis?”
“No, sir. That’s a new one on me. But I do know this damn Zandar nut. He’s a bad one. He was in prison when the Great War hit the globe. He was oh, maybe nineteen or twenty at the time. A black militant who belonged to a terrorist group that had declared war on all whites. He killed a white police officer who had pulled him over for speeding. He had just started his prison term when the balloon went up.”
“You knew him personally, Lewis?”
“I went to high school with the son-of-a-bitch in Cleveland. Until he dropped out in his junior year. He came from a real good family. Upper, upper middle class. That’s the shame of it all. Hell, he wasn’t oppressed. He had money, clothes, car, good looks. Sharp as a tack. He was accepted by everybody. Well-liked for a time. I don’t know what turned him around. He showed up at school one day wearing robes and beads and those silly goddamn hats. He started preaching hate. And it went downhill from that point. I stayed the hell away from him.”
“Thank you, Lewis.”
The sergeant nodded. “I came over to tell you we came out clean in this little fight. No dead or wounded. But those prisoners we took are nuts, General. What do you want to do with them? They’re driving my people crazy.”
Ben chuckled at the expression on Lewis’ face. “I’ll have a chopper come in and take them back to Base Camp
One for more interrogation. We’re going to hold here until we can find out exactly what the hell we’re up against with this Musseldine character.”
“Right, sir.”
“Death to the Philistines!” the faint shout came from the prisoner compound.
“This war just keeps getting weirder and weirder,” Ben muttered.
Back at Base Camp One, the newly appointed Secretary of State of the Southern United States of America settled right in and went to work. Since there wasn’t as yet a lot to do on the international scene, Homer started helping Cecil with the administrative duties of running the SUSA.
Blanton’s wife, older now and a hell of lot more tactful (and wiser in the ways of the world) than when she’d first met Ben Raines, began making plans to start teaching at a local college as soon as it reopened. The first thing she noticed (with a slight smile) was that the textbooks were not in the least politically correct—they were accurate. The textbooks detailed events as they happened, not as some had wished they had occurred, and portrayed people in their order of importance, favoring no ethnic or political group.
Mrs. Blanton’s eyes had widened considerably since the Great War blew the entire world apart a decade back, and widened even more since the assassination attempt. She understood (finally) what Ben and the others had done. For as he had told her, or tried to tell her some months back: “Look lady, six thousand years ago, the Jews had a working government, a written language, schools, etc. At the same time, my European ancestors were sitting around in caves, grunting at one another and painting themselves blue. We all had to start somewhere. Every race of beings had their order of advancement. I’m not going to whitewash history—no racial slur intended—just to satisfy some ethnic group. In the SUSA, we’ll teach what actually happened, not what some group wished had happened.”
At the time, she thought Ben to be racist.
She saw now that her thinking could not have been further from the truth.
“We’ve got three battalions of Rebels left in Eastern Europe,” Cecil told Blanton. “What is your thinking on leaving them there?”
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