Rosita’s face was pale under her olive complexion. She said nothing. But her eyes were frightened.
Ben parked a safe distance behind the pickup and, Thompson in hand, off safety, on full automatic, walked up to the truck. Thickening blood lay in puddles in the highway.
“Jesus Christ!” one of Ben’s Rebels said, looking into a ditch. “General!”
Ben walked to the man’s side. The torn and mangled body of the driver lay sprawled in the ditch. One arm had been ripped from its socket. The belly had been torn open, the entrails scattered about, gray in the cold sunlight.
A Rebel pointed toward an open field. “Over here!” he called.
The second scout lay in a broken heap, on his stomach. He was headless. Puddles of blood spread all about him.
“Where’s his head?” the man asked.
“I don’t know,” Ben answered. “But we’d damn sure better keep ours. Heads up and alert. Combat positions. Weapons on full auto. Back to the trucks in twos. Center of the road and eyes moving. Go.”
Back in the warm cab of the truck, Ben noticed Rosita looking very pale and shaken. He touched her hand. “Take it easy, little one. We’ll make it.”
He radioed in to Cecil. “Cec? Backtrack to Roseville and 67 down to Macomb. Turn west on 136. We’ll meet you between Carthage and Hamilton. Don’t stop for anything. Stay alert for trouble.”
“What kind of trouble, Ben?”
Ben hesitated for a few seconds. “Cec – I just don’t know.”
“Ten-four.”
Ben honked his horn and pulled out, the other trucks following.
They saw nothing out of the ordinary as they drove down 96. But Hamilton looked as though it had been sacked by Tartars followed up by hordes of giant Tasmanian devils.
“What the hell?” Ben said, his eyes taking in the ruins of the town. Bits and scraps of clothing blew in the cold winds; torn pages of books and magazines flapped in the breeze, the pages being turned by invisible fingers. Not one glass storefront remained intact. They all looked as if they had been deliberately smashed by mobs of angry, sullen children.
There was no sense to any of it.
Ben said as much.
“Perhaps,” Rosita said, venturing forth an opinion, “those that did it do not possess sense as we know it.”
“What are you trying to say, Rosita?”
“I . . . really don’t know, Ben. And please don’t press me.”
“All right.”
Ben cut to the bridge and saw it was clear except for a few clumsily erected barricades. They looked as though they had been placed there by people without full use of their mental faculties.
Again, he said as much aloud.
Rosita said nothing.
Ben radioed back to the main column. “Come on through to the bridge at Keokuk, Cec. But be careful.”
“I copy that, Ben. Ben? We just passed through a little town called Good Hope. It looked . . . what was it the kids used to call it? It looked like it had been trashed.”
“I know, Cec. The same with Hamilton. Just no sense to it.”
“We’ll be there as quickly as possible, Ben.”
“Ten-four.”
With guards on the bridge, east and west, Ben and the others cleared the structure in a few minutes. Beneath them the Mississippi River rolled and boiled and pounded its way south, the waters dark and angry-looking.
“They look like they hold secrets,” Rosita said, her eyes on the Big Muddy.
“I’m sure they do.” Ben put an arm around her shoulders, pulling her close.
They stood for a time, without speaking, content to be close and to look at the mighty flow of water rushing under them.
“General?” one of the men called. “Take a look at this, sir, if you will.”
Ben and Rosita walked to where the man stood. Painted in white letters on the bridge floor, close to the railing, were these words:
GOD HELP US ALL. WHAT MANNER OF CREATURE HAVE WE CREATED? THEY CAME IN THE NIGHT. I CANNOT LIVE LIKE THIS.
It was unsigned.
“He was talking about the mutant rats,” Ben said.
Rosita looked at him, eyes full of doubt.
“I wonder what happened to the person that wrote this?” the Rebel who discovered the message asked.
“He went over the side,” Rosita said.
“Probably,” Ben agreed.
No more was said of it until the column rolled onto the bridge. There, in the cold January winds, Ben told his people what had happened to the scouts.
Roanna told Ben of the AP messages she had received, and of her sending Jane Moore to Michigan.
Ben was openly skeptical. “Mutant beings, Roanna? Are you serious?”
“Yes, I am. Same copy that told of mutant rats. Received the same night from AP.”
Ben could but stare in disbelief.
“It’s entirely possible, Ben,” Cecil said, as the cold winds whipped around them. “I recall hearing some doctor say that after the initial wave of bombings that God alone knew what type of mutations the radiation would bring in animals and humans.”
When Ben spoke, his words were hard and firm. “Now I don’t want a lot of panic to come out of this. None of us know what happened to our scouts. They were killed. By what or by whom, I don’t know. What I do know is this: We are going to make Tri-States. Home, at least for a while. We’ve got some rough country to travel, and we’ve been lucky so far. I expect some firefights before we get there. So all of us stay alert.
“We’ll be traveling through some . . . wild country, country that has not been populated for some time – more than a decade. So it’s entirely possible that we’ll see some . . . things we aren’t, haven’t witnessed before. I hope not. But let’s be prepared for anything. When we do stop at motels, we’ll double the guards and stay on our toes. But I won’t have panic or any talk of monsters. Let’s move out. Let’s go home.”
And now, more than a year later, as the Rebels traveled northward, they began to see more and more evidence of the mutants’ existence: destroyed stores that looked as if bands of madmen had descended upon them; absolutely no sign of human life; and that awful odor that was the trademark of the mutants. For a time, it was a drive of utter desolation. And it was making the Rebels nervous.
“Steady down, now,” Ben spoke calmly over the radio. “Keep your weapons at the ready and your eyes open. But stay calm and keep your cool.”
His voice and words and relaxed attitude seemed to do the trick.
“Keep your cool?” Gale looked at him, a smile on her lips. “Boy, that sure dates you, old man.”
“Wanna hear my imitation of Chuck Berry?” Ben asked.
“Who?”
“Forget it,” Ben told her.
“Was he a singer or what?”
Ben ignored her. She grinned at him.
A few miles south of where the highway turned due east, Ben halted the column and put out guards while he consulted a roadmap.
“I was going into Keokuk,” he said to Colonel Gray and Lieutenant Macklin. “But now I don’t think I’ll take the chance. We’ll pick up this secondary road here and take it up to Highway 2, take that all the way until we junction with 63. Then we’ll cut right straight up the center of the state. Stay on 63 all the way into Minnesota.”
“You want me to send out advance recon, General?” Colonel Gray asked.
“No,” Ben said. “I think, if what Kat said is true, and I have no reason to doubt her, this General Striganov will probably attempt to contact us.”
“And then?” James Riverson asked, the M-16 looking like a toy against the hugeness of the big ex-truck driver.
“We’ll have to play it by ear. But unless provoked, we are not hostile. Let them open the dance.” He looked around for his radioman. He thought of Gale. He smiled as he realized his radioman was a woman. All right. Radioperson. “Corporal, get in touch with Ike back home. Tell him to put two companies on stand-by and have planes
standing by ready to go.” He glanced at Colonel Gray. “Do we have two companies of personnel who are jump-qualified?”
“Only by stretching the point, sir, and by pulling them all in from the three-state area.”
“Mary?” he looked around for Lieutenant Macklin.
“Sir?” She stepped forward.
“You know of more riggers down home?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, that’s that,” Ben said. “Good idea while it lasted. Colonel, when we get back, I want you to personally train at least two companies of airborne.”
“Sir.”
To the radio operator: “Tell Colonel McGowen we can’t risk a jump if his people are needed. The pilots will just have to land the planes on a strip or in the damn road.”
“Right away, sir.”
Fifteen minutes later, Ben ordered the column out. A half hour later, they rolled into Iowa.
“Radar O’Reilly,” Ben remarked with a smile as they approached Ottumwa, Iowa.
Gale laughed. “I remember watching that show when I was a little girl. But mostly I remember the reruns. It was funny.”
“What did you do directly after the bombings of ’88?” Ben asked.
Gale thought for a time. She was so long in silence Ben asked, “First time you’ve talked about it?”
“Yes,” she replied, the word just audible over the highway rush.
“If it bothers you, don’t speak of it.”
“No. I think it’s time. It’s not all that great, anyway. I mean, as compared to what happened to a lot of other people.”
Ben let her gather her thoughts.
“I was sixteen,” Gale began. She cleared her throat and spoke louder, firmer. “Sixteen. I didn’t know crap about the real world. I was still going to a damn summer camp when I was fifteen years old. That summer I didn’t go to camp. Raised so much hell with my parents they finally threw up their hands and told me I was impossible.
“On the day ... the day it ... happened, I was out driving with a girlfriend. We went into a panic. We just couldn’t believe it was happening. We were way out in the country, miles out of the suburbs. But when we tried to get back into the city, all the highways and streets were blocked for miles. I tried shortcuts, got lost. Then I calmed down some and pulled an E.T. Managed to call home. My mother said my father was at the hospital, working. I remember she was very calm. She told us not to attempt to enter the city, but to drive into the countryside – even further out than we were – get miles from St. Louis. She said to get food and bottled water and clothing – if I didn’t have the money to buy them, steal them. I was shocked. Really. This was my mother telling me to steal. She said to find a sturdy house or barn, hide the car, and hide ourselves. Don’t come out for anything or anybody. She said it might take days for this thing to wind down. Something like that.”
“Your father was a doctor?”
“Yes. A surgeon. A very good one. My mother was a psychologist. I still remember how incredibly calm she was over the phone. Anyway, the girl I was with, Amy, she became unglued. Said she wasn’t going anywhere except back into the city. She jumped out of the car. I tried to stop her. I yelled at her and screamed at her. She just kept on running. I never saw her again.
“I drove . . . I guess maybe thirty miles from the city. Then I stopped at a country store and got gas. No one was there. It was eerie. I mean, the place was deserted. I rummaged around and got all sorts of food and bottled water and pop and clothes and stuff. I felt so ... so guilty about just taking it. So I put all but five dollars of my money on the counter and left.
“I drove. Just drove aimlessly. Ben, to this day I can’t tell you how long I drove, but it was fifty or sixty miles further from the city. And I can’t tell you where I finally hid. It was terrible, though, I can tell you that. I hid like some animal in this barn. I mean, I never left that place. I had hidden my car, a little Chevy, in some kind of stall thing and covered it all up with straw and hay and stuff. Except to go to the bathroom and to wash my face and hands, I stayed the whole time up in the second floor.”
“The second floor of a barn?” Ben questioned, looking at her.
“Whatever you call it.”
“The loft.”
“Thanks. I’ll treasure that knowledge forever, I’m sure. What do I know from barns? Anyway, it was scary. There were rats and snakes up there at first. How do snakes get up that high? I don’t know. Anyway, I killed them with a handle off some kind of tool. It was broken when I found it.
“Then the men came prowling around. They were looking for whiskey and women. Not necessarily in that order. The first group of men – I don’t know whether they were black or white or green – had a little boy with them. They did ... disgusting things to him. I don’t want to talk about it. Then they left, took the little boy with them. Then some white men came in and looked around. One of them even climbed up the ladder to the second – to the loft – and looked around. But I was hidden really well in the hay and he didn’t see me. This bunch said now would be a good time to get together and kill all the niggers. They left. Then some drunk black men came around and I overheard them talking about how would it was a good time to get together and kill all the honks. But first they wanted some tight white pussy. They left and some guys came in and had this woman with them. Woman isn’t correct. She was a young girl, maybe fourteen or fifteen. I never saw her, but I could hear her begging them to stop . . . what they were doing. It got pretty . . . perverted. They raped her – among other things. Took turns with her. It was awful.
“When they finally left, they took the girl with them – said they could swap her for guns, maybe. I was alone for two or three days. I don’t remember; the days kind of all ran together. Maybe it was longer. Then it got real quiet, like I was the last person left on earth. You know what I mean?”
Ben nodded, remembering his feelings of being alone when he finally left the house after being so sick for so long.
It was his birthday. It was a Sunday. 1988. It was a day the survivors would remember all their lives. Ben had started a new book, writing for three hours. It was the first time he’d felt like writing after being stung repeatedly by a swarm of yellow jackets. The stings had dropped him into shock. He did not know at the time how long he’d been out – days, surely. But now he felt fine. The mood was not to last.
He drove into town. Just outside of the small town in Louisiana, Ben cut his eyes to a ditch and jammed on the brakes.
There was a body in the ditch.
Ben inspected the dead man. Dead at least a week – maybe longer. The corpse was stinking and blackened.
He tried his CB. Nothing. He turned on the radio, searching the AM and FM bands. Nothing.
With a feeling of dread settling over him like a pall, Ben drove into town.
There, he found the truth.
“Yes,” he told Gale. “I know the feeling quite well.”
“I guess maybe you do,” Gale said. “But you’re tough. With me, it was different, believe it. Anyway, I finally ran out of food. I went through it like Grant took Atlanta.”
“Sherman,” Ben said automatically.
“Who’s telling this story, anyway?”
“Sorry.”
“I had eaten like a starving person. Ate from fear, I suppose. Gained about ten pounds, at least. I had to leave to find more food. And, I guess, even though I was still scared, I wanted to see what had happened. I just couldn’t believe there had really been a war. Well, my damn car wouldn’t start. I lifted the hood and looked in. Talk about a shock. There wasn’t any motor. I finally figured out the motor was in the rear. I am not mechanically inclined, believe it. What I knew then about engines and stuff was nothing. But I could see where the rats had chewed a lot of wires and things. I sat down by the car and bawled and squalled.
“I finally got it together and stepped out of the barn. The sunlight blinded me for a few moments. Gave me a headache, too. Then I stepped right on a body. Talk a
bout freaking someone out. I almost lost control at that point. Maybe I did lose control for a time. I ran. Boy, did I run. But it didn’t do any good. There were bodies everywhere. Like in a movie, you know, after a big battle? And animals and birds were eating the dead people. It was the worst thing I had ever seen in my life. Period.
“Well . . . I stopped at this house – fell down in the front yard would be more like it, collapsed. Then I went inside. Luckily, the shape I was in, emotionally, the house was empty. No people, I mean.
“Ben, I know how you feel about liberals, and my mother and father were liberals, the whole bag. Gun control, civil rights, opposed to capital punishment, everything, you know?”
Ben nodded his head in agreement.
“OK, so they were liberals. But they taught me how to think. They taught me to sit down, be calm and rationalize things out. So that’s what I did. I sat in a chair, calmed myself and thought. I thought myself right into a headache – that’s all I accomplished.”
Ben laughed at the mental picture of her doing so, then he apologized for it.
She smiled. “No, it’s all right, Ben. I feel better finally being able to talk about it. And I understand, really, I do. Looking back, some of the things I did were funny – but not at the time. So I went looking around in this farmhouse. It was set way back from the road, in a bunch of trees, and had been left alone by the looters. I found a rack full of guns. I took out a shotgun and then found a box of shells that said twelve gauge. The double-barrel gun was a twelve gauge – said so on the metal. So I thought: By God, there isn’t anybody going to rape this kid. I’ll get tough.
“I finally figured out how to open the damn gun – that thing was heavy – and loaded it. I went outside to fire it. Damned thing knocked me down. When I hit the ground the other barrel went off and almost took my foot with it. I decided right then I’d better find me some other kind of gun.
“There were some other shotguns in the rack. I got the smallest one. A 410, it said. Wonderful. Personally I found it all rather confusing. It was smaller than the twelve gauge, but it had a bigger number, so thinking logically, it should have been more powerful, right? I mean, there’s three hundred and ninety-eight things difference between the two, right?”
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