But he had no doubts as to his success. Failure never entered his mind. Never. True, he would have to shelve his plan to kill the Jew bitch; and that had been a good plan, Striganov reckoned, one that would have sucked Ben Raines out into the open, seeking revenge. Or so Striganov thought. But the Russian did not know Ben Raines as well as he thought.
“Hello, baby.” Hartline smiled at Jerre. “My, you are a fine-looking cunt.”
Jerre remained silent for a moment. She knew why Hartline had kidnapped her, but she also knew the mercenary had grossly underestimated Ben Raines if he thought Ben would drop whatever he was doing and come to her rescue. She knew Ben was somewhere in Virginia, moving his Rebels toward Richmond, to seize the government from President Addison and Al Cody. Ben had told her several times: “No one in my command is unexpendable, Jerre. Person gets taken prisoner, we’ll come after him if at all possible. But I won’t risk losing a hundred people just to save one.”
And she knew Ben meant it.
“Where am I?” she asked Hartline.
He had laughed. “About a hundred miles from Ben Raines. You’re in Virginia, baby. Didn’t you have a nice flight out here?”
“Not particularly. Some of your men kept feeling me up. Where are my children?”
“They got away, so I’m told. Big, blond fellow took them. Friend of yours, maybe?”
“Yes. Matt. Good. Then I know that my babies are safe.”
She seemed satisfied with that.
Hartline sat looking at her. He seemed puzzled. He didn’t understand these followers of Raines. Even though he had broken half a hundred of them with physical torture, and raped and sodomized a half a hundred more, they always seemed to look at him as if he were the loser, not them.
Her smug expression angered the man. He reached out and slapped her hard across the face. She slowly brushed back her blond hair and continued staring at him.
“What’s with you people, anyway?” he demanded. “You sluts and losers seem to think Raines is some sort of God. What kind of fucking special society did you people have, anyway, to make you think you’re so much better than the rest of us?” He was shouting at her. “Answer me!”
Jerre realized she was dealing with a psychopath – at least that. And she had best walk softly in his presence.
“We don’t think we’re better,” she replied. “But we do believe we had a good society.”
“Perfect one?”
“No. I don’t think that’s possible with humans being the carpenters of that society.”
“Isn’t that profound?” Hartline said, his voice ugly with sarcasm. “Did you make that up in your pretty little head?”
“No. Ben Raines did.”
“I’m sick of his name!” Hartline yelled at her. “You hear me? I don’t want you to say it around me, you understand that?”
“Yes.”
He changed as quickly as the flit of a fly. He was now calm, smiling at her. He reached out and cupped a breast. “That’s nice, Jerre baby. I bet you could give a guy a ride, couldn’t you?”
“I ... don’t know how you want me to answer that.”
“You like to fuck?”
“I like to make love.”
“Tell me about love, baby.”
“Are you serious?” she blurted. Then realized that was a mistake.
He slapped her.
Through her tear-blurred eyes she watched as the mercenary unzipped his pants and took out his heavy penis. She was pushed from her chair to the floor, on her knees.
“Kiss it, baby,” Hartline ordered. “Just pretend it’s a pork chop and lick it. Unless, of course, you’re a Jew. Then you can pretend it’s a bagel.”
He thought that funny and laughed.
Jerre bent her head.
With the death of President Addison, and the wounding of Ben and his appointment to the office of the president, Ike, Captain Gray, and Matt led teams into the Midwest to rescue Jerre. Hartline got out just in time, but his mercenary army had been routed.
Jerre and Matt returned to the West Coast, and Ben began the awesome job of rebuilding America from the ground up.
Then the rats came, bringing with them the plague.
A year later came Striganov and the IPF.
General Striganov punched a button set into his desk top. Seconds later, an aide stuck her head into the room.
“Sir?”
“Have my equipment laid out and my car made ready. Tell my guards to prepare for a move south. This time I shall personally see to it that President-General Ben Raines is destroyed.”
“Yes, sir,” the young woman replied.
But she was not so certain about the mission of the IPF as she once had been. So much of what she had heard about Ben Raines was disturbing. So many of the Americans believed the man to be a god – and that disturbed her. She had been taught from birth that the Christian God did not exist. Now the Russian woman was beginning to have doubts about the validity of that philosophy. President-General Ben Raines had been shot so many times, had been stabbed and blown up – still he would not die. Or, the thought chilled her, could not die. He had single-handedly fought and killed a massive mutant, and had come out of that fight without a scratch on him. And there was that story circulating about him having spoken to some sort of God’s messenger. That filled the young woman with dread. It caused her – and many more of the IPF – to suffer bad dreams during her sleep.
No, the young woman did not look forward to traveling south with General Striganov. She wished the IPF could have just stayed in Iceland and lived in peace. But she was more than just an aide to the general. She was his sex partner upon command. And she was a soldier, and she had her orders, and she would obey.
Like a good soldier.
TWO
To the north, to the west and to the east, the IPF was running into more trouble than even the most cynical among them had anticipated. To the north, even though Striganov had sent four companies of IPF to fight the “grandfathers,” as the Russian had referred to the old soldiers, the IPF found they could not punch through the lines of the old men. The “grandfathers” were holding firm.
The old soldiers knew warfare and knew it well. Thousands of hours of actual combat lay among the men: They were experts in the art of ambush; experts in tactics; experts in producing and deploying explosives; experts in long-range sniping and experts in guerrilla tactics; experts in building and camouflaging hidden bunkers.
As one IPF commander put it, “The old bastards are there one minute, then they are gone the next. They just vanish. You never know where they might pop up: behind you, in front of you, at your flanks, snapping and biting like a small dog. Then they cut a throat or two and disappear. I hate these old men. I hate this country.”
And the IPF troops, for the very first time, met the horror of true guerrilla warfare. The men and women of the IPF became fearful of entering the dark timber, for they had found the areas mined with Claymores. And the deep timber and brush contained deadly swing traps and punji pits.
On the fourth day of fighting in the north, what was left of the four companies of the IPF found themselves in the unenviable position of having themselves surrounded, with no place to run, no place to hide, facing either surrender or death.
To the west and the east, the young people fought just as cunningly, but with much more savagery. For most of the young had been on their own for years, and they had learned the hard facts of postwar: If one is to survive after a holocaust, one had best learn how to kill – silently, stealthily, and without mercy or pity. Most could just barely read and write, but all – boys and girls – were experts in the art of survival. Those that did not learn the art of survival while very young... usually died.
The boys and girls were small – due to years of bad diet – but they were quick, for they had lived their lives on the fringes of civilization, learning the savage lessons on how best to avoid the mutants and the sudden explosion in the population of bears and w
olves and bobcats and mountain lions. Just as Ben Raines had learned back in 1988....
I’ve got to search the town for survivors! the thought came to him just before he went to bed. Surely there will be somebody left alive.
The next morning, after shaving and showering and eating a light breakfast, he took his coffee outside and stood for a moment by his small house in the country. He viewed the silent scene that lay before him. Birds still sang and dogs still barked in the distance, and that puzzled him. A nuclear war that would kill humans and leave the animals alive? Not likely. So it had to have been some type of germ warfare. He had to find out what happened.
He went to several stores in search of a worldwide radio. But the stores had all been looted. He finally found one at the Radio Shack. He sat on the curb outside the store and studied the instructions on the operation of the radio. He turned it on. No batteries.
“Wonderful, Ben,” he muttered. “Marvelous presence of mind.”
With fresh batteries in the radio, Ben worked the dial slowly, going from band to band. Sweat broke out on his face as he heard a voice from the speakers.
The voice spoke in French for a time, then went to German, then to English. Ben listened intently, a feeling of dread washing over him. “We pieced together the story,” the voice spoke slowly. “The whole story of what happened. Russian pilot told us this is what happened – from his side of the pond, that is. They – the Russians – had developed some sort of virus that would kill humans, but not harm animals or plant life. Did this about three years ago. Were going to use it against us this fall. Easy to figure out why. Then they learned of the double cross; the Stealth-equipped sub. That shot their plans all to hell. Everything became all confused. If we had tried to talk to them, or they with us, or the Chinese, maybe all this could have been prevented. Maybe not. Too late now. Some survivors worldwide. Have talked with some of them. Millions dead. Don’t know how many. Over a billion, probably. Maybe more. Ham operators working. It’s bad. God in heaven – it’s bad.”
This message was repeated, over and over, in four languages.
“A goddamned tape recording,” Ben said.
A snarling brought him to his feet, the .45 pistol in his hand. A pack of dogs stood a few yards away, and they were not at all friendly.
Ben leaped for the hood of his truck just as a large German shepherd lunged for him, fangs bared. Ben scrambled for the roof of the cab as the dog leaped onto the hood. Ben shot the animal in the head, the force of the heavy slug knocking the animal backward to die in the street.
The dogs remembered gunfire. They ran down the street, stopping on the corner, turning around, snarling and growling at the man on the cab of the truck. Ben emptied his .45 into the pack, knocking several of the dogs spinning. Ben slapped a fresh clip in the pistol and climbed down. He got his .45-caliber Thompson SMG from the cab.
“From now on, Ben,” he said. “That Thompson becomes a part of you. Always.”
And now the young of the new century found themselves facing an animal explosion, with many of the animals mutant in size and nature. Flesh-eaters. And the young, without benefit of parental guidance and formal education, without adults helping to shape their minds and lives and actions, and teachers to help shape the mush of their minds into facts, became even more savage than the usual child, for without education, training, discipline and love, we would all be savages.
This then was the shaping of the future generations of the world. The less than auspicious start of the long, slow drift downhill into ignorance and barbarism.
Unless one man could stem the tide, plug the dam, rejuvenate the fountain of knowledge. And do it all in time.
Ben Raines.
But this tragedy – that was all foreseen and forewarned, from Orwell to Meade – was not confined to the land that was once known as America. And to place the brunt of the blame solely on the young would be grossly unfair. For the same was occurring worldwide. In the once-civilized land called England, home of the Magna Carta and the birthplace of law, the Druids were once more flourishing, with the survivors of that once-beautiful and civilized land now robed and hooded, gathering at Stonehenge to ponder the mystery of centuries. And to worship there, all praising and calling to an unknown god. And to sit in caves, painting themselves blue with dye from the berries of wild plants, tracing dark and mysterious lines on their bodies in some ritual of a religion that until only a few years ago had been an evil and unknown memory in the dim reaches of their brains, only now springing forth to sit and snarl and pick at themselves in the real but confused light of consciousness.
In France – or what was left of that germ and nuclear-torn country – the people had gathered and again broken off into formations of Burgundy, and Orleans, and Bourbon and Brittany; and, God save King Louis, into groups of Celts and Normans and Chouans and Gaul and Huguenots.
In Germany, there was not much left, for that country had taken the brunt of much of the nuclear warheads. But a few survived, and they raised their heads out of the rubble and ashes and roaming mutants and thought: There is no God, not the God we were taught to believe in and worship and praise. For if God did exist, He surely would not have permitted this. And there, as in so many other once-prosperous and reasonably civilized nations, statues and man-made Baal-like places and objects of worship began to spring up throughout the countryside, in basements and caves and underground burrows now inhabited by human beings; they would be called the Children of the Darkness. And they would worship the Prince of Flies, the King of Beasts, Lord of Filth – Satan.
Around the world, in Peru, India, Italy, Holland, Hawaii, all around the war-torn globe, many of the survivors began worshipping a false god, in the mistaken belief that they had displeased him or her in some manner, and it was now time for them to make amends . . . in some way.
In many cases, the amends were of the sacrificial nature – human beings.
Civilization was crumbling. Not yet dissolved – many years would pass before that would happen, many more battles involving Ben Raines and his descendants. Civilization was not finished, but well on its way if something or someone did not step forward to take the reins of responsibility in a firm hand, provide direction and leadership and replace myth with truth, ignorance with knowledge, hate with love and compassion and justice.
But that man had his hands full at the moment.
It was the third full day of fighting. Why the phrase came to Ben, he could not understand, for he had no idea yet that the enemy was beaten. But Perry’s message to General Harrison leaped into his mind: We have met the enemy, and they are ours.
I hope, Ben silently thought.
At that moment, a mortar shell burst very close to Ben’s bunker. The ground shook with a fury, sending bits of dirt and dust floating down into the hastily dug and sandbagged bunker. Ben did not flinch. He continued gazing at the battleground through field glasses.
Lt. Mary Macklin and Sgt. Buck Osgood could but look at each other and shake their heads. Ben Raines’s courage was unshakeable and unbelievable.
A sniper from the IPF lines began shooting, several slugs whining through the small opening in the reinforced sandbags.
Ben calmly turned and spoke to Mary. “Mary, have someone neutralize that long-distance shooter, will you?”
Mary’s hands were shaking as she rang up the mortar teams and called in the coordinates Buck gave her.
Mortar rounds began fluttering overhead as several teams walked the rounds in, both from the north and the south.
The sniper was neutralized.
Ben was certainly no coward, though he did know the taste of fear on his tongue. But also knew that to show any cowardice in the face of fire would be highly demoralizing to his people. Therefore, he did not.
“Get me heavy artillery on the horn, Mary,” Ben ordered.
The colonel on the line, Ben spoke into his headset. “Let’s do it again, Bert. And this time let’s give them everything we’ve got. 105s, 155s,
90mm, 152s, 81mm, and Shillilaghs. Keep pounding them until the metal gets so hot rounds are in danger. Keep pounding them until I give the order to stop. We’ve pounded their brains out for two-and-a-half days, let’s give them some more. Commence firing in one minute.”
It was as if the battered troops of the IPF knew something hot and heavy and lethal was in the wind, for the battleground fell strangely silent as Ben’s troops dug in deeper for the barrage.
The booming began from the rear of Ben’s Rebel lines. Within seconds, the landscape in front of them was transformed from a peaceful country scene to one out of the mind of a raging psychopath in the final grips of destructive madness.
Huge trees were flung into the air, as if ripped from the ground and hurled about by a giant child in a fit of temper. Vehicles and human beings were ripped apart and thrown high into the air amid an assortment of arms and tires and legs and fenders and severed heads and axles.
“Order all troops to prepare for chemicals,” Ben spoke into his headset.
The countryside became quiet, with only the moaning of the wounded and the smoke to remind anyone of the battle just past.
The battle just seconds away would be much quieter, but much hideous in the pain and suffering it would wreak.
“Now,” Ben said.
Moments later, the air was once again filled with the sounds of incoming death, as chemical warfare began from the side of the Rebels. The faint screaming and shrieking of the IPF troops could be heard as the acid and mustard and modified nerve gas touched living tissue and burned and ravaged and destroyed the flesh and the eyes and the organs of the IPF troops across the ripped and smoking and wasted no-man’s-land.
“High explosives,” Ben ordered. “Every third round white phosphorous.”
Then the screams of the IPF personnel began in bone-chilling earnest as the WP rounds began dropping, the burning shards of phosphorous searing the flesh and burning to the bone and beyond.
Anarchy in the Ashes Page 30