“Mary,” he greeted her, motioning her inside the lamp-lit home. “What’s on your mind?”
“Can I level with you, General?”
“Of course.”
“I have a boyfriend back in Tri-States. We plan on getting married in a few months.”
“My best wishes, Mary.” Ben looked at her, a puzzled expression on his face.
“But I’ve been trying to get pregnant for six months.”
“Oh?”
“Jim thinks the bombings back in ‘88 made him sterile.”
“That’s certainly possible.”
“But I want us to have a child.”
The expression on her face and the look in her eyes told Ben everything else he needed to know.
“You sure Jim wouldn’t mind?”
“Like me, General, he would be honored.”
Ben took her hand. “It’s a strange world we live in, Mary.”
“You’ll make it better, General,” came her response.
CHAPTER TWO
It was as if the incident had never occurred between the man and woman. Mary was her usual military self the next morning, and Ben never brought up the subject. It was the first and last time she was to share his bed.
The small contingent of Rebels hit their first armed resistance in southeast Missouri, while they were on state Highway 53, angling northwest toward Poplar Bluff.
“Trouble up ahead, sir,” a scout radioed back.
Ben pulled the column up short and walked forward, his Thompson SMG in hand. Mary walked one step behind him, her M-16 at combat arms.
“Ever killed a man, Mary?” Ben asked.
“Yes, sir.”
“More than one?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Ever cut a throat?”
“No, sir.”
“You’ll probably get the chance if you hang around me long enough.”
“I can hardly wait,” her reply was dryly given.
Ben laughed at her. His smile vanished as one of the young scouts hurriedly approached.
“What’s the problem?” Ben asked.
“About fifty motorcyclists have blocked the road a half mile ahead, sir. They’re all armed.”
“Were they hostile to you?”
“Yes, sir. Said if I tried to push through they’d kill me.”
“Well, that makes my job easier. What do they want, son?”
“Women, sir. And guns.”
Mary tensed beside Ben, her hands tightening on her M-16.
“Tell them to clear the road and get out of the way, or we will forcibly remove the blockade, and them with it.”
“Yes, sir.” The scout used a bull-horn to relay the message.
“You don’t own the goddamn road!” The shout was electronically hurled back to Ben. “We got you outnumbered anyways. Give us your women and guns and you can drive on through.”
Ben looked behind him. Colonel Gray was standing in the center of the road, calmly reviewing the situation.
“Colonel Gray?”
“Sir?”
“There is a pile of garbage in the road ahead. Please remove it, if you will.”
“Sir.”
The Englishman saluted, gave an order, and a team
Colonel Gray put down his range finder. “Nine hundred meters,” he called over his shoulder. “Fire for range, adjust, then fire for effect. HE and WP. G.”
The mortars thonked and delivered Ben Raines’s reply. The highway ahead exploded as range was found and clicked in. Saddle tanks on the motorcycles exploded as Ben’s Rebels opened up with mounted ring-type .50-caliber machine guns, spraying the area.
“Cease firing!” Colonel Gray yelled.
The morning grew hot and still once more. Moaning and screaming from up the road drifted to the men and women of the Rebel contingent. Snipers began firing, stilling many of the cries.
Ben glanced at James Riverson. “Clear it out, James. We don’t have time to jack around with prisoners.”
APC’S rolled forward. After a few moments of automatic weapons’ fire, no more moaning was heard. A deuce-and-a-half with a front-mounted scoop rolled forward, lowered the scoop, and unceremoniously cleared a wide path through the smoking, bloody rubble.
Mary was outwardly calm, but her pale face betrayed her inner feelings. “I was told you don’t believe in fucking around, General.”
Ben smiled. “That depends entirely on the connotation one places on that vulgarity, Mary.”
Her mouth closed with a snap.
“Let’s roll it!” Ben yelled.
At Poplar Bluff, Missouri, the Rebels found two
dozen or so survivors. They were not in good shape.
“Can you help us?” a man asked. There was a whine to his voice that cut at Ben’s nerves.
The group consisted of nine men, fourteen women, and half a dozen young people and babies. They all looked to be in sad shape.
Ben’s first emotion was pity-but only for the children, not for the adults. Every good man has his fault, and that was Ben’s. He could not work up pity for a grown man that did not know how to survive. It was his flaw, and he knew he possessed it.
“What do you want us to do?” Ben asked, his tone harsher than he intended.
The speaker appeared to be in his early-to-mid-thirties, in reasonably good physical shape. Indeed, most of the men appeared in good physical shape. But they were dirty and stank of filth and body odors.
Don’t be too harsh, Ben silently cautioned himself. You don’t know what they’ve been through.
The question seemed to confuse the man. “Why-help us.”
“In what way?” Ben asked.
The man backed away several steps. “You’re just like all the rest,” he said, an accusing tone to his voice. “I-we-thought the government would help. But they haven’t. You look familiar. Who are you, mister?”
Ben ignored the question. “There is no government.” His words were deliberately harsh. “How long does it take for that to sink into you people? Goddamn it, you’ve got to help yourselves this go round. The government doesn’t exist. It was suspended some months ago, along with the Constitution and the Bill
of Rights. It probably will never exist again, not in the way you people remember it. You survived the bombings of ‘88, what the hell happened to your guts this time around?”
The man began crying, the tears cutting trenches down his dirty cheeks.
They disgusted Ben.
Ben looked around for Colonel Gray. “Dan, we’ll bivouac here in the city. Doctor Carlton-was he glanced at a young M. D.-“after these people have bathed this filth off, check them out-all of them. Then see to it they are fed. They all appear not to be able to take care of themselves.” The last was said very sarcastically.
“Hey, mister!” a woman with a small baby in her arms yelled to Ben. Anger was evident in her voice. “Just who in the hell do you think you are, anyway? And what do you know about what we’ve been through these past months? Yeah, we look pretty bad, I know all that. But we’ve been on the run for two months. A gang of motorcyclists have been killing and raping and kidnapping around here. They’re all armed with guns. Then over at Lake Wappapello there’s about fifty or sixty people that blew in here from I don’t know where. They’re murderers and rapists and scum. Mister whoever-you-are, the government collected all the guns some years ago. Where have you been, under a rock? What in the hell are we supposed to fight with, you bastard!”
Ben smiled at her outburst. Here was one with some guts. He looked at her without speaking. She would maybe hit five feet-ninety-five pounds to a hundred, if that much. But definitely female. She had more fire in her than all the others combined.
Ben walked over to her. She stood her ground and met his gaze without flinching. “What’s your name?”
“Gale Roth. And that’s G-A-L-E.”
Ben chuckled. “I can damn sure see why it’s spelled that way. Your husband among these tigers?”
; “I don’t have a husband. Never been married. You going to make something out of that, too?”
Ben laughed openly as he studied her. Black, angry eyes, very short dark brown hair, a sensuous mouth. And a dirty face. Made her look like a tomboy. From the neck up.
She glared at him. “If you’re quite through undressing me, mister-what’s your name?”
“Ben Raines.”
The woman paled, stepped back, opened her mouth, then closed it without speaking. She appeared to be in mild shock at the mention of his name.
“A speechless Jew,” Ben needled her, and from somewhere in the ranks of the Rebels came a laugh. The laugh sounded suspiciously like Leon Lansky’s laugh. “I believe I’ve met a first.”
Gale stuck out her chin. “Well… fuck you!”
Ben laughed and held out his hands and the baby came to him. Of them all, Gale and the baby appeared to be the cleanest, but neither of them could be called a rose.
“Is the child in good health?” Ben asked.
“As well as could be expected. I’m a nurse, so I know something about health.” She was still very defiant. “Are you going to take my baby, Mr. President?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Gale. Of course I am not going to take your baby. And I am not your president.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she mimicked him, “of
course you are. I haven’t heard of anyone calling any special elections to replace you.
Everyone within hearing range could feel the electricity popping back and forth between the man and woman. Especially the man and the woman.
And neither of them could really understand it.
Not yet.
Ben looked around him, meeting the staring eyes. “What the hell is everyone looking at? You have your jobs-get moving!”
“Right-o, General,” Colonel Gray said with a smile. “All right, lads and lassies, get cracking, now. Step lively. You civilians over there.” He pointed.
Ben turned back to Gale. The baby reached for the woman and Ben let him slip into more familiar arms. “Mrs. Roth…”
“Ms.,” she quickly corrected.
“I never would have guessed,” Ben muttered, “Ms. Roth, I will not apologize for coming down hard on men who will not fight.”
“They don’t have any guns!”
“Then they should have killed those who did have access to guns and then fought.”
“Now how in the hell does one go about that?” Out came the chin.
“One goes about that, Ms. Roth, by the use of booby traps, Molotov cocktails, dynamite, punji pits, C-4, rocks, clubs, bottles, chains, wire, ambushes….”
Awright awready-enough!”
“But first one must possess enough guts to do the deed with any or all of the aforementioned articles. And where are you from? Awright awready?”
“I was born in New York City. Moved to St. Louis with my parents when I was thirteen. I’m twenty-nine years old and this isn’t my kid. He belonged to someone else.”
“Is Gale your real name?”
She smiled. She was very pretty. Reminded Ben of an NBC correspondent he used to enjoy watching. Rebecca something-or-another. He couldn’t remember her last name.
“Of course not. It’s a nickname.”
“Well?”
“Well, what?”
“What is your real name?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“Oh, forget it. Leave it Gale. It certainly fits. You said the baby belonged to someone else?”
“She’s dead.” Gale did not elaborate.
Ben let it slide. “How’d you get hooked up with this bunch of losers?”
Out came the chin. She glared at him for a few seconds. “Mr. President, sir, General, whatever in the hell you’re called, has it ever occurred to you that not everyone in this world is as tough as you?”
“Ms. Roth, there are varying degrees of toughness. There used to be a football player, a giant of a man called Gorilla Jankowski. Gorilla could have, on any given day, without working up a sweat, broken me in about thirty-seven different and separate pieces, and then kicked my head the length of a football field-providing he could catch me. That’s one degree of toughness. But put us both on a jet on a HALO/SCUBA mission, where we had to drop in from about thirty-five thousand feet, free-falling down to seven
hundred before our “chutes opened in order to avoid radar, use tanks and wet suits to swim ashore from about three or four miles out, crawl ashore on an unfriendly beach, slit a few throats, blow up a bridge or two, then successfully complete a silent op-a body snatch … all without being detected by the enemy. That is another degree of toughness. Do you understand the parallels I’m drawing?”
“He was trained to do one thing, you were trained to another.”
“Right on target, Ms. Roth.”
“But those men I was-am-traveling with, they weren’t trained to do …” She paused, a slight smile touching her lips. “Ben Raines-sure. You wrote a book one time-one of your best, if not the best, I think-called When the Last Hero Is Gone. In it you advocated compulsory military training, for everyone, male and female, starting immediately upon completion of high school, and you would have made a high school education mandatory. The length of service would have lasted three years. After the military, the government would then finance a four-year college plan, picking up the tab for all expenses for those who went into math, science or English, and stayed with teaching for a minimum of ten years. You maintained that in ten years the nation would no longer have a shortage of those teachers. I did a book report on that novel in the tenth grade. I got a C on it because the teacher didn’t like the other books you wrote.”
“My apologies. Doctor Carlton is motioning for you to come over to that aid station just set up. He’ll check you out and also the baby. I’ll see you later.”
Gale seemed hesitant to leave. Something about the man exuded confidence and safety. “Those … animals from up at the lake sent word to us that they might be back tomorrow to … get the women. What are you going to do if that happens?”
“You mentioned a gang of motorcyclists that had been bothering you?”
“Yeah.”
“We killed them all about ten o’clock this morning. Just west of the St. Francis River. Does that answer your question?”
She blinked. She had very pretty eyes now that the anger had vanished. Eyes that looked as though they could dance with mischief. “I guess you are as tough as people say.”
“I guess so, Ms. Roth.”
He stood and watched as she walked away. She looked exhausted. Colonel Gray walked up.
“What are we going to do with them, General?”
Ben shook his head. “I can’t leave them to be killed, Dan. We could arm them, but without proper training, they would still get killed. Those civilian men aren’t exactly man-hunters.”
“I will certainly agree with that, General.”
“Send out a team to round up some vehicles. We’ll outfit them and take them with us.”
Dan smiled. “Yes, sir.”
Ben looked at the Englishman. He could not understand the smile. “What are you smiling about, Dan?”
“Nothing,” the colonel said innocently. “Nothing at all, General.” He walked away, chuckling softly.
“Crazy Englishman,” Ben muttered.
Had he but noticed, everyone in his command was grinning.
Eight more ships from Iceland had put ashore personnel and equipment: two ships every four days. The IPF troops based on American soil now numbered ten thousand, and they had spread out into Wisconsin from northern Minnesota.
The IPF teams used no force in dealing with the survivors they found. They left food, clothing and medical supplies; they worked with the people in repairing equipment and restoring such services as electricity and running water. The doctors with the IPF treated the sick and consoled the elderly and despondent. They promised that conditions would soon get better. They promised they
would restore order and a government. They promised they would have jobs for everyone. They promised proper medical treatment and better living conditions. If one had been a farmer before the holocaust, then you could again be a farmer; if you had been a mechanic or a carpenter or a teacher or whatever, that job would soon be opening for you. They promised a lot. They did it all with a smile and a gentle pat on the arm. They were such nice people. So considerate. They never fussed or snapped or became angry or upset. They never used force.
They didn’t have to.
Yet.
Lenin would have been so proud.
Ben stood on the outskirts of Poplar Bluff and stared out into the darkness, his thoughts busy. Gale
had told him her group was not the only group of survivors in the small city. She said there were others, but their numbers were smaller, and they were much more elusive. And they were well-armed. She didn’t know where they got the weapons.
Ben didn’t have the heart to tell her guns were easy to find.
Being a curious sort, Ben had prowled through what remained of the local library, his heart sore at the sight of the books ripped and rotting and torn and gnawed by rats and mice. He had located a World Almanac-circa 1987-and looked up Poplar Bluff, Missouri. Population 17,139.
Gale had told him that maybe-maybe-there were a 150 people left in the small city. There had been more, but about 50 had died during the winter. Mostly old people, she said.
“The nation’s elderly have been getting crapped on for years, Gale,” he said. “Right up to and including 1988.” He spat on the littered sidewalk. “A goddamned criminal gets better treatment and has more of his rights protected than the nation’s elderly.”
She had looked at him in the fading June sunlight and replied, “Maybe you’re not so tough after all, Ben Raines.”
He had not replied. But his thoughts had been flung back to the spring of “89, when he had been traveling with a very idealistic young lady by the name of April. He had found her in Florida and gotten rid of her in Macon, Georgia. He had been relieved to see her go. But before they had parted company, never to see each other again-and Ben did wonder, occasionally, what had happened to April-they had happened upon a
small gathering of elderly.
“As to our troubles, Mr. Raines,” Ms. Nola Browning, an elderly schoolteacher had told him, “it seems we have a gang of hoodlums and roughnecks roaming the countryside, preying on the elderly-those who survived God’s will, that is.”
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