Anarchy in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

To Charles and Rosemary

The enemy say that Americans are good at a long shot, but cannot stand the cold iron. I call upon you instantly to give a lie to this slander. Charge! -Winfield Scott

This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

PROLOGUE: A NEW BEGINNING

It looked good.

Yes, Ben Raines thought as he drove the area of the nation known to a few as the new Tri-States, it did look good. As he drove he gazed out at the fertile land that would soon bring forth beans and cotton and corn and the many hundreds of small gardens that would feed the people.

Ben smiled.

For the first time since the arrival of Ben and his Rebels in portions of Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, Ben felt some degree of optimism for the future of those who chose to follow his dream.

The spring of 2001 was, Ben felt, a long way from what most science fiction writers of his generation had envisioned. Those writers envisioned robots doing much of the tasks formally relegated to the unskilled. They imagined numerous space shuttles to faraway worlds, an easing of the world’s hunger, great strides and breakthroughs in the field of medicine-and so very much more.

Instead, the world now hung by a slender thread: on one side a chance for civilization to flourish; on the other, anarchy, barbarism, a return to the caves.

We’ve got to make it, Ben mused as he drove. Some group of people must show the rest of the world that civilization and order can once more prevail over chaos.

We’ve got to make it.

It’s up to us, and I know it. But I don’t have to like the heavy yoke of responsibility that hangs like that stinking albatross about my neck.

But, he sighed, we almost made it. We came so close, so very close to crawling out of the ashes of nuclear war. 1988 was not the end. It could have been a glorious new beginning. But 1988 blew up in our faces and very nearly destroyed the entire world.

His thoughts drifted back to the beginning of his dream: Tri-States, a section of America in the west, after the horror of germ and nuclear war; a society of free men and women of like mind, like dreams, like hopes. A society where people of all races could live and work and be content. And live free of crime. And Ben Raines and his Rebels did it. Social scientists and social anthropologists and assorted liberals and bleeding hearts had always maintained it could not be done, but Ben and his people had proved them incorrect. Grossly incorrect. Those men and women who were the founders and the foundation of Tri-States had succeeded against all odds. They had made their dream work.

And for almost a decade they had lived in peace and harmony and contentment, in a land where good schools-free of nit-picking and government interference

and unions and leniency-had done what schools were meant to do: educate the young, mold their minds, teach them reading and writing and math and science and discipline and respect.

Tri-States had shown the world-that world which remained-that a government does not need to be top-heavy with bureaucracy and dead weight and hundreds of unfair and unworkable laws and pork-barrel projects and scheming politicians and massive overspending and dead-heads.

But the Central Government-then located in Richmond, Virginia because D. C. had taken a nuke dead-on back in ‘88-witha lunatic at the helm of state, could not bear the success of Ben Raines and his people. President Hilton Logan had ordered the destruction of Tri-States-and all its inhabitants.

Only three years ago, Ben thought, waving to a Rebel standing by a fence, talking with a neighbor. The men returned the wave.

“Hi, General!” they called. Both men wore side arms belted around their waists. And they would have automatic weapons close by, not just because they were citizen soldiers, regulars in the Rebel army, but because the world was still tumbling about in fear and chaos and violence and near-anarchy.

Citizen soldiers, Ben thought, driving past the talking men. That is why we survived and so many others did not. I insisted that all my people be a part of the armed forces, with all the training and discipline contained therein. And we survived the holocaust, came through it, due in no small part to the fact the people were armed and trained and disciplined.

That should tell the world something.

But what world is left to hear it?

So much has happened in only three years.

Ben wondered, if history were ever written abut this tragic period of the world, if anyone would believe that one man, Ben Raines, could go from novelist to guerrilla leader to the founder of a separate nation within a nation back to guerrilla leader, and from there move on to the office of the president of the United States, and once more back to guerrilla leader-all in the short span of only twelve years?

Unbelievable.

Ben smiled. It would have made a hell of a book, he thought, the writer in him once more surfacing. He missed writing, missed the long hours of solitude, missed the exercising of his mind as he grappled with plot and dialogue, missed the deadlines he used to curse.

Reading, he thought, the smile still on his lips. That’s the key. That is what we have to stress with the young people. The nation, Ben knew, had begun slipping in the reading department-really took a beating from 1960 to the big blow-up of ‘88. Can’t let that happen again. Got to stress reading and math and science. For those will be the keys to picking up the pieces of civilization and putting them back together once more.

Thank God the mindless inanity of much of prime-time TV was gone. His smile turned grim. The only good thing to come out of being nuked.

Ben lost his smile as his eyes picked up the reflection of his constant shadow in the rear-view mirror of his pickup: his bodyguards.

Sgt. Buck Osgood would be at the wheel of the rear

vehicle. With another Rebel riding shotgun, armed with an automatic weapon, and a third Rebel in the rear of the vehicle, ready to grab the big .50-caliber machine gun.

By nature a loner, Ben could never become accustomed to the idea of having a babysitter wherever he went-not even after all these years.

And ranging a half mile ahead of him, always trying to stay out of his sight, for his bodyguards knew how Ben felt, would be another Jeep or APC, with more Rebels in it, all heavily armed.

What price fame? Ben silently mused, the mental question laced with sarcasm.

But Ben knew the precautions were necessary, for there had been sightings of mutants. However, the mutants for the most part left humans alone as long as they were not provoked. In addition, there was the need to guard against roaming gangs of thugs and paramilitary groups. At least several times a month they would attempt to slip into the new Tri-States, to steal or rape or burn or kill, or all of those things.

They would be put down hard; if not killed on the spot, they would be hanged the next day.

For that was the order of day now-around the battered globe. Nowhere else that the Rebels knew of was there social order-only the new Tri-States, which set rules and behavior and morals.

In this late spring of 2001, worldwide, it had come down to the survival of the fittest. Humankind had reverted very nearly back to the caves. And in some cases, had indeed returned to the caves, although Ben and his people would not learn of that for months to come.

For now, in the new Tri-States, Ben Raines and his six thousand survivors, men, women, and children, were attempting to rebuild some sort of workable society out of the ruins of war and anarchy and a worldwide plague. Hopefully, they could fan a spark from the ashes.

Ben thought that just maybe they could pull it off. Maybe.

God knew they had to try.

Ben didn’t think humankind would have another chance.

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

May, 2001

The men and women of the IPF, International Peace Force, had landed quietly on Canadian soil, on their way to the United States. Their route had been long and often tedious. They had waited and trained and studied for ten years before making their move. They had planned well.

They had sailed from home port in March-not the easiest month to leave-and skirted south of Cape Farewell, into the Labrador Sea. They sailed into the Hudson Strait, passed around Mansel Island, keeping to the east, then angled south by southwest until the mouth of the River was in sight. There, they offloaded boats and equipment for the river trip.

They followed the Nelson into Lake Winnipeg, then began a tortuous trek overland. But most were young and strong and the trip was nothing compared to the training they had been undergoing for the past decade.

All came through. Anything for the Motherland and for the development of a meister rasse.

The IPF picked up Highway 10 in Canada and procured vehicles from the abandoned cars and trucks. They headed for the United States border, dropping off small contingents of IPF personnel along the way. They saw very few people alive in Canada. Those they saw seemed more curious than hostile.

Had the people in Canada known what type of monster mentality they were facing, they would have turned hostile in a hurry.

But by the time they discovered the truth, it was too late for the few Canadians left alive in the areas where the IPF landed.

In the United States-the late, great United States-the IPF set up base camp in Minnesota and radioed back to home port they were at their objective. They were told two more ships had set sail and had steamed near the mouth of the Nelson. There, they were awaiting orders to offload men and equipment.

In Minnesota, the IPF broke off into teams and fanned out into the countryside, testing the mood of the people. In a great many cases they found men and women-entire families-who were just barely hanging on to life, victims of the many roving gangs of thugs in the land.

The men and women of the IPF spoke grammatically correct English, with only a very slight accent. They were very polite: the men were often courtly in their dealings with American women, straightforward and open with the American men. At first. But conditions and deportment among the IPF were subject to

sudden and drastic changes-very soon.

An American man asked where the people had come from.

“Originally, Eastern Europe,” came the reply, always with a smile.

“That would account for the accent.”

“Yes.”

“And you want?”

“To be your friend, and for you to be our friends. To live in peace in this troubled world. To try and find the cause for the terrible tragedy that has befallen us all, and to correct it.”

“Isn’t that what we all want?”

“Yes,” Gen. Georgi Striganov said with a smile. He was a strikingly handsome man, tall and well-built, with pale blue eyes, fair skin, and blond-gray hair. “Indeed it is.”

The American stuck out his hand. “I’ll tell you what the problem was. The goddamn niggers wanted everything given to them and the goddamn Jews went along with it. Every time you looked at the TV there was about a million greasers comin’ across the border, grabbing up jobs that should have gone to Americans.”

General Striganov listened with a sympathetic smile on his lips.

“Taxes kept goin’ up and up and up; it never seemed to stop. Everything for the minorities and to hell with the taxpayers. I said it, and by God that’s the way I feel about it.”

Striganov shook the man’s hand. “My name is Georgi. I think we’re going to get along very well. Now

tell me: How can we help you?”

Ben watched Ike pull into his driveway and get out of the pickup. Ike walked up to Ben, resting on his hoe handle in his garden.

“El Presidente,” Ike said with a grin, “it is time, I believe, for me to speak.”

“Quote the Walrus, “Of shoes-and ships-and sealing wax.” Maybe I don’t want to hear it, Ike.”

The grin never left Ike’s face. “Hell, Ben, that never stopped me before.”

The two men had met down in Florida, back in late ‘88, the ex-Seal and the ex-Hell-Hound. They had been close friends, like brothers, ever since.

“That certainly is true, Ike.”

“You need a woman, Ben.”

“Oh, hell!”

“Hear me out, ol’ buddy. Things are lookin’ pretty good around here, thanks to you. You somehow put some steel in the backbones of those who follow you. I personally didn’t believe you could do it-but you did. With any kind of luck, pal, well make it here.”

The usage of the informal noun brought memories rushing to both men of Pal Elliot, a black man who had been instrumental in shaping the original Tri-States. Pal, his wife Valerie and their children had been killed in the governmental assault on Tri-States.

Ben shook away the memories of people dead and events past. “I am perfectly content with my life as a bachelor, Ike.”

“That’s bull and you know it, Ben. You got too much he-goat in you for that.” He grinned. “Have you seen the twins?”

“Which set?” Ben asked sourly.

Ike laughed and punched the man playfully on the shoulder. “Rosita’s set.”

“No.”

“They got their momma’s good looks and your eyes. You know what she named them?”

Ben had to smile at the memories of Rosita. “Ben and Salina. Not very subtle of her, I’d say.”

“Have you seen Dawn?”

“Get to the point, Ike,” Ben said wearily. “If there is a point.” He knew very well what the point was.

“That’s your baby, Ben.” It was not phrased as a question.

“Yes,” he admitted. “She said she was going to have it and nothing I could say would change her mind.”

“And now you’re alone and have been for some months.”

Ben shrugged.

“What are you going to do: put a rubber band around it and become celibate?”

Ben laughed at just the thought. “That would be painful, buddy.”

“The rubber band or celibacy?”

Ben tried his best glare on Ike. It didn’t work, bouncing off the stocky man. “Ben, you’ve been rattlin’ “round in that big ol” house like a pea in a dry pod. For all you’ve been through, you still look like a man forty years old. I know-a lot of us know-you’re restless. Would like to take off and ramble. But you can’t do that, Ben. You’re the glue that holds us together. You was to take off, Tri-States would collapse.”

Ben did not like to think of himself as being that

important to the society. It bothered him. “And you think a woman would help settle me down, is that right, Ike?”

“It’s been known to happen.”

“I read Roanna’s newspaper every week. Maybe I should advertise?”

“It isn’t funny, Ben.” Ike was serious.

“And I’m not treating it as a joke, Ike. Damn it, Ike, I don’t want a harem. And I’m not liking the feeling I get when I leave the farm. That’s why I’ve been keeping a low profile, and why Cecil is being groomed-not that he needs any grooming-to take my place, and the sooner the better.”

“Cecil’s a good man,” Ike said guardedly.

“Drop the other shoe, Ike.”

“Nobody can take your place.”

Ben felt temper building in him. He fought it back. “And I don’t like that crap either, Ike. Damn, buddy, nobody is indispensable-you should know that. Nobody!”

Ike stood quietly, waiting by the fence. Finally he waved his hand and sighed. “All right, Ben, let’s don’t fuss about it. Too much to do without putting that into it. Two reasons I came out here. You won’t discuss number one, so here’s number two: Intelligence keeps picking up some strange radio transmissions. They came to me with it “cause, well…”

“They’re afraid to come to me with them,” Ben finished it. There was a flat tone to his voice.

“I reckon that’s about the size of it,” the Mississippi-born-and-reared Ike admitted.

“That really makes me feel swell, Ike.”

Ike spread his hands in a gesture of “what can I

say?” When he spoke his voice was soft. “You know you’re bigger than life to a lot of people, Ben.”

“And I get the feeling it’s getting out of hand.”

“Maybe. Anyway, we pinpointed latitude and longitude. Coming from just south of the Arctic Circle. Twenty degrees west longitude, sixty-five degrees north latitude. They’re coming from Iceland, Ben.”

“Iceland! But Iceland was supposed to be destroyed, Ike.”

“You got it. And the transmissions are in a funny language. It’s almost Russian-but it isn’t. It is a Russian dialect, though.”

Ben nodded his head thoughtfully. “Could be one of a dozen or so. Latvian, Croatian, Georgian. What do you make of it?”

Ike shook his head. “Strange, Ben-weird. You remember that we got reports back in “89 that Iceland was hot, took several nukes nose-on.”

“Yes,” Ben’s reply was thoughtful. “We damn sure did. And as I recall, I wondered why they would-or should. OK, they’ve got to be broadcasting to somebody, Ike.”

“Right. To a base in northern Minnesota.”

“Now that is interesting.”

“I did a little checking “fore I drove up to see you, since you never seem to leave this raggedly ol” place,” Ike added dryly. Ben ignored that dig. “Doctor Chase says it would have been highly unlikely the plague would have hit that far north. Extreme temperatures, hot or cold, seem to at first stall it, then kill it.”

“Wonder why he never told me that?”

was “Cause you don’t never leave this goddamn place!”

“Uh-huh. You have someone attempting to translate the language?”

“Right. Ben, what are you thinking? Man, I don’t like the look in your eyes.”

Ben slapped his friend on the back, his mood suddenly lifting. “Ike, I want you to personally get me a full platoon together.”

“Now, damn it, Ben!”

“I want supplies for a sustained operation. Full combat gear. Mortars and light howitzers.” “Goddamn it, Ben!”

“At least two APC’S and rig .50’s on all the Jeeps, no telling what we’ll run into.”

“If I had known you were gonna pull this kind of crap I’d have never come out here!”

“And have one of Doctor Chase’s doctors accompany us. No telling what we’ll find. Get on that right away, will you, Ike?”

Ike stood for a moment, glaring at his friend. Ben returned his gaze sweetly, blandly, the picture of all innocence. Ike finally turned away, muttering under his breath.

Ben rubbed his hands together, a grin moving his mouth. Ben Raines did not like inactivity. He liked to be on the move, liked action.

This was just what the doctor ordered.

Sam Hartline looked like the stereotyped Hollywood mercenary-when Hollywood existed, that is. Six feet, two inches, heavily muscled, a deep tan, dark brown hair graying at the temples, cold green eyes, and a scar on his right cheek.

Cecil had summed up Hartline several years back.

“Sam Hartline is a goddamned psychopath. And one hard-line nigger hater. He was with Jeb Fargo outside Chicago back in “88 and

‘89.”

“Mr. Hartline,” General Striganov greeted the mercenary warmly, with a smile and a firm handshake. “How good to meet with you at last. Did you have a pleasant trip up?”

“Very nice,” Hartline replied, his eyes taking in and silently appraising the Russian. The man looked to be about the same age as Ben Raines, and in just as good physical condition. Hartline wondered if the Russian was as tough as Ben Raines. He’d damn well better be, he concluded, if he’s thinking of tangling with Raines.

“You have laid claim to the entire state of Wisconsin,” General Striganov said, not losing his smile. “Don’t you find that a rather ambitious undertaking, Mr. Hartline?”

Hartline’s smile was as cold as the one greeting him. “Not at all, General. The people seem to be coming along splendidly.”

Striganov leaned back in his chair. “You know, of course, who I am and what I represent?”

Hartline shrugged his heavy shoulders. “You’re a former member of the KGB.” He smiled. “The Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Brozopasnosti.”

Striganov’s eyebrows lifted slightly. Then the rumors concerning Hartline’s linguistic abilities were not exaggerated.

“A general in the Russian Army. Or what is left of that army.”

The smile did not quite reach Striganov’s eyes. “I assure

you, Mr. Hartline, we are of more than ample number. Ah, well, shifting away from me for a time, Mr. Hartline-may I call you Sam? Thank you. Sam, it is quite obvious to any intelligent being that communism-that type of order advocated and practiced by my superiors over those long decades-simply did not work. It was much too repressive. Would you agree?”

“Yes, General, to a point, I would.”

“Ah, good. We are of like mind already. Half the battle is won, I believe. Sam, I have some excellent English tea; would you care for more? Good!” He ordered more tea sent in. “You see, Sam, I was one of those who led the rebellion-for want of a better word-against the Politburo back in ‘88.1 was a colonel then, but with quite a following.” A look of anguish mixed with regret passed over his handsome features, quickly disappearing.

“We failed,” Georgi said simply. “The world exploded in nuclear and germ warfare. You know all that-ancient history. We shan’t fail again. Not if you agree to help me instead of fighting me.”

Hartline had no intention of fighting the Russian. But he saw no point in revealing his hole card just yet. “I’m still here, General, listening.” Hartline sipped his hot tea. It was very good tea. The best he’d had in months. “Earle Gray?” he asked.

“But of course. None finer. Before you misinterpret my previous statement, Sam-I am still a communist. I was born a communist, I shall die believing in that ideology. But I lean more to the socialistic aspects of the philosophy, and away from the harshness-more or less-of hard-liners.”

Hartline knew the man was lying. But he decided to

play the game. “But you do believe in the caste system.”

“But of course! And so do you, nyet?”

“Da,” Hartline replied, his eyes locked to the cold gaze of the Russian. “I speak fluent Russian, General.”

“I know,” Georgi said.

Hartline began musing aloud. “Divide the people into classes. At the second level, the doctors and scientists and legal minds and upper-echelon executives. At the third level, the farmers and ranchers and foremen and supervisors, people of that ilk. The fourth level will be the workers. The fifth level, the really menial jobs. Am I close, General?”

“V. But you left out the top level, Sam.”

“Why… that’s us, General.”

“Yes.” The Russian smiled. “Go on.”

“We need to purge the races. Make the races pure, so to speak. Niggers, spies, Jews, Indians, Orientals-we can dispose of them.”

Georgi Striganov laughed, a big booming laugh. “I think, Sam Hartline, we are going to get along very well. Very well, indeed. Oh my, yes.”

June, 2001

Ben longed for the day when Cecil would take over the reins of responsibility so Ben could just roam. But for now he was leaving Cecil in charge only temporarily. As Ben made ready to pull out on Sunday, June tenth, he felt better than he had in weeks. He drove a Chevy pickup with four-wheel drive capability if needed, and all the vehicles in the column had PTO

winches on the front. Four deuce-and-a-halves carried spare parts, ammo, food and other equipment. Ben had planned very carefully, leaving nothing out: medical supplies, walkie-talkies, bull-horns, clothing and dozens of other small but likely-to-be-necessary items.

Ben had cut his platoon down to forty for mobility purposes, but the forty were, for the most part, all combat vets, and all of them 110 percent loyal to Ben Raines and his desire to rebuild from the ashes.

James Riverson, the ranking NCO in the Rebel army, and a longtime member of Ben’s recon team, sent out two of his people to take the far point. They would range several miles in front of the column, always staying in radio contact.

Although everyone was against Ben’s leading the column-directly behind the point vehicle-no one dared say anything about it.

Except Lt. Mary Macklin.

“Pardon my impudence, sir,” she asked, standing by his pickup truck, driver’s side, moments before pulling out. “But are you trying to prove something?”

Ben looked at her, blinked. Tried to place her. Then it came to him.

Back in Tri-States after racing to escape the plague, arriving there in a raging blizzard, Ben had slept a few hours in the motel Ike and his people had prepared for the Rebels from the east, then had walked downstairs for breakfast.

Over bacon and eggs and a huge stack of flapjacks, Ben asked, “How’s it looking, Ike?”

“Fifty-eight hundred, Ben.”

Ben could not believe it. “What the hell happened to the rest? We had more than ten thousand six months ago.”

“They just didn’t make it, partner. Word is still pretty sketchy, but from all reports, we lost a full battalion of people coming out of Georgia. We were in contact one day … next day, nothing. A couple of companies were ambushed up in Michigan. We lost a full platoon of people in Wisconsin, and we don’t know what killed them.”

“What do you mean, Ike?”

“Just that, Ben. We don’t know what happened. The two people who survived died on the way here without ever regaining consciousness. They were, well, mangled all to hell and gone. I got the pictures if you got the stomach for it.”

Ben thought he knew what the pictures would reveal; he had seen something very similar to it on a lonely, windy highway in Illinois.

He said as much.

Ike toyed with his coffee cup. “And?”

Ben shook his head. “We deal with it if or when we see whatever killed those people with our own eyes.”

Ike grunted softly. “Probably be best. Keep down the horror stories, I reckon.”

The large dining room was silent, only a few of Ben’s Rebels from the east up and about. It had been a harrowing and dangerous journey, with nerves stretched tight most of the way.

Ike mentioned that Jerre would like to have her babies as soon as possible. He suggested a chopper.

Ben agreed.

Ike motioned for a uniformed young woman to

come to the table. Lt. Mary Macklin. After receiving her instructions, she saluted smartly and left.

Ben smiled. “Getting a little rigid on discipline, aren’t you, Ike?”

“That ain’t my idea,” the ex-Seal replied glumly. “It’s hers. She was regular army “til about six months ago. I can’t get that damned salutin” out of her. Drives me up the wall.”

“I beg your pardon, Lieutenant?” Ben shook himself back to the moment.

“I do not mean to be out of line, General, or to overstep any chain of command. But all concerned would feel much better if you were in the middle of the column instead of leading it.”

Ben smiled at her. He took a closer look with a man’s eyes. Light brown hair, hazel eyes, about five-seven. Nice figure. Erect military bearing.

“Thank you for your frankness, Lieutenant. Noted and appreciated. Your name?”

“Lieutenant Mary Macklin. I was a rigger with the Eighty-second Airborne prior to OCS:”

“After that?”

“ASA, sir.”

“Well. Lieutenant, if you’re so concerned with my well-being, why don’t you ride with me and protect me?”

“Is that a joke, sir?”

“Not unless you want to take it as such.”

She met his eyes. “Then may I take it as an order, sir?”

This lady was all military, Ben thought. “No. But if

you like I can make it an order.”

“That won’t be necessary, sir. I’ll just get my gear and put it in the bed of your truck.”

Ben watched her walk away, his eyes on her reflection in the side mirror. Might be an interesting trip in more ways than one, he thought.

Hard eyes, Mary thought as she walked away. She knew, with a woman’s awareness, that General Raines was watching her. She tried very hard to walk with a military bearing. She failed miserably.

The column pulled out shortly afterward. They skirted Little Rock and picked up Highway 67, taking that all the way to the northeast corner of Arkansas. They stopped for the night in Piggott, Arkansas, a small town just a few miles from the Missouri line.

The town had been looted, but as in most cases of looting, the looters did not take essentials such as food, clothing and medicine.

“Another reason I have always advocated looters being shot on sight,” Ben muttered, driving around the courthouse square.

“Beg pardon, sir?” Mary asked.

“Muttering to myself, Mary. Nothing of importance, I suppose.”

“Looters, sir?” she guessed, for she knew how Ben Raines felt about lawbreakers.

“Good guess, Mary. Yes, looters. Two-legged animals.”

“And you feel that they should be?”

“Shot on sight.”

She stirred beside him and Ben hid a smile, knowing a full-scale debate might be only moments away. He nipped it short.

“Hemingway lived here for a time, did you know that, Lieutenant?”

“Ernest Hemingway? Here?”

“Yes.” Ben laughed at her expression. But he was thankful that at least one person of her generation had heard of the writer. All was not lost, he supposed. “We’ll get the people settled in and I’ll try to find the house.”

Col. Dan Gray was the next-ranking officer under Ben and Ben gave the Englishman orders to pick a spot to bivouac.

“We’ll be in radio contact, Dan,” Ben said. He dropped his pickup into gear and pulled out. He smiled as Buck Osgood tore out after them.

Mary looked at his smile. “Do you enjoy worrying people, General?”

Ben glanced at her. The lady was smart as well as pretty. “Is that what I do, Lieutenant? How about if I call you Mary when we’re alone?”

She met his brief glance. “All right,” she said softly. “Yes, you worry people. And you do it deliberately. Just like right now. You knew damn well Buck would be after you; it’s his job.”

Ben thought about that and slowed his speed, allowing Buck to catch up. The sergeant was frantically flashing his headlights off and on, signaling Ben to slow down.

“You’re right, Mary.” She was mildly astonished to hear the admission from his lips. “I’m a loner at heart, and I’ve been taking care of myself for a good many years. And doing it quite well without a nanny. I’ve never gotten used to being bird-dogged.”

“I’ve heard so many stories about you, General.

How did you get into this … this position of authority?”

Ben laughed aloud. “Did you ever hear what John Kennedy said about him being a hero in World War II?”

She blinked. “Was that the president, or what?”

Ben sighed. “How old are you, Mary?”

“Twenty-four.”

Ben did some fast math. Odds were good that her parents had not been born when Kennedy was sworn in, back in ‘61.

“Depending on how one counts it, Mary, JFK was either the thirty-fourth or thirty-fifth president of the United States. He was assassinated in 1963. As to his being a hero, he said, “They sank my boat.””

She smiled, then laughed as the humor of it struck her. “Thank you, but that doesn’t answer my question.”

Ben was thoughtful for a few moments, as he skillfully twisted and turned the wheel, avoiding the many obstacles in the road: abandoned cars and trucks, fallen trees, skeletons of humans and animals, tin cans and garbage containers, and an occasional fresh body.

How to tell her? How to tell anyone? How to tell a stranger that Ben had this dream of a free society, free of crime and bigotry and hatred, with jobs for those who wished to work, and those who didn’t could either leave voluntarily or be kicked out.

“I’ll tell you someday, Mary,” he said. “When you have several days to listen.”

Ben drove and drove and finally gave up. “Well,” he said, “I can’t find the house. Crap. I saw it once, back in the seventies. It was beautiful.”

“That’s right!” She looked at him, “I almost forgot. You used to be a writer, didn’t you?” “About a hundred years ago,” Ben said dryly. “I’d like to read some of your books.” “I assure you, Mary. I have many copies.”

They drove the streets of the small town once more. They could find no one alive. But Ben knew from past experience that was probably not true. In a town this size, so his statisticians had told him-and Ben was still a writer at heart and wanted to know those types of things-from five to eight people would have survived. But they would have become very wary of strangers, especially uniformed, armed strangers.

He told Mary that. She asked, “I wonder how they survive-get along?”

“Many of them won’t make it for any length of time. Only the very toughest will stand the test-usually. Of course there is always the exception; but the exceptions find out they’d damn well better get tough or die. The ones who will come out will be those who will not hesitate to shoot first and ask questions later.”

“So we have come to that.” Her words were softly spoken, just audible over the hiss of the tires against the pavement. “Then we have gone full circle.”

“Back to the caves? No, not yet. Not if I have anything to say about it. We’re on the right track, Mary, but we still have a very long way to go before we get home free.”

“Optimistic, General?”

“Only at times, Mary. Other times I hit new lows.”

She looked at his profile in the waning light of evening.

She had heard all the talk about his being some sort of god, that he could not be killed, and all that. That shrines had been secretly built in his honor by some of the people who followed him. She wondered if he knew about those places of worship. She decided he did not. Everything within her being wanted to reject any notion of a higher being, for Mary was more agnostic than believer-at least she felt that way most of the time. She had heard about General Raines’s sexual escapades and the children he had sired. She wondered if Ben was attempting to repopulate the world single-handedly. That brought a smile to her lips. And an idea to her brain.

“Tell me the joke?” Ben asked, glancing at her Mona Lisa smile.

“I don’t think you would appreciate the humor, General.”

“Perhaps not, Mary.” He pulled up, parking in the center of a street lined with Jeeps and trucks. “Let’s see about getting something to eat.”

She came to him later that night, after the area was silent, with only the guards maintaining their lonely vigil. He did not seem at all surprised to see her appear at his door.

“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.”

“They’ve been here?” Ben questioned. “Bothering you people?”

Ms. Browning, who had been an English teacher for fifty-five years, then told Ben and April that yes, the hoodlums had indeed been bothering the elderly. They had raped and tortured some of the members of the small group. And they were coming back to perform some, well, perverted acts on the person of one Mrs. Carson, a very attractive woman of sixty-five. There were fifteen hoodlums, and only one Ben Raines. So what could he hope to do?

Ben smiled, and Ms. Browning noted that his smile was that of a man-eating tiger who had just that moment spotted dinner.

“Oh, I imagine I can think of something suitable for them, Ms. Browning.”

Ben had killed all but two of the punks; the elderly had hanged them.

Ben wondered how long the old people had survived after he left them.

Ben pulled his thoughts to the present as he continued to stare into the darkness. The darkness seemed void of any life. He wondered about the people left

alive, not just in Poplar Bluff but around the nation. How many had made it? He did some fast math. Was a half million shooting too high? Only a few percentage points of the population. And was it the responsibility of Ben Raines to take every damned one of them under his wing like helpless chicks to raise?

Resolution stiffened within him. No, it was not. Then compassion touched him. If he-or someone like him-did not do it, where was civilization heading?

Back to the caves? Probably. Already, Ben knew, the nation was well into a generation of young men and women whose education was spotty, at best.

Ben Raines could not attempt to educate the entire nation. But he could start with his own people. If time would allow it.

And he had doubts about that.

He sighed, the soft expelling of breath lost in the whispering of the night wind. Again, his thoughts drifted back in time, bringing a smile to his lips.

All he wanted to do was travel the nation after the bombings, as a writer, from coast to coast, border to border, chronicling the events, talking to the people, putting their opinions and his views down on paper, in the hopes that someone, sometime in the future, would take the time to read it.

Instead, he had found himself as the leader of a people. And he had not wanted the responsibility.

But maybe it was his responsibility. Perhaps that was his purpose in life. But as he thought that, the ageless question rose silent in his mind, as it had done so many times: Why me?

As usual, he could find no answer.

Ben hefted the old Thompson, shifting the weapon from right hand to left. The submachine gun, modeled after the old 1921 Thompson with several improvements added over the years had been called the Chicago Piano in its heyday. It was as closely identified with Ben as the FBI had been with J. Edgar Hoover. Ben did not know, could not have known, that the Thompson was held in almost as much awe as the man who carried it, that youngsters believed the weapon held some special power. There was not a child in the entire Rebel-controlled areas who would have touched the weapon.

And quite a few adults felt the same way.

Ben Raines did not look his true age, nor did he feel it-except in memory. Discounting the light touch of gray in his hair, Ben looked years younger than he was. And he was in excellent physical shape, just as randy and horny as any young buck.

He fought back a smile in the gloom of night. Perhaps his true mission in life was to procreate the earth.

He turned at the sound of footsteps behind him. Doctor Carlton.

“I’ve checked out the survivors here as best I could, General,” the young M.d. informed him. “They’re scared and suffer from lack of confidence-life’s beaten them down pretty badly-but surprisingly, their physical condition is good.”

“Do they know how they beat the plague?”

“No. But Ms. Roth took the same type of medicines we took.” He laughed softly. “That, General, is one feisty lady.”

“I’ve noticed. Thank you, Wes. Oh, by the way, do you know if the teams found suitable transportation for the survivors?”

“Yes, sir. And they are eager to join us.” He hesitated for a moment. “General, the people are scared, sir. Even after the bombings of ‘88, we still had some form of government, some hope, if you will. Now they have no government, nothing to look forward to, no one to tell them what to do, and they don’t know what to do.”

“The de-balling of America,” Ben muttered under his breath, the words tossed unheard by the breeze.

“Beg pardon, sir?”

“The government got what it wanted,” Ben told him. “The goddamn liberals and the goddamned lawyers and the goddamned courts succeeded in de-balling the American people.”

“That’s a sexist remark if I ever heard one.” The voice came out of the darkness.

Neither man had to turn around; they both knew who it was. Ben said, “You wander around out here in the dark, Ms. Roth, around my people, and you’re very likely to get your butt shot off.”

“The de-balling of the American people, Mr. President?”

“Ms. Roth,” Ben said patiently, “I am not your president.”

“For a fact. I damn sure didn’t vote for you,” she told him.

“I don’t recall anybody voting for me, Ms. Roth.”

“Do you always carry that gangster’s gun around with you, Mr. President?”

Ben kept his patience. He sighed heavily. “I’ve found it to be the wisest thing to do, Ms. Roth.”

Dr. Wes Carlton found his cue. “I think I’ll say

goodnight,” he said. He quickly disappeared into the darkness.

“Coward,” Ben muttered to his fast-vanishing back.

“What if I don’t want to accompany you and your Rebels, Mr. President?” Gale asked. She stepped closer to Ben. A very slight figure in the dark.

“Then you may stay here.”

“You’ll leave troops behind to protect me?”

“Hell no!”

She stamped a foot. “Mr. President, I think you are-was

Ben cut her off. It would turn out to be one of the very few times he would be able to do that. “Goodnight, Ms. Roth. Go to bed, Ms. Roth. We pull out at 0700, Ms. Roth.”

“What the hell is oh-seven hundred, Mr. President?”

“Seven o’clock in the morning, Ms. Roth.”

“Where are we going?”

“Why don’t you just let it be a surprise?”

“I don’t like surprises.”

Ben turned to walk away. “Give the old college try, Ms. Roth. Boola-boola, and all that.”

Ben did not see her tongue sticking out at him or the perfectly horrible-looking face that she made next. Neither did he see her toss the bird at him.

Then she smiled gently.

CHAPTER THREE

The convoy took Highway 60 out of Poplar Bluff, staying with it until they came to state Highway 21 angling off to the west. Ben wanted to stay with the lesser traveled roads, feeling more survivors would be found in the less-traveled areas. He was right.

As they slowly traveled through the small towns of rural Missouri, slowly edging northward, the Rebels found survivors: ten in Ellington, a half dozen in Reynolds, twelve in Bunker, four in Stone Hill.

“Do you know of more who stayed alive around here?” Ben asked a middle-aged man outside Stone Hill. The man had been hoeing in his large garden. He wore a .45-caliber pistol around his waist, and had picked up a bolt action .30-06 upon first sighting the small convoy. He looked as though he was perfectly able and willing to use either weapon.

“A few more,” he replied, relaxing when he learned who he was speaking with. “We’re trying to gather up as many as possible and rebuild. That is, providin’ the IPF leaves us alone.”

“The what?” Ben asked.

“Call themselves the IPF International Peace Force. They talk funny, with kind of an accent. Can’t rightly place it. You ask me, they’re just too damned nice. Ain’t nobody that nice to a perfect stranger “less they want something in return, or they’re tryin” to hide something.”

Ben kept his smile a secret. He thought: Leave it to a farmer. Rural folks could spot a ringer a mile off.

“They say where they were from?”

“Nope.” The man shook his head. “And I asked them flat out.” He spat on the ground. “Personally, I think they’re communists.”

“Why do you say that?”

was “Cause you can ask the same damn question to every damn one of them. The answer don’t never vary. It’s down pat-like they’ve been drilled over and over. A few folks around here have taken a shine to them.” Again he spat on the ground. “Personally, I don’t like them worth a shit!”

“Are they armed?”

“I’ll say they are. Well-armed.” He described the weapons.

“AK’S,” Colonel Gray spoke. “Or AKM-74’S. Maybe the AKS’S. Soviet bloc weapons.”

“Did they give you any names?” Ben asked.

“Yep. But first names only. No last names. And I got the feelin” they was lyin’ about the first names. I don’t like them people.”

A sergeant standing nearby mused aloud. “How in the hell did they manage to keep it a secret for so many years?”

“By careful planning,” Ben told him.

“Well,” the civilian said, “you probably right about that, Mr. Raines. But I’ll tell you this-all of you. We’re organizing around here. So far, it’s comin’ along slow, but it’s comin’. We’ve got about a hundred people so far, and we’re all reasonably well-armed and know how to use the weapons-and will use them. I’ve defended this place several times since the rats and fleas come last year.” He pointed to a graveyard in back of the house. “Them’s the ones who come to steal and rape and kill. They didn’t make it but just that far. Anyways, it’s them damn young people up to Rolla that’s playin’ footsie with the foreigners.”

“Young people?” Ben quizzed.

“Bunch of them have gathered up there at the old college. My cousin over to Dillard says his boy went to one of the lectures given by the IPF, come back home sayin’ it was communistic. The workers this and the workers that-free this and free that. I’ll be goddamned if I’ll see this nation go back to that kind of crap; fucking unions damn near ruined us back in the sixties and seventies. Quality workmanship was hard to find back then. Time the eighties rolled around, if it was made in Japan, buy it. If it was made in America, odds were good it wasn’t worth a shit.” He looked hard at Ben. “You still the president, Mr. Raines?”

“No,” Ben said. “No, I’m not.”

“Shame. You might have been the one to pull us all back together. I think you might have been the only one able to do it. You’re a hard man, but you’re a fair one. But now …” He shook his head.

“But now what, sir?”

“Come on, Mr. Raines-we’ve had it. Oh, I’m not giving up. Don’t you ever think that. But I’ve been

doin’ some arithmetic. Say, on the average, and this might be shooting high or low, ten percent of the American people made it out alive from the rats and fleas and plague. What does that leave us, Mr. Raines? A half million folks? A million? Most of them scattered all to hell and gone in little groups of twenty and thirty. No organization, no goals, no plans except survival of the fittest. No nothing. And the young folks!” He laughed bitterly. “Hell, you know how a kid’s mind works: They’re easy prey for anyone with a slick line, holding out a carrot, preaching love and peace and an easy time of it. We’re old enough, Mr. Raines, you and me, to remember the peace and love movement back in the sixties. The hippies and the flippies and the Yip-pies. No, sir. If the IPF people can reach our young, us older folks can bend down, put our heads between our legs, and kiss our asses goodbye.”

“I’ve got some three thousand fighting men and women who just might have something to say about that, sir,” Ben told the man.

“I don’t care if you’ve got thirty thousand,” the man stated flatly. “If a time has come, it’s come. Mr. Raines, you ever seen a young person-any young person of any generation-who would rather work than play? I haven’t, and neither have you. That’s why they’re young folks; they have yet to learn the work ethic.” He tapped the side of his head. “The IPF people, now, they’re smart-give them credit for that. I think they’re evil, but they’re smart. They’re sending kids into the countryside-nineteen, twenty years old, good-lookin’ young people. The young people are all blue-eyed and blond, and they’re pulling in our young folks faster than eggs through a hen.”

Something ancient and evil stirred within Ben. That remark about blond and blue-eyed triggered something … a memory recall. But he couldn’t pin it down. It would come to him.

The man was saying, “Now you on the other hand, Mr. Raines, you’re the picture of toughness, discipline, hard work-a fighting man. Many of the young people-not all of them, but many-won’t be able to relate to you, sir. They’ve had enough of war and disaster. And if these IPF people can convince them you stand for war and they represent peace, we’ve had it.

“Now, your people know what you’re doing is right; I know it and most people my age know it. But you’re going to have one hell of a time convincing a lot of the young people.”

Earthy wisdom, Ben thought. Plain, old-fashioned common sense. Why in God’s name did the American people ever turn their backs on this type of thinking?

“Are you suggesting I don’t even try to talk with them?” Ben asked.

“Oh, no. You can try. But I recall tryin’ to talk to my youngest boy back in ‘87. Like tryin’ to talk to a fence post. His mind was made up, and there wasn’t nothing I could say or do to change it. He pulled out one morning to see the world. I guess he seen it, “cause I damn sure never saw him again.”

Caught up in the hell of global warfare, Ben mused. “Anything else you can tell us about these people from the IPF?”

“Not a whole hell of a lot more to tell. I heard one of them talk about Iceland, wonderin” how things was goin’ back home. But if these folks is originally from Iceland, I’m a Baptist preacher.” He smiled. “And I’ve

been a Methodist all my life. Their leader is a man calls himself George. But I heard some of his people call him General Strogonoff. That’s not the right way to pronounce it. Something like that, though.”

“How do they conduct themselves?”

“They’re well-trained and polite. But I get the feeling they’d as soon kill a man as look at him. And the few black people left around here walk real light around them, as if they can sense something nobody else can.”

The memory recall leaped strong into Ben’s brain: Hitler. The master race. He kept that to himself.

Ben thanked him and the man returned to hoeing in his garden. Ben turned to Colonel Gray. “Dan, get Judy Stratmann and Roy Jaydot. Have them dress in jeans and tennis shoes-like the young people. Get them duffle bags or knapsacks and tell them to look trail-worn. We’ll pull back and bivouac in Greeley, keep our heads down. Tell Judy and Roy to find out what’s going on up at Rolla. We’ll sit back and wait.”

The Englishman saluted and left.

“James,” Ben waved to Riverson. The six-foot-six ex-truck driver walked over. “When we get to Greeley and settled in, pass the word for a low-alert status. These IPF people are sure to have patrols out-if they’re smart. We don’t want to be spotted.”

James nodded and called the four squad leaders together.

Lieutenant Macklin came to Ben’s side. “The International Peace Force, General? What in the world do they represent?”

“I… I’m not sure, Mary. But I think it’s one hell of a threat to whatever future this country has left it.”

Mary shivered, although the day was quite warm.

The young man was fair-skinned, blue-eyed and well-built. The blue in his eyes was of the piercing type, cold. Almost all the young ladies gathered at the long-abandoned branch of the University of Missouri at Rolla thought him handsome.

Judy Stratmann thought his smooth line just a bit too oily and well-rehearsed. He reminded her of an old movie about Southern Californian used car salesmen. Those old, old clips she’d seen of that guy named Johnny Carson.

Roy Jaydot thought that if all the members of the IPF were as smooth-talking and good-looking as this dude, the country was in trouble.

And both Judy and Roy had immediately noticed one thing: There was no blacks, Indians, Orientals, Jews or any other minority on the old campus.

Roy was a Ute Indian and Judy was half Jewish. It made them feel just a bit uncomfortable.

And the young ladies with Mike-Mikael, Roy felt would be the correct way to spell his name-they were all just as pretty as Mike was handsome.

On the second day of their roles as wandering young people, one of the young ladies with the IPF zeroed in on Roy.

“Hi,” she said, walking up to where Roy was sitting on the grass. “My name is Katrina.”

Roy looked up at her. Very pretty. About five-five, blue eyes, blond hair, fair-skinned. Very well endowed. No makeup. He wondered if she spelled her name with a C or a K? “Roy,” he said, getting to his feet.

“How do you like it so far?” Katrina asked.

Roy returned her smile. The opening was just too good to let slide by. “I don’t know,” he said, “yet.”

She looked puzzled for a moment, then the double meaning came to her. She smiled, but the smile did not quite touch her eyes. They remained as cold as the land she reportedly was from. “Yes,” she said, “I see. A joke. That’s funny.” She laughed.

Roy thought the laughter sounded very false. “I’m sorry if I offended you.”

“You didn’t,” she was quick to reply. “A society without humor would be very drab indeed. Tell me, Roy, what are you going to report to General Raines?”

Roy felt the first mild clutches of panic grab at his guts. He kept his expression bland, but his face felt hot and he knew he was flushed. He thanked the gods for his dark complexion.

“Don’t try to deny it, Roy.” She stood calm and self-assured. “You and Judy were not on the campus six hours before we discovered you both were not what you pretended to be.”

Roy decided to level with her. There was something about the young woman. He kept picking up strange vibes that suggested-he hoped-she was not really happy with her role in the IPF.

“Very well, Katrina. I will report to General Raines that you and the others in your party are here spreading communist dogma.”

She cocked her head to one side and looked at him. “Dogma. A good word. I like it. I shall retain that word for usage. Aren’t you in the least interested in how we discovered your secret?”

Roy shrugged. He wondered if he was going to have to shoot his way out of this bind. He had a 9mm submachine in his kit, and could feel the weight of the .38 pressing against the skin of his belly. He wondered where Judy was.

“I noticed the minute we arrived we didn’t exactly fit in with the crowd.”

“How?” she asked politely.

“Other than the fact I’m Indian and Judy is Jewish, I think we are too well-fed, too healthy, and that we walk with a military bearing, perhaps. Is that good enough for you?”

“Yes. That is correct. That is totally accurate. Thank you.”

She sounded like a computer. “Are you a clone, or something?” Roy asked her.

She cocked her head to the other side. Roy felt something soft touch his heart. Oh boy, he thought. Feelings of gentleness for a goddamned Russian, he berated himself. Roy, you’re coming unwrapped. But she sure was pretty.

“Clone? I do not understand that. What is a clone?”

“Your speech is perfect. Your dress is perfect. Your posture is perfect. Your hair is perfect. Are you real?”

This time the smile touched her eyes. “Would you like to touch me to see for yourself?”

Roy smiled, mischief in his eyes. If, the young man thought, I’m to be hanged anyway, I might as well make the best of a bad situation. He reached out and cupped a soft breast.

Katrina did not pull away. But her eyes darkened a bit.

“I guess you are real,” Roy said, removing his hand reluctantly.

Katrina licked her lips. “Why… what was the purpose of touching me there?”

“Because I wanted to touch you there.”

She looked confused for a moment. “In your society, does one always do what one wishes to?”

“No, of course not. What I just did was wrong. It would be considered very rude and I’d probably get slapped for doing it.”

That only seemed to confuse her more. “Why, I mean, it felt… nice.”

Now Roy was confused. “You’re, ah, you’ve never been touched, I mean, like that before?”

She shook her head. “Oh no! Any type of… sexual touching is not permitted before the committee chooses a marriage partner.”

“What? I mean, Katrina, are you supposed to be telling me all this?”

“That is correct. I am not.”

“Then why are you telling me?”

Again she shook her head. Her eyes, once so cold, now seemed troubled. “I… don’t know why. You’re … different, I think.”

Roy had been correct: The girl was not happy with her life. “How old are you, Katrina?”

“I believe I have seventeen years of age.”

She believes? Jailbait, Roy thought. But if we have no nation, then we have no laws. And if we have no laws … He shook that thought away.

“What do you mean, Katrina, that bit about a marriage partner being chosen? I never heard of such a thing.”

“How many years do you have, Roy?”

“I’m twenty-three. Don’t you want to answer my question?”

She hesitated, cut her eyes toward a group of people gathered a few hundred meters away, then took his arm. Her touch was warm to his skin. “Let’s walk around some, Roy.”

They walked the weed-filled campus, heading away from the crowd.

Katrina said, “I was chosen to confront you with the news of your discovery. Your deception. I was instructed to let you run if that was to be your choice of action.”

“The IPF would have killed me?”

“No. I do not believe so. That is not supposed to be our mission. But with Mike one never knows. There are members of the IPF surrounding this institution. They would have stopped you.”

“Judy?”

“The Jewess? She would have been taken alive. She would probably have been … would have become one of the pleasure women.”

“Beg pardon?”

“Malestfemale contact in any sexual manner is strictly forbidden in our society. To preserve the races. But males over the age of twenty-one are allowed to satisfy themselves with selected women who have been altered.”

Roy looked at her, not understanding any of this.

“Altered women cannot bear offspring,” she explained matter-of-factly.

“I see. I think. Let me see if I can put the rest of this … story together, Katrina. You people-your leaders-practice selective breeding among humans?”

“That… is one way of putting it, yes. We-they-are attempting to purify the races.”

“Blond hair, blue eyes, fair skin?”

“Yes. Most of us.”

Something yanked gently at Roy’s mind. Something he had read or heard or seen about some other person or group, a long time ago, who had strived for the same thing. He couldn’t bring the person or group to mind. He thought it had something to do with Europe. Long time back. Before his parents were even born.

“There are no people of color in your society?” he asked.

She looked at him as though he had asked a very stupid question. “No. That is why we chose Iceland. Theirs is practically a pure race.”

Germany! The word leaped into his consciousness. It had something to do with Germany. And some guy with a funny name. But history had never been one of Roy’s favorite subjects, and like so many others his age, his education was erratic at best.

“What will you-your people-do with the different races here in America, Katrina?”

She shrugged. “Over a period of time, we shall breed all colors out. That will take many generations, but our leaders believe it can be done. Our learned people have said so.”

Hitler. Roy found the man’s name. More flooded into the light of consciousness. The Gestapo, the SS. Concentration camps. Extermination. Gas chambers. The horror he had seen in old movies. He looked at Katrina. He just could not believe she could do such things to another human being.

But he also knew that looks could be very deceiving.

Katrina said, “Our people have taught us that people of color are inferior to us. From what I have seen-or have been allowed to see-I tend to believe it.” She seemed eager to talk and Roy wondered if he was being set up for a fall. For some reason, he didn’t believe so.

“People can’t help what color they’re born with, Katrina.”

“That is certainly true, at this time. But we can change all that, our leaders say. And when we do, the world will be a better place to live.”

“Katrina.”

“Most call me Kat. That’s with a K.”

“All right, Kat. Why are you telling me all this?”

They had come to a small wooded area, just off campus. They sat down on a bench by a broken walkway.

Kat was deep in thought and silence for a few moments. Roy did not attempt to break into her reverie.

“What do you know about Iceland, Roy?”

“Very little.”

“Icelanders are-were-great readers. They loved literature. When I was younger, I found a huge wooden box of books in the basement of the home where I lived.”

“With your parents?”

“No. I don’t even know who my parents are. I don’t know whether I was born in Russia or Iceland. I am just here. That is all many of us were told. That is the way. Parents are not important after the birthing. Children are kept in special places called communes until they are six years of age. During that time they

are taught, beginning at an early age. After intelligence is tested and determined, the child is placed in a home-setting appropriate to the intelligence of child and male and female sponsor. The environment is tightly controlled. One is trained to do one thing and that is what that person will do. That, forever.

“But I was talking about books. I never knew there were so many different books. Our reading is selected for us-we have no choice in the matter. But these books … oh my, they were wonderful. They were about everything. Life and love and mystery and adventure and romance and, oh, just about everything!

“I had never seen anything like it, and I knew because I had never seen them before that the books were forbidden. I said nothing about them, for in our society you never know who will report you to the committee for some infraction of the rules.”

“The committee?”

“Each street in all cities have committee persons living on it. One or two people. No one ever knows exactly how many. You don’t have them?”

“No!” Roy was both horrified and fascinated.

“Then how do you keep order?”

“By rules, Kat. We all know the rules and we obey them.”

“But what happens if you don’t obey the rules?”

“If you get caught you get punished.” “If “you get caught?”

“That’s right.”

“That seems a rather lax way of doing things.”

“Freedom requires some degree of looseness, Kat.”

“You are free?”

“Oh yes.”

“You can do whatever you like?”

“Within reason.”

“Who sets the reason?”

“Common sense.”

“That must be interesting. Anyway, I found about a dozen books-paperbacks-by a writer named Ben Raines.”

Roy smiled.

“Did I say something amusing?”

“No, Kat. Go on.”

She looked at him strangely. “This writer, of the same name as your general, he wrote of many things, of monsters and werewolves and fighting men-the only true heroes-and love and honor and, oh, everything! One person did all that. That is not permitted in our society.”

“I don’t understand, Kat.”

“One person is designated to write of one specific subject, be it history, philosophy, whatever. He will devote his life to that subject matter and nothing else.”

“Kat, that sounds awfully boring to me.”

She sighed. “I… feel the same way, Roy.”

“You’re not happy with your life, are you, Kat?”

“Happy is unimportant. It is the state that matters.”

“But you don’t believe that anymore, do you, Kat?”

She put her head on his shoulder and began to weep.

Roy didn’t know what to do.

CHAPTER FOUR

“They should have been back by now,” Ben said to Colonel Gray. “You told them to return in two days, right, Dan?”

“Affirmative, General. And not to take any chances. They should have been back by last night.”

“Mount up,” Ben said. “Well just leave the civilians outside the campus and just roll right in-face these people. That might be the one way to make the kids come to their senses.”

“And it might backfire, General.”

“There is that to consider, too, Dan. But I’m not going to toss Judy and Roy to the wolves without a fight. Or to the bears, as the case may be. Just to be on the safe side, Dan, when we get to the outskirts of the campus, you take a team and infiltrate the buildings, give me a backup.”

“Will do, General.”

They were on the outskirts of Rolla two hours later, with Ben trying to convince the new members it would be in their best interest to stay clear of the college

area. None of them bought his plan, especially Gale. She puffed up, stuck out her chin and marched up to Ben.

Ben braced for a confrontation.

“Mr. President, General-whatever. Are you trying to dump us?”

“Ms. Roth,” Ben said patiently. “I have a great many things on my mind right now, and you are not making any of them any easier to resolve with your stupid goddamn questions?”

“I only asked one.”

Ben looked toward the sky as if seeking some advice from a higher power.

Gale shifted the kid from left to right hip. Ben still didn’t know the kid’s name. Woman and baby glared at him.

It must be contagious, Ben thought.

“Ms. Roth, I have absolutely no intention of leaving anyone behind. But if matters deteriorate to the point where fast, violent action is the only way left us, I do not want a bunch of helpless civilians mucking about, getting in the way, hollering and bawling and being what they are: useless in any type of fire-fight. Now, Ms. Roth, is that perfectly clear?”

“It sure is. We’re going with you.” She turned to leave.

“Your ass, baby,” Ben said.

Gale spun around, off balance with the child perched on one hip. She almost fell. Ben caught her.

She jerked away from his hands and said, “Don’t call me baby!”

“OK, honey.”

She glared at him then walked off, muttering about

sexism still prevailing among men who should know better. But, she concluded, just loud enough for Ben to hear, anyone who wrote shtup books for a living couldn’t be anything but a sexist. And a male chauvinist pig, too. And other things that a lady should never even think, much less mention aloud. In public.

Ben laughed at her. “Are you any relation to Gloria Steinem?”

“I wish,” she called over her shoulder. “Were you any relation to Hilton Logan?”

“Bite your tongue!”

Ben grinned, thinking: Things sure had gotten livelier since she joined the parade.

Over the loud and sometimes heated protests of his people, Ben went into the campus alone, ordering his Rebels to dismount and prepare for a fire-fight, but hoping it would not come to that. Yet. Colonel Gray had his orders and, with a carefully selected team, quietly set about carrying them out.

Ben walked slowly up the weed-grown and cracked drive of the long-deserted college, toward a group of young men and women gathered in front of a building. They fell silent at his approach.

“President Raines,” someone muttered.

“Aw, come on. No way,” another young person said.

“Yeah, ain’t no way he’d be here.”

“That’s General Raines,” a young woman said, her eyes on the tall figure walking toward them. “Believe it.”

“Wonder what he wants with us?”

Some of the young people began backing away, to

the left and right. Ben’s reputation of shooting first and asking questions later had preceded him.

“President-General Raines,” a voice called from the steps of the building. “What an honor to have you join us. My name is Mike. What can I, or we, do for you?”

Ben looked at the young man. Tall and blond and well-built and blue-eyed. His eyes picked out many more like Mike. They looked as though they could have been brothers and sisters.

“Just looking for a couple of young friends of mine,” Ben told him, his voice carrying over the now-silent crowd. The butt of the Thompson rested on his right hip. A thirty-round clip was stuck in its belly, another thirty-round clip taped to that, for fast reloading. “Judy Stratmann and Roy Jaydot. Perhaps you’ve seen them?”

Mikael smiled. He had been well-trained, and was highly intelligent. He felt he could probably convince the general he had not seen either. But what he wasn’t sure of was how many troops the general had backing him up. And any convincing would have to be done privately; to lie now-openly-in front of the American young people would destroy everything he had so carefully constructed over the past two weeks.

“Yes, of course, I’ve seen them. They are here now, studying and learning.”

“Well, then,” Ben said with a smile. “You won’t mind if I speak to them, will you?”

Mikael’s smile had not wavered. “Of course not.” He turned to a young lady and spoke quietly. He swung his gaze back to Ben as the young IPF member walked away. “They will be along presently, General.”

“Fine. Don’t let me interrupt your lecture. You must be quite a speaker to hold the attention of so many young people. My speeches used to bore a lot of them.”

Small laughter among the crowd.

Without losing his smile, which, to Ben’s way of thinking, was a cross between a smirk and being downright smart-assed, the young man said, “Perhaps, sir, with all due respect, you did not speak to them on the right topic?”

“That might well be true, young man,” Ben said sagely. “But then, perhaps it was because I didn’t tell them everything they wanted to hear.”

Some of the young people looked at one another, shaking their heads in agreement with Ben. Their accord did not go unnoticed by Mikael. I will lose some of them, he thought. Perhaps ten or fifteen percent. But no matter. The majority will still be with me.

Ben’s mind was one jump ahead of the young Russian. He said, “We’re going to be camped just down the highway. Be there for a time. Perhaps Mikael would agree to debate me sometime? Then we could all have a question and answer session. That might not only be fun, but interesting and informative.”

The bastard! Mikael silently raged. He would have to contact Base One concerning this unexpected development. “Perhaps,” he said, his voice losing some of its confidence. “I will let you know tomorrow.”

“Why not now?” Ben challenged. “Or do you have to first speak with your superiors to get their

permission? Isn’t that the case-tovarich?”

Mikael knew his face was suddenly flushed. He fought to control his temper and struggled to keep from balling his hands into fists of anger.

Before Mikael could retort, a young woman in the crowd stood up and faced him. “What did General Raines mean, Mikael? What does tovarich mean?”

Mikael’s eyes were decidedly mean as he faced the questioner.

Ben said, “It means comrade, young lady. Your nice, friendly Mikael is a Russian.”

The young woman’s face drained of blood. “Is that true, Mikael?”

The Russian shrugged his shoulders. Silently he was damning Ben Raines to the pits of hell-if that place existed, and right now he hoped it did. “There is no Russia, Denise. Most of it was destroyed by nuclear warheads back in 1988. They were sent by NATO countries, and supplied by-was

Denise shook her head impatiently. “I didn’t ask for a political lecture, Mikael.” She stood with hands on hips. “Are you a Russian?”

His bright, hard blue eyes shifted from young lady to Ben. “Yes,” he said softly, with many straining to hear. “I am.”

A young man stood up. “Well… that don’t make no difference to me. I like what Mikael and his friends are all about and what they’ve told us. I believe what they say is true. I’m sticking with them.”

About two-thirds of the young people present agreed with that. It did not surprise Ben.

Ben said, “You young men and women who have not yet made up your minds about Mikael’s …

ideology, come with me when I leave. Just walk with me to where we’re camped and talk with those with me. I promise you no pressure will be exerted upon your minds. Let’s just talk. Isn’t that what a democracy is all about?”

A mixed group of young people-a few more than Ben expected-rose and walked to where Ben stood. Denise said, “We’ll listen, General. But we’ll make no firm commitments.”

“That’s all I ask, young lady.”

Denise looked at the man. She was standing beside a true living legend and it filled her with strange, unexpected emotions. She had thought President-General Raines would be an old man. But he looked to be in his mid-forties. But he had to be older than that. Maybe, more than one person in the group thought, there is something to his being more than a mere human. There just had to be.

Roy and Judy came out of the building. Both of them appeared to have been roughed up and then hurriedly patched up.

They stopped beside Mikael. Ben called, “Mikael and his buddies hammer on you two?”

“Yes, sir,” Roy called. “And Judy was raped.”

Ben looked at her.

“I’ll be all right, sir,” she said grimly. “Much better, in fact, in about a minute.”

“What happens then?” Ben asked.

“This,” Judy said. She spun, driving her elbow into Mikael’s stomach. He doubled over, gagging. She brought her knee up into his face, smiling with satisfaction as his jaw popped like a gunshot and teeth rolled and bounced on the concrete steps. She

brought the knife edge of her hand down hard on the back of his neck, and Mikael dropped to the steps, bleeding, hurt, and out of commission for a time.

Judy stepped back and, stone-faced, drew back her right foot and kicked the Russian squarely in the balls with the toe of her heavy combat boot.

A dozen IPF members appeared on the steps, automatic weapons at combat ready.

“Now, now, boys and girls,” Colonel Gray’s voice rang from the top of the building. “We don’t want this situation to turn into a sticky wicket, now, do we?”

The IPF members looked up into the muzzles of M-16’s and AK-47’S. They heard the roar of engines racing up the broken blacktop. Jeeps swung around, .50-caliber machine guns leveled at them, the muzzles menacing.

“Holster or sling your weapons,” Ben told the IPF troops.

They did as ordered, handling the weapons gingerly.

“One more person I have to get, General,” Roy said. “Give me a minute?”

Ben nodded. “G.” He was curious as to the third person.

A number of young women had gathered around Judy, asking her questions, their distaste for this newly discovered side of the IPF very evident. And they were all curious as to how she had learned how to fight like she did, and if they could learn it.

She said they could, just join up with Raines’s Rebels-if they thought they could cut it.

Roy reappeared, a very pretty young woman with him, holding onto his hand. The young woman had

obviously been beaten. There were bruises on the side of her face and her hands were swollen from her wrists being tied too tightly.

Ben looked at the crowd of young people. “Any of you young folks want to leave with us? Don’t worry, the IPF won’t try to stop you.”

Almost half the crowd silently made up their minds to pull out.

Ben ordered a team to escort them to the edge of the campus and to arrange transportation for them. He smiled at the young woman called Denise; she seemed to be some sort of spokesperson for the young people.

“I think it best that we hold our discussions some miles from this place, don’t you, miss?” Ben said.

She returned his smile. “Yes, I do, General. And that’s ms. if you don’t mind.”

“Right,” Ben said dryly. “What else?”

One young member of the IPF allowed courage to override training and common sense. He grabbed for his pistol and leveled it at Katrina. “You traitor!” he screamed at her.

Ben stitched him from belly to face, left to right, with a short burst from the Thompson. The young man’s feet flew out from under him and he slammed back against the brick wall, bloodying the old bricks as he slid slowly downward, his brains leaving a gray trail edged with crimson.

“James?” Ben called.

“Sir!”

“Gather up all the weapons and ammunition you can find. Take as many people as you need to do it in a hurry. Search all the buildings. I don’t believe these

people represent all the IPF personnel here. If your team comes in contact with any armed men or women, shoot first and ask questions later.”

“Yes, sir.”

Colonel Gray yelled from the top of the building. “You IPF people! Down on your bellies, hands behind your head, fingers interlaced. Move!”

The dozen young people obeyed instantly. Ben thought: well-trained and well-disciplined. The Russian equivalent, of the German Herrenvolk may consider themselves to be the master race, but they damn well want to survive in order to prove it.

Ben motioned Judy, Roy and Katrina to his side. “What was done to you?” he asked the young Russian girl.

“They beat me,” she said softly, her accent giving her voice a pleasing lilt. “They made me take off my clothes and then beat me. They were going to rape me but they were afraid of what might happen to them should they do that. Tell your men they are wasting their time looking for more members of this contingent of the IPF. They are gone. At the arrival of your people, they would have assessed the situation, decided they could not defeat your troops, and pulled out. Do not construe it as any act of cowardice, it is merely good sense.”

“Mikael is the leader?” Ben asked.

“Yes.” She looked at the unconscious young man. Blood streamed from his broken mouth and from one ear. “What is left of him, that is.” She added, “He is a pervert.”

The young people who had elected to remain at the school with the IPF, who had decided to adopt the

philosophy of the IPF, now sat sullenly, defiantly, silently. Katrina gave them little more than a quick glance of dismissal.

“They are what we call hard-core recruits. They needed very little persuasion. You could not reconvert them now, no matter what you said. So far, we have found many like these.”

Ben suspected as much. “All of them young?”

“Oh, no,” the girl replied. “Many people, of all ages.”

“And you?” Ben asked her.

“I have not been content with General Striganov’s views of matters since I found books,” the seventeen-year-old said. “I read books. In them I found a much different world than my superiors described. I began to think-and that is something our leaders and cell coordinators do not like for us to do. They do not like for us to think about anything other than what we are told to think.”

“Education, then,” Ben prompted, “is what swayed you?”

“Oh, my, yes. As much of a broad education as I could give myself with the crate of books I found in Reykjavik.” She smiled. “And some of the books were authored by you, President-General Raines.” She met his gaze. Even badly bruised, the girl was beautiful. Her pale eyes held one.

“And how do you know I am the same Ben Raines, young lady?” Ben smiled at her.

“Two reasons, President-General. One: When I mentioned the name to Roy, he smiled. Two: Your picture was in one of the books. It was, I believe, taken some years ago, but it was you.”

“Don’t compliment him too much,” Gale said, standing just outside the group. “It’ll go to his head and he’ll be more impossible than ever to live with.”

Katrina shifted her pale eyes. “You live with President-General Raines?”

“God, no!” Gale said. “That’s a figure of speech.”

Katrina smiled. “Bot kak!”

Walking away, Gale asked Colonel Gray, “What did that girl say to me back there?”

Dan smiled; he spoke some Russian. “Let’s just say she questioned the validity of your statement.”

“I wonder why?” Gale asked innocently.

“You three get to Doctor Carlton,” Ben told Judy, Roy and Katrina. “We’ll pull out as soon as James is through.”

“He won’t find a thing,” Katrina predicted.

She was right.

The convoy took Highway 63 out of Rolla and rolled to just outside of Jefferson City, pulling into a motel complex in mid-afternoon. They had seen a few survivors, but Ben knew more had seen the convoy from hiding places along the highway. The people were wary and scared. The great unknown had reached out and slapped the nation twice, hard, in little more than a dozen years, knocking those that survived to their knees. He knew that many of those slapped down would never get to their feet.

Ben gathered the seventy-five or so young people from the campus around him. “If any of you want to go home, I’ll try to find some type of transportation for you.”

No one did. Denise explained, “We don’t have homes, General-none of us.”

“For how long?” he asked.

“Years,” she said. “I’ve been on my own since I was ten. You don’t know there are large groups of young people on both sides of the Mississippi River?”

Ben shook his head.

““Yes, sir. The western group is headed by a young man named Wade. The eastern group is headed by a young man named Ro. Both groups live in the woods. They are, well, rather wild, but they’ve never hurt anyone to the best of my knowledge.”

“I see,” Ben said, not sure if he saw or not. “Well, Denise, you and your people have homes now, if you want them.”

“With you and your Rebels, General?” a young man asked.

“That is correct.”

“If we decide to stay with you, General,” Denise said, “what would we do?”

“Stay with us until we can check you out with weapons and survival tactics. Although-was he smiled-“if you’ve been on your own for all these years, I don’t believe you need any lessons on survival.

“After we check you out, you would then move out in teams, attempting to convince other young people that the way of the IPF is the wrong way, that we-Americans-have to rebuild this nation. We have to rebuild with education and hard work, compassion when it’s needed, and toughness tempered with mercy in many cases. How about it?”

The young people thought they liked that plan.

They would stay.

“Tell me about these groups of young people, Denise,” Ben asked.

“I … really don’t know much about them, General, other than what I told you.” She looked at him strangely. “Except, well, their religion is not quite like what the rest of us, well, practice.”

“I don’t understand. They worship God, don’t they?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes, sir.”

“Explain that, Denise.” There was a sinking feeling in the pit of Ben’s stomach. He braced himself for what he knew was coming.

“They worship you, sir.”

Jefferson City contained more than four hundred survivors, but as was the case in most areas, Ben and his Rebels found organization lacking. People had splintered off into little groups, each with their own leaders, with their own varying philosophy as to what should be done and how to go about doing it. In some cases the people were fighting each other.

And Ben did not know how to bring an end to the fighting.

It was what Ben had been afraid he’d find.

He spoke with a few of the survivors-those that would let him get close to them-and tried to convince them they had to get off their butts and start working, straightening matters out. And to stop warring between themselves. Many times he would turn and walk away in disgust, leaving before anger got the best of him. Of those he spoke with,

Ben figured he got through to maybe ten percent.

Clearly disgusted, Ben ordered his people mounted up to pull out. He told Dan Gray. “To hell with these people. Let them kill each other off. They’ve lost the will to survive in any type of productive society.”

“I concur,” Colonel Gray said.

It was then Ben noticed that Mary Macklin was reluctant to ride with him. He did not understand it. He thought it might be due to their brief sexual encounter-but he did not really believe that was it. When they reached Fulton, Missouri, just prior to stopping at a small college there, Ben pulled the growing convoy off the road and walked back to where Lieutenant Macklin was sitting in a Jeep alone.

“I say something to offend you?” he asked her.

“No, sir. Not at all.”

“You maybe don’t like my deodorant?”

She laughed. “No, sir. It’s nothing like that. Believe me.”

Ben didn’t believe her. He felt she was holding something back, but he decided not to push. “Finally decide I could take care of myself, eh, Mary?”

“Something like that, sir.” You’d better be able to take care of yourself, General, she thought. Because when you and Gale stop spatting and hissing at each other like a cat and dog, things are sure going to pop.

And Mary really wasn’t all that certain how she felt about that.

Ben nodded, not believing a word he had heard. “All right, Mary. Right now, I want you to take a team over to Westminster College. Check it out for survivors. Shouldn’t take you more than a couple of hours. Well wait for you here.”

She nodded and pulled around the convoy, stopping twice to pick up people. With four in the Jeep, she headed out.

Ben ordered his people to dismount and take a rest.

“I’m surprised you would delegate that much authority to a woman, General Raines,” the voice came from behind Ben.

“Ms. Roth,” Ben said, turning around. “I really don’t-was

He cut off his sentence at the sight of her. He could hardly recognize her. She had done something to her hair, cut it maybe-something was very different. Maybe she had simply combed it, Ben thought. But he decided he’d best keep that a thought and not put it into words. For safety’s sake. His own. She wore jeans that fitted her trim figure snugly, and what looked to be a boy’s Western shirt. However, Gale would never be confused for any boy. Ben stared. She was somewhere in between pretty and beautiful.

“A speechless gentile.” She tossed his words back to him with a smile. “My goodness, I believe I’ve found a first.”

Ben ignored that. “Where’s the kid?”

“With the new people from the college. One of the young women had just lost her baby-a couple of weeks ago. She asked if she could take care of the baby. I told her that was fine with me. Baby’s probably better off with her, anyway.”

“Why would you think that?” Ben looked into her eyes. She really had beautiful eyes.

She returned his open stare. “You really ask a lot of questions, you know that, General?”

“Perhaps. Why would … what is the child’s name, anyway?”

“I haven’t the vaguest idea. I found him in Flat River when I was traveling south. Believe me, I don’t know from nothing about babies. Well, not all that much, anyway.”

Ben sensed she was putting up a brave front, but had decided the child would be better off with someone else. “The mother who lost her baby-she still in the nursing stage?”

“That’s right.”

“And fresh milk is hard to come by these days.”

“Right.”

“I see.”

“I doubt it. What do you know about nursing babies? Nothing,” she answered her own question.

He stepped closer. She stood her ground. Out came the chin. “Ms. Roth, would you do me the honor of riding with me in this parade?”

She seemed taken aback. For a very brief moment. “Why in the world would I want to ride with you?”

“To harass me, to annoy me, and to be a constant source of irritation to me.”

“You talked me into it.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Westminster College was deserted except for one senile old man and several young ministers and their families who had elected to stay behind and care for the elderly man.

Some young people had been through, Mary was told, but they had not stayed long. Seemed like nice young people, but rather distant, one young minister said. He thought they might have all been related, they looked so much alike. Blond and blue-eyed, mostly. But, he told the small unit of Rebels, something about the young people had frightened them all, and none were sorry to see them leave.

Ben pointed the column toward Columbia. He wanted to check out the University of Missouri.

Columbia was a dead city, seemingly void of human life. But Ben, standing on the outskirts of the city, picked up a slight odor in the air, the breeze blowing from west to east. He knew what that odor was.

He shook his head in disgust. “Mutants,” he told his people. “I know that smell very well.”

A Rebel looked at Ben. “You killed one of them once, didn’t you, General?”

Ben was conscious of Gale’s eyes on him. “Yes, months ago.”

“Close up, General?” one of the new people from the campus at Rolla asked.

Ben smiled. “About as close as you can get without getting intimate with the thing.” He tried to brush off the question as lightly as possible. He knew only too well his battle with the mutant had only served to strengthen the belief among many that he was somehow more than a mere mortal.

When he moved off, walking down the center of Interstate 70, Gale asked, “What happened, Ben? I mean, the mutant.”

Ben had walked out of the communications shack and toward a thick stand of timber. He wanted to think, wanted to be alone for a time. More and more, since leaving Idaho he had sought solitude.

A young woman’s scream jerked his head up. Ben sprinted for the timber, toward the source of the frightened yelling.

Ben reached the edge of the timber and came to a sliding halt, his mouth open in shock.

It was a man, but it was like no man Ben had ever seen. It was huge, with mottled skin and huge, clawed hands. The shoulders and arms appeared to be monstrously powerful. The eyes and nose were human, the jaw was animal. The ears were perfectly formed human. The teeth were fanged, the lips human. The eyes were blue.

Ben was behind the hysterical young woman-about fourteen years old-the child of a Rebel couple. She was between Ben and the … whatever in God’s name the creature was.

The creature towered over the young woman. Ben guessed it was an easy seven feet tall.

Ben clawed his .45 from leather just as the creature lunged for the girl. She was very quick, fear making her strong and agile. Ben got off one shot; the big slug hit the mutant in the shoulder. It screamed in pain and spun around, facing Ben. Ben guessed the thing weighed close to three hundred pounds. And all three hundred pounds of it were mad.

Ben emptied his pistol into the manlike creature, staggering but not downing it. The girl, now frightened mindless, ran into its path. Ben picked up a rock and hurled it, hitting the beast in the head, again making it forget the girl. It turned and screamed at Ben. Its chest and belly were leaking blood, and blood poured from the wound in its shoulder.

Ben sidestepped the lumbering charge and pulled his bowie knife from its sheath. With the creature’s back momentarily to him, Ben jumped up on a stump for leverage and brought the heavy blade down as hard as he could. The blade cut through skull bone and brain, driving the beast to its knees, dying. Ben worked the blade out and, using both hands, brought it down on the back of the creature’s head, decapitating it. The ugly, deformed head rolled on the grass, its eyes wide open in shocked death.

Ben wiped the blade clean on the grass and replaced it in leather. He walked to the young woman and put his arms around her.

“It’s all over now, honey,” he spoke softly, calming her, patting her on the shoulder. “It’s all right, now. You go on and find your mother.”

A young boy stood a short distance away, holding hands with his sister. Both of them were open-mouthed in awe. “Wow!” he said. “He is a god. He can’t be killed.”

“He fought a giant and beat it,” his sister said. “Just wait ‘til I tell Cindy over in Dog Company about this.”

By now, many Rebels had gathered around. They stood in silence, looking at the beast with some fear in their eyes, looking at Ben with a mixture of awe, fear, respect and reverence.

Ben looked at the silent gathering. “You see,” he told them. “Your bogey men can be killed. Just be careful, travel in pairs, and go armed. Now go back to your duties.”

The crowd broke up slowly, the men and women and kids talking quietly among themselves-all of them speaking in hushed tones about Ben.

“Maybe it is true.”

“Heard my kids talking the other day. Now I tend to agree with them.”

“A mortal could not have done that.”

“So calm about it.”

“Tell you, gods don’t get scared.”

“Kid prays to General Raines before bed. Maybe it’s not such a bad idea.”

Ben heard none of it.

Ike stepped up to Ben, a funny look in his eyes. He had overheard some of the comments. “Are you all right, partner?”

“I’m fine, Ike.”

Ike looked at him. Ben’s breathing was steady, his

hands calm. Ike looked hard at the still-quivering man-beast. “I wouldn’t have fought that thing with anything less than a fifty-caliber.”

“It had to be done, Ike. Don’t make any more out of it than that.”

Ike’s returning gaze was curious mixture of humor and sadness. He wanted so badly to tell Ben that feelings about him were getting out of hand; something needed to be done about them.

But he was afraid Ben would pull out and leave for good if he did that.

Afraid! The word shocked Ike. Me? he thought. Afraid? Yes, he admitted. But it was not a physical fear-it was a fear of who would or could take Ben’s place.

Nobody, he admitted, his eyes searching Ben’s face. We’re all too tied to him.

“That was a brave thing you did,” Gale told him.

“I was there and it had to be done.” Ben stood, looking down at her. “I was lucky.”

“Maybe,” she replied cautiously. She did not tell Ben that all during her travels since the plague struck the land, she had heard of Ben Raines’s powers. At first she had dismissed the talk as the babblings of a hysterical populace seeking something to believe it, something to grasp during this time of upheaval. Now she wasn’t so sure.

“Let’s get rolling,” Ben told her.

The convoy backtracked, picking up Highway

54,

heading for Mexico, Missouri, where they would spend the night.

Ben and Gale rode in silence for a time, with Ben finally breaking the uncomfortable tension between them.

“Tell me about yourself, Gale.”

“I’m boring. I’d rather talk about you.”

Ben smiled.

“And keep your ethnic cracks to yourself.”

Ben laughed. “I wasn’t going to say a word.”

“Sure. We’re friends, right, General?”

Ben pretended to mull over that for a few seconds, pursing his lips and frowning. “Come on!”

“OK. But only if you call me Ben.”

She pretended to think seriously about that, frowning and pursing her lips.

Ben laughed at her antics.

“All right,” she said. “Tell me more about the monster you killed single-handedly, Ben.”

Ben had hoped that episode was past history. “It was a matter of necessity, Gale. It was there and I was there. Believe me, I would have preferred to have been elsewhere.”

She doubted that. The general, she had concluded, thrived on action. “But you didn’t run?”

“No. But a young girl’s life was at stake. Gale, don’t make any more out of it than it was. Too many people are doing that now, I’m afraid.”

“You’re afraid? I don’t believe you’re afraid of anything, Ben Raines.”

“I meant that as a figure of speech.”

“I know it. I still don’t believe you’re afraid of anything.”

They were again silent for a few miles, and again Ben wondered if his staying with the Rebels was the right thing, both for himself and for the people. He knew Gale had heard the stories and tales and myths and rumors about him. He wondered if she believed any of them. He hoped not.

He glanced at her. She looked so small and vulnerable. But he knew for her to have survived she had a deep well of toughness in her. He suddenly wanted to put his arm around her; but he wanted to avoid having his arm broken even more. He resisted the impulse.

The town of Mexico, Missouri, once a thriving little city of about thirteen thousand, appeared deserted. After pulling into a large motel parking area, Ben sent a team into town to check it out. He had detected that odor in the air and had ordered the rest of his contingent to stay mounted up. He was bracing himself mentally for what he hoped the recon team would not find.

Col. Dan Gray reported back to him. From the look on his face, Ben knew the news was not good.

“It’s rather grim, General,” the Englishman reported. “Looks like the beasties have used this place to winter and to breed. The stench of them is strong.”

“What do you think, Dan?”

“I think it’s very unsafe, General.”

“Very well,” Ben said. He turned to his squad leaders. “We’re pulling out. It’s about sixty miles to Hannibal. Well bivouac there.”

The column rolled and rumbled through the town. Downtown Mexico looked as though a pack of wild kids

had trashed the streets and stores. Not a window remained intact; filth was strewn everywhere. Once, Ben stopped to retrieve part of a heavy metal gas can from the street. The can appeared to have been physically ripped apart, torn open, much like a huge bear would do, with super-animal strength.

Ben silently showed the can to Gale.

For once, she had nothing to say.

Unlike Mexico, Missouri, Hannibal appeared untouched by time or mutants. There were a few rotting skeletons to be seen, but the Rebels had long months back grown accustomed to that sight.

Ben ordered the people to dismount and clean up the Holiday Inn; they would use that for a base while in the area. Ben wanted to spend several days in this part of Missouri. He wanted to search for any original manuscripts of Samuel Clemens and as many of his artifacts as possible. Ben felt that something had to be preserved-some link with the past, when times were better and life was easier. Before the bomb.

Gale mentally prepared herself for the proposition she was sure was forthcoming from Ben Raines, for his sexual antics were almost legend among the Rebels, and she had been subtly warned to prepare herself.

She went to sleep in a chair in her room, still waiting for Ben’s advances. When she awakened at one o’clock in the morning, her back hurting and her neck stiff from sleeping in the chair, she smiled ruefully at the white, almost virginal nightgown she had picked up from a store in Fulton, Missouri. The gown lay across the foot of the bed.

She carefully folded it and replaced it in her duffle. “Another time, another place,” she said, adding, “Shit!”

Doctor Carlton took several Rebels with him right after breakfast. Said he wanted to prowl around a bit, see what he might discover. The others took the two-day lull to wash clothes, lounge about, rest or sightsee. Ben and Gale visited the many landmarks in that part of Missouri: Hannibal’s Cardiff Hill; Lover’s Leap, overlooking the Mississippi River; the old lighthouse, built in 1935 as a monument to Mark Twain.

“I don’t understand,” Gale said, as she and Ben sat eating lunch, “how one town could be virtually destroyed by those… things, mutants, and another town could be almost untouched.” She looked at the can of Cration and grimaced.

“I can’t answer that,” Ben said. “Maybe a scientist could, but I don’t know of any in this area. I don’t know of any scientists-period. So much has been lost, and it doesn’t appear that too many people really care. I can understand it, but I don’t have to like it.”

“Explain then, please. Take my mind off this horrible food.”

Ben laughed at her. “I lived off that stuff for months, Gale.”

“No wonder your disposition is so rotten.”

Chuckling at her, Ben said, “I think many who survived the bombings of “88 somehow found the strength to bounce back. Maybe the world would have survived if the rats had not brought the plague. Just seems like it knocked the props out from under most who made it through that sickness.”

“It didn’t knock the props out from under you,” she observed.

“No, it didn’t. But we’re different, the Rebels and me.”

“I.”

“Are you sure?”

“Damn, Ben-you’re a writer!”

“Me still sounds correct.” “Ben!”

“Whatever. We had a goal, we were organized, we had a dream of a better society. Maybe we were just stronger people. Sometimes I wonder if it’s all worth it.”

“Hitting those new lows you told Mary Macklin about, Ben?”

“No, not really.” Ben shook his head. “The fact the IPF is here shows that we have survivors from around the world, shows that somebody other than myself is going to try to pull this world out of the ashes. Even if it’s just a small part of the world. Walk before you run,” he quoted the old saying.

“If you don’t mind, Ben.” She looked at him, putting her hand on his thigh. “I’d rather it be us than them.”

“So would I, Gale.”

“Then let’s do it, Ben Raines.”

He met her gaze. “All right, Ms. Roth. Let’s do it.”

“It was only a matter of time,” General Striganov spoke to Sam Hartline. “But Ben Raines need not disturb us all that greatly. Neither he nor us is strong enough to mount any type of sustained attack against the other. Perhaps, really, we might never need to fight. If he will keep to the south, and we to the north, perhaps we could work out some kind of peaceful coexistence

plan. I think that would behoove both of us.”

“Don’t count on it,” Hartline said. “Raines is a communist hater out of the old school. And he is one tough bastard.”

“I do not want a fight at this time.” The Russian was adamant. “Let us attempt to converse with President-General Raines. During the meeting-if he agrees to it-we shall attempt to work out some dividing line that would separate his form of government from ours-a physical line.” He turned to an aide. “Have leaflets printed and order a team sent out to find General Raines. No contact at this time. Later we shall have a pilot do a fly-by and drop the leaflets. Raines is slowly progressing northward, taking his time, according to our people just in from Rolla.” A look of disgust passed quickly over his face at that thought. The general had already seen to Mikael. “Iowa would be a good place to locate him and for us to meet, I believe.” He studied the map on his office wall. “Yes. Ask Mr. Raines to meet me at, ummm, ah, Waterloo.” He smiled. “Yes, Waterloo, Iowa. That should be a very appropriate place, don’t you think, Sam?”

“For one of you,” Hartline grunted his reply. The Russian did not know Ben Raines as well as Sam. Ben Raines would never permit a communist form of government to exist alongside his own. At least Hartline didn’t believe he would.

Not for any length of time.

But… maybe it was worth a shot.

On the morning of the third day in Hannibal, the column pulled out, rolling northward on Highway

61.

Ben had cautioned his people to be careful, for he remembered only too well the incidents last year, when the Rebels were moving west out of Richmond, when the government collapsed.

The scouts had failed to report in at their given time. Ben and the convoy waited impatiently on the cold, wind-swept highway. The bridge at Fort Madison had been plugged up tight with stalled and wrecked cars and trucks. The scouts had radioed back they were going on to Hamilton, taking a secondary road. Ben waited a long half hour past the time they were supposed to have radioed in. He turned to Cecil.

“I’m taking a patrol,” Ben told him. “I’ll call in every fifteen minutes. Anything happens, you’re it.”

“Ben…”

“No. It’s my show. Maybe the radio conked out. Could be a lot of things. I’ll be in touch.”

Back in his pickup, Ben looked at Rosita. “Out,” he told her.

She refused to leave.

“Do I have to toss you out bodily?”

“That would look funny,” she calmly replied.

Ben closed the door and put the truck in gear. “Your ass,” he told her. He pulled out, leading the small patrol.

Rosita smiled at him and said something in rapid-fire Spanish. It sounded suspiciously vulgar.

“Check your watch,” he told Rosita.

“Ten-forty-five.”

“Call in every fifteen minutes. It’ll take us forty-five minutes to an hour on these roads to get to Fort Madison. That was their last transmission point. Whatever happened

happened between there and Hamilton. You’ve got the maps. What highway do we take?”

“96 out of Niota.”

At Nauvoo they found the pickup parked in the middle of the highway. One door had been ripped off its hinges and flung to one side of the road.

“What the hell?” Ben muttered.

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. G.”

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.

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.”

“Well 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, “lake 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 TH.

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 fire-fights before we get there. So all of us stay alert.

“Well 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 well 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 about 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?”

Ben was trying desperately to maintain a straight face.

“Go ahead, laugh, you big ox. I know, I know, klutzy little girl from the city trying to figure out how to work guns. But Ben, my parents wouldn’t even let my brother play with toy guns when he was little. Me? I had Ken and Barbie. Fantastic. Really helps a girl prepare for disaster. Doesn’t help you prepare for anything. Ken had been neutered and Barbie didn’t have nothing. It was a big disappointment.

‘The 410 was OK. It kicked, but not much. The keys to a pickup were on the kitchen table. The electricity was still working. I took a long, hot bath. I mean, I was gamy. I washed my clothes, fixed something to eat, and slept in a real bed.

“The dreams were kind of bad.”

She was silent for a few miles, gazing out the window at the barren landscape, at lands that were once among the most productive in all of America.

Gale said, “When I got up the next morning and dressed, I looked out the living room window. There were some guys walking up the gravel road. I loaded both guns and walked out onto the front porch. I just knew bad trouble had found me. The twelve gauge was as big as me. The men laughed at me. I told them to stop and to go away. They laughed and one of them asked me what I was. I told him I was an American. He said that wasn’t what he meant. I knew what he meant. Then he said some things I’d rather not repeat. Finally he said he’d never had any Jew pussy.

“Ben-was she glanced at him, her eyes seeking support

and condonation of what she was about to say-“I got so mad I lost control. I became so angry I didn’t even feel the shotgun kick, and it didn’t knock me down when I fired it. I shot the man right in the stomach. Then I fired the other barrel and hit a man in the leg. There was maybe thirty feet between us. Took his leg off at the knee. Just blew it off. I dropped the big shotgun and grabbed up the 410. I fired both barrels of it. I don’t think I hit anyone, but the other two men were really running up the road. I heard a car or truck start and never saw them again. I went in the house, packed my stuff, and put it in the pickup, along with both shotguns and all the shells I could find. I walked out to where the guys were lying on the ground. One was dead. The other one was bleeding really bad. I vomited on the ground.

“I stood right there and watched that man die, Ben. I felt … I felt lots of things. But Ben, I didn’t feel any pity for him. I… felt like he deserved what I had done to him.”

She sighed heavily, as if the telling had lifted a load from her slender shoulders.

“One of the men had a pistol in a holster, and some bullets for it in loops. I took all those. I got in the pickup and drove off. Kind of. It was one of those four on the floor types. I knocked the whole porch down before I figured how to get the damn thing out of reverse. It was embarrassing.

“I found some people a little while later and they were very nice. They told me they heard St. Louis had blown up. So I headed for Columbia. My parents had friends there that taught at the university. They took me in. There’s a whole lot more, but that’s the high points. Except for this:

“I am tired of running. I am tired of being alone. I am tired of being scared. I do not want to be alone ever again. Do you understand what I am saying, Ben Raines? I mean, really understand it?”

He looked at her and full comprehension passed silently between man and woman.

“Yes, I do,” Ben told her.

“Fine.” She smiled and mischief popped and sparkled in her dark eyes. “Then keep your eyes on the road, Ben. You’re not the best driver I’ve ever ridden with, you know?”

CHAPTER SIX

Ottumwa contained more people than Ben had seen theretofore in any one place. And Ben noticed that most of them were armed, with both side arms and rifles.

He ordered his convoy to a halt and got out to speak with some of the people. He was greeted courteously, if not, at first, warmly.

So spotty were communications throughout America that some of the people did not even know Ben had been in and out of the White House at Richmond.

Ben commented on the highly visible arms.

“Had to go to it,” a man told him. “First those awful things were around-you know what I’m talking about, don’t you?”

Ben nodded. “Mutants.”

“Yeah. Then the IPF came nosing around, spewing that communistic bullshit. We ran them out of town, but they just spread out all around here, all around us. They got a firm hand and hold on Waterloo, conducting classes at the college, and lots of folks are being taken in by that line. But not us.”

“How far up north do they extend?”

“All the way up into Canada, so I hear tell. But it’s a funny-odd-type of communism. Not like the way it was in Russia before the bombings.”

“Yet,” Ben said.

The man smiled. “Yeah. Say, why don’t you folks spend the night here? We have running water, electricity, all the comforts. Well, most of them. We can talk about what to do about the IPF.”

“I’d like that,” Ben said with a smile. He stuck out his hand. The man shook it.

“You’re sure you won’t reconsider and make the move down south with us?” Ben again asked. “Join up with us.”

Dinner had been delicious. The people of Ottumwa had opened up their homes to the Rebels, eager for company and for some news of happenings on the outside. The days of turning on a radio or TV for news and entertainment were long gone… and for many would never return.

The Iowan smiled and shook his head negatively. He refilled their cups with hot tea. Coffee was now almost unknown. The tea was a blend of sassafras root and experimental tea leaves grown in South Carolina and in hot houses.

“I don’t believe so, General. This land around here is still some of the best farm land in the world, and me and the wife have been farming it for some years now. Think we’ll just stay on.”

“And if the IPF returns?” Ben asked. “In force, with force?”

“We do try not to think about that, General Raines.” the man’s wife said. “But we’re not always successful in doing it.”

The farmer said, “If that happens, General Raines, look for us to join you.”

“I’ll stay in contact, try to warn you in time to get out.”

“We’d appreciate that, General.”

“But if you see it coming at you, don’t wait until it’s too late,” Ben cautioned.

“There’s about three hundred of us rebuilding around here,” the man said. “And we’re all armed and know how to use the weapons.”

“The Russians have between five and ten thousand troops,” Ben replied.

The man paled. “Then well have to give your suggestion some heavier consideration, General.”

The convoy pulled out the next morning, rolling northward. They halted at the junction of Highways 63 and 6 while a team was sent into Grinnell College to inspect.

Ben stood beside Gale, both of them leaning against the fender of the pickup. They heard the plane coming and looked up at the twin-engine prop job as it dipped lower, coming out of the north.

“It’s unarmed, General!” a spotter called, viewing the plane through binoculars. “But its markings show it’s an IPF aircraft.”

“Stand easy,” Ben told his people.

Paper fluttered through the air as the plane did a slow fly-by. The pilot waggled his wings, banked to the north, and was gone before the bits of paper had fallen to the earth.

Gale snagged one of the falling leaflets and handed it to Ben. After she read it. Ben waited patiently.

TO: PRESIDENT-GENERAL BEN RAINES FROM: GENERAL GEORGI STRIGANOV MY DEAR MR. RAINES: I AM WAITING IN WATERLOO TO MEET WITH Y. I WILL MEET YOU ON THE OUTSKIRTS OF THE CITY, SOUTH SIDE, AT THE CITY LIMITS SIGN. IF YOU WISH, COME ARMED. I WILL NOT BE ARMED AND NEITHER WILL ANY OF MY P. LOOKING FORWARD TO MEETING WITH YOU AND SHARING SOME INTELLIGENT CONVERSATION.

GEORGI

“I wouldn’t trust a goddamn Russian any further than I could spit,” a Rebel said.

Colonel Gray smiled, anticipating Ben’s reply. He was not disappointed.

“I think that probably has a great deal to do with the shape of the world at the present time,” Ben said. “But the Russians never inspired a great deal of confidence in me, either. Colonel Gray?”

“Sir?”

“Take a team and reconnoiter the situation. Do not fire unless you are fired upon. If you meet with any of General Striganov’s people, set up day after tomorrow for the meeting and report back to me immediately.”

“Sir.” The Englishman saluted and called for three other Rebels to join him. They left within five minutes in two Jeeps.

“Corporal.” Ben looked at the radio operator. “Get on the horn and have Colonel McGowen get his people up and moving. I don’t want to risk a night landing using vehicle headlights, so tell him to use the airstrip just outside of town and I’ll expect him no later than 1200 hours tomorrow. I’ll be waiting.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Dismount and make camp,” Ben hollered.

“You are?” Colonel Gray asked the uniformed young man.

“Lieutenant Stolski, sir, IPF.”

“Nice old Welsh name,” Dan muttered under his breath. “Well, Lieutenant, are we going to be civilized about this, or do we draw a line with the toe of a boot and dare each other to step over it?”

The young IPF officer laughed and stuck out his hand. “I have some excellent tea in my quarters, sir. Would you join me for a cup?”

Dan shook the offered hand. “Delighted, son.”

The four old, prop-driven planes were airborne within an hour after receiving Ben’s orders. The planes were old, but in excellent mechanical condition, the motors rebuilt from the ground up. The four planes carried two full companies of hand-picked Rebels, in full combat gear.

The planes had refueled in central Missouri and spent the night there. They were circling the small airport outside Grinnell, Iowa at 1150 hours.

Ben had arranged transportation (thousands of vehicles

around the nation were still operable after a bit of servicing) and the troops mounted up and were rolling after guards were placed around the aircraft.

“You’re in charge here while I’m meeting with General Striganov,” Ben told Ike. “I’m only taking four people with me.”

“Plus your bodyguards.”

“Only four people,” Ben repeated.

“Plus your bodyguards,” Ike insisted, staring out the windshield.

Ben sighed. “All right, Ike. If it will make you happy.”

Ike sniffed the air of the cab. “Smells like perfume in here, Ben. Have you gone funny on me?”

Ben gave him a hard look. But it was to no avail. No one could stay miffed at Ike. Ben told him about Gale.

“One good thing came of this trip anyway,” the stocky ex-Seal said with a grin. His grin faded. “We got a little more trouble down home, though.”

“Oh?”

“Emil Hite and his band of kookies and fruities. They’re growing, Ben. Seems people are looking for something or someone to believe in. ‘Bout five or six hundred more new members just joined up with Hite and his cream-pies.”

“Moving into our area?”

“I don’t know how to keep them out, Ben. They’re not armed, never make any kind of hostile move. They are not aggressive at all. What the hell can we do under those circumstances?”

“We can run their paganistic asses clear out of the area,” Ben spoke through clenched teeth. Emil Hite was the Jim Jones type-only worse. Ben suspected, but had no way of proving, that Hite was having sexual relations

with young boys and girls ten years of age-and less. And he knew comhaving seen with his own eyes-Hite and his followers were worshipping idols. Well, they could worship a pile of horse hockey if they chose, but it was the children that concerned Ben.

Ike glanced at him and worked his chewing tobacco over to the other side of his mouth. “The mutants might not like that too much, ol” buddy.”

“What the hell do the mutants have to do with Emil Hite?”

“Well-was Ike spat out the open window-“Emile Hite and his nutsos kind of worship the ugly bastards.”

That so startled Ben he almost lost the pickup. He was glad Gale was not with him. “What!”

“Yeah. Our intelligence just discovered that a few days ago. Seems they-Hite and his jellybeans-have been feeding the mutants for the past year or so; kind of tamed some of them, I reckon. And hold on to your balls for this one: Every now and then, so intelligence has gathered, Hite gives the ugly things women.”

“You have got to be kidding!”

“Nope.” Ike shrugged philosophically. “Savage and stupid people the world over have been doing things similar since the beginnings of time, Ben. You know that.”

“Yeah. The Aztecs, Mayans, hell, the Hawaiians used to toss selected maidens into volcanoes.” He shook his head in disgust. “Well, I’ll deal with Hite later. Right now, let’s worry about the Russians.”

“One thing at a time.” Ike grinned.

The men stood for a full minute, each silently appraising the other. They were very close in age; no more than

a year or two separated them. Both were in excellent physical shape, heavily muscled and lean-waisted.

“General Striganov.” Ben was the first to speak. He extended his hand. The Russian took it.

“So good to at last meet you, General Raines. It’s rare one gets to meet a legend.”

“If indeed I am a legend.”

“Oh, you are, sir.” Georgi said with a smile. “Have no doubts concerning that.”

Ben decided to pull no punches with the man. “I won’t apologize for what happened to your young man in Rolla, General. He and his men raped one of my people and roughed up another.”

The Russian smiled grimly. “No apologies expected, General. I personally shot him.”

Ben lifted his eyes to meet the Russian’s open gaze.

“Oh yes, General Raines. His orders were not to rape or physically abuse the population. And I run a very tight ship, so to speak. I will not tolerate any breach of discipline. Besides, Mikael, so I learned, was somewhat of a-how to say this-was twisted sexually. He will not be missed. His rather lame excuse about your two young people being spies had no validity. Spies against what or whom? Russia no longer exists as a government; America no longer exists as a government, a power. The world, indeed, is a free, open land, as unbridled by man-made law as the vast seas. I view it this way, General: If you have the right to set in place your own form of government, amenable to the people who follow you, then so do I. Would you argue that?”

Ben had to smile. Putting the question that simplistically, Ben could not argue the concept or the method-thus far-but he could argue and question the ideology.

The Russian returned the smile, viewing the American through cold eyes. “As the Americans used to be fond of saying, General, I’m being quite “up front” with the people. At first I was not; I will admit-openly-to some initial deceit. But no longer. I am telling the people who I was and what I have now become: a communist who has now shifted a bit to become a pure socialist in thinking and actions.”

“And of the caste system you advocate?” Ben was not letting him off the hook that easily.

But the Russian was full of surprises. “But of course! Stupid and shallow people are very often quite vain, General Raines. You are a very intelligent man; I don’t have to tell you about human nature. Oh no, General, I am now-much to Sam Hartline’s disgust-being quite open and honest in my dealings with the people. But what is amusing to me is this: Not one of the people who now embraces my form of government actually believes he will be placed in the lower levels of the system, even though I intimate they certainly will. That, I believe, is the dubious beauty of the naive and the arrogant man who knows not that he is either. And would not believe it if he was so informed. You know those types, General Raines. The world is-or was-full of them.”

The man was anything but a fool, Ben reluctantly conceded. And he would be a formidable adversary. If it came to that.

As if on some invisible signal, an aide brought them coffee-real coffee. Ben savored the rich smell and taste. He had to ask where in the world General Striganov got the coffee.

“Call me Georgi-please. And may I call you Ben?”

“Certainly, Georgi.”

“Stockpiled it, Ben. Hundreds of tons of the finest coffee beans in the world, although I can’t personally guarantee each bean was hand-picked by that fellow on your American TV.”

Ben smiled in remembrance of that commercial: a coffee bean picker with manicured fingernails.

“And also some of the finest tea in the world, as well,” Georgi concluded proudly.

“But none of that will be shared with the, ah, lower classes of your system?”

“Certainly not.”

“I could attack that, Georgi.”

“But of course you could! However, Ben-was the Russian leaned forward, pyramiding his finger tips in a vague gesture of praying-“do tell me this: Does an ignorant person appreciate the beauty and talents of a Renoir, a Van Gogh, Cezanne, Caravaggio?” He smiled in anticipation of an easily won verbal victory. “We both know the answer to that. If an ignorant person had a choice, which would you envision him hanging in his hovel: a print of a famous master, or some hideous cloth depicting dogs playing billiards or poker?”

Ben had to laugh at that, for in that, he shared the Russian’s philosophy. But he felt compelled to say: “They could be taught to appreciate fine art; are you in agreement with that?”

Striganov waggled his left hand in a gesture of comme ci, comme ca. “I can attack that, Ben. Back in the eighties, before the world exploded in nuclear and germ madness-which brought us to this point today-which TV program do you think drew more viewers, Hee Haw or a special from the Metropolitan Opera?”

Ben could but smile. Again, he agreed with the Russian. “We’re speaking of personal choices, Georgi; that is the price a society must pay if said society is to live in freedom.”

“Nice safe answer, Ben. So you are admitting that freedom can sometimes bring mediocrity to the forefront?”

“That’s an interesting way of putting it,” Ben said.

“And you’re hedging the question.”

“I learned a little about politics, Georgi.”

“Of all music, Ben, which do you want to endure through the ages?”

“I think you know the answer to that, Georgi. I was listening to a tape of Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings and Capriccio Italien on the way up here. But I still maintain it is all a matter of free choice.”

“We could argue for quite sometime about this, Ben.”

“Yes. But what would be the point? Unless one of us wanted to play devil’s advocate?”

Georgi laughed. He leaned back, sipping his coffee. “I forbid the yowlings of hillbillies and the jungle throbbings of black music among my people.”

“I don’t,” Ben said. “But I don’t have to listen to it, either.”

“You are very agile at sidestepping, Ben. But I think we are of like mind on many-no! perhaps a few-issues.”

“Probably.”

“How many sides do you possess, Ben?”

“Personalities?” Ben shrugged. “Several, I’m sure. I think you and I are both music snobs, Georgi.” “Yes,” the Russian said. “Q. And you are an honest man, Ben Raines. A truthful man. Diogenes the

Cynic would have enjoyed speaking with you, I believe. Ben, let me be quite open and honest with you. When I first… when this plan of mine was first conceived-and it is not original with me, I assure you-I thought at first… well, that I would find Americans to be more compassionate than we Russians. But do you know what I’ve found, Ben? The majority of the Americans I’ve encountered are no more compassionate than my people. So for the past few weeks, I have been very honest with those to whom I speak. I tell them up front: We are going to have a pure white race-colorless. There will be no concentration camps, no gas chambers, nothing of that horror. No torture, no starvation, nothing of that sort. Now … history may well perceive me as-to use a movie term-the bad guy, but historians, if they exist at all a hundred years from now, will not portray me as some sort of modern-day Vlad the Impaler or Hitler or Amin. Selective breeding-yes. It will take many, many generations, and of course, I shall not see the end results of my work, certainly, but I will die with the satisfaction of knowing I started a pure race.

“And Ben, eighty percent-at least that many-of the people to whom I have approached agree with what I’m doing. You don’t appear to be startled at that news, Ben.”

“No, I’m not, Georgi. I have thought for years that Americans are some of the most arrogant people on earth. But I also think, in spite of, or perhaps because of, that arrogance, we have done more for the world than any other nation in history.”

Georgi reminded Ben: “You also helped to bring about the world’s downfall.”

“That, too.”

“More coffee?” the Russian offered. “Ah-good. I shall have another cup with you. Must we fight, General Raines?”

Ben sugared his coffee. Real sugar too. “General Striganov, the historians might well condemn me for what I’m about to say and do, and I may-probably will-have second thoughts about it. But from what you have told me so far, at this moment, I don’t want a war with you. For several reasons. I think what you are planning is wrong; I think it is monstrous. But I just don’t have the troops to beat you. At least I don’t believe I have. I think you carefully surveyed the situation before you came in, and you know all we would accomplish, at this time would be to annihilate each other. And I won’t do that, General. I have plans and hopes and dreams for what remains of this nation. Besides, you’ll fail, General, with or without me. If you think the surviving minorities in this land will just roll over and let you wipe them out as a race, you, sir, are very badly mistaken.”

“They are not organized, Ben, with the exception of that little group out in South Carolina and that other group in the Southwest. And those groups are of little concern to me. You are a man of organization. I am a man of organization. And we know that without organization-a central government, a man in power, in full control-all is lost. How many blacks and how many Hispanics and Indians are left? Let’s say a million. Spread out over more than three-and-a-half million square miles. Nyet, Gospodin Raines, they will present no problem. You present the immediate problem to me.”

Ben knew the man was right, but damned if he was going to agree with him. “So, General Striganov, do we now talk of a dividing line?”

“In time, yes, I believe that is the only answer. But first, let us have lunch. Then we will speak of boundaries.”

The lunch was excellent: thick steaks and green salad and good wine and baked potato with real butter and sour cream. Sour cream! Ben couldn’t believe it. He said as much.

The Russian was amused. “I like to eat,” he said simply. “And eat well.”

“Do your troops eat just as well?”

“Very nearly so, yes. The steaks might not be as thick, and they may have mashed potatoes with gravy, but they are well-fed, yes. I assure you of that. I do not stint on my people’s behalf.”

“But there are people probably not fifty miles from where we sit, gorging ourselves, who are starving.”

“Not in any area I control,” General Striganov contradicted, his answer surprising Ben. “You see, Ben, we are-you and I-of very like mind. In some ways,” he was quick to add. “I do not wish slavery or hunger or disease or poverty for my people. Besides, they would be so much more difficult to control should I be an advocate of those undesirable traits.” He smiled. “You were correct in your statement that I have planned well. I do demand discipline, Ben, but no, there is no hunger in any area the IPF controls.”

“Providing I buy all that you have told me, General, and I have certain reservations, there is still one issue-correction-several issues that bother me.”

The Russian refilled their wine glasses. “Ties, I’m sure. Now we come to the part where I must try to match your honesty.”

Ben took a sip of wine. It was a Rothschild, a very old

vintage. “White is a rather bland color, General. Black or brown or tan or yellow will almost always be dominant. You say you aren’t going to kill the minorities; you aren’t going to starve them out. No concentration camps, no gas chambers. Tell me, just bow do you plan on achieving the master race without some form of genocide?”

The smile on the Russian’s face widened. “The minorities will not have children.”

Ben laughed. “Men and women have been known to engage in sex, General.”

“They may engage in all the sex they wish, General. As a matter of fact, I plan to encourage that-keep them happy. I am merely saying they will not have any offspring.”

“You’d better have one hell of a medical team if you’re planning on performing operations on every man and woman in this nation who doesn’t fit your standards of what a human being should look like.”

The smile remained on Striganov’s lips, but his eyes were cold. “What do you think we’ve been doing in Iceland for the past decade, Ben-playing cards and drinking vodka?”

“I have no idea what you’ve been doing, Georgi.”

“When we left Russia, Ben-getting out with only seconds to spare, I can tell you that-I took quite a few very good scientists with me. Doctors, scientists, the like.” He shrugged. “Many of them were Jews, I will admit, but still intelligent people. I don’t like Jews,” he conceded, “but they are survivors. And good scientists, too. It seems the Jew scientists perfected-and kept it a secret for years-a simple method of preventing pregnancy. One injection virtually destroys the ability to reproduce. They kept silent about their discovery for years; we

found out only by accident. Then it was only a matter of, ah, well, convincing them to share their knowledge with us. How we got it is not something one would want to discuss over lunch.”

“Torture.”

The Russian shrugged. “The end justified the means, Ben.”

“I’m sure.” Ben’s reply was as crisp as the wine.

“The people will be able to have and enjoy sex as often as they like. But they will never be able to reproduce offspring.”

Ben stared at the man for a full moment, allowing the horror of what he had just heard to sink in to its hideous depths. “That is monstrous!”

“Calm yourself, Ben.” Striganov patted Ben’s hand and Ben fought to restrain himself from taking physical action for that gesture. “After all, I’m not destroying a human being; I have no gas chambers or firing squads or the like. I beg you, please don’t compare me to Hitler.”

Ben thought of several people and many things he would be more than happy to compare the Russian to and with. But he kept silent.

“And, Ben, there is this: We aren’t monsters. If the people do not wish to have the injection, they may breed-selectively-with someone of fair skin. The offspring will do likewise, all very carefully controlled, of course. And so in time, several generations, they will conform. Selective breeding. It’s all up to the individual, I assure you.”

“How magnanimous can you be?” Ben said sarcastically. “And if the newborn child does not conform in color to your plans?”

“It will be destroyed for the good of the pure race.”

Ben felt a small sickness within him grow larger. He looked at the handsome features of the Russian and in his mind, the man wore the face of evil, his hair that of a Medusa.

Ben heard himself saying, “It will never work, General Striganov.”

“Oh?”

“When I leave here, I am going to spread the word about you.”

“But of course you are. I fully expect you to do that.”

“And you’re not’ going to try to stop me from leaving?”

“No, indeed, Ben. I’m not a barbarian.”

Ben could but look at the man and wonder if he was insane.

“You see, Ben, we’ve already injected over five thousand blacks, Hispanics and Jews. All your spreading the word will do is slow the process a bit, but really not very much. In the end, General Raines, we will be victorious.”

“I fail to see how, General.”

“Because a great many people simply do not like blacks and Spanish people, Ben. A like number-maybe even more-do not care for Jews. Those people will turn them in to us.” He smiled at how simple it all was-in his mind.

Ben thought the smile resembled the SS death’s-head insignia. “Let me guess how you plan on keeping records, General Striganov: little, portable tattoo machines.”

The Russian applauded Ben. “How marvelously astute of you, President-General Raines.”

Ben’s lunch lay heavy on his stomach. The once-delicious meal felt as though it had turned wormy. He had

lost all taste for the wine. He wanted to run outside and breathe deeply of the summer air. He felt the invisible odor of death and evil and everything hideous and unimaginable through his clothing, sinking into his flesh. For a brief moment, Ben entertained the wild thought of reaching across the table with his steak knife and slashing the Russian’s throat. He rose from the table.

“I am going to stop you and your master plan, General Striganov.”

“You will forgive me if I don’t wish you luck, General Raines. But no matter-you will be unsuccessful, I assure you of that.”

Ben’s smile was grim, the smile of a mongoose looking at a cobra. “You will forgive my lack of manners by not offering to shake your hand?”

“Perfectly understandable, General Raines.”

Ben walked out of the building and to his waiting troops. “Let’s go,” he said. “First chance you get, pull over to the side of the road.”

“Something the matter, sir?” Sgt. Buck Osgood asked.

Ben looked back at General Striganov, looking at him through a window. The Russian waved merrily. “Yeah,” Ben said, “I need to puke!”

CHAPTER SEVEN

“So you didn’t speak of dividing lines?” Ike said.

“No, I blew it,” Ben replied. “Got mad. Lost my cool. Almost my lunch. I wish I had. I wish I had vomited all over that bastard. He’s got to be stopped, Ike.”

“I agree. Al Maiden time, Ben?”

“With much reluctance, Ike. I don’t like Al Maiden. Cecil doesn’t like Al Maiden. There isn’t a black in all of Tri-States that likes him. He’s a militant white-hater. He’s as bad in his own way as Striganov.” Ben shook his head. “No, he isn’t. I shouldn’t have said that. The man reminds me of Kasim, that’s all. But I know he isn’t that bad.”

Ben had met Kasim back in the late fall of 1988, at a motel in Indiana. The man had been traveling with Cecil, his wife, and several other blacks, including the lady who was later to become Ben’s wife, Salina. Kasim had hated Ben from the beginning, and the feeling had been more than mutual with Ben. Kasim had later been killed by Hartline’s mercenaries; Cecil’s wife and family, along with Salina, had been killed during the

government assault on the first Tri-States.

“Juan Solis?” Ike asked, shaking Ben out of the misty memories of the past. Ike had lost his family during the bloody and needless battle of Tri-States, and, like Ben, sometimes retreated into memory.

“Him I like. Yes, get in touch with both of them. Sorry to have brought you up here on a false alarm, Ike.”

“Got me out of the house for a little while.” Ike grinned. “You want to meet with them in Tri-States, Ben?”

“Yes. Tell them what’s going down.” Ben sighed. “But for God’s sake, Ike, don’t tell Maiden to come in for the meeting. You’ll get him mad and he’ll puff up like a spreading adder.”

Ike laughed and slapped his friend on the back. “Hell, Ben. Maiden is just doing what you did back in ‘89: starting his own little country.” There was a twinkle in Ike’s eyes. He knew only too well he was touching a very sore spot with Ben.

Ben bristled. “Damned if that’s so, buddy, and you know better.” Then he smiled. “You do love to needle me, don’t you?”

“Helps to keep you young, ol’ buddy.” Ike grinned lewdly. “And with Gale, boy, you’d damn well better stay young. That lady is a spitfire.”

“Tell me. OK, buddy, you head on back. I’ll see you in a couple of weeks.”

So often when tragedy strikes, the first glimpse is misleading. The initial scene depicts total desolation, seemingly void of life; but there are almost always survivors

at the second glance: men and women who somehow made it through the impossible.

Such was the case with Juan Solis and Al Maiden and their followers.

Juan had surfaced only a few weeks after Ben and his Rebels and pulled into the new Tri-States. Juan had sent patrols out, looking for Spanish-speaking survivors, urging them to resettle in New Mexico and Arizona. Some eight thousand had, with more trickling in each day. Juan was building, as Ben had done back in ‘89, a society of like-minded men and women whose aim was to rebuild from the ashes of chaos and destruction a workable, fair society, with schools and businesses and a strong economy. Juan’s was not an all-Spanish-speaking society. Just like Ben’s Tri-States, there were people of all faiths, all nationalities.

Al Maiden had surfaced on the East Coast, claiming parts of North and South Carolina. But unlike Juan, Al’s regime was a rocky one, with many of his followers objecting to Maiden’s constant barrage of not-too-subtle hate directed at the whites. When Maiden tried to drive the whites out of his disputed territory, most of his own people had stopped him, horrified at Maiden’s unwarranted actions and bitter vituperation.

Ben’s intelligence corps had predicted that unless Maiden changed his methods, he would, probably within a year, be assassinated, with a much more moderate black coming into power. That would be Mark Terry, a former IBM executive, Harvard graduate, class of ‘83. Mark was a very vocal opponent of any type of New Africa. Mark had met secretly with Cecil Jefferys several times during the past year, seeking advice

from the level-headed VP of Tri-States and the first black to ever become vice president of the United States. When there had been a United States.

Cecil had told him bluntly that, “You would be doing the world in general a great favor if you would just shoot that ignorant, bigoted, biased son of a bitch and pull your followers out and into Tri-States. Then we could get on with the process of rebuilding.”

But no man is totally bad, and Al Maiden did have a few good points, despite his open hatred of whites. He did want the best for his people, but if the whites suffered for it, that, to Al, was of no consequence. He wanted good schools for the blacks, but he insisted upon his teachers teaching myths and half-truths instead of fact. (cecil had once asked Maiden that if indeed there ever was a “great black center of learning located at Timbuktu,” where in the hell was it now-lying somewhere alongside Atlantis?)

In short, Al wanted everything for his people that he did not have as a child in south Alabama. And he did not care how he achieved that goal.

“I can’t do it, Cecil,” Mark had said. “Maybe Al will come around.”

“Doubtful,” Cecil had responded. “I had the same hopes for Kasim, back in ‘89 and ‘90, when I was attempting to build in Louisiana and Mississippi. Kasim’s hatred of whites had made him crazy, just like Maiden.”

“We have to try, Cecil.” Mark smiled. “You know that Al calls you a white man’s nigger?”

Cecil’s returning smile was not pleasant. “I am nobody’s nigger.”

Mark’s smile this time was genuine, knowing he had

riled his friend. “Yeah,” he said softly. “I know that for a fact.”

Ben watched the planes carrying his Rebels lift off and head south. His own people on the ground were mounted and ready to roll. The young people he had gathered at the college in Rolla were ready to move out also, but they would not yet be returning to the new Tri-States. Ben had personally checked them out with weapons-rifles and pistols-and found most of them better than average with each. He had given them plenty of ammunition with which to practice and was now sending them out into the countryside, half of them to the west, the other half to the east. They would spread the word about General Striganov’s IPF and their monstrous plan for a pure race. Each of them carried a signed statement from Ben Raines containing Ben’s condemnation of the Russian’s plan and urging all Americans to arm themselves and resist, to the death, if necessary.

“What are the odds of us succeeding, General?” Denise asked.

“I think they’re better than even,” Ben told her, thinking how young she was and how much she reminded him of Jerre. She wore a revolver at her waist and carried a 20-gauge shotgun.

Ben said, “Striganov was correct when he said a lot of people don’t like minorities. The man did his research well; no telling how long he’s had people in this country, reporting back to him. He’ll get some support-perhaps not as much as he believes, but more than enough, unfortunately.”

The young woman had a puzzled look on her face. “Why do people dislike minorities so, General?”

“Right and wrong on both sides, Denise. A lot of it has to do with arrogance, what the people were taught as young people in the home, and that which the minorities brought on themselves. I don’t think they did so knowingly, many of them, but they did. You’re far too young to remember the social programs designed to help people. They were badly misused, badly administrated and grossly over-budgeted back in the sixties through the eighties and caused a lot of resentment among the taxpayers who had to foot the bills.”

“I don’t understand, General,” Denise said. By now, quite a crowd had gathered around Ben, not just the new young people, but many of his own Rebels.

Careful, Ben silently cautioned himself. Many of these people-maybe all of them-think your words should be chipped in stone to stand forever, and for many of them, this will be the final mental imprint of an event that history might never record with the written word.

He looked at them. They waited patiently.

But I am a man, Ben thought. Therefore I am human, with all the frailties therein. So I have to tell it as I saw it and perceived it.

“The government meant well,” Ben said, choosing his words carefully, conscious of Gale’s eyes on his face, listening intently. “But in their fervor to correct a centuries-old problem, they went overboard with their efforts. The government and courts meant well, and much of what they did was right and just. I will never be convinced that a racially balanced school system

did one damn thing for or toward quality education. Do not-any of you-misconstrue my statement. I am not now and have never been an advocate of the so-called separate but equal philosophy. If one is equal, that is enough said. I believed very strongly in neighborhood schools. They were built so the children of that neighborhood could stay in that neighborhood and still receive a quality education. The courts changed all that by forced busing, and they created a monster; they created hard feelings and near-riots, undue expense for the taxpayer and unnecessary hardships for the kids who had to-were forced-to endure miles of riding a bus. Yes, they were forced. If the parents did not submit to the whims of the government, they faced jail. So much for personal freedom and freedom of choice.

“The government created a welfare state, up to three and four generations of people on welfare. The government took away the will to work among many people. Certainly not all the recipients, but enough of them to create one massive problem. The solution was simple to men like me: Make the people work if they were able to work. But the courts refused to do that. More hard feelings among many of the taxpayers who were picking up the tab-and the tab got more and more expensive. It got-along with the programs-out of hand.

“The great shame of our social programs was the way the government neglected the elderly and the very young. That was a shame I shall never forget. The government would give a community a half million dollars to build a goddamn swimming pool, yet in that same community, the elderly didn’t have enough to

eat, proper shelter or warm clothing. I don’t know how our politicians could shave in the mornings without feeling the urge to cut their throats.

“It seemed that for a while, almost everything the government did irritated somebody or some group. And sadly, rightly or wrongly, the minorities got the blame for it. Many people’s dislike of Jews turned to hatred because so many of the American Jews supported the social programs, were against the death penalty, headed drives in support of gun control. That did nothing to enhance the position of Jews in rural areas-and not just in the South, for the South had become the whipping boy for the liberal eastern establishment.

“The government-in the form of the courts-moved into the private sector, into the work place. Private industry was ordered to establish hiring practices that would include X number of blacks, X number of Hispanics, X number of this and that and the other thing. I’m not saying it was right or wrong, just that it created as many problems as it did solutions.

“And then we had the traditional haters on both sides of the color line. Whites who hated blacks but couldn’t tell you why-they just did. Blacks that hated whites and couldn’t tell you why-they just did. Both sides taught their kids to hate. We had teachers in private academies who would stand up in front of their all-white classes and proudly announce they would never teach or allow a damn nigger in their classrooms. And that is fact, people, not fiction.

“And in many-if not most-of the public schools in the South, and probably all over the nation, teachers became afraid to discipline blacks, and I mean literally

afraid. Fear of losing jobs, fear of having their tires slashed, fear of a lawsuit. All it produced was a couple of generations of badly disciplined and ill-educated blacks. But whitey wasn’t gonna do no number on me, man. You dig?

“Now … that was not the majority of blacks, but just enough to leave a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouths.

“Anybody with any insight at all could have and should have seen what was coming: white flight. That became quite a popular word back in the seventies.

“It may seem to you all that I am being unduly harsh on the black people. But you new people, look around you-you don’t see any of the blacks in this command leaving, do you? None of them are leveling guns at me for what I just said. No, because we worked it all out. We agreed on every major issue. We of Tri-States don’t have bigotry and hatred for someone of another color. We don’t have it because we all realized that education was the key to removing it. Education, understanding, some degree of conformity, and patience. We understood that regardless of color, a child is going to need and get a spanking from time to time. That is up to the teacher and it begins and ends there. That is the agreement made between school and parent.

“We almost made it work in Tri-States. We came so close the taste of victory was on our tongues. But the central government in Richmond just couldn’t stand it. I thought they would applaud the achievements we made: all races and nationalities living and working together without one incident in ten years. I thought the central government might learn something from our experiment. But they didn’t. But we aren’t giving

up, people. We’ll make it work again. On a smaller scale, certainly; but we will make it work once more.”

The Rebels stood in silence for a few moments, then slowly began to disperse. Denise stood with a wistful expression on her face. “I just want to live in peace,” she said. “Yet here I am carrying guns. It’s crazy, General.”

“Crazy world, Denise. But it’s always been my belief that the olive branch of peace only gets partial attention. Especially to people who aren’t really interested in peace. It gets their full attention if the other hand is holding a gun.”

“But isn’t one the contradiction of the other?” she asked.

“So is the term fair fight.”

She laughed and turned to leave. “Wish us luck, General.”

“Break a leg, kids.”

She walked away to join the other young people in one final check of supplies and equipment and weapons.

“When I first heard about Tri-States,” Gale said, moving to Ben’s side, “I thought what you people were doing was monstrous.”

“Little liberal got all outraged, eh?” Ben smiled at her.

“That’s putting it mildly, Ben.”

“Our success stuck in the craws of government, Gale. They just couldn’t stand our proving them wrong on nearly every social issue they had advocated and bled the taxpayer to implement and keep going for years. Government just couldn’t believe we could bring it all back to the basics and make it work. But we

did and it outraged them.”

“And you are going to do it again, Ben.” It was not put as a question.

“If I can.”

The man and woman stood in silence for a few moments. Stood and watched as the young people began leaving. Gale said, “I wonder if they know what they are facing?”

He took her small hand in his. “No. No, they don’t. But those that survive this will grow wise to the ways of this ravaged planet very quickly, I am thinking. Either that or die.”

Gale glanced up at him, horror evident on her face. “Those that survive?”

“We will never see thirty to forty percent of them again,” Ben said flatly.

“Knowing that, you still sent them out?” There was genuine outrage in her voice.