Circle OF DEATH

A crowd of ragged men and women had gathered around the pickup. They were armed with clubs, axes, knives, and spears.

“The welcoming committee,” Ben Raines said softly.

“What do you want here?” a woman shouted at Ben and Judy.

“We don’t mean you any harm,” said Ben calmly, hoping for the best. “We’re just traveling through.”

“Why did you stop?” a man called. He held an axe in his hands.

“People on the roofs with bows and arrows,” Judy whispered.

“I see them. If shooting starts, you take the south side of the street, I’ll take the north.”

“All right.”

“We don’t want any trouble,” Ben called out. But he was going to get trouble-and plenty of it! ZEBRA’S MASTER STORYTELLER

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A family held together by tradition-and torn apart by love! As beautiful and unique as the natural gem she was named for, Pearl Resnick always stood out in the crowded world of New York City’s Lower East Side. And as she blossomed into womanhood, she caught the eye of more than one man-but she vowed to make a better life for herself. In a journey that would take her from the squalor of a ghetto to the elegance of Central Park West, Pearl triumphs over the challenges of life-until she must face the cruel twisted fate of passion and the betrayal of her own heart! Available wherever paperbacks are sold, or order direct from the Publisher. Send cover price plus 50 cents per copy for mailing and handling to Zebra Books, Dept. 4019, 475 Park Avenue South, New York, N. Y. 10016. Residents of New York and Tennessee must include sales tax. DO NOT SEND CASH. For a free Zebra/pinnacle catalog please write to the above address. Alone in the Ashes

BY WILLIAM W. JOHNSTONE

ZEBRA BOOKS

KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP. ZEBRA BOOKS are published by Kensington Publishing Corp. 475 Park Avenue South New York, NY 10016 Copyright [*copygg‘1985 by William W. Johnstone All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews. Fourth printing: June, 1992 Printed in the United States of America To Charles and Linda Abraham

All I want of you is a little servility, and that of the commonest goddamnest kind.

Anonymous

Them’s my sentiments.

Thackeray

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

Ben knew he should feel some sort of regret; some feeling of sadness or sorrow at leaving his people-and they were his people-behind.

But the only feeling he could muster up was a feeling of freedom.

“Free at last,” Ben said aloud, with only the wind and the truck to hear him.

And they gave no reply.

He shook his head at the paraphrasing of Doctor King’s famous statement, and wondered how many young blacks, a decade and a half after the world had exploded in nuclear and germ warfare, could even say who King was? Or for that matter, Ben pondered as he drove, how many young whites knew anything about J. F. K., or Watergate?

Most were too busy just staying alive in this world gone mad, Ben concluded. They didn’t have time for school-even in those areas where school was available.

He sighed, the rush of cold wind carrying the sound

away, out into the brisk autumn afternoon air.

He was not making very good time, even with the new truck his people had provided for him. The highways were getting worse and worse. And for some reason Ben could not fathom, highway maps were becoming as scarce as hen’s teeth. Any map printed between ‘89 and ‘98 was to be treasured. He had heard that people were killing over highway maps. A good map could bring food, weapons, ammo, and on occasion, women.

Ben could not prevent a bitter laugh from pouring past his lips.

If a person could not understand the written word, how could they comprehend a map? And Ben knew from experience that a full seventy-five percent of those born after the World War of ‘88 were illiterate.

He had turned west at the deserted Tennessee town of McMinnville. A crude sign had stated Highway 70 leading north was closed to traffic, and another sign had stated Highway 56 north was closed to traffic. Ben doubted they were closed for any other reason except the whim of a local warlord or some religious nut who wanted a closed society to practice his or her mumblings upon.

On impulse, Ben jerked his Thompson submachine gun free of the clamps that held it upright, and laid the old weapon on the seat beside him.

“You and me, old boy,” he said with a smile, “are outdated.” He patted the smooth stock. “But we can still spit and snarl, can’t we?”

Ben wore a .45 semiautomatic pistol belted around his waist and a long bladed Bowie knife on his left hip. In the rear of the camper-covered bed of the pickup,

Ben carried a myriad of survival gear. Tent and sleeping bag, extra clothing, a case of grenades, and two cases of .45-caliber ammunition. A rocket launcher and a case of rockets for the tube. Cases of food and jugs of water. He had a Weatherby 30-06 with scope, and a Remington model 1100 S. W.a.t. shotgun with an extended tube that held enough three-inch magnums to stop a rampaging Cape buffalo. Strapped to both sides of the Chevy pickup, and on a special framework built on top, he carried five-gallon cans of extra gas. He had enough radio equipment in the truck to transmit anywhere within what used to be known as the United States of America.

After more than a decade of leading his people, constantly searching for a place to put down roots and live and work and grow and rebuild from out of the ashes, Ben Raines was pulling out, heading out by himself.

He would be alone. In the ashes. BOOK ONE Chapter 1

Ben pulled off the highway just outside of what remained of Woodbury, Tennessee. Tucking his truck behind a farmhouse on the east side of the highway, Ben sat for several minutes, his eyes searching for signs of life. Falling back on years of experience, Ben knew after only a moment that he was alone.

He inspected the house, cautiously going from room to room. The house was, of course, ankle-deep with the litter left behind by rats and mice. When the rodents had eaten everything they could find to eat, they had left. But once they had done that, the roaches had followed.

The house was crawling with living waves of brown movement.

Ben pulled out of that locale and spent the night sleeping in the cramped space under his camper.

He awakened to a cold dawn, under a sky that promised rain very soon. The dull grayness of the sky matched the landscape that surrounded Ben. Everything around him seemed lifeless.

He didn’t like this area, didn’t like the feeling of foreboding it offered him. Skipping breakfast of any sort, Ben cranked the engine and pulled out, finding Highway 53 and taking that until connecting with a road that would take him to Interstate 40, at Lebanon. There, he drove over the interstate and pulled off the highway at the outskirts of town.

Smoke from wood and coal fires drifted up from houses in the coolness of morning. But, as Ben had so often sadly observed over the years, the homes were not centralized or grouped for safety or work. They were widely separated, which meant to Ben-and it had been proved time after time-that the people were not organized. And in these times of anarchy and warlords, and roaming gangs of thugs and punks and creeps and assorted savages, not to be organized was an invitation to die quickly.

And to let what was left of civilization die.

Ben spotted the gang of young men and women long before they spotted him.

Go on, Ben! he urged himself silently. Go on. Just pull out and avoid trouble.

But he knew he would not. That flaw, if it was a flaw, and Ben thought not, within him was rearing up.

Ben lifted his Thompson and cradled it, clicking the .45-caliber submachine gun in his arms. He got out of the pickup and stood by the hood of the truck, watching as the young people spotted him.

Back in my day, Ben thought, they would be called punks.

I’ll still call them punks, he thought.

Ben stood tall and rangy and loose by his truck. The years had peppered his hair with gray and had put a few

lines in his face. But as Doctor Chase had told him, “For a man your age, Raines, you’re in disgustingly good shape.”

“Clean living,” Ben had said with a smile, knowing what response that would bring from the crusty old ex-Navy doctor.

“Horse shit!” Doctor Chase had replied. “You’re going to be a dirty old man, Raines.”

“What do you mean, “going to be?”

“Hey, Dads!” one of the young men called. “They’s a toll for passin” through here.”

The young man was tall and slender and blond. He was dressed in dirty jeans, heavy boots, and wore a black leather jacket. His hair was very long and very dirty and very unkempt.

The knot of young men and women around the punk were, except for coloring and size, his mirror image.

Punks.

Ben was dressed in tiger-stripe field clothes. His field pants bloused into jump boots. He had already stopped along the road and fixed a meager breakfast, boiling water to shave.

Even after a worldwide tragedy and a nation swarming with anarchy, the generation gap still holds true, Ben thought.

“Public road,” Ben said.

“Not no more,” the spokesman said. Ben pegged them all as in their late teens to early twenties. “We took over the road. Now you shut your mouth and pay up.”

“You want money?” Ben said with a smile. Money had been worthless for years.

“You a real smart-ass, ain’t you?” a pouty young woman popped off.

“At least my ass is clean,” Ben told her.

“Dads,” the tall young man said, reaching for a pistol on his belt, “you just bought yourself a world of hurt.”

“Kill “im, Tad!” the young woman cried. “Shoot his legs out from under him and let’s watch him flop around.”

“Yeah,” Tad smiled.

Ben dropped the muzzle of the Thompson, heavy in his hands with its full drum of .45-caliber ammunition, and pulled the trigger.

The quiet morning air was shattered by the hammering of the old Thompson and the screaming of the dead, dying, and badly wounded.

Ben knelt down beside the young woman who had wanted Tad to shoot Ben’s legs out from under him so she could watch him flop around.

The young woman had managed to pull a .38 out of her belt before Ben’s Thompson had very nearly cut her in half.

Despite the events that had prompted the shooting, Ben felt some small waves of pity wash over him. The young woman was really, under the grotesquely and amateurishly made-up face, a very pretty woman.

“It ain’t fair,” the young woman gasped. “Tad said he was the boss of this town and he’d take care of us.”

“What did you do with the people who refused to pay your toll?” Ben asked.

“Kilt ‘em,” the young woman groaned.

All feeling of sorrow for her left Ben.

She closed her eyes and lapsed into unconsciousness.

Tad screamed, his hands clutching his shot-up belly.

Ben walked back to his pickup and pulled out. “You

goddamned cock-sucker!” Tad screamed after him. “My town! My road! Jimmy kilt Lucas for it and I kilt Jimmy. Mine!”

“You are certainly welcome to it,” Ben said. He rolled down the window and let the cold air fan him. “Should be quite an interesting trip,” he said aloud. “Certainly starting out with a bang.”

At an old truck stop just outside Nashville, Ben pulled off the interstate and into the parking lot, carefully maneuvering his way between rusted-out rigs and stripped cars. He tucked his truck between two rusting hulks that once were eighteen-wheelers, and walked toward what used to be the restaurant, his Thompson slung over his shoulder, the drum refilled.

He liked to stop at these old truck stops because sometimes he lucked out and could find, among the rubble, playable cassette tapes; he had left all his back in Georgia.

The first thing he spotted were two bodies, a man and a woman. The man had been tortured, then shot between the eyes. The woman had been raped, judging by the still-visible bruises on her inner thighs and the blood that had dried on her legs and buttocks. Like the man, she had been shot between the eyes.

Ben knelt down between the bodies. He touched them both. They were cold, but they had not been dead for very long. Bugs had not found them, and rats and dogs had not gnawed their flesh.

Ben walked the ruined and littered truck stop. There was not another living soul-that he could see. He stood and looked down at the man and woman. He had

seen so many dead and rotting bodies that they had long since ceased filling him with any emotion. They were now merely a part of the way things were.

He walked out of the truck stop and to his pickup.

As he pulled back onto the car-and truck-littered interstate, Ben wondered if that was the way he’d end his span on earth. A bullet between the eyes and left to rot in some house or ditch?

Before he could answer his own question, an old woman trudging along the side of the interstate flagged him down. What did they used to call people like this? Ben thought.

Bag ladies. Yeah.

He leaned over and rolled down the passenger-side window. “Can I help you, ma’am?”’

She cackled, exposing the blackened, rotting stumps of teeth. “If I was twenty years younger, you damn sure could, young feller!”

Ben laughed. Young feller! “Thanks, lady. You just made my day.”

“Or if you was twenty years older,” she laughed again. “”Course, if that was the case, you probably couldn’t get it up no more, could you?”

“Probably not,” Ben said. “You want a ride?”

“Well, you look like a trusting sort, Mr. Ben Raines. But I think not. I just wanted to warn you not to go into Nashville.”

“How’d you know my name?”

“Seen some pictures of you a time or two. Country sure has gone to crap, ain’t it, Mr. Raines?”

“We’ll rebuild it.”

She smiled and shook her head. “No, we won’t, Mr. Raines. Not none of you nor me. Maybe two, three

hundred years up the road. But we won’t know nothin” about it. Don’t go into the city. Thugs and shit-heads took it over. Turn back around and take the Gallatin exit. You a big, tough man, but don’t tempt fate.”

“Aren’t you afraid of going into the city?”

“Oh, they won’t bother me. Too old to do them any harm. They think I’m crazy so they leave me alone. Bye now, Ben Raines. Hang in there, kid.”

She picked up her sacks and went trudging on up the road.

Ben smiled as he watched her leave. “Luck to you, too, lady,” he muttered.

He turned the truck around and backtracked, found the Gallatin exit, and cut north, then west. It took him almost six hours to drive approximately one hundred miles. He finally pulled over after crossing the bridge at Lake Barkley, deciding to spend the night on the west shore of the lake and do some fishing.

He carefully hid his truck and laid out his sleeping bag on the porch of an old fishing camp, after first inspecting the cabin and several more nearby.

He got his rod and reel, gathered up several of his favorite crank baits, and walked down to the pier of the camp. Within fifteen minutes, he had caught half a dozen small-mouth bass. “Kentuckies,” he said aloud. That’s what we used to call them. “Damn, they must be hungry.”

Then he realized the lake probably had not been fished by sport fishermen in years.

He cleaned the fish, carefully inspecting the liver for discoloration. He fixed an early supper, recalling as he did, that this was how he’d first met Pal Elliot. He struggled to remember what part of the country he’d

been in when he first met the man. Arkansas, he thought. They had talked about forming a new country-a country within a country. And Tri-States had been born on that evening, years back.*

But Pal was dead. And Valerie. And Salina. And hundreds more who had helped form Tri-States, and had fought for it, and died for it.

Sitting on the porch of the old fishing camp, watching the afternoon fade into evening, Ben smoked one of the few cigarettes he allowed himself daily-harsh, homemade cigarettes-and let his thoughts drift back into the past, something he rarely did.

But he could not allow much of that. And he knew it. It was dangerous. He, and others like him, needed to look constantly toward the future. That was the only way anything could ever be rebuilt from the ashes.

Far across the lake, Ben caught the first flickerings of a fire being built. No fires for me this night, he thought. Too dangerous. I don’t know if the people across the lake are friends or enemies; probably the latter.

Then he realized the campfire was not across the lake but, rather, across a narrow inlet of the lake. The cabin he was using was facing the inlet. That knowledge made him even more wary.

He went to bed on the open porch. He was asleep in less than five minutes.

Voices brought him awake, tensing his muscles, bringing his nerves taut.

Out of the Ashes.

Slowly, quietly, he unzipped his sleeping bag and slipped from the down-filled warmth. He laced up his boots, slipped into his field jacket, and got to his feet, Thompson in hand. He eased the bolt back, locking a round in place.

“I heard a truck yesterday afternoon,” a man’s voice came to him. “I know I did.”

“That doesn’t mean it stopped around here,” a woman replied.

“We have to check it out. They might be coming back for you.”

“I’ll die first,” the woman said. “I mean it, Wally.”

The man and woman rounded the corner of the cabin and came face to muzzle with Ben’s Thompson. They froze.

“I’m just traveling through,” Ben said softly. “I don’t mean anybody any harm. My name is Ben Raines.”

The man’s eyes widened. “General Ben Raines? President Ben Raines?”’

“Yes.” Ben first looked at the woman. And she was well worth looking at. Probably in her late twenties. Dark brown hair. Tanned, smooth face. Stacked, as used to be said. Ben shifted his eyes to the man. The family resemblance was strong between them. Probably brother and sister.

Both were well-armed. The woman wore a pistol and carried a rifle. The man wore two pistols and carried a pump shotgun.

“I saw your campfire last night,” Ben said. “I wanted to check it out but didn’t know what kind of reception I’d get.”

Ben lowered the muzzle of the submachine gun.

“Where are all your troops, General?” the man asked, suspicion plain in his voice.

“North Georgia. I left General Cecil Jefferys in charge and pulled out. For many reasons; some of them purely personal.”

The man relaxed his grip on his shotgun. “I guess even Ben Raines gets tired.”

“Yes. Come on up and let’s talk. I have a little bit of coffee. Would you like some?”

“This is the best coffee I have ever tasted,” Judy Williams said.

Her brother, Wally, laughed. “Sis, it’s the first cup of coffee I’ve had in months.”

“I get the impression you’re both running from somebody,” Ben said. “Care to talk about it?”

Brother and sister exchanged quick glances. Made up their minds. “Jake Campo,” Wally said. “Ever heard the name?”’

“No. What is a Jake Campo?”’

“He’s a warlord. Controls most of this part of Tennessee and up into Kentucky. Has two, maybe three hundred men in his gang. What he wants, he takes. There was ten of us originally. Me and Judy’s all that’s left. Jake and his men raped and tortured and killed the rest. We’ve been running for the past two weeks. I’m … I’m afraid, General, you’ve stepped right into something that even you can’t handle. You see, Jake and his gang have been closing the circle on me and Judy. We figure they’re maybe three, four miles from here, and closing fast. They’ve got every road and

path blocked off. They’ll be here sometime today, we’re figuring. Sorry, General. But you’re stuck.”

“Oh, I’ve been stuck before, Wally. But I seem to have this knack of getting unstuck.”

“Well,” the voice came from behind Ben. “Let’s see you get unstuck from this, mister.” Chapter 2

Ben took Judy and Wally with him, the woman in his left arm, the man in his right. He jumped and sent all three of them crashing through the rotted railing of the porch. Rolling, he did not look to see who or what the man behind the voice might be. He just came up with his .45 in his right hand and shot the man twice in the chest.

Movement and a slight sound from the far corner of the cabin spun him around, the Colt .45 barking and bucking in his hand. The slugs caught the second man in the throat and face, blowing off part of his jaw, sending bits of jawbone and teeth spinning wetly through the air.

“Jesus God!” Wally said. “You are quick, General.” Ben rose to his booted feet and reached for his Thompson, holstering his Colt. “A person had damn well better be quick, Wally. Or get dead. Check the surroundings and shoot anybody you don’t know that even looks like they might be hostile. Learn that right now, up front-if you want to stay alive.”

Wally looked at the man, a curious glint in his eyes. “I’m a minister, General. I can’t kill wantonly.”

“I’m not asking you to kill wantonly,” Ben said. “I’m telling you that in these times, if you feel any degree of suspicion toward strangers, if they make just one off-the-wall or hostile gesture, if they even say anything that could be construed as hostile, shoot first and worry about it later.”

Wally smiled gently. “I will shoot if fired upon, General. Other than that, I can do no more.”

Ben nodded his head. “Wonderful,” he said. Glancing at Judy, he asked, “You feel the same as your brother.”

“No,” she said quickly.

“We got a chance then,” Ben said.

Ben had stripped the two men of their weapons: two 9mm pistols and two M-16’s. Both men had bandoliers of clips for the M-16’s around their shoulders, bandit style, and clips for the pistols on their belt. He tossed the weapons and ammo in the bed of his truck and motioned for the brother and sister to get in the cab.

“You have some kind of transportation?” Ben asked.

Judy smiled. “Shank’s mare.”

“I heard that,” Ben said, returning the smile. “What kind of vehicles does the Campo gang use?”

“One-ton trucks that they’ve fortified with welded-on sheets of metal,” Wally told him. “They’ve made light tanks out of them.”

“Uh-huh,” Ben said with a smile. He dropped the gear selector into D and pulled out. “But how about underneath the trucks?”

“What do you mean?” Wally asked. “There’s nothing under the trucks except what the trucks came with.”

“That’s their weakness, then,” Ben told them. “Roll a grenade under the trucks and they go sky-high.”

“I like the way your mind works, General Raines,” Judy said, placing a hand on his thigh.

“Call me Ben.”

After consulting his map, Ben took a rutted county road out of Dover, heading south. He connected with Highway 49, then turned east on 147, stopping at a deserted little town called Stewart. The buildings had been looted and all were in bad condition. He pulled in front of an old service station.

“See if the doors of the bays will open, Wally,” Ben said. “You might have to put some oil on those old hinges. If so, use it sparingly; we don’t want to change the appearance of the building.”

“Don’t dribble it all over the place, right, General?”

“You got it.”

While Wally was struggling with the door, Ben walked around the building. At the rear, he smiled. Around front, he told Wally, “Forget it. There’s no back wall to the station. We’ll hide the truck somewhere else and we’ll use the station to wait for Campo’s men to find us. Judy, start rounding up a dozen or so old soft-drink bottles; any long-necked glass container will do.”

While she was doing that, Ben used a small portable pump to bring up any gas that might be left in the tanks of the old station. Ben and his Rebels had learned all the tricks of survival years back. He used the old

measuring stick first to check the gas, then to detect water in the tanks. Had there been water in the tanks, the stick would have come out of the tank a pretty pink.

“Water settles to the bottom,” Ben told the brother and sister. “Almost any station that was worth a damn would or will have a detection stick around. Good, you found some wine bottles. Fill them up about three-quarters full with gasoline, then stick a rag down the top and set the cocktails inside the old station. Hurry right back, because we’re just getting started. I’ll rid this country of Campo and his creeps for good.”

“You’re awfully sure of yourself, Mister Raines,” Judy said.

“Yeah, I am,” Ben said. He looked at Wally. “You go around to every car you can find in this burg. Remove the batteries and, if possible, dump the battery acid out into a large glass container. Don’t get any of it on you. Bring it back to me. Judy, when he gets back, you find a pot and boil that battery acid until white fumes appear. Then remove it from the heat and don’t inhale any of the fumes.”

Ben prowled the station until he found several cans of antifreeze. “Good enough,” he muttered. “Mister Campo, you are about to experience one hell of a lot of big bangs.”

When Ben had all the materials at hand, he began measuring carefully. Judy watched him intently. “Ben, what are you doing?”

“Making methyl nitrate dynamite, dear. You’re old enough to remember the United States Army Rangers, aren’t you?”

“Yes. were you one?”

“Yes.” Before you were born, Ben thought sourly.

“Get some shotgun shells out of my truck and pour out the powder in a dry container. I’ve got to make some blasting caps.”

“You’re a strange man, Ben.”

“I’m a survivor, honey. Do unto others before they do unto you.”

She laughed at that and went off to get the powder Ben needed.

“Wally, prowl the town and find me some iron or steel pipe that has one end capped off. Get a hacksaw-I saw one in the office-and cut me half a dozen. No smaller than an inch. Take off.”

With the brother and sister out of harm’s way, Ben checked the glass containers. The mixture had settled and separated. Ben carefully removed the top layer and very carefully placed that in another jar. This was the explosive. He added an equal amount of water and began swirling the mixture. He set it aside and once again allowed the mixture to separate. The highly volatile explosive was now the bottom layer in the jar. He removed the top layer and threw it away-carefully. Ben had shredded some cloth and placed that in an old pan. He slowly added the mixture until the cloth had absorbed it and was damp. He now had a form of dynamite.

It took him only a few minutes to construct blasting caps.

“What are you going to use to detonate those things?” Wally asked.

“I’ll make regular fuses for some of them,” Ben explained. “For the others, find me some clothespins.”

“Clothespins?” Judy asked.

“Clothespins,” Ben repeated. “Wally, you get me

some copper wire and the finest, darkest wire you can find. We’ll booby-trap some of these buildings and lay down a false trail.”

Muttering, Wally went in search of material.

Ben stripped the copper wire and wrapped one wire around the top jaw of the clothespin, another raw wire around the bottom part. He took a small, flat piece of wood, punched a hole in one end, and clamped the wire-wrapped jaws of the pin to the other end. He secured one end of the tripwire through the hole.

He talked as he worked, conscious of Judy standing very close to him. “I’ll have two wires running from the explosives. One wire is connected to the positive terminal of a battery; the other wire runs to the top jaw of the pin. The wire running from the bottom jaw of the pin is connected to the other terminal of the battery. This piece of wood between the jaws prevents contact from being made until someone trips it. When the exposed wires come in contact-bang!”

“I don’t think I’d want you for an enemy, Ben Raines,” Judy said.

Ben looked up at her and smiled. “Then let’s be friends.”

“I’d like that.”

Ben worked the rest of that morning on his bombs and booby-trapping several buildings on the main drag of town. The buildings he rigged with explosives were located in the center of town, on both sides of the street. After rigging each building, the tripwire located several feet inside the doorway, Ben would clear away the debris that littered the doorway, making it appear that someone had recently used the doorway several times.

“Tell me about this Campo bastard, Judy,” Ben said.

“He’s a big hulking brute of a man. A giant. Probably six feet, seven or eight inches tall. Three-hundred-plus pounds. While I was a captive of his, several of his men mentioned that he was somehow tied in with a man called Sam Hartline. What do you know about Hartline?”

Ben stopped working and looked at Judy. “That son of a bitch! Will I never be rid of him?”’

“You know him?”

“Unfortunately. Sam Hartline is the sorriest bastard God ever put on the face of the earth.”

“Well, Campo doesn’t work for him any longer. Campo turned out to be too brutal for even your Mister Hartline.”

“That’s going some. But please. He isn’t “my Mister Hartline.” I’d like nothing better than to kill that perverted filth.”

“Why don’t you, then?”

Ben smiled. “He’s about as hard to kill as I am, Judy.”

“Then make friends and team up with him.”

“If you can’t beat “em, join ‘em? Would you try to make friends with a rattlesnake, Judy?”’

“No. But that’s not the same. Hartline is a human being.”

“So was Hitler,” Ben countered.

Judy cocked her head to one side. “Who’s that?”

Judy, Ben learned, was twenty-five years old-she thought. Her parents were killed during the initial wave of nuclear and germ warfare back in ‘88. That would have made her eleven years old at the time.

She had “taken up with an ol’ boy,” when she was seventeen. He’d been killed two years later by Hilton Logan’s Federal Police. Judy hated and feared cops-of any kind.

“Chances are, Judy,” Ben told her, “you’ll see very few cops from here on out.”

“Good,” she said.

Ben had posted Wally on top of a building. He knew that trucks like his-in such good shape and equipped with several antennas-would be extremely rare. And he felt sure Campo would have spies throughout his territory.

Ben was ready. The three of them had worked hard and swiftly for several hours in preparation for Campo and his creeps. Now all they could do was wait.

“Why did we pile all that junk around those fifty-five

gallon drums of gasoline, Ben?” Judy asked, pointing to the carefully piled materials at each corner of the block.

“Because when I get as many of Campo’s people within this one-block area as possible, I’m going to turn this street into an inferno. We toss a cocktail into the debris, then, when it’s burning, shoot into the drums of gas. The fumes ignite.”

“Where are you going when this is over, Ben?”

“Just wandering. How about you?”’

“Wally wants to stay in this area and start up another church.”

“And you?”’

“I don’t want to stay. I’d like to see the country. I’ll bet I haven’t been three hundred miles in any direction from this point. Not in my whole life.”

“How did you avoid Logan’s resettlement plans?”’

“Paul and me hid out, then we went to live with kin up in Kentucky. That’s when I started back to school. Then the rats came.”

Ben had learned that most people did not care to discuss that period of their lives. The memories were just too horrible. Those rodents had almost been the final blow against humanity.

“Well, I’m certainly going to ramble around when this is over, Judy. You’re welcome to come with me.”

“No strings attached?”’

“None whatsoever.”

“Here they come!” Wally shouted. He scrambled down from the building and took up his position. Ben watched him through worried eyes.

Wally had pointed toward the east.

“You don’t think Wally has his share of guts, do you, Ben?” Judy asked.

“I’m sure he is a very brave man, Judy. But being a brave man and being a survivalist are two entirely different things. Wally has a reluctant trigger finger, that’s all. And at times like these, that is a drawback to those who might be depending on his reactions.”

“He’s killed before,” Judy defended her brother.

“When absolutely pushed to the wall and then only after putting his life, your life, or somebody else’s life in jeopardy.” It was not posed in question form.

“How’d you know that?”

“Wally’s about ten years older than you, right, Judy?”

“How’d you know that? Yeah, that’s right.”

“Wally remembers when a person could call a cop. His formative years were in the late ‘60’s and ‘70’s. He probably feels guilty just at the thought of picking up a big, bad gun to defend himself against all these poor misguided souls that roam the country, raping and killing and stealing.”

She laughed softly at the expression on his face. “You ever been married, Ben?”

The sound of labored engines was growing louder.

“Yes. A long time ago.” Long ago and far away, the line came to the one-time-writer-turned-warrior. “Here they come. Stay very still, Judy.”

“Campo won’t come in with his men,” Judy said. “He always lays back until it’s clear. I’ve watched him do it a half-dozen times.”

Ben nodded and watched the lead vehicle turn the corner, its ugly, squat nose poking arrogantly around the corner. The truck was not a one-ton truck but a heavier bob truck. The front and sides had been

fortified with steel plate. Gun slits bad been cut into the steel plate. The muzzles of automatic weapons stuck out of the slits.

Ben watched as two more fortified trucks pulled around the corner. “They’re going to strafe first,” Ben whispered. Whispering was not really necessary. The trucks had no mufflers and were making enough noise to almost cover a gunshot. “You climb down into that bay there. I’ll join you very soon, believe me.”

Then Ben was alone as the woman scampered into the protective old bay. He heard the metallic sounds of radio speakers barking out their static. Another truck pulled around the corner, then another. He watched as the muzzles of the guns on his side lowered. He slipped into the concrete protection of the bays just as the machine guns opened up, the slugs tearing great jagged holes in the old wooden doors of the service area. Bits of broken glass sparkled in flight, showering Ben and Judy with shards of glass. Several of the big .50-caliber slugs struck the inner frame of the sliding door and knocked the door ajar.

The strafing stopped. “Remember, Jake wants that cunt alive. Fan out and search both sides of the block. They got to be here. They didn’t make it to McKinnon and they ain’t on the east side of town. Most out.”

Ben had tucked his truck into a ravine a half-mile out of the town proper and covered it with brush. The ravine wound around and connected with a dry creek bed that ran just behind the old station. That would be their escape route.

They hoped.

Boots crunched on the broken and littered street and sidewalks. Ben and Judy tensed as the boots stopped in front of the service station.

“Shit!” they heard a man mutter. “Ben Raines ain’t nowhere around these parts. And if n he was, I don’t want no truck with him.”

“You better not let Jake hear you say that,” another man said. “Jake hates Ben Raines.”

In the darkness of the bay, Ben felt Judy’s eyes on him, asking silent questions. Ben shrugged. So far as he knew, he had never met Jake Campo.

Hell, he’d never even heard of the man until that morning, back at the lake. But Jake may have been one of the many thugs and hoodlums and slime Ben had run out of Tri-States, years back, when he and his Rebels were moving in to start their own country within a country.

“Somebody’s been in and out of this building!” the shout reached Ben and Judy.

“Here, too!” another man called, the shout coming from across the street.

“Check “em out!” the order came down the line.

Judy looked at Ben. The man was smiling. Strange man, she thought.

Two tremendous explosions, one coming only a heartbeat after the other, rocked the old deserted town. Ben ran up the steps of the bay, a Firefrag grenade in his hand. He was pulling the pin before he reached the top of the bay, the spoon pinging away. He rolled the grenade across the street, under the lead truck, and jumped back, unseen, into the bay of the service station.

Shouts of confusion and fear filled the dusty air. Then a huge explosion ripped the air as the Firefrag grenade exploded, the incendiary capabilities of the

grenade blowing the gas tank of the truck. The truck was lifted off its tires and tossed to one side, those inside trapped in the raging inferno. Their screaming echoed up and down the street.

That was Wally’s cue. Crouched in a building at the other end of the street, Wally tossed a burning firebomb into the debris piled around the drum of gasoline. He ran to the rear of the store, took aim with his pistol, and fired into the concealed drum. The fumes ignited, turning that end of the street into a firestorm.

Ben tossed a cocktail into the debris at his end of the street and leveled his Thompson at the hidden drum, pulling the trigger.

“Out the back and to the ravine!” he called to Judy.

She was running for the ravine as the gas drum exploded.

Ben tossed cocktail after cocktail into the confusing conflagration. Through the blaze, he could see Wally running for the ravine.

Without a second glance, Ben ran out the back of the station, throwing his last Molotov cocktail into the station, near where he had placed the materials left over from his bomb-making.

The hot blast almost knocked him off his booted feet. Ben stumbled, caught his balance, and continued running for the ravine and the truck.

“Get in front with Wally!” Judy panted, a rifle in her hands. “I’ll get in back and lay down cover fire if they follow.”

She knows more combat than her brother, Ben thought.

Ben dropped the truck into four-wheel drive, roared

out of the ravine, and headed across a field. He found a dirt road that ran some distance from, but parallel to, the blacktop road leading out of the town. He stayed close to the woods and circled the town, coming out on the blacktop that would take them to the town of Tennessee Ridge. On the blacktop, he cut out of four-wheel drive and drove as fast as he could on the littered road, weaving and dodging the fallen limbs, and in some cases, entire trees that had fallen across the road.

He bounced onto Highway 13 and followed that for some twenty-five miles, until connecting with Interstate 40. There, he cut west. He didn’t stop until they had crossed the Tennessee River. There he pulled off the interstate and they all took a well-deserved breather.

Ben and Judy stood patiently as Wally bowed his head and spoke a short prayer, thanking God for His help in delivering them from the hands of savages.

Brother looked at sister. “Time for us to think about heading back home, Judy.”

“Wally,” she said gently. “We don’t have a home.”

“Home is wherever God sends me,” he said. “And I have to go back to spread His word.”

Ben stood quietly. He wasn’t about to interfere between brother and sister. And he’d seen enough lay preachers-and Judy had told him that’s what her brother was-to know that many times they were as stubborn as a mule.

“They’ll kill you, Wally,” Judy said bluntly.

“Perhaps. But if you go off to live in sin with this man,” he looked at Ben, “you’ll be worshipping a false god. You know what we’ve heard about him for years.”

Ben stirred as the old rumor flared up once more.

“I am not a god,” Ben said. “I am flesh and blood and bone like everyone else.”

“I shall worship, in my own way, the only true God, Wally,” Judy said. “The God whose words are contained in the Bible.”

Wally looked at Ben. “May I have a small bit of food for my journey, General?”

“Take whatever you need, Wally. But I wish you’d stay with us. At least, for your sister’s sake, until we get further away from this part of the state.”

“I have to go back, General. I’m called to do so.”

Ben nodded his head in agreement. “I wish you luck, Wally.”

Wally smiled. “God is on my side, General.”

There was nothing Ben could say to counter that. Chapter 3

Ben and Judy stood by the pickup and watched Wally Williams walk slowly up Highway 641. He had told them he was only going a few miles, then would cut northeast, toward Eagle Creek on the Tennessee.

He rounded a curve in the road, and was lost from sight.

“I will never see him again,” Judy said.

“You can’t know that for sure,” Ben said.

“I will not see him again,” she repeated. She turned and faced Ben. “Let’s go, Ben. I want to leave this part of the country. And I don’t care if I ever come back.”

Ben opened the door to the truck. “Your chariot awaits you, dear.”

They spent their first night together at a tiny town just off the interstate. They never did find out the name of the town, for they could never find any highway markers denoting the name.

“Don’t you have a tent, Ben?” she asked.

“A pup tent in all that mess somewhere.”

“That won’t do.”

“Oh?”

“Tomorrow, first town of any size we come to, we start lookin” for one of them big pretty-colored tents like I seen in a catalog one time.”

“Those and saw,” Ben corrected.

“You ribbin’ the way I talk, boy?” she asked.

“No. Not at all. I used to be a writer, that’s all. It’s habit.”

“You wrote books!”

“Yes.”

“Big books?”’

“Yes. If by that you mean a hundred-thousand words or more.”

“What’d you write about, Ben? Tell me some stories.”

Ben fought to keep a straight face at her childish excitement. “I thought you told me you went to school?”’

“Oh, I did. I got to the seventh grade. I can read. But I’m slow at it “cause I have to skip over the big words.”

“All right, then. But first things first. We can’t get a bright-colored tent, because the color would stand out and might bring us visitors we don’t want. Understand?”

“Oh, yeah. Right.”

“But we will get a tent-somewhere. Next we’re going to get you some books. Some English books and a dictionary.”

“That’d be great.”

“Why didn’t your brother ever help you with reading?”

“Why … I don’t know. I guess ‘cause I never asked him.” Good reason, Ben thought.

“Which way did they go, bitch?” the voice rumbled out of the huge chest, exploding in the air.

“I didn’t see them, Mister Campo,” the woman said. “I swear to God, I didn’t.”

“There ain’t no God around here but me, bitch,” Jake told her. “And you’d best remember that.”

“No, sir,” the woman told him.

“Huh?”’

“I will not forsake my God and He will not forsake me.”

Campo laughed. The woman thought him to be the ugliest man she had ever seen. His head was shaved clean and round as a basketball, and just about as large. His eyes were small and piggy. His nose was large; with the nostrils flared, he looked like a pig. His mouth was wide, the lips thick and constantly wet from saliva. The man seemed to have no neck. Just the head attached to massive shoulders. His arms were thickly muscled. A huge chest and big belly. But the big belly did not quiver and shake like a fat man’s. It was solid. His legs were like the trunks of small trees. His feet were curiously small for a man his size.

“No, bitch,” Campo said, towering over the frightened woman. “You worship Jake Campo.”

She shook her head.

He squatted down beside her with a grunt and squeezed one soft breast. He clamped down hard, bruising the flesh. He laughed as the woman screamed in pain.

Her husband broke free of the hands that held him, and ran to Campo. He hit the man on the bald head with his clenched fist and the sound of the knuckles breaking was loud.

Campo stood up and roared with laughter.

“You do have balls, mister,” Campo said. “But nobody hits Jake Campo and gets away with it. Let’s see, what shall your punishment be? Should I cut off your balls? Naw! Rip out your tongue and feed it to the hogs? Naw!” Campo’s big face brightened. “I know.” He looked to his men. “Strip the broad, boys. And tie her husband to that tree yonder.”

The man was forced to watch while Campo’s men took turns raping the woman.

Campo pulled out a long-bladed hunting knife. He grinned at the man. “You seen Ben Raines’ fancy pickup truck, didn’t you, pig farmer?”

“No, sir, Mister Campo.”

Campo cut the man’s worn belt and let his patched trousers fall around his ankles. He cut the man’s long-handled underwear and lay the cold steel of the knife against the man’s testicles. “You want your balls cut off and stuck up your wife’s ass?”

“No, sir.”

“Ben Raines.”

“I seen this fancy truck go by just a-sailin’. Two men in the cab and a woman in the back, under a camper. She had a rifle stuck out the open camper winder.”

“You done good, boy,” Campo told the man, cutting the ropes that held him. “I’m gonna let you and your big-pussied woman live. This time around.”

He waved for his men to follow him. The hungry—

looking truck farmer jerked up his pants and ran to his wife’s side.

“Radio headquarters,” Campo told a man. “I want half the men to come with me, the other half stay in this area and collect our booty. Tell the boys to gear up for a long hard run. Lots of food and warm clothing and winter gear. I’m gonna foller Ben Raines until I catch that prissy, law-and-order son of a bitch. And I don’t care if I have to foller him, and that snooty cunt with him, all the way to the Pacific Ocean.”

Jake Campo looked to the west. “I’m gonna git you, Raines. And that there’s a promise.”

Even though the going would be much slower and would sometimes involve backtracking, Ben decided to stay on the secondary roads. They would afford him so many more ways to twist and turn in case Campo and his men were chasing them.

And Ben felt sure they would be.

Ben and Judy pulled out just after dawn, angling more west than north. At a small town in West Tennessee, Ben stopped at the public library-or what was left of it-and found some books for Judy. A book on creative writing, a good dictionary, and Fowler’s Modern English Usage.

On the road again, Judy opened the dictionary at random. “Ga-vo-tit,” she said.

“I beg your pardon?”

She repeated her pronunciation.

“Spell it, Judy.”

“G-a-v-ocommentcomment-every.”

Ben hated to admit he didn’t have the foggiest idea

what the word meant. “What does it mean, Judy?”

“Well, hell! I don’t know. I’m askin’ you.”

“See all the smaller words to the right of the bold-type word?”

“Huh?”

Ben slowed the truck and took a quick look at the word. “An old French dance,” he read. “Since I never wrote the types of books where that word would be used, I am not familiar with it.”

“So you don’t know everything after all?”

“Who in the world ever said I did?”

“Lots of people have. I seen-was

“I have seen.”

She looked at him. “I have seen lots of shrines and stuff like that built for you. Lots of the Underground People worship you.”

“So I heard,” Ben said through gritted teeth. “I am not to be revered or worshipped, Judy. I am not a god. Would a god do the things we did last night?”

“They would if they was horny.” “Jesus!” Ben muttered. “That’s not what I mean, Judy.”

“I know that, Ben. Look! There’s the sign pointin’ the way to Missouri. Let’s go there. I ain’t never been to Missouri.”

“I have never been.”

“Whatever.”

Ben drove into Dyersburg, Tennessee, and after carefully parking the truck on the street, enabling them to keep an eye on it, they began their search of the stores. Over the years, though, the stores had been looted many times, and anything of any value was long gone.

“Have you gotten used to the skeletons, Ben?”

They had just opened a broom closet door and two old skeletons had fallen out, clattering at their feet.

“A long time ago, Judy.”

A noise from the street spun them around and sent them running through the littered store to the sidewalk. A crowd of ragged men and women had gathered around the pickup.

They were armed with clubs and axes and knives and spears.

“The welcoming committee,” Ben said.

“What do you want?” a woman shouted the question at Ben and Judy.

“We don’t mean any harm,” Ben called. “We’re just traveling through.”

“Why did you stop?” a man called. He held an axe in his hands.

“People on the roofs with bows and arrows,” Judy whispered.

“I see them. If shooting starts, you take the south side of the street, I’ll take the north.”

“All right.”

“We don’t want any trouble,” Ben called, as they walked closer to the truck.

“You say!” the woman spokesperson said angrily. “That’s what they all say. Then they rape and kill and take away the young girls and boys.”

“Who takes them? Where do they take them?”’

“Who knows?” the woman said. “We never see any of them again. The attackers or our young.”

“My name is Ben Raines,” Ben spoke softly.

About half of the knot of people drew back in fear. They whispered and muttered among themselves. The

spokeswoman stood firm, glaring at Ben, her hands knuckle-white from gripping the spear tightly.

“You lie!” she shouted.

“I do not lie,” Ben told her. “I… we …” he said, indicating Judy, “just killed about twenty-five of Jake Campo’s people. Just east of the Tennessee. They’re probably only about a day behind us.”

“Jake Campo does not bother us,” the woman said. “This is not his territory. We pay homage to a warlord called West.”

“Do you do so willingly?”

The woman laughed. It was not a pretty laugh. “What do you think, Mr. So-Called-Ben-Raines. West has gathered up all the guns and left us with only clubs and spears and homemade bows and arrows to defend ourselves. He leaves us just enough food to survive and takes the rest. How can we fight him and his men?”

“You could leave here and find guns. There are millions of guns scattered around the country.”

“Do you see any cars or trucks or horses or mules?” the woman asked. “No. West has taken them all. If we tried to walk out, the beasts and the mutants would eat us, if West’s men did not kill us first. We are trapped here.”

An idea Ben had been nurturing for a long time took more solid shape in his mind. “You say people come in and rape and kill. Why doesn’t this West person protect you?”

“He does when he’s around. But he ain’t always around. He has a big territory to look after.”

“This doesn’t make sense,” Ben muttered. “Have these people lost all will to survive as free people?”

A man stepped from the crowd. “I heard that!” he

shouted. “Look, you bastard. I’m a doctor. Or I was. Now I’m reduced to carrying a spear. There used to be about fifteen hundred of us around here. Now we’re only about four hundred strong. If you’re really Ben Raines, help us.”

“Do you want to help yourselves?” Ben asked.

“Yes!” the man shouted. “But we have to have the means to do so.”

“All right, then. I’ll see about giving you the means, Doctor?…”

“Barnes. Ralph Barnes.”

Ben walked through the crowd to his truck and opened the camper. He handed Judy an antenna. “Take this to the top of that building,” he told her. “Then drop this end of the lead-in down to me.”

The radio connected, Ben flipped the set on. The frequency was preset. “General Raines to Base Camp One. Raines to Base Camp One.”

“General Raines!” the operator-on-duty’s voice snapped out of the speaker. “Yes, sir.”

“Get me General Jefferys.”

“Yes, sir. It’ll take me about one minute.”

“I’ll be here, son.”

“Ben!” Cecil’s voice was full of warmth over the miles.

“Cecil. At the chance we’re being monitored, I’m scrambling.”

“Yes, sir.”

“All right. I’m in Dyersburg, Tennessee. Are you aware of the fact the country has deteriorated to the point of warlords terrorizing the people?”

“It doesn’t surprise me, Ben.”

“Very well. You remember we spoke of setting up

outposts east to west, every hundred miles or so?”

“Yes.”

“We may as well start here.” He explained the situation. “I want a full platoon in here. As heavily armed as you can get them. Rations for a winter’s stay. Enough weapons and clothing for four hundred men and women. Reloading equipment, medical supplies, the whole nine yards. I want them rolling in the morning, Cecil. I’ll meet them here.”

“Ten-four, General.”

Ben clicked off the set and waved Judy down from the rooftop. He turned to the people.

“They’ll probably be here in two days. Now let me tell you people something. How many of you know anything about the way the old Tri-States was run?”

Most hands went into the air.”

“Then you know how fast my system of justice goes down. I will not tolerate racial bullshit. I will not tolerate laziness or sloppy work. Everybody in my command pulls their fair share. You do not steal, you do not lie, you do not cheat. Everybody pulls together. Personally,” he said with a smile, “I despise gardening. I always have; I always will. I have what is known as a brown thumb. I touch a plant, it dies. Fortunately, those otherwise blessed saw this fact and asked if I would please stop. I have a flair for administration and a passion for order. The point I’m making is this: Do what you are good at and enjoy. We’ll talk more tomorrow. For now, how many of you know anything about combat?”

Only a few hands went up.

Ben’s eyes settled on a man who looked to be in his late forties. “Where’d you serve?”

“Eighteen years in the Army, sir. I got shot during the assault on Tri-States and was court-martialed because I ordered my platoon to pull back and take no further action against you or your people. Name is Charles Leighton.”

Ben handed him one of the M-16’s taken from Campo’s men. “Well, Charles, you have just been promoted to the rank of Colonel and placed in charge of security on this outpost. What’s your name?” Ben asked another man who had raised his hand.

“Jim Canby, General. Three years in the Marine Corps.”

Jim got the other M-16, and the two pistols were given to a Chuck Morris and a Dot Fontana.

“All right, people,” Ben said. “Now you level with me. How many contraband guns have you managed to stash away?”’

The spokeswoman, Dot, smiled. “Twelve rifles and six shotguns. Four pistols. But we don’t have much ammunition for them.”

“You will,” Ben said. “Soon.”

Leaving Judy talking with the others, Ben took those he had just armed off to one side.

“West has to have informers among you,” Ben said. “Who are they?”

Dot named four people she was sure of and two more she suspected. The others agreed.

“Place them under guard,” Ben told them. “If they’re innocent, we’ll apologize later. When that is done, I want whoever it is among you who usually contacts this West person, to do so. Tell him you have to see him first thing in the morning. Tell him … tell him half a dozen women just wandered into town and you don’t have

enough food for yourselves, much less a half-dozen more people. The mention of women should bring him on the run. Does he usually come in by the same route? Good, We’ll ambush the son of a bitch-or whoever he sends-take their guns and vehicles. Then we’ll raid his base camp and steal some more.”

Broad grins greeted Ben. Dot said, “Oh, I like the way you think, General.”

“So do I, lady,” Judy said, joining the group. Her eyes were mean. “And I got first dibs.”

“You married to him?” Dot asked.

Judy balled her fists.

Ben stepped between them.

“Get outta the goddamned way!” Judy said.

Ben got. Chapter 4

There was no trouble between Judy and Dot. Doctor Barnes intervened and the woman stepped back.

Dot said, “I apologize to you both. But men, as you shall see, are scarce around here. I had to test the waters.”

“What do you mean, men are scarce?” Ben asked.

“West takes most of the men to work his camps,” Doctor Barnes said. “Those he leaves are usually under fourteen or over sixty. The few men you see here are all that are left in town. The rest are too young or too old. The women remaining here are also very young, or over fifty.”

“And the other men and women?” Ben asked.

“They’re held at the work camps.”

“Then we’ve got our work cut out for us, haven’t we?” Ben said.

“Yes, sir.”

West, Charles told Ben, always came in from the

north. His work camps were located in a half circle, ranging from Union City in the north, extending eastward to Martin, down to Milan, taking in Jackson, down to Bolivar, then in a straight line west to Memphis.

“How many men?” Ben asked.

“It fluctuates,” Barnes said. “But I’d say four hundred at any given time. Don’t misunderstand, General. The people in the area he controls aren’t cowards. Not by any means. He just built his little army and then took one town at a time. Some of the towns might have had fifteen people left when he came, others might have had fifty. He just overpowered them, set up informers, took the guns and vehicles, and left after torturing and killing and raping to prove who was boss.”

“Yes,” Ben said. “And he also caught the people at just the right time. I’ve seen it many times before. Beaten down, scared, hungry, and most important, leaderless.”

“Leaders, General Raines,” Dot said, “are very hard to find.”

“Leaders, Miss Fontana,” Ben countered, “are very easy to find. Finding the right one is what is so difficult.”

Ben spent the rest of that day making more bombs. West had stripped the area of all functioning vehicles, but had left behind those that would not run. Ben ordered the batteries to be pulled from those vehicles and emptied of their acid-if any remained. Many of the batteries were dry.

He showed the people how to properly make and handle Molotov cocktails, and how to construct tin-can land mines, filling them up with gunpowder and nails; how to make wine-bottle cone charges, capable of penetrating two or three inches of armor.

“Special Forces or Ranger, General?” Leighton asked.

“Both,” Ben told him. “Then into the old Hell-Hounds. You remember them?”

“Jesus!” Leighton whispered. “I figured all you guys were long dead.”

Ben showed the people how to take sodium chlorate and sugar, and by adding one other easy to find ingredient, make a highly volatile pipe bomb.

By late afternoon of the first day in town, Ben had more than a hundred of the people gathering materials for him, and by dusk, he had quite an impressive display of homemade bombs.

“Let’s call it a day,” Ben said, straightening up. “Tomorrow morning, early, we’ll go over the plans once more, then take out the column this Mister West sends in.”

They assembled an hour before dawn, at staggered positions along both sides of the old county road. Ben had ordered extra precautions taken with the suspected informers under guard, and his suspicions paid off-one man had tried to escape. Under questioning, he admitted he was an informer for West. He had received extra food for that. Ben ordered him hanged.

“He has a wife and family, General,” a man told Ben.

“He doesn’t anymore.”

In the chilly predawn, Ben finally told his plan to those men and women he had armed, before positioning.

“We wondered when you were going to let us in on it, General,” Leighton said.

“It’s very doubtful we locked up all the informers,” Ben said. “I couldn’t take the chance of one getting away and blowing it all. All right, here it is. First rule of battle: Keep it simple. The more complicated the plan, the more chance you have of it failing. We have to have the vehicles. That’s essential. A roadblock would warn them of danger. So that’s out. Notice how I’m dressed? None of you have. Learn to be more observant. Your life is going to depend on it. My clothing is old and dirty. I didn’t shave this morning. My hat is different. I found it in an old department store, all rat-chewed. I look like I’ve been on the road for a time. I’m holding a ragged-looking coat over my arm. The coat conceals the tear-gas grenade in my left hand. When we hear the sounds of West’s vehicles approaching this position, I’m going to step out into the road with the pin pulled on this grenade, holding the spoon down. With any kind of luck, the driver of the lead truck will roll down his window and call me over. When that happens, I’ll toss the tear-gas grenade into the vehicle and dive for the ditch. That’s your cue to open fire on the others. You don’t have much ammo, so don’t waste it. Never mind broken windshields. They can be replaced; broken skulls can’t. You know your positions, now get to them.”

The thin line of Ben’s newest contingent of Rebels waited in the weed-grown ditches. For many of them, this would be the first taste of actual combat. For

despite the collapse of the government of the United States of America a decade after the world had been torn by nuclear and germ warfare, many of the survivors just rolled with the flow, so to speak, obeying blindly the often-times idiotic dictates of a central government that, even in the best of times, had never worked to the satisfaction of a very large and varied minority.

The newly formed Rebels waited. Despite the coolness of the fall morning, many wiped sweaty palms, then regripped their weapons.

The faint sounds of engines sprang out of the morning’s mist. Ben stepped onto the rutted blacktop road. He had slipped another tear-gas grenade into the hip pocket of his old field pants at the last minute. His .45 pistol, a round in the chamber, was tucked in his belt at the small of his back.

He stood alone in the road, waiting.

The vehicles approached slowly, taking their time on the old road. Ben started walking slowly, not wanting to walk past those that lay crouched in the ditches.

The lead truck, a three-quarter ton, stopped, as Ben had hoped it would, only a few yards from him.

“That son of a bitch looks familiar to me,” the man on the passenger side said, his words reaching Ben.

“Raggedy lookin’ thing don’t look like nothing to me,” the driver said. He stuck his head out the window. “Hey, skinny!” he shouted, although the distance between them was short. “Get your funky ass over here, boy.”

“Yes, sir, boss,” Ben said. “I don’t mean no harm to nobody. I was just-was

“Shut your goddamn mouth, boy! And don’t speak until you’re spoken to.”

“Yes, sir, boss.”

Ben stepped closer to the truck. He could smell the rancid odor of unwashed bodies.

“You new around here, ain’t you, boy?” the driver asked.

“Yes, sir, boss.”

“You quick with them bosses, ain’t you, boy? You ever done prison time?”

“Yes, sir, boss. Down in Texas. Huntsville.”

“Well, now,” the driver grinned. Surprisingly, his teeth were in good shape. “The boss might like to talk to you.”

“The hell with that!” his partner yelled. “That’s Ben Raines!”

Ben released the spoon on the tear-gas grenade, dropped his overcoat, and flipped the hissing grenade into the pickup. With his right hand, he jerked out his .45 and shot the driver of the next vehicle in the face, the slug spider-webbing the old, cracked windshield and blowing away part of the man’s jaw.

Ben leaped for the ditch barely in time to avoid being shot by one of the new people. Ben leveled his .45 and shot the man in the stomach, just as Judy shot the traitor in the head with her .30-30 rifle. The slug exited out the right side, blowing out brains and blood and bone and fluid.

Judy tossed Ben his Thompson and he spun to join the fight..

It was over before he could get into action with his submachine gun.

The new Rebels were filled with hate for West’s people, and they gave no quarter to his men. Ben did

not try to stop them as they jerked those few left alive out of the vans and trucks and escorted them to the nearest tree for hanging. Ben and Judy stood silently by and watched as the townspeople strung West’s men up with rope and wire and belts and let them swing.

Dot came to face Ben. “That was Ned that tried to shoot you, General. He’s been one of our most faithful people. I never would have suspected him.” She looked at his body. “I wonder why he did it?”

“We’ll probably never know. It doesn’t matter now. Come on, let’s dump the bodies in the ditch and gather up the weapons and ammo. Get these vehicles back to town and look them over. We’ve got to get ready for West’s counterattack.”

Back in town, those who waited were jubilant when their friends drove back into town, cheering and shouting. They now had two dozen more guns and four vehicles.

Ben sat in his pickup truck and watched it all, an amused expression on his face.

“I think it’s sad, and you think it’s funny,” Judy said. “I don’t understand you, Ben.”

“I’m just thinking how my people are going to have to go from coast to coast, border to border, propping up the survivors. It isn’t that I really want to do it, but for our survival, we have to do it.”

“Isn’t that kind of… of… what’s the word I’m looking for?” Judy asked.

“Conceited, smug, arrogant-take your choice. You’re correct to a degree.”

“You make me mad sometimes, Ben Raines.”

“Dogs go mad, dear,” Ben automatically corrected. “People become angry.”

She got out of the truck and slammed the door. She stalked up the street, her back stiff.

Doctor Barnes had been leaning up against a light pole, only a couple of feet from the cab of the truck. He smiled at Ben.

“I wasn’t eavesdropping,” the doctor said. “I was standing here when you drove up.”

“I know,” Ben said. He got out of the truck and walked to the curb, leaning against the fender, looking at the doctor.

“People confound you, don’t they, President-General Raines?”’

“Ben. Just Ben. Yes, they do, Ralph. I would have died fighting before I would have allowed myself to become what West made of you people.”

“I won’t become angry at that, Ben. Some people might, but I won’t. I was quite a fan of yours, Ben. Not during your short tenure as President, mind you; but when you were writing books for a living.”

“I did my best to warn the people what was coming dead at them.”

“Yes, you did. You and a dozen other writers. But we just wouldn’t listen, would we?”

“Sure as hell wouldn’t,” Ben muttered.

“And now the great, indomitable, long-suffering Ben Raines, with a long sigh of resignation, will gather up all his hundreds of survival experts, and travel the battered nation, setting up little outposts of civilization, kicking the civilians in the butt, jerking them out of their doldrums, saving them from themselves. Right?”

“You’re the one talking, Doctor. But you’re in a pretty sorry state for a man who has all the answers.”

“Oh, you’re right. But you enjoy it, General.”

“What?”’

“Stop running from the truth, General. You wouldn’t have conditions any other way. You see, it’s always easy for men like you. I envy you: you and those that follow you.”

“Barnes, I don’t know what in the hell you’re talking about.”

The doctor studied the man for a long moment. “Maybe you really don’t, General. I have all your books, Ben. I really do. St. You could have been a great writer, but you chose to write pulp. Oh, it was good pulp-contradictory statement, yes.”

“Doctor, get to the point of this, will you, please?”

“You’re an idealist, General. You refuse to take into account the many weaknesses of human beings. You took what you considered to be the cream of the crop and built your Tri-States-was

“It worked, Doctor,” Ben cut him off. “You can’t deny that.”

“I won’t try to deny it. Yes, it worked. How could it fail when you gathered the best around you?”

Ben smiled. “Here it comes. After all that’s happened, you’re still a liberal at heart.” .

“To some degree,” Barnes admitted. “There is no middle ground with you, Ben. Everything is either black or white. No gray in-between.”

“Doctor,” Ben said patiently. “One can train a dog to obey basic rules. Now if a dog can be taught the difference between right and wrong, it should be very simple to teach a human being.”

Barnes shook his head. “You’re a hard man, Ben Raines. But,” he sighed, “perhaps it’s time for hard men. One philosophy, right, Ben? No taking into account different cultures, backgrounds, early upbringing-anything like that, right?”

“You stick to healing, Barnes,” Ben told him. “Leave the rest for people who have the stomach for it.”

“General Raines, you want what never was and never will be: a perfect society. But you cannot build a perfect society when the architects are imperfect human beings.”

Ben smiled again. “The man said, quoting Ben Raines.”

The doctor’s smile matched Ben’s. “That’s right, you did write that, didn’t you? I’ll live in your society, General. But I’ll do so because of the safety it affords me, not because I agree with its basic philosophy.”

“Then that makes you a hypocrite, doesn’t it, Mr. Barnes?”

The doctor chose not to reply. He studied Ben for a moment, then walked away.

Ben noticed the seat of the man’s jeans had been crudely patched with a piece of canvas. For all his education and lofty thoughts, the man could just barely keep his ass from showing through. Chapter 5

“Still angry at me?” Ben asked Judy.

“Mad!” she said.

“Very well. When you get your rabies shot, let me know. I’ll be around.”

She grabbed his arm with surprising strength and spun him around as he turned to go. “Ben, these people were beaten down-whipped. Now they’ve had a small victory and they’re happy. And you think it’s funny.”

“Judy …” Ben stepped closer. “I’m amused, but not in the way you think. My Rebels have played out this same scenario for years. Has it occurred to you that we just might be weary of it?”

“Then why don’t you and your people just quit?” she asked hotly.

“We can’t. For our own sake, we can’t. It’s never-ending for us. I see that now. If I-we comh a destiny, this is it.”

“Yeah, you said that-something like it-back in the truck. But you don’t have to act so … so smart-assed about it!”

He laughed at her and took her hand. “Come on, fireball. We’ve got to start setting up a defense line against West and his people.”

“And it annoys you that you have to remind the people to do it, right, Ben?”

“Oh, not really. I guess it’s second nature for me.” He smiled. “Just one of my many talents.”

Judy muttered something extremely profane under her breath.

“You don’t know the exact location of West’s base camp?” Ben asked.

“Not his main camp,” Leigh ton said. “We know where most of his work camps are, though.”

They were taking a break from setting up a first line of defense on the north side of town.

“After we arm ourselves better with the weapons taken from the next contingent of West’s people, we’ll hit the first labor camp and free your friends. By that time, my Rebels should be here with some heavier stuff.”

Barnes looked horrified. “You plan to fight West’s people before your troops get here?”’

“Sure,” Ben said.

“Are you mad or just insufferably arrogant?” the doctor asked.

“Neither one, I hope,” Ben said with a smile.

“Look around you, General!” Barnes almost shouted the words. “You have thirty people armed, and not well-armed, at that. West has between four hundred and six hundred well-armed and trained men.”

“But he can’t send all of them at once,” Ben said gently. “That would leave his labor camps unguarded. He can’t leave his base camp unguarded; that’s probably where he stashes his weapons and ammo. Warlords down through history share many things in common, one of which is a monumental ego. I’m counting on this West person to fit the mold. He will find where we ambushed and killed his people. I’m counting on that. It’s kind of hard to miss a half-dozen hanging bodies,” Ben added drily. “That’s going to make West either awfully angry or awfully cautious. I’m betting on angry. We’re going to let him bust through this first line of barricades with very little resistance. See how they’re placed close to deep ditches so we can jump into their protection and run screaming and frightened away from the Big Bad West? You notice I have the other teams working just around that curve, one mile down the road. Row after row of drums filled with water, concrete blocks, old junked cars. No way he can get through. When his column grinds to a halt, what’s going to be directly over and behind him, Doctor?”

The doctor smiled grudgingly. “An overpass, General. And you and Leighton and Canby and Morris will be up there with automatic weapons and bombs, right?”

“You’re learning, Ralph. I’ll make a fighter out of you yet.”

“I’ll stick with medicine,” the doctor replied, turning away.

“That man does not have much use for me,” Ben told Dot.

“He resents the ease with which you handle things,”

the woman told him. “We’ve been plotting and scheming for a year around here, trying to come up with some solution to our problem. Then you walk in and take over. And get it done,” she added.

Ben looked at the woman. “Dot, no nation whose citizens were fully armed was ever conquered by an outside force. I might get some argument on that, but in the main it’s true. Just as it’s true that many nations went from right-wing dictatorships to a democratic form of government. But no nation ever went from a communist form of government to a democratic form of government. The people who control the guns control it all.”

She smiled at him. “I’m old enough to remember that the writer Ben Raines was a liberal hater in print. A liberal hater in person, too, it appears.”

Judy came to Ben’s side, two cups of what currently passed for coffee in her hands. More chicory than anything else. But at least it was hot, and if enough honey was added, not too bad.

“Thank you,” Ben said, not sure if Judy was still angry at him, for whatever reason.

“You’re welcome.” She handed the second cup to Dot. A quiet peace offering from woman to woman. “The lookouts are reporting everything is quiet. No sign of West.”

Dot sipped her coffee. “They’ll be here. What worries me is what happens if West and Campo join forces?”

“We fight them,” Ben said. “My people will be here in the morning; possibly late this evening. Campo doesn’t have artillery and no one here has seen any type of artillery in the hands of West. There’ll be a mortar

crew with my Rebels and at least two .50-caliber machine guns-maybe four of them. That, plus our discipline and experience, will make up the difference.”

“Here they come!” the excited call was passed down the line. “A whole great line of them.”

“Get into position,” Ben ordered. “You all know what to do. Do it, and we’ll come out of this alive. Fuck up, and we’re dead.”

Ben and those with him, all armed with M-16’s, crouched on the overpass and watched and waited. Ben saw the twenty-odd vehicles of the column slow, then stop. Using binoculars, Ben watched the lead vehicle, a van. A man got out and stood with hands on hips, surveying the flimsy barricade that stretched across the road. The bearded man laughed at the obstacle and pointed toward it.

Ben handed the binoculars to Leighton. “Is that West?”

Leighton looked. “That’s him.” He counted the vehicles in the column. “Figuring five men to a vehicle, I make it about a hundred twenty-five men we’re up against.”

“Yes,” Ben said. He lifted his walkie-talkie. Judy was behind the second, as yet unseen, barricade around the curve. “Judy? Everybody in place and ready?”

“Ready, Ben,” she radioed back. The young lady had never seen a walkie-talkie before meeting Ben.

“Stay loose,” Ben said.

“One guy got too loose,” Judy radioed back. “He messed his pants.”

Ben grinned and rehooked the walkie-talkie to his chest harness. “Here they come.”

A few desultory shots were fired at the advancing

column by those behind the first barricade. They then jumped into the ditch, running and yelling as if in mortal fear.

A bob truck with a steel grate welded in front of the hood was waved on past West’s van. The bob truck slammed through the barricade, the column following.

“So far, so good,” Ben muttered.

When the last vehicle had passed the wrecked barricade, people ran out from the thick weeds and brush on both sides of the highway. They carried concrete blocks, wooden planks with long nails driven through, sacks of broken glass. Others rolled water-filled fifty-five-gallon drums. Still others unrolled barbed wire, securing the ends on both sides of the highway.

They quickly and effectively closed the highway to West and his people.

Rounding the curve, the second barricade looked at first glance to be as flimsy as the first. The bob truck picked up speed, preparing to ram right through the barricade. The bob truck’s right front tire struck a series of concrete blocks, tipped to one side, and rolled over, spilling the men riding in the back. The men were shot down before they could rise to their feet. From behind the barricade, men and women darted out, grabbed up weapons and ammo belts, then raced back behind the shelter.

In the van, West realized he had driven right into a well-thought-out trap. He spun the steering wheel, the van slewing around, facing the direction he’d come. On the overpass, Ben leveled his scope-mounted, .30-06, lined up West’s ugly face in the cross hairs, and pulled the trigger. The slug slammed through the windshield,

deflected upward several inches, and struck West on the side of the head. The slug blew off the man’s ear, taking a thick patch of hide and hair with it. He jumped out of the van, howling in pain, one hand to the side of his bloody head, and tried to run. Ben shot him in the knee, almost blowing the lower part of the leg off. If he could do it, he wanted West alive.

West’s men found themselves trapped in an increasingly bloody box. There seemed to be no way out. The rage of the men and women they had brutally subdued and abused and oppressed howled to the surface, erupting like a savage trapped beast. When the men attempted to surrender, they were hacked to pieces by axe-and machete-wielding men and women. The blood and gore slicked the old highway.

“Cease fire!” Ben yelled. “Cease fire! Back off, people! Back off! It’s over, goddamn it!”

Silence settled over the smoky, bloody carnage-filled highway. The men and women looked at what was left of that which they had so feared for so long.

“Doctor Barnes!” Ben yelled, standing up.

“Here, General.”

“See to West’s wounds. We want him alive for barter. The rest of you gather up the weapons and tear down the barricades. Get the road clear of nails and glass.”

“We did it!” a woman cried, crying tears of joy and relief and disbelief. “We really did it!”

Ben looked down from the overpass, his eyes touching Doctor Barnes.

“Might rules once again, right, General?” the doctor called.

“An armed, disciplined, organized people cannot be

enslaved, Doctor. were I you, I would keep that in mind.”

“Still the writer, aren’t you, General?” Barnes said, his voice carrying to the top of the overpass. “Still carrying your liberal-hating message to the masses, right?”’

“Somebody damn well better continue doing it,” Ben said.

The doctor turned away. The canvas patch on the seat of his trousers had worked loose.

His ass was showing. Chapter 6

One hundred and fifty of the town’s residents were now armed, with plenty of ammunition for the weapons. Only a handful of West’s men made it out of the ambush alive, and two of those died during the night. West’s leg, from the knee down, was amputated by Doctor Barnes. It really was not that tough an operation, for Ben’s bullet had done most of the work. When Barnes complained that he had nothing to knock the man out with, Ben looked at the doctor as if he were an idiot.

The doctor got the message.

“It’s going to be very difficult closing all this off,” the doctor bitched.

“Cauterize it,” Ben said.

The doctor finally lost his temper. “You’re a fucking savage, Raines! Goddamn it, the man is a human being.”

Ben met the man’s hot eyes. “West has killed, in cold blood, no telling how many hundreds of people. He has raped, tortured, mutilated, degraded, enslaved, and

God only knows what else, to countless hundreds more. If you’re expecting me to feel any degree of pity for that scum, you’re going to have a long wait, doctor. Like forever!”

“Now I know why the Tri-States was virtually crime-free!”

“That’s right, Doctor. We just didn’t tolerate it.”

West lay on the table, tied down with ropes, and cursed Ben.

Ben looked at the man and spoke quietly. After his words, West shut his mouth and kept it shut.

Ben had placed the muzzle of his pistol against West’s temple and said, “I can put you out of your pain permanently, West. The choice is yours.”

Doctor Barnes said, “God, Raines! I’d hate to have to live with your conscience.”

“I don’t have any problems with it at all, Ralph,” Ben replied.

The contingent of Rebels rolled in just after first light. They were commanded by a Captain Chad.

“You made good time, Captain,” Ben told the young officer.

“We took shifts at the wheel, General. Only had to detour three times and then not too far.” He looked around at the looted and nearly destroyed city. “This going to be our first outpost, General?”

“One of the first, I suppose. I’d like to set up at least two more between Base Camp One and here. We’ll see how this one works out.”

The Rebels were introduced all around. The men and women of what was left of Dyersburg could only stand

and stare at the healthy, well-dressed, and fit Rebels. A young woman, dressed exactly like her Rebel counterparts, walked up to Ben. She wore a .45 belted at her waist and looked very comfortable with it.

“I’m Doctor Walland, General. We met briefly back at Base Camp One.”

“Yes, I remember, Doctor,” Ben said, shaking the woman’s hand. He waved for Doctor Barnes to come over. He introduced them and said, “I’ll leave you two alone. Doctor Barnes doesn’t care for my company.”

Gloria Walland looked at Ben and smiled. “You’re joking, of course, General.”

“According to Doctor Barnes, I am a barbarian and a savage,” Ben said bluntly. “He doesn’t care for the Rebel system of justice.”

Doctor Gloria Walland, a captain in the Rebel Army, faced Doctor Ralph Barnes.

Ben leaned over to see if the doctor had changed trousers. He had.

“Let’s clear the air, Doctor Barnes,” Gloria said.

“That would probably be best, Doctor Walland,” Ralph said. “Captain Walland,” Gloria corrected.

“But of course.”

“I am a physician, Doctor Barnes. If you bring two wounded people to me, one a member of the Rebel Army, the other a prisoner of war, I will check to see which person is the more severely wounded. But I would not, and will not, allow a member of the Rebel Army to die in order to save the life of the enemy. Is that clear, Doctor?”’

“Perfectly clear, Captain,” Barnes said stiffly.

“One more thing, Doctor Barnes,” Gloria said. “Two

years ago I was seized at gunpoint by armed men. Scavengers, looters, scum. They raped me. One of them made a mistake and turned his back to me when he had finished. I grabbed his pistol, a .38-caliber revolver, took very careful aim, and shot the bastard squarely and precisely in his asshole. He was still screaming as I killed the other two and drove away. Does that give you some insight as to what I think about criminals, Doctor?”

“I get a very clear picture, Captain Walland.”

“Fine, Doctor Barnes. Now if you’ll help me with my equipment, we’ll see about giving everybody here a checkup and see where we have to go concerning vitamins and diet.”

“With pleasure … Doctor,” Ralph said. As Walland walked away, Ralph looked at Ben and smiled. “Very … ah, forceful young woman, General. I think we’re going to get on splendidly.”

“I hope so, Ralph. I’m told she’s an expert shot.” When Ralph had gone, Captain Chad said, “General? I’ve known Gloria for five years. She never was raped.”

Ben smiled. “Yes. I’ve read her file. She’s just telling Doctor Barnes how the show is going to be run, that’s all.”

Leaving half the newly arrived contingent of the Rebels behind, Ben took the mortar crews, the machine gunners, and one hundred of the newly armed citizens with their newly acquired vehicles and led the column toward the first of West’s labor camps. Ben’s heavily armed force rolled up to the gates of the forced labor

camp, located some twenty-odd miles from Dyersburg.

A strange silence greeted them. There were no guards in the crudely built towers, no guards to be seen behind the high barbed wire that surrounded the camp.

“I don’t think we’re going to like what we’ll see in those barracks, General,” Captain Chad said.

“Nor I, Captain,” Ben replied. “Blow the gates and let’s take a look.”

Several of the civilians lost their breakfast and many more turned green around the mouth.

The prisoners in the labor camp had been machine-gunned in their barracks. The rough wooden floors were slick with blood. The stench of loosened bowels was nearly overpowering.

“Why, General?” a man asked. “Why did they do this?”’

“Revenge. West must have had observers behind the main column yesterday. They reported back, and this,” he waved his hand, “is their reply to us.” Ben turned to Dot. “You know where the other camps are located?”

“Most of them. But… what about the dead here?” she asked.

“You have no earthmoving equipment, Dot. And I didn’t bring any body bags with me. So unless you people want to spend several days digging holes for the bodies-which the dogs and other wild animals will dig up as soon as you’re gone-I suggest we put all the bodies in one barracks and burn them.”

“And … then?” Canby asked.

“We go wipe out what is left of West’s operation.”

The smoke from the controlled burn poured black

and greasy into the morning sky. The unmistakable odor of burning human flesh filled the still air.

The scene was nothing new to the small contingent of Rebels that stood impassively by and watched. Many of them had been with Ben for years; they had seen much worse than this during the years of traveling.

But to the civilians of Dyersburg, the scene was awful.

“Got a long way to go to make these folks fighters, General,” Captain Chad said quietly. “If it’s possible at all.”

“I’ll opt for the latter, Captain,” Ben said. “And I’m not downgrading them for it. I think we can train them to become a pretty good militia force, as long as some of us are around to lead.”

“And that’s up to me and my troops, right, General?” Captain Chad asked.

“That’s it, Captain. This outpost idea was just a thought. We’ll review what’s happened next spring. Take it from there.”

The captain thought about the small city. “First thing we do is clean up the town. Got to give the people some purpose; keep them busy. Elect a leader and set up work teams. But the people will have to think they’re the ones who thought of it and implemented the plan.”

“The chief of security will be Charles Leighton. Let him pick his own security people; he’ll do a good job. Watch Doctor Barnes, Captain. The man is living in a dream world.” Ben was thoughtful for a moment. “I believe Barnes is a good man. But he’s no Rebel and never will be. He’s going to question every decision you make, Captain.”

“What you’re saying, sir, is that the man is going to be a pain in the ass.”

“Very aptly put, Captain.”

Ben sent out scout teams of his own people, with Charles Leighton guiding them, to reconnoiter the largest of the forced work camps. While that was being done, he sent a jeep back to get West.

“Doctor Barnes isn’t going to like that, General,” Canby told Ben.

“He probably won’t,” Ben agreed.

Ralph Barnes returned with West. The man was clearly upset and made no effort to conceal his ire.

“I demand to know why you ordered this man taken from his bed and brought here, General?” he said. “Can’t you see he is clearly in pain?” The doctor sniffed several times. “What is that smell?”

“Burning bodies,” Ben told him. “Several hundred of them.” He told Barnes what they had discovered at the camp.

Sitting in the Jeep, under guard, West laughed. Barnes flushed at the taunting laughter.

“Real nice fellow, isn’t he?” Ben asked. “Has the milk of human kindness flowing strongly through his veins.” Ben looked at West. “You’d better hope your men think enough of you to swap you for the prisoners, West. “Cause if they don’t, you won’t be laughing when I put a noose around your dirty neck.”

West’s laughter ceased as quickly as it came. He sat in the jeep and glared at Ben.

The woman Rebel manning the radio called to Ben. “All the prisoners have been grouped

together at one camp, General. They’re still alive. Our scouts have made contact and are keeping the camp under visual.”

“Tell them we’re on the way,” Ben told her. He turned to Doctor Barnes. “Coming with us, Doctor?”

“You couldn’t keep me away, Raines.”

“I wouldn’t bet on that, Ralph,” Ben told him.

The doctor met the Rebel’s eyes. “Just a figure of speech, General.”

“Uh-huh,” Ben muttered.

“What’s the procedure, West?” Ben asked.

Ben stood by the jeep where West sat. The outlaw was clearly in pain, his face slick with sweat and pale. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat and looked at Ben.

“I don’t know,” West finally said. “Nothing like this ever happened before.”

“Then I’ll tell you,” Ben said. “We’ll make an even swap. You for the prisoners.”

A sly look came into the outlaw’s eyes. “You know damn well you ain’t got the people to overrun my boys, don’t you, Raines?”

“Maybe. But we could sure put one hell of a dent in your number.”

“Yeah,” West admitted.

“Think about it, West. You’ll have to shut down your labor camps, but you’d be alive.”

“And you’d keep your word?” the outlaw asked, suspicion in his eyes and voice.

“Yes.”

“You got a bullhorn?”

“No. But we have walkie-talkie’s.”

“Gimme one.”

A field radio was brought to the jeep. West checked the frequency and called in. He spoke for a moment, listened, then his voice became harsher. He turned to Ben.

“The guys don’t trust you, Raines. Hell, I don’t trust you. But it’s the only game in town, so I gotta play it.”

“When the last prisoner walks free of that camp,” Ben said. “You’re free. That’s it.”

“Hey!” West protested. “That ain’t worth a shit, man.”

“You said it, West. It’s the only game in town. Take it or leave it.”

“Awright, awright.” He lifted the walkie-talkie, and spoke for a few seconds. He again turned to Ben. “They’s comin” out now.” His eyes shot hate at Raines. “This ain’t the end, Raines. You takin’ a hell of a chance turnin’ me loose. You know I’m gonna be comin’ after your ass.”

“A lot of folks have tried, West. I’m still around,” Ben told him.

“You ain’t never had me on your ass, Raines. I’ll get you for this. And that’s a flat promise, buddy.”

Ben smiled, thinking that his newest odyssey would prove quite interesting. Chapter 7

Ben’s Rebels and the newly armed civilians ringed the big camp, keeping the outlaws penned until the last of the prisoners were being safely trucked away back to Dyersburg.

Ben lifted his walkie-talkie. “You and your men are free to leave, now, West. Lay down your weapons and start walking.” “What?” West screamed, the word bouncing out of the walkie-talkie.

“You heard me,” Ben radioed. “Start walking.”

“No goddamn way, Raines. We take our guns and vehicles.”

“Captain Chad,” Ben called. “Put ten rounds of mortars, H.e., into that camp.”

“Yes, sir,” the captain grinned.

A long barracks-type building went first, the high-explosive round sending bits of splintered wood flying. A guard tower was blown all over that part of Tennessee; another building was blown, then a mortar round shattered the big front gates of the labor camp.

“All right, goddamn it!” West screamed. “All right, you bastard. Cool it!”

“Cease firing,” Ben ordered.

“I cain’t walk outta here, Raines,” West’s voice whined out of the speaker. “Gimme a break, man.”

Charles Leighton whispered into Ben’s ear. Ben grinned and lifted his walkie-talkie. “All right, West. You can ride out. On a mule.”

West did not need a walkie-talkie. His cursing could be heard for half a mile.

“You got anything to say about that, Doctor Barnes?” Ben asked the man.

“Would my opinion make any difference, General?” the man asked.

“Not a bit, Doctor. But this being a democratic society, I thought Td ask.”

“We need more medical people in here,” Doctor Barnes bitched to Ben. “The prisoners are in extremely bad shape. We need more doctors.”

Ben was tempted to tell the man that a frog probably wished it were more beautiful; people in Hell wished they had ice water, and that if Barnes’ aunt had been born with balls, she’d have been his uncle.

Ben was getting awfully weary with Doctor Ralph Barnes.

Ben held his temper. “In addition to Doctor Walland, there are two fully-trained medics with the Rebel platoon. I can’t pull any more people in here from Base Camp One.”

“Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute.”

“Guns and butter,” Ben countered. He walked away.

He found Judy helping in the makeshift hospital. “I’m pulling out in the morning,” he told her. “If I stay here any longer, I’m going to end up beating the shit out of Doctor Barnes. And that’s not going to do either one of us any good.”

“Ben …” She faced him.

“I know. I know. You’re staying. I think you should, Judy. You’re needed here. I mean that, kid.”

She kissed him, then smiled up at him. “I’m going to make you proud of me, Ben. I’m going to study and learn how to write books.”

“I think you will, Judy. We’ll say good-bye, now.”

“Bye, Ben.”

He walked away.

Ben was surprised to see Doctor Barnes leaning against his truck in the just-breaking light of dawn. Ben tossed his kit into the protection of the camper and walked around to face Barnes.

“I hope you’re not leaving because of me, General,” Barnes said.

“You’re part of the reason,” Ben said truthfully. “But the real reason is I’m no longer needed here. Captain Chad and his people will handle it. So it’s time for me to be pulling out.” Ben stuck out his hand and the doctor shook it.

“I was thirty-five years old when the bottom dropped out, General,” the doctor said, speaking softly as dawn broke. “I had a family, a fine practice, and everything that went with that. I looked up the next day, and the entire world had gone mad.”

“And you bet your whole roll on Hilton Logan,” Ben said.

“Am I that transparent?” Barnes asked.

“Let’s see if I can peg you, Ralph,” Ben said, leaning up against the fender and lighting one of his horrible, homegrown, homemade cigarettes. He offered one to the doctor and Ralph took it.

“It’s bad for your health,” the doctor grinned.

“I heard that,” Ben replied with a laugh. “You were what was known as a Yuppie. You belonged to the country club locally. You were politically and socially aware and active …”

He paused while the doctor inhaled and went into spasms of coughing. “Damn, that’s good!” Ralph said. He took another drag and said, “Reasonably accurate. Continue, please. You’re a very astute man.”

“You were a democrat, politically. You were opposed to the death penalty and loudly in favor of gun control. You bemoaned the state of the nation’s health care for those who could not afford the skyrocketing medical costs, but you were against any type of socialized medicine. And you lived in a two-hundred-thousand-dollar home and your wife drove a Mercedes or BMW. How close am I, Ralph?”’

The doctor went on the defensive, as Ben had thought he would. “And what did you do about health care for those who could not afford it, General?”

“Nothing,” Ben said. “I didn’t have lobbyists in Washington, Ralph.”

“And you weren’t paying fifty thousand dollars a year for malpractice insurance, either, General.”

“Want to jump on the back of lawyers, now, Ralph?” Ben said with a laugh.

Barnes joined in the laughter. “No. I don’t believe so.

We’ll save that for your return trip.” He stuck out his hand and Ben shook it. “See you, General. Good luck to you.”

“Luck to you, too, Ralph. See you on the back swing.”

His scouts had reported that West and his people had last been seen trudging up Highway 51, heading north toward Kentucky. Ben headed west, taking 155 toward the Mississippi River and into Missouri. The bridge over the Big Muddy was clear and the river rolled beneath him, eternal and silent. Ben stopped on the center of the bridge and got out of his truck, gazing down into the muddy waters.

As he watched the swirling, ever-rushing waters of the Mississippi, a passage from the Bible came to him: One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth forever.

“But what kind of men and women will the next generation give the earth?” he asked the cool winds of late fall.

Like the river, the winds swirled and rushed, speaking in a language only they could understand.

With a sigh, Ben got back into his truck and headed west.

He stopped at Hayti and looked around. There was no sign of life. But he knew there was life. Almost every town of any size at all held two or ten or twenty survivors. But most, instead of organizing, pulling together, working together in a cooperative effort, for safety and defense and productivity’s sake, were instead lone-wolfing it, and by doing so, were helping

to drag down what vestiges of civilization remained.

“No good,” Ben muttered. “It can’t be allowed to continue. The outpost idea must be implemented-and soon.”

He smiled as he drove on west. “That’s right, Ben. Set yourself up as a modern-day version of Don Quixote.” Or perhaps you’re playing the role of Sancho Panza, he thought.

Either way, what right do you have to play God, rearranging peoples” lives? Who named you the Great Overseer? Nobody came down from the mountain and whispered in your ear, Raines.

He shook away those thoughts and concentrated on his driving.

But his mind refused to stay idle; the outpost idea kept jumping to the fore. The outposts would, out of necessity, have to start out small. Because of the recent revolt within his ranks, his Rebel number had been cut by forty percent.

They could not, as yet, stretch coast to coast; there weren’t that many Rebels left. Perhaps a thousand miles without strain. From Base Camp One in Georgia to the middle of Colorado. Maybe. Just maybe. But due to the aftereffects of the limited nuclear strikes, the jet stream had shifted, so he needed to get some people down south, to where the growing season was longer.

“Shit!” he said aloud. “Raines, this is supposed to be a vacation for you. You’re supposed to be doing some writing.”

But he doubted that would ever happen. Something always came up to keep him from paper and pencil.