Anarchy in the Ashes (10 page)

“Crazy world, Denise. But it's always been my belief that the olive branch of peace only gets partial attention. Especially to people who aren't really interested in peace. It gets their full attention if the other hand is holding a gun.”

“But isn't one the contradiction of the other?” she asked.

“So is the term fair fight.”

She laughed and turned to leave. “Wish us luck, General.”

“Break a leg, kids.”

She walked away to join the other young people in one final check of supplies and equipment and weapons.

“When I first heard about Tri-States,” Gale said, moving to Ben's side, “I thought what you people were doing was monstrous.”

“Little liberal got all outraged, eh?” Ben smiled at her.

“That's putting it mildly, Ben.”

“Our success stuck in the craws of government, Gale. They just couldn't stand our proving them wrong on nearly every social issue they had advocated and bled the taxpayer to implement and keep going for years. Government just couldn't believe we could bring it all back to the basics and make it work. But we did and it outraged them.”

“And you are going to do it again, Ben.” It was not put as a question.

“If I can.”

The man and woman stood in silence for a few moments. Stood and watched as the young people began leaving. Gale said, “I wonder if they know what they are facing?”

He took her small hand in his. “No. No, they don't. But those that survive this will grow wise to the ways of this ravaged planet very quickly, I am thinking. Either that or die.”

Gale glanced up at him, horror evident on her face. “Those that
survive?
”

“We will never see thirty to forty percent of them again,” Ben said flatly.

“Knowing that, you still sent them out?” There was genuine outrage in her voice.

“It had to be, Gale. I tried to tell them what they were going up against, but I'm not sure how much of it registered on them. I really hope my words sank in. We'll know when we see the number that return.”

“I can't believe you would do something like that, knowing that many of them faced death, would be sure to die.”

“The survivors will make it. The rest will either get tough or die. That's the way of the world now. Those that don't have the right stuff will die along the way. There is no momma to write home to, now, honey. No USO, no Red Cross, no State Department. This nation, the very laws upon which it was founded and which the high courts and our elected leaders chose to spat upon for decades, is standing on the brink, teetering, first in one direction, then the other. A lot of people will die before any type of democratic process is ever again in force. If, in fact, any type of democratic government is
ever
again adopted. And I have very grave doubts about that. Right now, Gale, this moment, we are facing the greatest challenge since the bombings of '88. And if we don't win, we can all kiss any hope of freedom and democracy goodbye.”

She looked at him. Blinked, then smiled. “Thank you, Professor Raines,” she said. She rose up on tiptoes and kissed him.

 

 

The small column, now minus the young people from the college, backtracked to Ottumwa. There, Ben told the villagers what was soon to go down.

“What do you want us to do, General?” he was asked.

“I'd like for you to come with us, back to Tri-States.”

The people of Ottumwa had already discussed this. The man shook his head. “No, sir, we won't do that. This is our home, and we have agreed to die defending it. We may be making the wrong decision, but we're going to stand firm.”

Ben knew there was no point in arguing. He shook hands with the spokesman and pulled out, heading south, leaving them with their shotguns and hunting rifles. Against trained troops and experienced combat officers, with mortars and long-range howitzers. Maybe, Ben figured, just maybe, if they were lucky, and had the time to group before the IPF hit them, they might last six hours. If they were lucky. But Ben could understand the desire to defend homes and a free way of life.

Ben ordered his column to head west until they intersected with Highway 65, then to cut down into Missouri, staying to the west of Kansas City by about sixty miles, for Kansas City was radioactive and would be for centuries. During the trek, they found survivors in Princeton, and Trenton, and about a hundred in Chillicothe. Thirty families elected to go with the Rebels, the rest stayed, despite Ben's warnings they didn't have a prayer of defeating General Striganov's IPF.

But they would not leave their homes.

The column crossed the Missouri River and found more than a hundred people at Missouri Valley College. It was there Ben made up his mind, there Ben put the strugglings of his brain to rest.

“Get me General Striganov,” he told his radio operator. “You'll have to search the bands, but I feel sure he's got people waiting to hear from me.”

“Yes, sir.”

She began searching the bands, carefully lingering over each frequency. She would broadcast for a few moments, then listen, seeking some reply.

Ben looked over the band of people on the campus of the old Presbyterian college. They were a grim-looking lot. Most of them wore a defeated look, and once more, that flaw appeared in Ben. He was not now and had never been the type of man to give up. No one who was ever a part of any hard-line special military unit was a quitter. One could not make it through the training by being a quitter, and very few special troops have anything but contempt for a quitter. Past training had been too brutal, too dehumanizing for a man to face failure by just rolling over and giving up.

With very rare exceptions, no man who was once a part of any tough military unit, the elite, if you will, will ever beg or quit in a bad situation. And they do not like to be associated with those that do.

Ben shoved his personal feelings back into the dark recesses of his mind and asked, “Where are you people from?”

“South Dakota, mostly,” a woman replied. “Aberdeen-Watertown area. Thought we were making a sort of life for ourselves. Then the IPF came in. They suckered us, General Raines. They were nice, at first. Real nice young people. They helped us. But our minister, Ralph Dowing, he was the first to figure them out, what they were really all about and up to. He called them on it. They didn't do much about it, at first. No rough stuff, nothing like that. But we noticed that after that, they all started carrying automatic weapons. So my husband – no, he's not here, he's dead – he started carrying a pistol wherever he went. He and several other men. They – the IPF – they didn't like that. They told my husband they would rather he not wear a gun. They would protect us if the need arose. My husband told them he didn't give a jumping good goddamn what they liked or disliked or wanted.” She wiped a hand across her face and sighed heavily. “Shortly after that, there was an accident – so the IPF called it. My husband was run over by a pickup truck. The IPF said my husband fell in front of the truck.” She shook her head. “It was no accident, General. He was deliberately killed to get him out of the way.”

“Yes,” a young man standing beside her said. “Then they started rounding up all the privately owned guns. That's when we started to fight them. But let me tell you, General Raines: They're tough and mean. And Lord, are they quick. Those of us you see here got out just in time, 'bout fifty of us. We picked up the other people outside Watertown. Same thing happened to them. General, what in the hell is going on?”

Briefly, Ben told them what he knew. He could see by the expressions on their faces many did not believe him, but the majority did.

“I've got General Striganov's HQ, sir,” the radio-operator called from the communications van.

Ben keyed the mic. “This is Ben Raines. To whom am I speaking?”

“My dear Mister Raines,” the familiar voice rolled from the speakers in the van. “This is Georgi. I trust you have had a most pleasant trip thus far?”

“Just dandy, General. But I am not contacting you to exchange social amenities. Interstate 70 is your stopping point, General. Starts in what is left of Baltimore and cuts right across the center of the country. That's your southern boundary, Georgi. You keep your IPF people north of that line.”

“Are you buying time, President-General Raines, or tossing down the gauntlet?”

“Maybe a little of each, General.”

“And if I don't comply with your demands?”

“Then that little war we talked about just might come to be a whole hell of a lot sooner than you expect,” Ben said bluntly.

“I see,” the Russian said after a short period of silence. His mind was racing as fast as Ben's. “Then may I have your word you will not interfere with my personnel north of the line?”

“I most certainly will interfere, General. If you disarm the citizens, I'll send teams in to rearm them. If you use any type of force or torture, I'll meet it with force.”

There was an edge to the Russian's reply. “I don't like this game, General Raines. You're not even being slightly fair with your demands.”

“It's the only game in town, General Striganov. Take it or leave it.”

“I'll think about it,” the Russian said.

“You do that, partner.”

The connection was broken from the Russian's end. Rather rudely, Ben thought.

A crowd had gathered around the communications van. A man asked, “Is there going to be another war, General?”

“Do you want to live under communist rule?” Ben answered with a question.

“I don't care,” the man replied. He had the pinched look of a man who had been born into poverty and never escaped it. His expression was sullen. “I ain't gonna fight them people. I don't think what they're doin' is all that wrong, noways. I just want to live and be left alone.”

“Then you're a damned fool!” a woman cried, her face flushed with anger. Ben noticed she had a pistol belted around her waist. “Man, have you lost your courage or your senses – or both?”

“I won't fight them people,” the man insisted. “So what if the niggers and the spics and Jews are wiped out? Be a better world without them people.”

About a third of those present agreed with the man.

Gale stirred beside Ben, but kept her mouth shut. But if her eyes could speak, they would be speaking volumes. Her fingers dug into Ben's arm with a hard fury.

“Then why don't you take those of like mind and join up with General Striganov's people?” Ben asked the man.

“By God, maybe I'll do that little thing!” the man flared, his eyes furious. “I just cain't see what is so wrong with what he's doin'. And a lot of others around here agree with me.”

“Mister.” Another man stepped forward, his hands balled into hard fists. “Why don't you just take those that agree with you and carry your goddamned ass out of here? My wife is Mexican, and I don't like what you're saying or what you're all about. And if you open your fat mouth one more time, I'm going to knock your goddamn teeth down your throat.”

The man who thought he might like to join Striganov's IPF opened his mouth to speak, then thought better of it. He walked out of the small encampment with about two dozen other men and women following him.

“I just can't believe Americans are really doing this,” Gale said. “This is ... unreal.”

“Oh, you can believe it, dear,” Colonel Gray spoke. “There is a lot of hate in this world. Or, rather, what is left of this world.”

“And it will get worse,” Ben cast more gloom. “Count on it.”

Ben shook hands with Juan Solis and Mark Terry and then offered his hand to Al Malden. Malden merely looked at him and folded his arms across his chest.

Ben shrugged it off and gazed out the window. It was late June and the weather had been ideal. If these conditions prevailed, there would be a bumper crop of wheat and corn and thousands of acres of vegetables.

“So from what you have seen, General,” Juan said, “you think that perhaps thirty percent of those approached are buying the garbage the Russian is spewing?”

“At least that many, Juan. There's a lot of hatred in this country directed toward minorities. Striganov is bringing it to an ugly head.”

“Placing yourself amid the pus of that boil, too, I hope, General,” Al said.

Cecil sighed and looked out the open window. Mark caught Ben's eye and shook his head in disgust. Ben could but smile.

“Al,” Juan said, “you're a real asshole, I hope you know that.”

“You'll see someday, Juan,” Al replied. He smiled, but his smile was void of humor. “Big Ben Raines,” he said sarcastically. “The great white hope.”

Ben decided the best action he could take was none. He ignored Malden. When he spoke, his words were directed to Juan and Mark. “I don't see how any of us can sit on our hands and do nothing about this situation. Are we in agreement with that?”

“I agree with nothing you say,” Al said.

Juan said, “Are you suggesting we take the fight to them, Ben?”

“Have we any choice in the matter?” Mark spoke. “My people will work with you in any way we can, Ben. You can count on that.”

“Hey,
brother!”
Al rose from his chair in open anger. “I run the government of New Africa, not you – or have you forgotten that?”

“You run the political arm of the parts of North and South Carolina our people have settled in,” Mark said pointedly. “But I run the military arm of it. That is a position the
people
placed on
my
shoulders – not yours. Al, are you so full of blind hate for all whites that you can't see that Ben is trying to help us?”

“Ben Raines never did anything except for Ben Raines,” Al retorted heatedly. “Are you forgetting he once threw the national president of the NAACP out of his office when he was in charge of this nation?”

“No, I haven't. But did it ever occur to you the man might have deserved being tossed out? I never did learn what happened. All I got was the one side – the side the liberal press chose to report, as usual. And, Al, I seem to recall that back in the early eighties, when Reagan was president, the same man, before he took charge of the NAACP, once referred to President Reagan as a California cowshit kicker. Now, Al, playing devil's advocate for a moment, I wonder how that man would have felt, being from Colorado, if President Reagan had stooped to his level, and called him a Colorado Coon?”

Cecil burst out laughing, as did Juan and Ben. Al Malden bristled with anger.

“All I'm saying, Al, is how about some fairness? That's all.” He again looked at Ben. “We're with you, Ben. I'll give you all the help and personnel you feel you need.”

Malden kept his mouth shut, but the hate in his eyes was intense.

“Same here, Ben,” Juan said.

“All right,” Ben said, rising to his feet and walking to a large wall map in the office. “Gentlemen, let's get down to nuts and bolts.”

 

 

Emil Hite stood in the bedroom of his quarters in the Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas and looked out over his growing kingdom. Not so little anymore, he thought. Growing daily.

On his bed lay a young girl, sleeping after her first initiation into sex. Her breasts were still developing and her pubic hair was sparse. She was just the way each weEmil liked his female sex partners: from twelve to fifteen. Younger than that and they screamed and cried too much; older than that and he felt inferior, inadequate in the act.

To say that Emil Hite was a bit twisted mentally would be putting it most subtly.

Emil walked back to the bed and caressed the soft skin of the child, smiling as he did so. Lovely. Lovely little children. Too bad they had to grow up and become such bitchy women.

His kingdom of followers now numbered almost fifteen hundred, and was growing daily. Not with the numbers of the past, but several came straggling in almost every day. And Emil had found the mutants responded – in their own peculiar way – to kindness. Ugly fucking brutes. But they did make great watch... watch
whats?
Things. That would do. They made their homes on the fringes of the mountains, some of them actually constructing shacks of tin and scrap metal and wood. Emil had found that among the mutants, just as in normal human beings, there were varying degrees of intelligence. Some of them, Emil felt, might even be trained to do menial jobs – if he were so inclined to do that – which he wasn't.

A knock on the door of the cabin meant that Emil's lunch was ready, the tray left by the door. Honeybread and fruit and nuts and raw vegetables.

Yuk!

Emil desperately longed for a thick, juicy steak, but that would have appalled his followers, all vegetarians, and he had too good a thing going to screw up this late in the game.

Jumping Jesus Christ, some of the people out there were real fruitcakes. They had built him a throne from where he held an audience twice a week. Emil had to sit very patiently, listening to his followers heap long, boring speeches of love and adulation upon him. And he would smile and nod his head and make the sign of the cross and look pleased while the yo-yos ranted and raved and groveled at his feet.

And Emil had to read his Bible daily, darkly reshaping the passages to suit his own twisted mind and perverted desires.

He sighed, thinking: I shouldn't complain about it. He had it made. Steady tight pussy from young girls and tight assholes from young boys. Love and servants and people to wash him and shave him and rub his feet and back. So he had to preach a couple of times each week.

Sure beat the hell out of selling used cars in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

 

 

The young black woman fought the hard hands that gripped her arms, dragging her to the van parked on a side street in the small Iowa town. She fought the men, but her efforts were fruitless. One of the men could not resist this opportunity to squeeze the woman's breasts, causing her to scream in pain as he gripped them brutally. The other men laughed at this.

“You can't do this to me!” she screamed. “I'm a human being, not an animal!” She cut her eyes to the few people standing on the littered main street of the town. “For God's sake!” she screamed at them. “Please help me.”

The men and women looked away, not wanting to meet the woman's eyes. But they could not close their ears to her panic-filled cries for help.

She screamed as the doors of the van were pulled open. Her eyes rolled in fear and desperation as she spied the banks of medical equipment and the straps on the narrow, white-sheeted table inside the van. A man and woman stood inside the van, both of them dressed in white. They smiled at her.

She fought even harder. “My baby!” she screamed, hoping against hope someone would find the courage to help her. “My baby!”

She was four months pregnant.

“It won't hurt,” the white-jacketed woman inside the medical van told her. “I promise you you will get the best medical care. We really don't want to hurt you. But you are going to hurt yourself if you persist in this struggling.”

“Please don't do this to me!” she wailed. “You have no right to do this!”

“You are impure,” the blond woman told her. “Although that is not your fault, you are imperfect. As with the mother, so goes the child.”

The young black woman began cursing the people as they forced her into the van.

She was screaming as she was lifted into the van and placed on the narrow table. Leather straps were tightened on her ankles and wrists. She felt her dress being cut from her. Cool air fanned her naked flesh. She was suddenly immobile.

“Look at the pussy on this one,” a man said. “God, what a bush.”

The young woman opened her eyes, looking into the hard, pale eyes of the blond woman standing over her. The woman licked her lips.

The young woman felt the weight of a man covering her, his hardness pushing against her dryness. He grunted his way inside her.

She was raped four times within an hour.

“Enough,” she heard the blond woman say.

The man on top of her climaxed and withdrew.

Coolness of alcohol touched the young woman's arm, followed by the tiny, brief lash of a needle.

“That's just to put you under for a time, miss,” a man's voice spoke. “We promise you as little pain as possible. We're not savages, you know.”

Laughter followed that remark.

She felt herself falling, falling. She fought the blackness that promised soothing, inky arms. Lights spun in her head, pinwheels whirled and sparkled. Blackness overtook her and she sank into midnight. There was some pain through her unconsciousness, but the young woman did not recognize it as such. She could feel herself falling deeper.

The midnight darkness began to be tinted with light. When she opened her eyes, she was in a hospital bed, in a clean, white, sterile room. An older black woman was standing over her, looking down. The woman smiled.

“How do you feel?”

“Shitty.”

The black face smiled. “So did I. It was a forced miscarriage, honey. And I'll tell you straight out: You will never have any children.”

“They?” She could not bring herself to speak the awful words.

“Yes,” the older woman said. “It just takes one shot to destroy everything that God gave us women. The same with men. I don't know what's in that shot, but it's a devil's mixture, for sure.”

The young woman turned her face to the pillow and wept hard, uncontrollably, the tears savage, soaking into the pillow.

“Hell, sister, that won't help none. I know. Was you raped,too?”

“Yes,” she sobbed.

“I was raped so many times I don't know how many men took me. Look, honey, I thought I'd kill myself after . . . after they give me that shot. But then I got to thinking – why? Then I thought some more, and came up with a better idea.”

The young woman looked up at her through a mist of tears. “What?”

“Keep on livin' and think of more ways to stop these Russian bastards.”

“That won't help my baby.” She turned her face away from the woman.

“You right, it sure won't. But nothing on this earth will. Listen, we can help save some others from what was done to us. Honey, this is just one of a dozen or more hospitals the IPF has set up – and this one, like all the others, is jam-packed full. This place is full of blacks, Jews, Hispanics. Anybody that don't have fair skin is in trouble with these Russian honk bastards, let me tell you that for a fact, honey, and you'd damn well better believe it.”

Through her pain, the mental anguish much more severe than the physical, the young black woman asked, “What can we do?”

“That's more like it.” The older woman smiled. “All right, we don't do nothin' 'til you get to feelin' better. Right now, though, we can talk. It'll help some, believe me. What's your name?”

“Peggy. Peggy Jones.”

“I'm Lois Peters. The IPF put me in here after I was... was worked on,” she spat out the last. “Made me kind of a den mother, you might say. I'll tell you this: Be careful who you talk to, 'cause they's some black women copped out, agreed to breed with light-skins, anything to stay fertile. I thought about it some – rejected it. You?”

“They didn't even ask me that. I ran and hid for several weeks, but they finally ran me down and caught me. Lois, I'm not going to take this. Someway, somehow, I'm going to fight.”

“Good girl. That's the spirit. You gonna make it now, talkin' like that. All right, what do you know about guns?”

“Nothing. I was born in New York City.”

Lois shrugged. “Ever'body has their faults, I suppose.” She smiled. “That's a joke, honey. Well, we can teach you about guns. OK. Now then, you ever heard of a man named Ben Raines?”

“Are you kidding! Sure, I have. General, president. That's the man who broke away from the union to form his own country. Why?”

“Word I get is he met with the commander of the IPF, a guy name of General Georgi Striganov. That man is, so I hear, one bad dude.”

“Sounds like something you'd eat.”

Lois laughed softly. “Son of a bitch stick it in my mouth, he'll pull out a nub. Talk is General Raines put the evil eye on the Russian, gave him a double whammy. Said he was gonna fight him, stop him and his IPF from doing this – like what was done to you and me.”

“Anybody can,” Peggy said, “General Raines is the man'll do it.”

“Damn right. That's the way I feel, too. You get better, honey. It won't take long. And you be careful who you talk to 'round here. Soon as you're up and about, we'll talk some more.”

“You'll teach me how to shoot a gun?”

“Somebody will, don't worry. We ain't got all that many guns, now, but we're gettin' some.”

“The people in that little town where the IPF finally caught up with me, they just stood and watched them take me away. I couldn't believe it. They just watched, didn't do anything.”

“Most of them couldn't do nothing. The IPF come around, gatherin' up all the guns. You too young to remember the way it was back in the mid-eighties, honey. The goddamn government of the United States passed laws that gave the Feds the right to take all the privately owned pistols. That was the worst law Congress ever passed. Ain't no son of a bitch ever gonna take no gun of mine – not ever again. I'll die first; but I'll go out shootin'. Believe it.