Anarchy in the Ashes (6 page)

“Mikael is the leader?” Ben asked.

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

The young people who had elected to remain at the school with the IPF, who had decided to adopt the philosophy of the IPF, now sat sullenly, defiantly, silently. Katrina gave them little more than a quick glance of dismissal.

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

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

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

“And you?” Ben asked her.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Katrina smiled.
“Bot kak!”

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

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

“I wonder why?” Gale asked innocently.

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

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

She was right.

 

 

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

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

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

“For how long?” he asked.

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

Ben shook his head.

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

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

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

“That is correct.”

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

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

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

The young people thought they liked that plan. They would stay.

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

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

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

“In a manner of speaking, yes, sir.”

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

“They worship you, sir.”

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

“I concur,” Colonel Gray said.

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

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

“No, sir. Not at all.”

“You maybe don't like my deodorant?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ben ordered his people to dismount and take a rest.

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

“Ms. Roth,” Ben said, turning around. “I really don't – ”

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

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

Ben ignored that. “Where's the kid?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“That's right.”

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

“Right.”

“I see.”

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

He stepped closer. She stood her ground. Out came the chin.

“Ms.
Roth, would you do me the honor of riding with me in this parade?”

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

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

“You talked me into it.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Maybe it is true.”

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

“A mortal could not have done that.”

“So calm about it.”

“Tell you, gods don't get scared.”

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

Ben heard none of it.

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

“I'm fine, Ike.”

Ike looked at him. Ben's breathing was steady, his hands calm. Ike looked hard at the still-quivering man-beast. “I wouldn't have fought that thing with anything less than a fifty-caliber.”

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

“Let's get rolling,” Ben told her.

 

 

The convoy backtracked, picking up Highway 54, heading for Mexico, Missouri, where they would spend the night.

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

 

“Tell me about yourself, Gale.”

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

Ben smiled.

“And keep your ethnic cracks to yourself.”

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

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

Ben pretended to mull over that for a few seconds, pursing his lips and frowning.

“OK. But only if you call me Ben.”

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

Ben laughed at her antics.

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

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

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

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

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

“I meant that as a figure of speech.”

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

“What do you think, Dan?”

“I think it's very unsafe, General.”

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

The column rolled and rumbled through the town. Downtown Mexico looked as though a pack of wild kids had trashed the streets and stores. Not a window remained intact; filth was strewn everywhere. Once, Ben stopped to retrieve part of a heavy metal gas can from the street. The can appeared to have been physically ripped apart, torn open, much like a huge bear would do, with superanimal strength.

Ben silently showed the can to Gale.

For once, she had nothing to say.

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

“No wonder your disposition is so rotten.”

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

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

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

“I.”

“Are you sure?”

“Damn, Ben – you're a writer!”

“Me still sounds correct.”

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

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

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