William W. Johnstone (15 page)

Seventeen

 

Ben and his contingent rested and spent the night at the northwestern tip of the lake that night, near the deserted town of Chester. The IPF had been in Chester, but abandoned it quickly as the Rebels began their latest moves. Here, as in the other town, the Rebels found huge amounts of supplies.

And a small band of citizens that Ben didn’t like and didn’t trust.

Ben called the leader of the surviving group to his command post for that night.

“Name?” Ben said shortly.

“Reed. Harry Reed. I sure am glad to see you and your people, General. You’re here to stay; to protect us?”

“No.”

Ben’s curt reply startled the man. “I beg your pardon, General?” “Why don’t you people protect yourselves?” “Why … we don’t have the training for that. We …”

Ben tuned the man out, letting him rattle on. Same old song, different jukebox. Reasons, explanations, rationalizations. Put them all together and they boiled down to the same thing: Excuses.

“Shut up!” Ben told him.

The man ceased his prattling, stopping in midsentence, standing before Ben, his mouth hanging open.

The older Ben got, the less patience he had with those who would not help themselves. And it
was
“would not.” Not “could not.” Ben had and would continue putting his life on the line for the elderly and the very young and the helpless. Just as he had done back in … ’88, he thought, with those elderly people.
^*

But he had nothing but contempt for people like Harry Reed.

“How many people in this area?” Ben asked.

“ ’Bout a hundred and fifty, or so.”

“You mean you don’t know how many?”

“Naw, sir.”

“How many children?” “Bunches.”

Bunches. Marvelous. “Before the IPF arrived – bearing in mind they only got here about a year ago – did you have school for the young?”

“Never got around to it. Always something else to worry about.” Harry was finding his balls and beginning to stand up to Ben – verbally and in his stance.

For when he had tried to sit down, when first entering the house, Ben had told him to get up and remain standing.

“Do you have gardens … vegetable gardens?”

“Some folks do. I never had much luck with them, myself.”

“What do you do with your time?”

“Scrounge around.”

“Before the IPF arrived?”

“Same thing. Why you asking me all these questions? I ain’t your enemy.”

“I don’t know whether you are, or not. I am trying to determine if you’re worth my attention.”

“Say what?”

“Harry, give me a couple of reasons why I
should
help you.”

“We’re human bein’s.”

“Is that a reason or an excuse, Harry?”

Harry’s eyes became hard as they locked with Ben’s eyes. “I don’t think I like you very much, Ben Raines.”

“I don’t think I’ll lose much sleep over it, Harry.”

“You was a writer before you became what you are now, right, Ben Raines?”

“That is correct.”

“And before that?”

“Some people called me a mercenary. I was not. What I was, was a soldier of fortune.” “Is there a difference?”

“Yes.” Ben had no desire to discuss that great difference. People who didn’t know the difference between the two were very naive.

“And before that?”

“I was a paratrooper, a Ranger, a Green Beret, then a member of the Hell-Hounds.”

“I never was even a Boy Scout.”

“That’s your problem.”

“Sir?”

“We’re about the same age, Harry. Give or take a few years. We both grew up in the days of the draft and the volunteer military. If you didn’t elect to serve, don’t blame me for it. If you chose not to learn weapons – as a civilian – that’s your problem, not mine. How did you feel about guns back when the U.S. was flourishing … back when you and others like you had somebody else to do your fighting for you?”

“You … !” Harry bit off the unspoken scathing.

“Go ahead and say it, Harry. I’m not going to shoot you for it.”

“Fuck you, Raines!”

Ben laughed at him.

Harry picked up a straight-backed chair, slammed the legs to the floor, and sat down, glaring at Ben, daring him to say something about his being seated.

Instead, Ben said, “Answer my question, Harry.”

“I despised guns, Raines.”

“I bet you didn’t like cops either, did you, Harry?”

“I didn’t have much use for them.”

“But you’d call one if you got in trouble, wouldn’t you, Harry?”

“I did on several occasions. What’s the point of all this, Raines?”

“You, Harry. How long have you lived in this area?”

“I came here just after the bombings. I was in business in Davis.”

“And you just scrounged around for food and clothing? No gardens, no schools for the kids, no organization, no forming of any type of defense? Is that right, Harry?”

“Yeah.”

“And now you people want me and my Rebels to pick your asses out of the ashes of war, dust you off, feed you and fight your battles for you, right, Harry?”

“I’ve heard for years what a horse’s ass you really are, Raines. I guess the rumors were true.”

“They may be, Harry. I may well be a horse’s butt. But I haven’t been sitting around feeling sorry for myself.”

“So what are you going to do with us, Raines?”

“Nothing,” Ben said softly. “Except take every kid I can find and all the helpless and elderly and transport them back to our base camp. The rest of you people can go straight to hell.”

“You’re just going to
leave
us?”

“Yeah.”

“But you’re supposed to be some sort of savior! You’re supposed to be … to be going around the country, helping people!”

“Who want to help themselves,” Ben corrected. “And I don’t recall running for this so-called position of mine, Harry. I never asked for this job.”

Harry stared at Ben for a long moment, his expression unbelieving. “Will you arm us, at least?”

“With a
gun,
Harry?” Ben said, his words laced with sarcasm.

The red crept up Harry’s neck, coloring his face.

“What are you going to do with a gun, Harry? Shoot yourself in the foot?”

Lora walked into the room, a pistol belted around her waist. She leaned her carbine against a wall and sat down in a chair.

Harry looked at her, then at Ben. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it.

“Yeah, Harry,” Ben said. “She’s carrying guns.”

“Will you arm us?”

“I’ll leave some of the IPF’s weapons and ammo for you, Harry. But when push comes to shove, you people will never use them. The next time some crazy warlord and his men roll through, you’ll all run and hide. You’ll let your women get raped and you men will drop your pants and bend over. I would help you, Harry. But there are too many obstacles in the way. You don’t like authority, Harry. People like you question every order given you by people who are trying to help. You want lots of things, Harry. But you don’t want to work for them. I saw that the instant I drove into town. The place is filthy. You don’t look like you’ve had a bath in a month.”

“There isn’t any goddamned
soap!”
Harry flared.

“Then make some.”

“Make
it? How?”

Ben rubbed his temples with his fingertips. “Can you read, Harry?”

“Of course I can read! I was a very successful businessman back in Davis.”

“There is a library in town, Harry. I drove past what is left of it. It looks like it hasn’t been used in years.”

Harry’s face was flushed a deep red.

“When did you last read a book, Harry?”

Harry looked like he was ready to explode. He stuttered and sputtered and managed to say nothing.

Ben momentarily forgot Lora was in the room. “You’re a dumb motherfucker, Harry.”

Lora laughed.

“Harry, you can make soap by boiling plain ol’ ordinary kitchen fat with wood lye; you can get that from leaching ashes of hard wood. You go
scrounge
around and find coconut oil, or linseed oil, soybean oil, or other vegetable oil. Add that, it’ll take the sting out of it. Then take a bath, Harry. You stink!”

Harry was crying as he rose from his chair and stumbled to the door. He turned around and said, “You ain’t got no right to treat me like this, Ben Raines. The Good Book says the meek will inherit the earth.”

“Six feet of it, Harry.” Ben winked at him. “Hang in there, Harry.”

^*
Out of the Ashes

Eighteen

 

Ike’s Rebels were now in firm control of everything south of Highway 20 down to the Bay area of San Francisco. And Ike was just as tough as Ben in his treatment of those who would not help themselves. He had no pity for them.

He was highly compassionate toward the very young and the very old; but anything in-between who groveled and allowed themselves to be enslaved, he brushed aside with contempt.

In Santa Rosa, a once thriving city, Ike found that cults had sprung up, worshipping everything from salt and pepper shakers to billy goats – and anything and everything in-between.

But out of every bad situation, there is usually some good – if one looks for it.

Ike and his Rebels looked.

Just a few miles northeast of the city, Scouts reported a large colony of people, living in well-kept houses, with neat fields, huge gardens, and herds of cattle and sheep and hogs.

And a lot of guns.

“Say again,” Ike spoke into his mike.

“Guns, sir. Lots of guns. And the people look like they know how to use them.”

“How many people?” Ike asked.

“Countin’ the kids, close to a thousand, I’d guess.”

“We’re on our way. See if you can make friendly contact with them.”

“Yes, sir.”

The community stretched for several miles, with lots of space between houses, so the residents would not feel hemmed-in. The lawns were neat and well-kept, spring flowers just beginning to bloom.

But what really caught Ike’s eyes were the four missile silos he’d seen spread out over the four miles or so. A grin began crinkling his face. Now he knew how and why these people were left alone.

But old soldier that he was, or sailor, as the case was, he also knew these people were, in all probability, running one hell of a bluff.

But he’d play it their way for a time; see what developed.

As his column rolled past the homes, with Ike’s Jeep in the lead, the people had stepped out of their homes, watching. Watching with no apparent fear. All were heavily armed, and very capable looking.

“Pull in right up there,” Ike ordered his driver. “Looks like some sort of community center.”

Ike stepped out of the Jeep and slung his weapon, leaning against the Jeep, watching as a well-built man walked toward him. The man appeared to be just about the same age as Ike, fiftyish, and in good physical shape, with close-cropped hair and big, work-hardened hands. Ike guessed him about six feet tall.

“I’m Ike McGowen,” Ike said. “Commander of this contingent of General Ben Raines’s Rebels.”

The man grinned. “You people finally decided to check out the west coast, huh. Good. Glad to see you. I’m John Dunning. The people sort of put me in charge around here. From what radio messages we have intercepted, you people are kicking the hell out of the IPF and those mercenaries. Welcome to our little community, Ike.”

John and Ike shook hands.

“Tell your people to park and relax. And get ready for a good home-cooked meal. You’re safe here,” John said.

“Yes,” Ike said drily. “I saw the … ah, silos.”

John caught the twinkle in Ike’s eyes. His own eyes twinkled. “You doubt we would use them, Ike?”

“Oh, you’d probably use them … if you had any activated missiles in there to use.”

“Well, let’s put this way, Ike. We have a lot of electronics people who came here from Silicon Valley after the bombings. They can be quite convincing;
were
quite convincing when the IPF came in here. If you get my drift.”

“I get it, John. But you’re playing a dangerous game. What if Striganov calls your bluff?”

“Then we fight with what we have, Ike,” the man’s reply was simply stated.

“One more thing, John. How do you know I am who I say I am?”

“Because our people have been tracking you and Ben and Dan and Cecil since you first came to California. Well, not exactly
our
people. But people who are aligned with us against the Russian and the mercenary.”

“The underground people?”

“Yes.”

Ike sighed. “But how in the hell do you meet with them? They refuse to meet with us.”

“That is a problem,” John admitted. “But we’ve overcome that by working out a series of drops. We leave messages for them, they leave messages for us.”

“What is their problem, John? Why do they live the way they do?”

John shrugged heavy shoulders, packed with muscle. “Call them dropouts, I suppose. They just reject things modern. They feel that the ancient ways were the best. They have tiny, well-hidden gardens in the timber. They trap, hunt, fish, and live underground. And before you ask, I don’t know their numbers. I would guess in the hundreds.”

“That many?”

“Yes. And they are either good friends, or vicious, terrible enemies. Luckily for us, we started out befriending some of them. They always returned the favor in some small way. Then some of our children became friends with some of their children. It just grew from there.”

John opened the door to the large community building. Ike stepped in. He could smell the aroma of fresh-cooked food. Men and women were busy setting plates and silver on long tables.

“Looks like we were expected, John.”

John smiled. “Yes. We’ll talk as we eat. I feel the time has come for us join up with General Raines.”

“Oh, little girlie!” the man panted, hunching between Kim’s wide-spread legs. “That’s the tightest I’ve had in a long time.”

The half-dozen men from the warlord Popeye’s group had grabbed Kim as she scouted ahead of her friends just inside Oregon.

Bird bent his head and began licking Kim’s nipples. She accepted the assault on her with stoicism. She had already spotted her friends moving up, silently, through the timber by the roadside.

“Move around some, Bird,” an outlaw said. “Let her get on top so’s I can screw her butt.”

Hurry up, gang! Kim thought. Please hurry.

Bird shifted, getting on the bottom, his gross nakedness on the grass, the girl on top. He pulled her head down to his slobbery lips and licked at her mouth.

Kim almost puked in his face from the stink of his horrible breath.

She felt the cheeks of her buttocks being spread apart. She looked up as a third man dropped his dirty trousers to his ankles and stepped out of them. He stroked his hardness and glared at her through mean little piggy eyes.

“If you bite me, you’ll die hard,” he said.
“Real
hard. You understand?”

Kim nodded her head and then screamed as the outlaw behind her penetrated her tightness.
Where were her friends?

“Hey!” through the foggy mist of pain that filled her she heard an outlaw say. “Where in the shit is Tiger?”

“Prob’ly sitting out the woods jackin’ off!” another man laughed.

Then somewhere in the bright light of pain, Kim heard a man scream.

“Jesus God!” the man howled.

“What the hell’s that?” the outlaw behind her panted.

If there was a reply, he never heard it. Something smashed into the side of his head, dropping him into unconsciousness, knocking him backward.

At the same time the outlaw standing in front of the girl caught the butt of an AK-47 on the side of his head. He fell to the ground like a dropped sack of potatoes.

The outlaw called Bird looked up from the ground from beneath Kim – smack into the muzzle of an AK-47. Lifting his eyes, he looked into the face of Judy.

Kim rolled away from him and began gathering up her torn clothing, getting dressed as best she could with what she had left.

“You kids got yourselves into a peck of trouble,” Bird said. “Y’all know that?”

Judy reversed the AK and smashed the butt into the man’s mouth, shattering what remained of his front teeth, top and bottom. Bird squalled and rolled on the ground, holding both hands to his bleeding mouth.

“Get some rope,” Kim said. “These the only ones left alive?”

“Yeah,” Sandra said. “We killed the others. You better clean yourself up,” she said, looking at Kim. “You don’t wanna come up pregnant.”

“I can’t get in no family way,” Kim told her. “I was raped when I about seven or eight. Tore me up bad. Old Dr. Chase done told me I can’t never have no kids. But I do wanna wash.”

“Stream over yonder,” Judy said, jerking her head to the south. “We’ll get ‘em ready for you.”

“What the hell you gonna do?” Bird moaned the question, his mouth bleeding.

“You’ll find out,” Sandra told him, the words hard out of her young mouth.

The girls poked and pushed and prodded Bird to a tree. There, they tied him securely, his back hard against the bark of the tree.

“What’s them ol’ boys’ names?” Sandra asked, pointing to the outlaws on the ground.

“That’n over yonder is called Big Dave. The other one is called Daddy.”

Big Dave and Daddy were spread-eagled on the ground, their ankles and wrists tied to stakes driven deep into the earth. When they awakened, they immediately knew they were in for a very bad time.

They were to soon discover just how bad a time.

Kim stood between Bird and the two men staked out on the ground. She had a knife in her hand. She had started a small fire burning in the clearing. One of the outlaw’s knives lay among the coals, the blade turning cherry-red.

Judy opened a map and held it out for the men to see.

Sandra said, “Tell us the location of every warlord Sam Hartline has. How many men in each spot. Name names.”

“Fuck you, girlie!” Big Daddy said with a laugh.

Sandra looked at him. She smiled. But her smile was totally without mirth. She looked at Kim. “Cut it off,” she said softly.

Big Daddy began screaming and before Kim was finished he’d passed out from the pain. When it was over, the girl picked up the knife from the fire, holding it by the stag handle, and seared the wound between his legs, closing it.

Sandra glanced at Bird. “You’ll tell us everything you know, won’t you?”

“God, yes! If you promise not to do that to me!”

“Oh, I promise I won’t do that to you,” the girl said. She turned to Big Dave. “How about you, mister?”

“Anything you say, girl,” Big Dave said, fear causing slobber to leak from his mouth. “I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

“Move Bird,” Sandra told the others. “Separate the men so they cannot hear the questions or answers. Then we’ll compare what they say.”

Bird was untied and moved a hundred yards from the staked-down Dave. The locations of the warlords were compared, found that they matched, and were marked on the map.

Daddy was still unconscious on the ground. The odor of seared flesh clung close.

“All the answers match,” Kim said.

“And so do the numbers of men,” Judy said.

“And Daddy is still out,” Sandra said. “Shoot the other two. We’ll turn Daddy loose. He won’t know they have talked.”

“But he’ll never rape another girl,” Kim said, grim satisfaction in her voice.

And deep in the now-uncontrolled and wildly growing timber, hidden among the shrubs and bushes, those underground people who had been tracking the young women nodded their heads in agreement with what had been done.

It had been a just sentence. They would have done the same. Rape was not tolerated among their society. Crime was virtually nonexistent among their members. It simply was not tolerated.

The underground people had taken another chapter from the book of Ben Raines, emulating what he had done in the old Tri-States.

He had wiped out crime simply by not tolerating it.

The underground people squatted and lay silently in the deep timber, watching the young people. They were curious now as to what they planned to do.

The girls had the information they had been sent to find. Now what were they going to do?

“Do we go on?” Judy asked.

“Let’s vote on it. That’s the way I’m told it used to be,” Kim said.

“When was that?” Judy asked.

“Before.”

“Ah,” she said.

They voted, agreeing to continue; they might pick up more information useful to the general.

The girls picked up their weapons and packs and moved out.

Into the unknown and the ashes of what used to be. Before.