Ben nodded his head; he had not thought about the strange-appearing old man in some time. “A lot of people have seen that old guy, Gale. I’ve seen him – Ike, a number of others. Why? What about him?”
“Who is he, Ben?”
As Ben began to talk, telling her what he knew of the old man, memories flooded him, taking him back to Little Rock, more than a year before.
Little Rock was a dead city. Twelve years of neglect and looting had reduced the once-thriving city into blackened girders, stark against the backdrop of blue skies and burned-out buildings. Dead rats lay in heaps, stinking under the sun, fouling the air of the dusty streets.
Ben drove by a high school that somehow looked familiar. Then he recalled that troops had been sent to this high school in the 1950s to integrate it.
He told Rosita as much, but she did not seem impressed.
“Doesn’t history interest you, Rosita?” he asked.
She shrugged her indifference. “It don’t put pork chops on the table, Ben,” she replied with her usual air. She was one of the few who dared to speak to Ben in such a manner.
“What?”
Her smile was sad. “Ben – can’t read much.”
“Dear God,” Ben muttered. He glanced at her. “You must have been about eight when the bombs came, right?”
“Pretty good guess, Ben. I was nine.”
“How much schooling since then?”
“Lots of lessons in the school of hard knocks,” she replied, going on the defensive.
“Don’t be a smart-ass, short stuff,” Ben said with a grin to soften his words.
“OK, Ben. I’ll play it straight. Not much schooling. I read very slowly and skip over all the big words.”
“You don’t understand them.”
“That’s right.”
“You know anything about nouns, pronouns, adverbs, sentence construction?”
“No.” Her reply was softly given.
“Then I will see to it that you learn how to read, Rosita. It’s imperative that everyone know how to read.”
“I got by without it.” She pouted.
“What about your children? Damn it, short stuff, this is what I’ve been trying to hammer into people’s heads. You people are make or break for civilization. I don’t understand why so many of you can’t – or won’t – see that.”
He stopped the truck in a part of the city that appeared to be relatively free of dead rats. They got out and walked.
“So I and my ninos can learn to make atomic bombs and again blow up the world, Ben? So we can read the formulas for making germs that kill? I – ”
“Heads up, General!” a Rebel called.
Ben and Rosita turned. Ben heard her sharp intake of breath.
“Dios mio!” she hissed.
A man was approaching them, angling across the street, stepping around the litter. It was the man in the dreams Rosita had been having. Bearded and robed and carrying a long staff.
The man stopped in the street and Ben looked into the wildest eyes he had ever seen.
And the oldest, the thought came to him.
“My God,” someone said. “It’s Moses.”
A small patrol started toward the man. He held up a warning hand. “Stay away, ye soldiers of a false god.”
“It is Moses,” a woman muttered, only half in jest.
Ben continued to stare at the man. And be stared at in return.
“I hope not,” Ben said, and his reply was given only half in jest. Something about the man was disturbing. “Are you all right?” Ben called to him. “We have food we’ll share with you.”
The robed man said, “I want nothing from you.” He stabbed his long staff against the broken concrete of the street. He swung his dark, piercing eyes to the Rebels gathering around Ben, weapons at the ready. “Your worshipping of a false god is offensive.” He turned and walked away.
Rosita stood in mild shock, her heart hammering and racing wildly.
Gunfire spun them around. Then the radio crackled with the news a patrol had found a family unit of mutants and the mutants had attacked them. The Rebels had killed them all. Ben and his patrol went to the building that had housed the mutants and were wondering what to do with the only survivor, a small mutant child.
“Here comes nutsy,” a Rebel called into the basement.
“Who?” Ben looked up, then realized the Rebel was referring to the old man in robes.
The old man appeared at the shattered basement door. “I am called the Prophet,” he spoke.
He pointed his staff at Ben. “Your life will be long and strife-filled. You will sire many children, and in the end none of your dreams will become reality. I have spoken with God, and He has sent me to tell you these things. You are as He to your people, and soon – in your measurement of time – many more will come to believe it. But recall His words: No false gods before me.” The old man’s eyes seemed to burn into Ben’s head. “It will not be your fault, but it will lie on your head.”
He turned away, walking back into the street.
The Rebels stood in silence for a few moments, until a Rebel from the outside stuck his head into the doorway.
“Sure is quiet in here,” he said.
“What did you make of nutsy?” he was asked.
“Who?”
“The old guy with the beard and the sandals and the robe and staff.”
The Rebel had seen no one answering to that description.
“Well, where the hell have you been?”
“I been sittin’ outside in the Jeep!” the guard replied indignantly. “And there ain’t been nobody wearing robes or sandals and carryin’ a stick come out of this building. What the hell have you people been doing – smokin’ some old left-handed cigarettes?”
Later, Ben spoke with Buck Osgood, who had just pulled in from Arizona. He told Ben he had seen some old man who called himself the Prophet.
“When did you see him, Buck?”
“Ah, last week.”
“In Arizona?”
“Yes, sir.”
“What date, Buck?”
“Ah, the ninth, sir.”
“Time, approximately?”
“ ’Bout noon, I reckon.”
“That’s the same date and time I saw him,” Ben told the young sergeant.
Buck looked at the general strangely. “I didn’t know you were in Arizona on the ninth, sir.”
“I wasn’t,” Ben said. He met the man’s eyes. “I was in Little Rock.”
Gale paled at the telling of the story, one hand going to her throat. “Ben – I saw him and spoke with him the night before the IPF shelled the camp alongside Interstate 70.”
Ben leaned back in his chair and studied her. He sighed. The mystery man was beginning to disturb him. Who was he? What did he want? What did he represent? And why did he keep popping up?
“What did you two discuss, Gale?”
She repeated the conversation almost word for word.
Lamar Chase leaned forward, listening intently.
Ike and Cecil sat open-mouthed.
Hector crossed himself.
When she had finished, Ben said, “I don’t want you to leave this camp, Gale. Not for any reason – not on your own. I’m going to have guards with you at all times.”
“Ben, why are you scaring me like this?”
“I’m not doing it deliberately, Gale, believe me. I just have this feeling Striganov might try to grab you or harm you; he might think he could get to me that way. I want you to be very careful from now on, Gale. Very careful.”
She sat down, a worried look on her face. “All right, Ben. From what I’ve heard about Sam Hartline, I don’t want to fall into his hands.”
“You won’t,” Ben assured her. “Just do as I say and don’t argue about it.”
“That’ll be the day,” Lamar said dryly.
Gale stuck her tongue out at him.
“The beast is impregnated from the sperm of a human male,” t
he IPF doctor informed General Striganov. “And the Mexicans, the blacks, and the Jew bitches are pregnant from the sperm of the male mutant. I believe gestation time is going to be very short.”
Striganov smiled his pleasure and approval. “Give me an educated guess as to gestation time,” he pushed the doctor.
The doctor shrugged and lifted one eyebrow. While in Iceland he had discovered old George Sanders movies and had begun emulating the late actor’s mannerisms. “X-rays show the fetus developing very rapidly. I would say no more than sixty days, at the outset.” He held the X-ray up to the light and clipped the print in place.
General Striganov studied the picture. The shape of the baby was very clear, depicting a form more human than animal, but still clearly showing animal characteristics. The Russian leader again nodded his pleasure. “Very good, doctor. Now – cease, at once, all sterilization projects on the women remaining in our camps. I want them fertile for the mutant experimentation. I will issue orders for teams to fan out, to gather more women, as many as possible. I believe – if all works out, and I see no reason for failure – we just might have stumbled upon a new race of workers, doctor. I think, doctor, we are going to go down in history as great men.” He smiled and rubbed his hands together. “Yes indeed, doctor. A pure master race with subhuman workers at our command. I like that concept, don’t you?”
“Very much so, General,” the doctor replied, his smile as large as that creasing the general’s face. “Perhaps the Jews and other inferior minorities have finally found their true niche in life, da? Copulating with mutants!” He laughed.
Both men found that hysterically amusing. They were laughing as they walked out of the office and into the hall.
But to the women who were desperately attempting to devise a method of aborting the half-human fetuses they carried in their bodies, and to the men who had been forced to copulate with the female mutants, it was anything but amusing. The women could not put into words their feelings at being strapped onto specially built tables and experiencing the horror and pain of the male mutants jamming their sex organs deep into their bodies. The hideousness of the sex act was so disgusting, that if given a choice, all would have chosen death over the mating. Several women had gone into such deep shock they had died. Several more had tried to kill themselves. Another was mauled so badly when the male mutant became excited during the act, she would carry the physical scars forever.
But the women could think of no way to abort themselves of the monsters that were forming inside their bodies – growing, taking shape, at almost unbelievable speed. The women were under constant supervision; a member of the IPF medical teams was at their sides at all times. The women were never left alone, not even when going to the bathroom. The chosen women would birth the half-mutant children, and if the IPF doctors had their way, there would be many of the half-mutant offspring.
In selected and carefully padded rooms in what had become known as the warehouse, the wailing and screaming of the women being sexually introduced to male mutants could be heard throughout the day and night. To keep the big male mutants happy and content, many of the sterilized women were “given” to the mutants – always under careful supervision so the big males would not kill the women when they became excited while copulating.
The screaming seemed to never stop.
And the human men chosen for the experiment were experiencing nightmares of such hideous magnitude many of them had to be sedated before sleep. And to make matters worse for the men, many of the female mutants had grown fond of their human sex partners; so much so the beasts were not content unless they could be with the men at least part of the day and night, touching and stroking and caressing them.
The men and women of the IPF found that most amusing.
“You do know what fightin’ is all about,” Abe Lancer said. He spoke from the ground, where Captain Rayle had tossed him during a hand-to-hand combat session. “I’ll be gittin’ up now,” Abe said. “Take me a rest. You ’bout wore me plumb out, Captain.”
Captain Rayle extended his hand and grinned. The mountain man accepted the hand warily, then returned the smile as he was helped to his feet.
“All of President Raines’s people trained like you?” the man asked Roger.
“Quite a number of us. The general insists on his people being able to take care of themselves.”
Abe rubbed his aching and bruised shoulder and grinned ruefully. “I would have to say, Captain, you folks do know that, all right.”
The crowd of mountain people and flat-landers from down in Georgia had watched in silence and some disbelief – at first – as the smaller, lighter and much less powerful Rebel captain had tossed the big mountain man around like a rag doll, bouncing him off the ground time after time. Abe had been unable to land even one blow.
Captain Rayle and his small contingent of Rebels had been surprised at the number of survivors they had discovered in the area, and delighted at the number who accepted them. Almost a thousand men and women had volunteered to be trained by the small detachment of Rebels.
But the civilians needed no training in marksmanship, however. There was not a man among them who could not punch out the center of a Prince Albert can at three hundred yards with a rifle.
All the Rebels had been touched by the naivete of the country people and amused and mildly shocked by the open frankness of the people. And all had been genuinely welcomed into the homes of the people.
Ben had deliberately mixed the detachment, including blacks and Jews and Hispanics and Orientals; he wanted the people to see exactly what his philosophy was all about.
“We ain’t got nothing agin’ black folks – or anybody else, for that matter,” one man had told Captain Rayle. “We live side by side with black folks and work ever’ day with’em. Long as a man pulls his weight and don’t want something for nothing and don’t try to mess over another person, anyone is welcome to come here and live. The one thing we ain’t gonna put up with is no goddamn welfare state. If a man or woman is able to work, by God they gonna work; they ain’t gonna lay up on their backsides and do nothing ’cept eat and git fat at somebody else’s labor.” That much was the Rebel’s philosophy. “I ‘member how it was – how it got – ’fore the big war of eighty-eight: lazy-assed trashy women of all colors layin’ around and fuckin’ and havin’ babies that the taxpayers had to support; goddamned sorry, trashy men too lazy to work, sayin’ a certain kind of job was beneath ‘em. Piss on those people. We ain’t gonna have none of them in here. No way. Now they ain’t nobody who is sick gonna go hungry or cold in this area; we’ll look after ’em folk – see to it that nobody lacks for comfort. But them that can work is gonna work.
“It’s a small community as communities go. We all know who is tippy-toein’ around, liftin’ what skirt and when. Woman gets in a family way, the man responsible is gonna support the child. And we don’t give a good goddamn how much more work the man’s gotta do. He’s gonna do ’er.
“I ain’t sayin’ I hold much with mixed marriages, but me and mine kinda figure that really ain’t none of our truck. Man or woman wants to wake up in the morning time and look at ugly – that’s their business.”
“Had many cases arose where a man refused to support a child he fathered?”
“One, to date. Feller admitted he got his jollies with the lady – said she should have tooken some measures to don’t have no kid. Refused to help with the child.”
“What happened to him?”
“He come up shot one night,” the man replied noncommittally. “Dead.”
The Rebel smiled at this very final type of justice. “Klan strong in this area?”
The man fixed him with a baleful look. “I ain’t got no use a-tal for that bunch of white trash. Never did have. Don’t know nobody that do. Wouldn’t have ’em around me if I did. Don’t know no one that would. That answer your question?”
The Rebel laughed. “Sure does.”
Captain Rayle radioed back t
o Ben, requesting that medical supplies and medics be sent into the area. Soon trucks began rolling in, some of them diverted from the battle area. The trucks brought in not only badly needed medicines, but also a few doctors and teams of highly trained medics to beef up the few medical people that had survived the plague of the previous year. They were welcomed.
Ben had given Captain Rayle his orders personally, in a private meeting back in Tri-States. Roger had the mapped-out coordinates for what Ben had called the last chance for his dream, and it was in that area that Captain Rayle and his people were working, fanning out, attempting to make contact with all those who survived. They began finalizing the boundaries. The Alabama line would be the western boundary, from Burke up in Tennessee down to Bowdon in Georgia, on the Alabama line. The line would run straight east to Orangeburg in South Carolina, then take a ninety-degree turn to Columbia, angling gently northwest, following Interstate 26 as the guiding line up to Ashville. From there, the north boundary would be a line straight east, connecting with Burke to close the area.
“Get your defensive positions quietly laid out,” Ben had instructed. “Study what we did in the old Tri-States back in eighty-nine and ninety. Use that as a guidebook. When we get as many of the people out of the areas controlled by the IPF as possible, we’ll be coming in. To stay,” he added, with more than a touch of grimness to his comment. “I hope.”
There were tears in her eyes, spilling down to roll in silver rivers over her cheeks as she read the message, then reread it. Ben sat quietly and watched her. Gale looked at him through a blurry mist. She wiped her eyes and threw the message in a wad onto his desk.
“That is the most monstrous thing I have ever heard of, Ben,” she said, considerable heat to her comment. Her dark eyes flashed fire through the mist that tinted them multicolored.
She had just read about the IPF’s experimentation programs with minority men and women. The report had been sent to Ben by LRRPs and verified by people who had managed to escape the area controlled by the IPF.
Anarchy in the Ashes Page 26
