“It’s worth it, Ben – you know that. None of us could have lived with ourselves if we’d turned our backs to this.”
“I know. I was only delaying the inevitable.” He held out his hand and the two friends shook hands.
“Luck to you, old warrior,” Ike said.
“Luck to you, old friend,” Ben replied.
The men walked away in opposite directions.
Ben stood in the center of Highway 67 just as dawn hit the horizon, casting his shadow long down the highway. He looked toward the north and lifted his hand, pointing a finger straight north.
“Let’s go!” he yelled. “Go, go, go!”
PART THREE
Be ashamed to die unless you have won some victory for humanity.
– Horace Mann
ONE
Thousands of tons of men and machines and instruments of war and destruction lunged forward from southeast Missouri. At the same time, young boys and girls moved forward from South Dakota and Indiana. To the north, old soldiers were telling their wives and sweethearts goodbye.
“You’re entirely too old for this nonsense, Sonny,” a woman said, kissings her husband of forty years goods-bye. “But I am so proud of you for doing it.”
The veteran of the early days of Vietnam kissed his wife and grinned at her. She patted the top of his bald head as he said, “Honey, I think civilization will either begin or end within the next few weeks. That is my firm belief. I can’t sit back and watch it all go down the tube.”
She smiled at him. “I want you to come back to me, Sonny. But I can’t help but remember what the Spartan mother told her son as he was leaving for the wars.”
“Either come back behind your shield, or on it,” the husband said.
“I love you, you crazy old soldier.”
“Love you, baby.”
The aging warrior picked up his rifle and walked away before his wife could begin weeping.
“Tanner, you old goat,” the retired general was told by his wife, “how many damn times do I have to tell you goodbye?”
“Hopefully, this is the last time, camp-follower,” he said with a grin.
“Yes.”
“You know the drill, lady, should I not return from this campaign.”
“Up into Canada to the cabins. There the rest of us old gals will live out our lives in peace,” she repeated in rote, a dry tone to her voice.
“The cabins are well-stocked. You’re no slouch with a garden. You’ll have adequate medical supplies to last you for years. You all should get by quite nicely.”
“But I want to get by with you at my side. So come back to me, Art.”
“I shall certainly try, Becky.”
He kissed her and was gone.
“Take care of yourself, honey,” the man said.
“I shall. And you come back to me.”
“Do the best I can.”
“Look, old girl, this is something that must be done, you know that.”
“Of course I do, Lewis. And don’t get amorous, old man,” she said with a smile, removing his hand from her rump. “We don’t have the time for that. You just do your duty and come back to me.”
“You got your high blood pressure pills, Bob?”
“Right here in my pocket, honey.”
“You come back to be me, lover.”
“I’ll be back.”
But he would never be back.
“After thirty-five years in the military,” a wife told her husband, trying her best to maintain a brave face, “you’d think I’d be used to this.”
“Last time, honey.”
It would be the last time she would ever see him.
The men moved out.
“Ben Raines is on the move,” Hartline informed the Russian commander.
Striganov lifted his head from a report he’d been studying. Disbelief was evident in his eyes. “What did you say, Sam?”
“I said Ben Raines is on the move. Scouts report columns advancing at full speed, heading straight at us from the south.”
“His logic escapes me,” General Striganov said, a puzzled look on his face. “His people took a terrible battering at the hands of our troops. What does he hope to gain by this action?”
Hartline shrugged his big shoulders. “I haven’t the vaguest idea. But that’s moot, isn’t it? The fact is, he’s moving.”
“Yes, you are correct. Moot. Mobilize the forces for a push south. Meet General Raines head-on. Have those troops I left in southern Iowa begin marching toward Raines. Engage the Rebels and hold them until we get there with reinforcements. This time I intend to finish the matter.”
Hartline started to speak, then hesitated, a curious look on his face.
Striganov caught the hesitation. “Is something the matter, Sam?”
“Yes ... I think so. Our intelligence shows a group – or groups – of armed people moving toward us not just from the south – that’s Raines’s bunch of Rebels, we know who that is – but also from the west, the east and from the north.”
“Who could it possibly be?”
When Hartline explained who it was, the Russian began laughing. “Children and old men!” he howled out his mirth, pounding his hands on his desk. “Little babies and senile old men. I love it. Hartline, you have made my day. I find this hysterically amusing. Hysterically!” He sobered as abruptly as he fell into laughter. “Very well, our ... enemies,” he giggled, “have been identified. So send two companies to spank the children, one east and one west, and one company to point the old men back to their rocking chairs. I don’t want to spare any more men than that.”
“Ah ...” Hartline looked at the Russian, a strange look in his eyes. “I don’t know, Georgi. Don’t sell these groups too short; they’re all well-armed and very dedicated.”
“Bah!” Striganov verbally brushed aside the warning. “Do not concern yourself with trivialities, Sam. Old men and children are no match for my people. You have your orders; carry them out and then take your men south to meet Raines. I’m counting on you to crush Ben Raines. That will be all, Sam. Good luck.”
The Russian returned to his paper work.
Outside the office, Hartline stood for a moment, his handsome features a study in concentration. He muttered, “I think you’re making a bad, big mistake, Georgi, but it’s your show.”
The members of the forward IPF forces were in a joking mood as they moved west, north and east to confront the “children” and the “old men.” This would be no more than a lark for them – a pleasant outing in the fall of the year. And it would be far easier than fighting Gen. Ben Raines and his Rebels. Those people fought like madmen.
One man stepped away from the parked column in northern Iowa, close to the North Dakota line, to relieve himself in the woods. When he did not return in a few moments, another man was sent in to find him. The troops of the IPF waited for the second man to return. He did not return. The woods remained still. Silence greeted the troops.
The IPF section leader, using his hands, ordered his people to fan out and to search the timber. “Nocko-pee!” the section leader whispered hoarsely, motioning his people to move quickly.
A shout reached the small group of forward scouts. In a rush, they ran into the woods. They stopped abruptly at the sight that lay before them on the ground.
Both men who had entered the timber now lay on their backs, their arms flung wide. Blood soaked the cool ground under and around them. Both men had an arrow embedded deeply in their chest. Weapons and all ammunition and equipment had been removed from the men. Their boots were gone. One of the men had a hole in his left sock, the big toe sticking through.
The section leader ordered his people back, making no noise, speaking with motions of his hands. He turned. An arrow hissed through the air and drove through the man’s skull, the point coming out just above one ear. He fell silently to the ground without uttering a sound.
The still and calm woods began to clatter and roar from the sounds of
gunfire. The IPF found themselves surrounded, with no place to run, death facing them from all directions. The men and women of the IPF had little chance to use their weapons, because there appeared to be no visible targets.
The deadly and bloody ambush was completed in less than one minute. Young people began drifting out of the deep brush and timber into the blood-soaked clearing. The young people stripped the bodies of uniforms and weapons and ammunition. They took all the equipment they could find.
The leader of the young people was dressed in buckskins and jeans, moccasins on his feet. He was tall and rangy and well-built, his dark hair hanging to his shoulders. His name was Wade. He did not remember what his last name had been. His parents and his brothers and sister had died in a house fire back in ninety. He had been alone, on the road, since he was eight years old. And he had survived. His weapon for this day – he was quite proficient with any type of weapon – was a huge bow, and he was an expert with the longbow. Wade could not read or write well, but he could survive.
“Strip the people of their uniforms,” he ordered his young charges. “Wash them free of blood at the creek. Dry them well.” To another group of young: “Hide their vehicles. They will be useful when we ambush the others.” He smiled and his smile was savage. “I think they misjudged our strength and our dedication to Mr. Ben Raines. I think the IPF people made a mistake.” He laughed. “I know they made a mistake.”
He walked to a small clearing and stood in a narrow beam of sunlight pouring through the thick stand of timber. Nature had managed to renew what man had destroyed. Huge stands of timber now flourished throughout the nation, in lovely contrast to mindless and short-sighted land developers, greedy farmers and stupid loggers; for between the factions, they had managed, in only seventy years, to rape the land, paying scant attention to the warnings of environmentalists and, in many cases, common sense.
Wade laboriously and with much silent lip movement, studied and read a map taken from the section leader of the advance party of the IPF. Finally he looked up, a smile on his lips.
“We will ambush the main column here,” he said, thumping the map. With a finger he traced a red line drawn on the plastic map cover. “They are sending one company of men. That is approximately two hundred people. Twenty-five trucks carrying the men and equipment and several Jeeps for the officers and senior sergeants.” He again consulted the map. “Yes,” he said, “this will be the perfect spot to catch them in a cross-fire. They are one day behind their scouts. Let’s get ready for them.”
The forward troops of the IPF made camp in Indiana on their first night toward destroying the force of the eastern-based “children.”
Most of the fed and sleeping IPF members would never wake up from their slumber. Those that did would know only a few seconds of intense pain before the bullets of the “children” mangled them into that dark and endless sleep.
Just before the first changing of the guards, moonlight flashed silver on sharpened blades. A very slight grunt as cold steel slid between ribs on the way to the heart; a gurgle as a throat was cut, blood leaping free and thick and steaming in the darkness; a short gasp as black wire looped around a soft throat, shutting off the air. Eyes bugged and tongues turned black and swollen in death.
Then the camp was once more silent.
The men who waited to replace the guards slept on, sleeping through the tap on the shoulder that never came.
The “children” positioned themselves.
“Now!” a young voice called out from the darkness.
For a full sixty seconds the air reverberated with the sounds and fury of gunfire. Most IPF personnel never got a chance to crawl from sleeping bags and blankets. They were shot to death, jerking and bleeding rags of flesh and bone, blood-splattered.
The young people watched and waited in silence. Occasionally, a shot would split the air as someone in the IPF camp moaned and stirred in pain. The shot would still the moaning.
The leader of the eastern-based young people, a young man of eighteen, named Ro, gave the quiet orders to move into the bloody encampment. Like his counterpart to the west, whom he had never met but had spoken with by radio, Ro was dressed in buckskins and jeans, moccasins on his feet. He was quite good with a bow, but on this night he used a twelve-gauge shotgun, loaded with slugs.
Ro did not know his last name, or even if the name Ro had been given him by his parents, whom he did not remember. He was called Ro – that was all the name he knew. He was a survivor.
“Take their uniforms,” Ro ordered. “And gather up the weapons and ammunition. Wash the clothing in the river and dry it. Hide their vehicles and bring me any maps you find.”
A ragged young boy of ten scampered down the embankment and began picking through the gore with others of approximately his age – although none of the young people really knew how old they were. The blood and the gore and stink of relaxed bowels and bladders seemed not to bother the young boys and girls as they conducted their grisly search.
The bodies were stripped down to their underwear and left where they had fallen and died. Birds and animals would eat them.
“Food here,” a young girl called to Ro.
“We’ll eat now,” Ro told them.
The young people had learned what the Indians of America had known for centuries: Eat when you can, sleep when you can, drink when you can.
With the blood of the dead IPF members still soaking into the cool, grassy earth, the young people sat and squatted and began to eat among the men sprawled in grotesque death. All present had been born into the horror of war and its aftermath, and had lived through a police state by depending on their guile. Social amenities were few; the young people gnawed at their meat and hard biscuits, eating with their fingers. Their eyes constantly flicked from left to right, much like an animal when he eats, aware that someone or something was always waiting to steal the food should guard be relaxed. When the young boys and girls finished eating, they wiped their hands on their clothing and one by one melted back into the deep timber and brush to seek a place to sleep: a deserted house, a culvert, a thicket. In the morning they would plan another ambush.
The combat company of IPF personnel that rolled northward to “point the old men back to their rocking chairs” drove straight into hell. The American veterans allowed the scouts to pass through the ambush site, after blocking all other roads in the area, then wiped out to a person the entire company of the IPF. They then captured the scouts and hanged them by the side of the road.
Just before they hanged the scouts, one of the Russians muttered under his breath.
“What’d that Russian bastard say?” General Tanner asked.
“I said,” the IPF scout replied in perfect English, “that the old bee can still sting.”
“Damn right,” General Tanner told him. “Hang them,” he ordered.
Tanner flexed the fingers of his left hand and then rubbed his aching shoulder. Damned arthritis was acting up again.
When the first reports reached the desk of General Striganov, the Russian could not believe it. Three full companies destroyed – wiped out to a person. Not one man had escaped. It was incredible that children and old men could have done it. Striganov just did not believe it. It had to be a trick of some sort. Little children and senile elderly men do not destroy three companies of highly trained troops.
The thought came to him: Perhaps Sam Hartline lied to him?
No, he immediately rejected that notion. Hartline would have no reason to do that; that would be detrimental to the mercenary’s own goals.
President-General Ben Raines must have planted the false information about the children and old men and then had his own Rebels beef up the children and old men. Yes, that was certainly it. Striganov felt better now that he had worked it out in his mind. He leaned back in his chair and smiled.
Well, Striganov pondered the small problem, no point in mentally berating oneself about it; no point in flailing one’s mind with whips of defeat.
It was done and over and that was that. But the mild irritation that for the first time his people were in a box nagged at him. Not a box with a very substantial lid on it, to be sure, but a box nonetheless.
And that irritated the general. Striganov liked for everything to be done neatly and orderly; he did not like irritation. It was . . . well, unsettling.
But, he thought, putting his hands behind his head, everything else seemed to be going quite well. No – not seemed to be going well – it was going well. The inferior minority women who had been forced to breed with the male mutants were swelling with new life. The mutant females who had copulated with the inferior minority men were likewise swelling with pregnancy. The areas controlled by the IPF were coming along quite well, and the people, while not content – many of them – were beginning to adjust to the rule of Hartline and the IPF. True, there were still pockets of resistance scattered about, but nothing that Hartline had not been able to contain, and contain it quite brutally. Fear was the great ruler, and Sam Hartline was very good at instilling fear.
Crops had been harvested and winter wheat planted in those areas suited for farming. Factories were now open – not too many, but there would be more as time passed.
Put people to work. That was the great pacifier. Idle minds and idle hands always meant trouble.
But for now, Striganov must deal with the problem of Ben Raines and his Rebels. And the old men. And the young people.
“Shit!” General Striganov spat out the American profanity. All was not progressing as smoothly as he would have liked.
Anarchy in the Ashes Page 29
