The young woman’s face drained of blood. “Is that true, Mikael?”
The Russian shrugged his shoulders. Silently he was damning Ben Raines to the pits of hell-if that place existed, and right now he hoped it did. “There is no Russia, Denise. Most of it was destroyed by nuclear warheads back in 1988. They were sent by NATO countries, and supplied by-was
Denise shook her head impatiently. “I didn’t ask for a political lecture, Mikael.” She stood with hands on hips. “Are you a Russian?”
His bright, hard blue eyes shifted from young lady to Ben. “Yes,” he said softly, with many straining to hear. “I am.”
A young man stood up. “Well… that don’t make no difference to me. I like what Mikael and his friends are all about and what they’ve told us. I believe what they say is true. I’m sticking with them.”
About two-thirds of the young people present agreed with that. It did not surprise Ben.
Ben said, “You young men and women who have not yet made up your minds about Mikael’s …
ideology, come with me when I leave. Just walk with me to where we’re camped and talk with those with me. I promise you no pressure will be exerted upon your minds. Let’s just talk. Isn’t that what a democracy is all about?”
A mixed group of young people-a few more than Ben expected-rose and walked to where Ben stood. Denise said, “We’ll listen, General. But we’ll make no firm commitments.”
“That’s all I ask, young lady.”
Denise looked at the man. She was standing beside a true living legend and it filled her with strange, unexpected emotions. She had thought President-General Raines would be an old man. But he looked to be in his mid-forties. But he had to be older than that. Maybe, more than one person in the group thought, there is something to his being more than a mere human. There just had to be.
Roy and Judy came out of the building. Both of them appeared to have been roughed up and then hurriedly patched up.
They stopped beside Mikael. Ben called, “Mikael and his buddies hammer on you two?”
“Yes, sir,” Roy called. “And Judy was raped.”
Ben looked at her.
“I’ll be all right, sir,” she said grimly. “Much better, in fact, in about a minute.”
“What happens then?” Ben asked.
“This,” Judy said. She spun, driving her elbow into Mikael’s stomach. He doubled over, gagging. She brought her knee up into his face, smiling with satisfaction as his jaw popped like a gunshot and teeth rolled and bounced on the concrete steps. She
brought the knife edge of her hand down hard on the back of his neck, and Mikael dropped to the steps, bleeding, hurt, and out of commission for a time.
Judy stepped back and, stone-faced, drew back her right foot and kicked the Russian squarely in the balls with the toe of her heavy combat boot.
A dozen IPF members appeared on the steps, automatic weapons at combat ready.
“Now, now, boys and girls,” Colonel Gray’s voice rang from the top of the building. “We don’t want this situation to turn into a sticky wicket, now, do we?”
The IPF members looked up into the muzzles of M-16’s and AK-47’S. They heard the roar of engines racing up the broken blacktop. Jeeps swung around, .50-caliber machine guns leveled at them, the muzzles menacing.
“Holster or sling your weapons,” Ben told the IPF troops.
They did as ordered, handling the weapons gingerly.
“One more person I have to get, General,” Roy said. “Give me a minute?”
Ben nodded. “G.” He was curious as to the third person.
A number of young women had gathered around Judy, asking her questions, their distaste for this newly discovered side of the IPF very evident. And they were all curious as to how she had learned how to fight like she did, and if they could learn it.
She said they could, just join up with Raines’s Rebels-if they thought they could cut it.
Roy reappeared, a very pretty young woman with him, holding onto his hand. The young woman had
obviously been beaten. There were bruises on the side of her face and her hands were swollen from her wrists being tied too tightly.
Ben looked at the crowd of young people. “Any of you young folks want to leave with us? Don’t worry, the IPF won’t try to stop you.”
Almost half the crowd silently made up their minds to pull out.
Ben ordered a team to escort them to the edge of the campus and to arrange transportation for them. He smiled at the young woman called Denise; she seemed to be some sort of spokesperson for the young people.
“I think it best that we hold our discussions some miles from this place, don’t you, miss?” Ben said.
She returned his smile. “Yes, I do, General. And that’s ms. if you don’t mind.”
“Right,” Ben said dryly. “What else?”
One young member of the IPF allowed courage to override training and common sense. He grabbed for his pistol and leveled it at Katrina. “You traitor!” he screamed at her.
Ben stitched him from belly to face, left to right, with a short burst from the Thompson. The young man’s feet flew out from under him and he slammed back against the brick wall, bloodying the old bricks as he slid slowly downward, his brains leaving a gray trail edged with crimson.
“James?” Ben called.
“Sir!”
“Gather up all the weapons and ammunition you can find. Take as many people as you need to do it in a hurry. Search all the buildings. I don’t believe these
people represent all the IPF personnel here. If your team comes in contact with any armed men or women, shoot first and ask questions later.”
“Yes, sir.”
Colonel Gray yelled from the top of the building. “You IPF people! Down on your bellies, hands behind your head, fingers interlaced. Move!”
The dozen young people obeyed instantly. Ben thought: well-trained and well-disciplined. The Russian equivalent, of the German Herrenvolk may consider themselves to be the master race, but they damn well want to survive in order to prove it.
Ben motioned Judy, Roy and Katrina to his side. “What was done to you?” he asked the young Russian girl.
“They beat me,” she said softly, her accent giving her voice a pleasing lilt. “They made me take off my clothes and then beat me. They were going to rape me but they were afraid of what might happen to them should they do that. Tell your men they are wasting their time looking for more members of this contingent of the IPF. They are gone. At the arrival of your people, they would have assessed the situation, decided they could not defeat your troops, and pulled out. Do not construe it as any act of cowardice, it is merely good sense.”
“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 mid-afternoon. 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-was 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. Well 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-was
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 ha
ven’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.”
CHAPTER FIVE
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.
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