“I never been so far, Ben. But I sure am glad we got away from them outlaws.”
“You running out of underwear?” Ben kidded him.
Jordy blushed.
The pair had stayed not one night, but four nights, camped along the river. The weather had abated, actually turning rather warm. They fished, rested, and Ben told the boy stories of how it used to be, back when the Tri-States had been in operation.
“You really mean nobody went hungry and you wasn’t always scared somebody was goin’ to get you?” the boy asked.
“Nobody went hungry, Jordy. Not if we knew about it. And no, you didn’t have to be scared. We didn’t have crime in Tri-States, Jordy. The cost to the criminal was just too high. Besides, everybody that wanted to work, could work. There was no need to steal.”
“That must have been a nice place to live,” Jordy said wistfully.
“Oh, it was, if a person obeyed the law and respected the rights of others.”
“What happened if they didn’t?”
“There was somebody around to bury them.”
Ben and Jordy had rambled around on county roads, picking up Highway 62 at Lawton and taking that into Texas. They turned south and headed for Childress, crossing the Red River.
This was an area of the once-proud-and-mighty nation the rats had hit hard. Ben had not expected to see many survivors, but he hadn’t thought it would be this bad.
There just wasn’t anybody.
Or anything.
“What happened around here, Ben?” Jordy asked. “There ain’t a godda ... darn thing alive.”
“Rats, Jordy. For some reason—and I don’t know why—the rats hit this part of the country hard. Very few people made it out alive.”
The boy looked nervously around him. “We ain’t stoppin’, are we, Ben?”
“Not even to pee, Jordy.”
At Paducah, Texas, Ben spotted the first human being he’d seen in a hundred miles of absolute desolation.
He pulled off the highway and drove slowly up to the small group of people. Ben let a white handkerchief flutter from his left hand, held out the window.
Ben called, “We’re friendly, folks.”
A man smiled and waved at him. “Then come on out and sit and talk, friend.”
“The last hundred miles looked a little grim,” Ben said, accepting a cup of coffee—or what presently passed for coffee.
“To say the least,” a woman said. “The rats have been long gone, died out, but everybody in that area was killed. We try to stay out of that part of the country.”
“What’s your name, friend?” a cowboy asked.
Jordy grinned.
“Ben Raines.”
The knot of people grew still and silent. The man who had first waved and spoken to Ben shuffled his booted feet. “General Ben Raines?”
“Yes. But why don’t we just keep it Ben?”
“Mr. Raines,” a woman stepped forward, “you like stew?”
“I sure do, ma’am.”
“Then let’s eat.”
Rani looked at the body of the man she’d just shot through the head. She recognized him as one of Crazy Vic’s men. And she knew Vic and the rest of his gang would not be far behind.
“Robert, Kathy!” she called to the two oldest of her adopted brood. “Help me drag this body over there and hide it.”
She gave Robert, twelve years old, the man’s pistol, and Kathy, also twelve, the man’s rifle. Rani was working so fast she wasn’t thinking properly.
“Rani?” Kathy said. “This man had to get here someway. He sure didn’t fly. He probably hid his car or truck.”
Rani gently ruffled the girl’s hair. “Good thinking, Kathy. Pray it’s a truck.”
It was a king-cab pickup. And best of all, the pickup started at the first touch of the ignition. Rani put her forehead on the steering wheel and said a little prayer.
“Prayin’ ain’t gonna help none, cunt!” the man’s voice said.
Rani raised her head and looked into the mean eyes of a man.
“You kill Harry?” the man asked.
Rani nodded her head.
The man grinned. His teeth were no more than blackened stumps. “Didn’t lak him noway. Git outta the truck, bitch, and take me to that fine-lookin’ little big girl travelin’ with you. I want me a taste of young pussy. Then I’ll get to you.”
The man’s entire lower jaw disappeared in a roaring boom and gush of blood and bone. He was flung to one side, the blood from his wound staining the concrete floor.
Rani, temporarily deafened by the gunshot, looked around. Kathy was standing by the rear of the pickup, the .30-30 rifle in her hands. She had shot the man from a distance of no more than six or seven feet.
The man flopped on the floor, his boot heels drumming in agony. He tried to speak. Only horrible bubbling sounds came from his ruined face.
In normal times, the child would have probably been sick after what she’d done. But these were not normal times. Normal times would probably never come again. At least not in her lifetime. Kathy looked at the jerking, bleeding man.
“Get his guns and bullets, Miss Rani,” she said. “We got to stay ready for Vic when he comes. And you know he’ll be comin’ after us.”
“Yes,” Rani came out of her fog of shock. She took several deep breaths, calming herself. The kids had gathered around. God! she thought. What a pitiful looking crew. Her eyes touched Robert. “Robert, you find all the gas cans you can round up, start filling them with gas from those drums.” She looked at eleven-year-old Jane, pale and too thin, always susceptible to colds. “You help Robert, honey.”
“Yes, ma’am.” The kids scurried off.
Sarah and Becky, the three-year-olds, stood off to one side, eyes big as they looked at the dying man on the concrete. “Lisa,” Rani said. “You look after Sarah and Becky. Come on, kids, we’ve got to get busy.”
“Is Crazy Vic gonna get us, Rani?” Six-year-old Danny asked.
“No!” Rani said. “I swear to you all—no!”
12
“Be like my great granddad,” one of the men said, after Ben touched on his outpost idea. “Back when they was fightin’ the Indians.”
Another man, obviously with strong Indian blood flowing in his veins, looked at the spokesman and smiled. “But now we’re all in it together. Right, Frank?”
“Thank God,” his friend said, returning the smile. “I’d hate to think we had to fight you heathens, too, Roland.”
A woman said, “Don’t pay them no mind, General. They’ve been friends for forty years.”
The man jerked his thumb toward the Indian. “His ancestors scalped my ancestors.”
“Your ancestors stole our land,” Roland retorted. “Besides, Indians didn’t invent scalping. They got it from the white man.”
“And away they go,” the woman said.
“Been doing it for forty years,” another man said.
“I think the Indians are winnin’,” another man said.
“If we have enough time,” Roland said. Then he laughed. “And enough Indians.”
The people in the small town warned Ben that there were outlaw gangs roaming about everywhere, and that they were vicious, cutting another page from the dark history of the Texas Comancheros, the band of Mexicans, half-breeds, and Caucasian Americans who had looted and raped and killed until finally being wiped out when the citizens of Texas and Mexico got their guts’ full of the outlaws.
Ben and Jordy pulled out early in the morning, heading south on Highway 83.
Guthrie was a ghost town, with anything of value having been looted long ago.
Without having any good reason to do so, other than the fact Ben was on no timetable, he cut west at Guthrie, heading for Lubbock. He did not see one human being until reaching the town of Ralls, and his curiosity almost got them both killed.
“Yeah,” Campo said, surveying all the carnage Ben had left behind. “Raines was here, all right.” He laug
hed, an ugly bark of derisiveness. “These pecker-woods thought ol’ Ben would be an easy touch. I could have told them different.”
“Me, too,” West said sorrowfully, looking at his stump. “I don’t know, Jake. Sometimes I get a plumb spooky feeling thinkin’ ’bout Raines.” He looked around at the charred bodies lying on the Oklahoma highway. “You know what I mean?”
Campo didn’t want to admit it, but he knew very well what West was talking about. He just didn’t like to think about it.
Campo chose not to answer West’s question. He turned away from the scene and walked back to his van. He told one of his men, “Somebody who lives around here saw something. You get some boys and scatter. Find out what you can; especially which direction Raines went from here. Go.”
Standing by his van, Campo looked toward the west. “You may think you’re a god, Raines. But I’m gonna prove people wrong. ’Cause I’m gonna kill you, mister. I’m gonna kill you and hang your scalp on my belt buckle. Bet on it.”
Rani got as far as Lamesa before running into trouble. But she had vowed the next time she was confronted with trouble, she would shoot first and take her chances with her conscience later.
There was a CB radio in the truck, along with some sort of military-looking shortwave radio. She was amazed at the traffic on the CB radio, most of it very unfriendly and extremely vulgar.
And it was the CB radio that warned her of impending trouble.
“Blue king-cab rollin’ south on 87,” the voice sprang out of the speaker. “Fine-lookin’ cunt behind the wheel. Truck’s packed with kids.”
“Stay out of this,” a man’s voice blasted the cab, obviously pushed by a booster. “That’s Vic’s woman.”
“Vic who?”
“Cowboy Vic. Warlord of the West.”
The first voice laughed. “Never heard of the son of a bitch. Tell him to keep ass out of this part of Texas or we’ll feed him to the rattlers.”
Rani pulled off the highway and drove behind a falling-down old farm and ranch complex of buildings.
“Lost her!” the first voice said. “She’s somewhere between O’Donnell and Arvana.”
“Keep lookin’,” a new voice was added. “She won’t be that hard to find.”
Another voice was added to the growing number of voices. “If you’re hiding, lady,” a man’s voice spoke, “stay down. We’re sending out a patrol from Lamesa to help you. Don’t reply to this transmission. Just stay quiet.”
“It’s them Christian motherfuckers,” the first voice said contemptuously.
“Yeah,” yet another voice said. “You asshole Jesus freaks come on. We’ll run your psalm-singin’ asses back to Lamesa.”
“You’ve tried that before, Red,” the calm, steady voice replied. “The Lord will forgive me for saying this, but this time I intend to kick your worthless ass all the way up to the Red River.”
“You the warlord called Texas Red?” Vic’s man asked.
“Yeah.”
“Pull it over, Red. Let’s talk. We might stand a better chance if we joined forces. You know what I mean?”
“Yeah. Mayhaps you’re right, friend. Me and my boys will meet you on the south side of O’Donnell. Be there in about fifteen minutes.”
“Ten-four.”
Rani sat it out, watching the highway from behind a shattered window in what had once been a nice home. She saw a dozen vehicles pass by her position, all heading north. She did not move for several minutes. Then she smiled as she saw a dozen more vehicles drive slowly past, heading north. The second line of cars and trucks, she concluded, belonged to the folks from Lamesa.
It was not that Rani didn’t want good homes for those kids in her car. It was just that she didn’t trust people. She’d been burned too many times by people professing to be this, that, or the other.
Her thoughts were interrupted by an excited Robert.
“Miss Rani!” the boy said. “They’s cases and cases and cases of food down in the basement of this place.”
“What were you doing in the basement?” she spoke, more sharply than she intended.
“Exploring,” the boy said, hanging his head.
She went to him and put her arms around his slender shoulders. “I’m sorry, Robert. I didn’t mean to be cross with you. Let’s look at this food.” She kissed his cheek. “I’m proud of you, Robert.”
Ben caught the movement to his right and twisted the steering wheel just as the man fired. The slug whined off the camper of the truck. Ben floorboarded the truck and ducked behind a building. Grabbing his Thompson, he said, “Shoot anybody that sticks their head up, Jordy. Understand?”
“Yes, sir. I’ll blow their ass off.”
“That’s as good a place as any to shoot them, I suppose,” Ben said, not able to hide his grin.
Ben slipped along the rear of the old store. He heard boots scraping the pea gravel near the corner and smiled, raising the Thompson, finger on the trigger.
“Easy, now,” a voice came to him. “I don’t want that fancy truck all shot up. And take the kid alive.”
“Yeah,” a second voice said in a hoarse whisper. “Clean-lookin’ kid lak ’at’s worth a lot of guns.”
Ben’s smile turned savage at the vocal implications of what lay in store for Jordy if the men took him. The men rounded the corner and Ben pulled the trigger, firing at almost point-blank range, and he deliberately held the muzzle low, at crotch-level.
He took the men’s guns and ammo, and left them screaming and bleeding on the gravel. Here were two who would molest no more children. And Ben hoped they would live a long and totally sexless life. Pissing through a hose.
Dumping the guns and ammo in the rear of the camper, Ben picked up an M-16 and a pouch of clips. Slipping to the front corner of the building, Ben located a gun in the second story of an old building; the glint of cold sunlight flashing off a stainless steel barrel gave the man’s position away. Ben flipped his M-16 to semi-auto and sighted the man in. He shot the man in the center of his face, the man dropping his rifle to the ground. The fancy rifle landed butt first and went off, discharging half a clip of ammo, the lead slamming into trees and buildings and into the air.
“Lennie got ’im!” came the excited shout. “Come on, boys.”
Ben slipped his M-16 to full auto and waited. A knot of men came charging around a corner. They stopped, confused looks on their faces. They stood all bunched up, standing over Lennie’s carbine.
“Lennie didn’t git him, neither,” a man said.
That was the last thing any of them would say or hear, except for the stuttering of an M-16 on full auto.
And they would hear that only briefly.
Ben let them flop on the ground for a few minutes, then he slipped the M-16 onto select fire and put two rounds into each of the bodies. He waited another full minute before zigzagging across the street to gather up their ammo. Only one of the men had been carrying an M-16 that looked worth a shit, and Ben took that. Each man was carrying several full clips of 5.56 ammo. Ben tossed the rifle and ammo in the camper and looked at Jordy.
“How’s it going, little man?”
“Hangin’ in, Ben.”
Ben checked his map and took a county road out of Ralls, heading south. He flipped on his CB radio and was startled to hear all the chatter jumping out at him. He listened carefully, knowing those CB radios must have been jacked up with boosters, giving them a tremendous range.
What he heard was disturbing. Someone named Texas Red, a warlord, was teaming up with another warlord named Cowboy Vic, or some such stupid name.
“Like I said, Ben,” Jordy said. “Warlords is everywhere.”
“Yes. But who, or what, is Rani?”
“Sounds like a dumb girl to me.”
“Listen.”
“... and I hear tell that Jake Campo is headin’ this way, too,” the voice spoke. “He’s teamed up with some guy named West.”
Ben grunted. “I knew I should have killed that basta
rd when I had the chance.”
“West?” Jordy asked.
“Yes. He’s scum.”
“They chasin’ General Ben Raines, so I hear,” another voice offered an opinion.
“Raines and his Rebels are in Texas?”
“No. Way I heared it, it’s just Raines and some snot-nosed punk kid he picked up along the way.”
“Fuck you!” Jordy said to the radio.
“How would you like for me to wash your mouth out with soap, boy?” Ben said, looking at him.
“Yukkk!” Jordy said.
“Then watch your language.”
“By hisself, or with a bunch,” a man said, “Ben Raines is a bad one. I don’t want to fool with him. Not none atall.”
“You don’t believe all that shit about him being some kind of god, do you?”
“I don’t know,” the man’s voice was serious. “I heard too many tales about him for some of them not to be true.”
“Well, then, you just tuck your tail between your legs and scamper on back home, then. Carry your boys home with you if none of you’s got the guts to face up to one skinny, middle-aged man. I’ll break that son of a bitch in half like a toothpick.”
Ben looked at the radio. “Fuck you!” he said.
Jordy shook his head. “For shame, for shame,” he said with a grin.
13
Ben wound around dirt roads until coming to Highway 84. He took that down to Post and there connected with 669. He stayed on that, constantly monitoring his CB, all the way to a tiny town just north of Big Spring. The traffic on his CB had faded into silence by the time he hid his truck behind a falling-down building and decided to call back to Base Camp. He knew perfectly well that Colonel Gray had bugged his truck—and probably some of his personal gear as well—so he could keep tabs on Ben, but Ben had expected that. It was rather a comforting feeling, Ben had to admit.
“General!” the radio operator almost knocked Ben’s head off with the shouted word. “It’s good to hear from you, sir.”
“How are things back home, son?” Ben asked.
Alone in the Ashes Page 9
