“Poor little girl,” Gale said.
Mary smiled. “Then that poor little girl grabbed the colonel’s weapon, kicked him in the shins, and ran off into the woods.”
Ike walked up and looked at the approaching young people, only a few hundred feet away. They marched forward, stopping a few yards from Ben and the group.
“Aw!” Ike said. “Look at them poor little kids. Makes your heart ache, don’t it? Me and Sally got to take in a few of them to raise.”
Ben had smiled.
Ike walked into the street and stood smiling down at the group. He felt his heart soften as he looked at a small girl, ragged and dirty. The stocky ex-SEAL knelt down in front of her.
“Howdy, honey,” he said in his best Mississippi drawl. “My, but you sure are pretty. How’d you like to come live with me and my wife?”
The girl, about ten years old, pulled a pistol from a holster, cocked it, and stuck the muzzle in Ike’s suddenly pale face. “How’d you like to eat some lead, fatso?”
Ben had to struggle to keep from laughing at the expression on Ike’s face. It was very difficult to get anything over on Ike, and Ben knew this story would fly around the Rebel camps. Ike would never live it down.
“Now, darlin’,” Ike said, very carefully getting to his feet. “There ain’t no call for nothin’ like this. I don’t mean you no harm.”
“Yeah?” the cute little girl asked belligerently. “That’s what them other guys told me, too. I believed them. You know what they done to me?”
“I’d really rather not hear about it, if you don’t mind,” Ike said.
“I guess you and your wife is gonna love me and hug me and give me food and pretty clothes and all that shit?” The little girl demanded that Ike reply.
Ike winced at her language. “Well, ah, yeah, that’s right.”
“That’s what them men told me, too. So I believed them. They took me to a house and did bad things to me. They hurt me real bad and left me to die. Then Wade and his people come along and him and his people killed them men who raped me. I believe Wade. I don’t know you, so I don’t believe you, and I don’t trust you. I got my reasons, mister.”
Ben stepped forward as the crowd began to swell with the arrival of more young people. “You can believe him,” he told the girl. “Ike is sincere in wanting you to come live with his family. Ike and Sally are good people.”
The ragged little girl with the pistol in her hand swung old/wise/young eyes to Ben. She holstered the pistol. “Maybe,” she said, suspicion in her voice. “I don’t know you neither, but you look familiar. Who you is, mister?”
“Ben Raines.”
The girl reached into a leather pouch on her belt and removed a plastic-covered picture. She compared the picture to the man then turned to face the large group of young people, hundreds strong. “It’s really him!” she yelled.
The little girl fell to her knees and every boy and girl in the crowd followed suit. Ben stood openmouthed, astonishment on his face.
“What the hell?” he muttered.
Wade crawled toward Ben. Clearly embarrassed, Ben tried to motion the young man to his feet. But Wade would have none of that.
“Get up!” Ben whispered to him. “What do you think you’re doing?”
With his eyes downcast, Wade called out, “All praise Ben Raines!”
“What!” Ben almost shouted the word. His own people were looking at him strangely.
“All praise Ben Raines!” the crowd of young people echoed.
Ben lost his temper. “Now just a damn minute!” he yelled. “All of you kids—get off your knees. Get up and face me.”
Ben handed his old Thompson to Ike. The eyes of the young people followed the movement. They now viewed Ike in a different light. Ben, feeling awfully foolish, motioned the young people up from their prostration.
Reluctantly, and with fear on their faces, the kids rose to their feet.
“You young people do not worship me!” Ben told them firmly. “Nobody worships me. I won’t have it. It’s silly. Where did you young people get such an idea?”
“It... is written,” Wade stammered out in reply.
Ben looked hard at him. “Written? Where is it written that I am to be treated like some sort of god?”
“An old man told us that. I mean ... he didn’t exactly say it like that, but he talked real funny; old-time like. And he said that to worship a false god was a sin in the eyes of the Lord. I told him that maybe was so, but there was only one man I would ever bow down to, and that was Ben Raines.”
Ben nodded, not knowing how the young people would interpret that nod. “Was the man’s name the Prophet?” The old man with the long beard and robe and staff that sometimes popped up in several places at once. Ben had seen him; didn’t know what to make of him.
At the mention of the old man’s name, the young people drew back, as if very much afraid.
“Yes,” Wade said, standing his ground but looking very much as if he would like to cut and run.
“What did the old man say and do when you told him that?”
“He said that perhaps you—Ben Raines—might be the man to do the job at hand. But that on your head would lie the... con-con ...” He struggled with the word. “Consequences should you try but fail.”
“What do you think the old man meant by that?”
A look of confusion passed over Wade’s face. He finally shrugged his shoulders. That you are a god— what else?”
“I am not a god. Not someone that you should worship.”
“No, sir.” The young man’s reply was soft. “No, sir. I don’t think so. And none of the people who travel with me think so neither. I been all over this land, from big water to big water, east to west. I been to Canada all the way down to Mexico. I have seen what some people have built in reverence to you.”
Ben stirred. The rock and stone monuments that some had erected to him. But how to combat that was something that eluded Ben.
“You have many, many followers, Mr. Ben Raines. Some who live on the land, some who live under it, in tunnels and caves.”
At that time Ben had only heard of the Underground People. He had never seen them.
Wade motioned to another young man and he stepped forward. “Ro,” Wade said. “He leads the second group of young.”
Ben extended his hand. Ro backed away from it.
“It is not permitted, Mr. Ben Raines.”
“What is not permitted?” There was an edge to Ben’s voice.
Ro looked at Ben and smiled. “It is as the Prophet said: you do not yet know who you are. But it still is not permitted.”
Ben thought: I ask a question and get riddles.
Ro further irritated Ben by bowing to him. Ro turned to his people and said something that Ben could not understand. It sounded very much like Pidgin English.
Dear God! Ben thought. Have we reverted to this—already ?
“And do they still worship you?” Cooper asked, after Ben had told them the story.
“I don’t know. I hope not. We’ve only scratched the surface of what really lies out there.” He pointed to the passing landscape. “And under it,” he added softly.
16
A subterranean society did exist in what was once known as America, South America, Central America, Asia Minor, Africa, Asia—all around the globe. In Europe, the Night People were called Children of Darkness ... they worshipped Satan. Their enemies, the People of Darkness, still worshipped a more kinder and caring God, a deity who had a face strangely like Ben Raines.
The people who lived in the caves and tunnels had long ago given up on modern technology and weapons and what was once considered the acceptable mode of dress and manner of living. They wore the skins of animals, and the soles of their feet were as tough as leather.
Some worldwide worshipped Satan, and all the horror that went with it. Others worshipped some form of higher entity, but for the most part they did not believe He was all-powerful. No true a
ll-powerful God would have permitted the world to become as it now was.
Blind faith in the unseen was unacceptable to many survivors of the Great War.
But Ben Raines, now—he was real. Ben Raines was doing something to correct all this misery and awfulness. So, many of them reasoned, Ben Raines must be in touch with some higher power. And if that were true, then Ben Raines must be the man-God here on earth.
In a manner of speaking, the older and wiser of them cautioned.
Ben knew only too well that he was combatting much more than a tangible enemy.
That other enemy scared the crap out of him.
“This Wade and Ro,” Jersey asked, “are they still alive?”
“I don’t know. They would be older now, and perhaps no longer in the field. We’ll just have to see. They live a hard and dangerous life. And they resist my efforts to bring them into our settlements.”
The long column rolled on. They crossed the Missouri River at St. Charles and cut onto 270 just outside of St. Louis. All along the Interstate were mounds of equipment with more equipment being trucked and flown in daily from Base Camp One.
Cecil had brought his battalion up from Louisiana. West was there, the mercenary limping around with a cast on his ankle.
Ben stepped out of the Blazer and let the bad news hit him.
“Khamsin and Villar are massing for attack, Ben,” Cecil told him. “They’ve already started moving units westward.”
“Here we go again,” West said, leaning on his cane.
Ben nodded his head. “And this time we’d better do it right the first time, or there won’t be another time—for any of us.”
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