“Skip it, Fran. People like you never understand.”
“Why didn’t you help them if you’re such a charitable person?”
“I didn’t know anything about their condition.”
Again, she shook her head. “I don’t know if my sister is alive, or not. She went to New Orleans the day… whatever happened happened. My mother and father are dead. I don’t know where Lance is—”
“And I don’t give a shit where he is,” Ben told her, and meant it.
“…And you’re not making this easy for me!” she screamed at him.
“Why should I?” Ben looked at her. “I just don’t like people of your ilk. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to stand out in the middle of a road and discuss it with you.”
She stamped her foot. “Well… at least take me into Natchez. I have friends there. I’m… well… I’m afraid to go alone, Ben.”
“Take you into Natchez?” Ben fell against the truck and laughed. “Are you serious, Fran?”
“Perfectly.” Her chin came up haughtily.
“Fran, don’t you know what has happened?”
“No. There is nothing on the television or radio. But it was something of a disaster, I should imagine.”
“And it’s all going to get better in a little while?”
“Certainly. The government will come in and straighten everything out.”
Big Brother will take care of me. “Fran, instead of Natchez, would you like me to take you to Tara?”
“There you go again, being flip.”
She really doesn’t know, Ben thought, looking at her. She
“Fran, listen to this. Try to understand what has happened.” He turned on the radio, preset on the distant ham band, and he watched her face as the tape changed to English.
“I… I don’t understand,” she finally said, her face white with shock.
“It means, Fran, that civilization, as we know it, is probably over for a time. Millions, a couple of billion, dead. As for Natchez, forget it. Forget it all, honey.” His voice took on a harsher tone. “It’s over. If there are only two people left alive in this parish—using that as a comparison—two out of fifteen thousand. That’s…” He did some quick mental math. “Say, 125 people out of every million left alive in the world. Now the figure is probably higher than that, alive, I mean, but that’s still pretty grim statistics.” And, he thought, what if this stuff has affected the minds of some—and, perhaps, their bodies? Mutants? Possible. Greatest story I could ever write and no one around to read it.
Shit!
“You’re serious, Ben?” Big eyes wide. Pretty eyes.
“I consider death to be very serious, Fran.”
“Well… exactly, what does this mean?”
“It means,” Ben said slowly, “that you’re stuck with me, and I suppose I’m stuck with you.”
“Oh, Lord!” she said, then rolled her eyes and fainted.
Ben caught her just before she cracked her head on the blacktop.
“What a marvelous way to start a relationship,” he muttered.
FIVE
She opened her blue eyes and looked at him as they rolled along the parish road. “Where are you taking me?”
“Where would you like to go, Miss Fran?”
She closed her eyes. “I don’t know.”
“Then shut up and help me look until you decide. And open your eyes. Look for people—alive. There’s got to be some in this parish.”
“All the wrong sort, I’m sure.”
You may be correct there, Ben thought. “Just look, baby, and keep your social comments to yourself.”
“What is that big ugly thing?”
Ben looked down to see if his fly was open.
“This!” She touched the Thompson.
“It’s a submachine gun.”
She looked at Ben, looked at the SMG, rolled her eyes, then looked out the window, her side of the truck. She shook her head.
“It’s real, Fran. I assure you of that.”
“I’m beginning to believe, Ben. Look. There’s smoke coming from that house over there.” She pointed, saying it with about as much interest as if she were discussing the price of kumquats in the supermarket.
The day was cool, temperature in the low sixties. But not cool enough for a fire, Ben reckoned. He pulled into the drive and looked for dogs. None. “Stay in the truck,” he told Fran.
“I most certainly will not! And don’t you dare order me about, Ben Raines.”
Ben nodded, wondering when she was going into shock. Probably, he guessed, when we drive through town and she sees all the bodies… with the birds and the dogs and the hogs eating on them.
“Then come with me,” he said. “No play on words intended.”
She opened the door.
“There might be fifteen guys in there, all ready to rape you.”
She closed the door and locked it.
Ben checked to see if he’d taken the keys out of the ignition. He had. It would be just like Fran to drive off and leave him.
He walked up the stone walkway and tapped on the door. He held the Thompson in his right hand. The door swung slowly open. Ben did not know the man, but had seen him in town a number of times. In his early sixties, the man appeared to be in good health.
“Afternoon,” Ben said, speaking through the screen door. “I’m Ben Raines.”
“The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away,” the man replied.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Armageddon. The battle has been fought. So sayeth the Lord.”
Although not a student of the Bible, Ben had read it. He asked, “Who won—Good or Evil?”
The question seemed to confuse the man. He stammered for a few seconds, then closed his mouth and shook his head.
“Do you realize what has happened?” Ben asked.
“Armageddon.”
Ben sighed and looked past the man into the living room of the home. A fire was raging in the fireplace and a woman was sitting in a chair. She was dead. Ben could smell her from the porch.
“Do you want to come with us?” Ben asked. “Can we help in any way?”
The man shut the door in Ben’s face.
He walked back to the truck and unlocked the door. As they were driving away, Fran asked, “Who was that man?”
“I don’t know.” Then he told her what he had seen.
“That’s awful. What are you going to do about it?”
“Nothing.” Ben shook his head. “Nothing I can do. I’m not a psychiatrist. But I’d say the man has stepped over the line. Pushed over it by what happened. He may come back around; he may not.”
“That’s a pretty cold-blooded attitude, Ben. That poor old man.”
“Those poor old people who died from exposure,” Ben countered.
She glared at him while Ben wondered if this was another side of her, or if she was merely acting for his benefit. “You keep harping on that, Ben Raines. What would you have had me do about them?—Not that it matters
