their oil-rich beds, their imported French water growing bugs in it. It was American know-how that had brought in their fucking oil in the first place.
Ben pulled out onto the highway just as he heard the roar coming at him. A pistol barked and a slug spiderwebbed the windshield. He squalled onto Ohio 199 just as another slug slammed through the rear window. Ben glanced at his side mirror; the motorcyclists were gaining on him, waving guns and shouting.
Two were tailgating him. Ben smiled grimly and jammed on his brakes. He felt a jarring impact as the bikers ass-ended the pickup; one was thrown over the cab to land on his head in the center of the road. Ben spun the wheel, corrected his slide, and stopped in the center of the highway. He grabbed his Thompson, opened the door, and cleared the highway of two-wheel vermin.
Those that were left wanted no more of Ben Raines. Whooping and hollering and shouting curses at him, they tucked their tails and split, man, leaving their wounded behind. Ben ignored the pleas for help from the riders sprawled in bleeding pain on the concrete. He didn’t think they would have helped him had the situation been reversed.
Ben inspected his truck for damage. The rear was caved in, but the wheels would roll without scraping metal. A spring had popped, and one side stuck up in the air. But the motor was still running.
The truck limped along the highway for miles, while Ben looked for a national guard or reserve armory. He finally found one and pulled in. He selected a heavy-duty three-quarter-ton truck with only a few thousand miles on it and began transferring his gear, installing his CB. The truck had a military radio in it, so Ben set that for 39.2. He changed the oil and filters in the truck, tossed two spare tires in the back, then went prowling through the armory to see what he could find.
He picked up a few cases of C-ration and some dehydrated rations. That was about all he could find that he felt he could use.
He secured the place for the night, fixed some supper, and turned in.
“Lucky again, Ben,” he muttered, just as sleep took him.
EIGHT
By the middle of October, Ben had traveled as far to the east as he dared go. Transmissions on the CB had dwindled to practically nothing, and lately he had been seeing some fresh bodies, all with signs of radiation sickness marking them. He knew they had died hard.
He cut south, and as he drove, he felt a sudden craving hit him. He chuckled as he recorded the craving for fresh sweet milk. He began looking for cattle, flexing his fingers as he drove. Been a long time since he’d milked a cow—years. Way back when he’d helped his dad on the farm. Those cows that had needed milking when the bombs struck; those cows that had been hooked up to milking machines. Agony, slow agony dying.
Then another thought struck him, driving out the craving for milk: the jails and prisons; the institutions that house the old, the sick, the insane.
Oh, my God!
Had anyone thought to check on them?
Why didn’t I? he asked silently.
He headed the nose of the truck southwest, through Pennsylvania. He would skirt the cities and check the small towns, the jails and hospitals, work his way southwest, through West Virginia, then cut into Virginia, giving the hot areas of Washington and Baltimore lots of room.
He finally gave up on the jails, the hospitals, the institutions: they were stinking pestholes, rotting bodies, and many of them had died in the most horrible manner. He drove on. Then, just a few miles north of Charlottesville, he saw a figure trudging along the road.
The figure whirled around at the sound of the truck, then jumped for the ditch, trying for the woods. But the jump was short, and the boy fell hard, grabbing at his ankle. By this time, Ben was on the scene. He stepped out onto the shoulder and turned, finding himself looking down the barrel of a small automatic pistol, held by a very pretty young lady.
“I don’t mean you any harm, miss.” Ben tried to calm her.
“Yeah? That’s what the last bunch of guys said, while they were trying to tear my clothes off me.”
“How’d you get away?”
“I kicked one of them in the nuts and split, man!”
“You want me to take a look at that ankle?”
“Not particularly. Why don’t you just head on out? I’ll be all right.”
“I don’t mean you any harm, miss. Please believe me. What’s your name?”
“None of your damned business.”
“O.K., None-of-Your-Damned-Business, my name is Ben Raines.”
“Big deal. Who cares? Ben Raines. That sounds kinda familiar.”
“I’m a writer. What are you, seventeen?”
“I’m nineteen, if that’s any of your business—which it isn’t.” She fixed her dark blue eyes on him. “O.K., you can look at my ankle if it means that much to you, but I’m gonna keep this gun on you all the time. One funny move and I’ll shoot you.”
“All right, that’s a deal.” Ben didn’t have the heart to tell her that with an automatic of that type, one first had to cock it before it would fire. She had not cocked it.
Ben knelt down beside her and looked at her ankle. It was swelling badly. Sprained, he hoped, and not broken. She was wearing tennis shoes. Exactly what she should not have been wearing on a hike; no support to the ankles.
“It’s sprained, None-of-Your-Damned-Business. We’ve got to find a creek with cool water and have you soak that for an hour or so.”
“My name is Jerre. J-e-r-r-e.” She spelled it out slowly. “Jerre Hunter.” She looked down at her ankle. “It looks gross.”
“Yes, it does, and it will probably get worse before it gets better. Come on, Jerre, put your arm around my shoulders and keep your weight off that ankle.”
She gazed at him for a moment, then shrugged. “What the hell? You might rape me, but that’s not gonna hurt as bad as my ankle hurts.”
Ben laughed at her. “You can put that pistol away, too, Jerre. It’s not going to fire unless you cock it first.”
She laughed with him. “Doesn’t have any bullets in it, anyway. Least I think it doesn’t. I don’t know how to load it.” She tossed the pistol into the ditch.
The automatic bounced off a large rock, fired, and blew a chunk of wood out of a tree.
Ben looked at her and slowly shook his head.
Ben found a little fast-rushing creek with water cold enough to turn one’s finger blue just from testing it, and for an hour the two of them sat on the bank talking, while she soaked her ankle and bitched about the temperature of the water and how she probably would catch pneumonia, or how her foot would probably rot off from radiation.
She told him she had just started her second year of college in Maryland when the war talk started. Then the panic hit. She had been sick for a week or so while others around her had been dying.
Gross, she called the experience. The absolute pits, man.
“You want to know something else, Ben? I mean, on top of all this stupid war stuff, there is no music.”
“By music, I assume you mean rock and roll?”
“Is there any other kind of music?”
“I wasn’t aware rock and roll was music.”
She cocked her head, blond hair falling over one eye, and stared at him for a time. “I think, Ben Raines, if we’re going to be friends, we’d better not discuss our tastes in music.”
“At least until you grow up.” He smiled at her.
“Whatever.”
