proclaimed). This one was too slick, too glib, too quick with a smile—an answer for everything.
“That guy makes my skin crawl,” Jerre observed. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Although many members of the group had heard of Ben, and some actually had begged him to stay, the preacher’s protestations over Ben’s leaving were weak, spoken without much sincerity. Ben pegged him as a man who would be king, and wanted no interference from the outside.
“He was afraid of you, Ben,” Jerre said.
“He won’t last long,” Ben predicted. They were heading southeast on U.S. Route 460, toward Norfolk—or what was left of it. Saboteurs had just about destroyed the city. “There will be a few dimwits who’ll follow him to the end, but most of those people back there are too intelligent to listen to his line of bullshit for very long.”
“He sounds stupid,” Jerre said with the blunt honesty of the young. “And I don’t think he’s very sincere. To tell you the truth, I think he’s an asshole.”
Ben laughed at her.
They drove as close to the Norfolk/Portsmouth/Virginia Beach area as Ben felt was safe. Smoke still clung over the area, smarting their eyes. They pulled back a few more miles and spent the night in a motel.
“Why is it,” Jerre asked, “that most of the bad people seem to be located… concentrated, I guess, in the cities, the larger places?”
Interesting question, Ben thought. But he hedged it, saying only, “Remember that when you strike out on your own.”
“Don’t worry.” She smiled at him over their dinner of C-ration. “I have vivid memories of Wheeling.”
“And the four-minute mile.”
“And fifty peckers,” she capped it.
They made love slowly that night, very gently, both of them sensing their time together was growing short. Ben was steeling himself for the time Jerre would leave him. He had grown more than fond of Jerre, and though he tried to keep that from her, he sensed she knew.
They backtracked to Suffolk and then headed south, taking highway 32 to Edenton. Ben stopped at every town along the way, looking for survivors… but he was stalling and knew it. And worse, he felt Jerre knew it.
During those last days, she sat very close to him most of the time, her left hand resting on his thigh. She spoke very little as they traveled through North Carolina, through the dead and silently littered towns. They watched the packs of dogs slink and snarl at their arrival and departure. They drove over to the coast and down to Nags Head.
Ben had picked up a Polaroid and had made a hundred pictures of her, and she of him. They walked the beach and picked up bits of driftwood and shell. Ben sensed she had something to tell him, but he did not push her. She would tell him in her own time.
They spent a week on the beach, Ben teaching her what he could of survival. She became a fair shot with the pistol, could pitch a tent and properly ditch it, build a fire and cook over it. But Ben did not have the time to teach her, to instill in her, the sixth sense of knowing when danger approached, and who to trust. And how could he teach her, in so short a time, to shoot first and ask questions later? That took learning the hard way. Ben hoped she would make it.
One morning Ben awoke to find her gone from his side. He called for her, and she quickly stepped back into the cottage. She looked at him, her eyes serious.
“Let’s pack it up, Ben. Head west. O.K.?”
“O.K., babe. How far west and any particular reason for that direction?”
She nodded. “Time to level with you, General.” She tried a smile that didn’t make it. “I heard on the road that kids were going to gather at the university at Chapel Hill the first and second weeks of November. The word was passed up and down the line. The reason…? Ben, I don’t want to hurt your feelings, and please don’t take this the wrong way, but—”
“But the adults screwed up the world and maybe you young people can do better this time around,” Ben finished it for her.
“You’re a wise man, Ben Raines.”
“I’m a survivor, Jerre.”
“Am I, Ben?”
“I think you’ll make it, babe.”
Ben skirted Raleigh and they spent their last night together at Pittsboro, a few miles south of Chapel Hill. They made love slowly and then she cried herself to sleep, lying in his arms.
In the early morning hours, just before dawn, Ben felt her slip from his side and dress quietly in the darkened house. She left a note on her pillow and softly kissed him on the cheek. He pretended to be asleep. Jerre opened the door and looked back at him; then she stepped quietly out of his life, closing the door behind her. He listened to the sound of her footsteps fade.
Ben rose from his blankets to stand by the window. He looked out into the dim light and watched her walk up the highway, toward the gathering of hopeful young people. As they had approached the small town, Ben had seen more and more young people, all heading for Chapel Hill.
They had smiled and waved at Jerre. They had flatly ignored Ben.
When Jerre was gone from his sight, Ben turned on the battery-operated lantern and picked up the note she had left.
Dear Ben,
I’ll make this short, ‘cause if I try to write too much I’ll just tear it up and stay with you, and I think that would be bad for both of us—at this time. Maybe what I’m doing is foolish. I don’t know. But I feel it’s something I have to do. The world is in such a mess, I have to try to do something to help fix it. Maybe the young can. I don’t know. In my heart I kind of doubt it, but we have to try—right?
The mood I get from the kids I’ve talked with is they blame the adults for the mess we’re in. I don’t think that is entirely fair, personally. You’re a good man, and there must be others like you. But give us a chance, huh?
I don’t know what my feelings are toward you, Ben. I like you a whole lot and I think I probably love you a little bit. That’s a joke—I think I probably love you a whole lot. That’s one of the reasons I’ve got to split. There are other reasons, of course, but my feelings toward you are right up there at the top.
You’ve got places to go and things to do before you find yourself—your goal, preset, I believe—and start to do great things. And you will, Ben. You will.
I hope I see you again, General.
Ben carefully folded the note and put it in a waterproof pouch where he carried other precious, silent memories: a picture of his mother and father, his brothers and sisters, a girl he had once loved. And now, Jerre. He put in the pictures of Jerre with her note and closed the flap, securing it.
He sat on the edge of the bed for a time, the scent of her still in the air, on the pillowcase, the sheets.
“Good-by, Jerre,” Ben said aloud.
He packed his gear and pulled out. Had he turned north, instead of south, he would have found her sitting at the side of the road, crying, looking down the empty road. Looking south.
TEN
Ben was maudlin for a time, his thoughts moody, filled with regret and self-pity. But as he drove, his mood began to lift as he realized Jerre had been right in her young wisdom: she needed to be with her own kind, her own age—at least for a time. He wished the young people well, but did not believe they would accomplish a thing. Except to get themselves killed. Back in 1960, when Ben was sixteen years old, he had believed in Camelot. But the years of combat and of seeing the mute silence of the dead and the screaming of the wounded and the starvation of the peoples in parts of Africa had convinced him that only the toughest survive—there is not, there was not such a
