“No, ma’am, we’re not married. As for living in sin, I wouldn’t know about that. She doesn’t believe in God.”
“I’m Nola Browning, young man.
“They have been here?” Ben questioned. “Bothering you folks?”
Ms. Browning laughed without mirth. “Bothering us, sir? Oh yes, I would say so. They came up on us… what, Mr. Jacobs? Three months ago? Yes, something like that. They roughed up the men—humiliated them, I won’t go into details—then they left. We hoped they would not return. But of course, they did.
“The second time they took all the weapons in the town. Mr. Jacobs hid his shotgun in a ditch; they missed that. Then they disabled all our vehicles. Left us stranded here. They’ve been back a number of times since then. The last time just the past week. Mrs. Ida Sikes is the youngest of us all: she’s sixty-two. They took turns raping her. Then they pulled Mrs. Johnson out of her house and raped her the next time. A woman a trip. Mrs. Carson is next. She’s sixty-five, but still a very attractive woman. The things they said they were going to do to her… well, they were rather perverted, to say the least. So can you help, Mr. Raines? Yes, very probably. But there is only one of you, fifteen of them, at least. What can you do?”
Ben smiled, and Ms. Browning noted that his smile was that of a man-eating tiger who had just that moment spotted dinner. “Oh, I imagine I can think of something suitable for them, Ms. Browning. I used to write a lot of action books.”
“Yes,” the schoolteacher replied. “And correct me if I’m wrong, sir, but didn’t I read in some column that you had been a mercenary at one time?”
“I prefer ‘soldier of fortune,’ ma’am.”
“Of course you do. As for your books… I so enjoyed your action stories, especially when your hero rid the world of thugs.”
“Well, we’ll see if I can’t make one of my heroes come to life and lend a hand here.”
“I imagine you can, Mr. Raines. And will. You don’t look at all milksoppish to me.”
“Ben?” April asked.
“Umm?”
They lay in bed, waiting for sleep to take them.
“What type of… slime would do something like what’s been happening to these people here. I mean… I just don’t understand.”
Ben chuckled quietly. “What’s the matter, little liberal? You finding that the real world is a little tough? I bet when you were in college you supported all the correct causes, liberal, of course, didn’t you?” She stiffened beside him. “I bet you leaped to the defense of every lousy punk and shithead the state brought up for burning in the chair—or whatever they do—did—in Florida.”
“You going to rub it in?”
“No, I just wanted to bring it up, that’s all. See if I was right in my assessment. I was. Well, Ms. Browning —and that’s a tough old lady—said she thought they’d be back tomorrow. Then you can see what kind of slime would do such a thing. After I kill them.”
“Ben Raines, the one-man hand of retribution, huh?”
“Just doing what the courts should have done a long time ago. We should have never stopped public hangings.”
She shivered beside him. “You scare me when you talk like this, Ben. You sound as if you’re going to enjoy… doing it.”
“I am.”
Ben put away the light M-10 and carefully loaded his Thompson with a full drum. He hid that, along with a pouchful of clips and several grenades, behind sacks of feed he had stacked in an alley between the general store and a deserted shop. He buckled on both .45s, jacked a round in each chamber, and kept both of them on half-cock. Then, with a grenade in his hand, he sat down on the porch of the store and waited.
Homer Jacobs was guarding the women in the basement of the local Baptist Church. Ben had given him an automatic shotgun he had picked up at a police station in Florida: a riot gun, sawed-off barrel, eight rounds of three-inch magnums in the slot.
He heard them long before he saw them. They came in fancy vans, their loud mufflers roaring. Rock and roll music was pushed through straining speakers; it offended the quiet and the beauty of early spring.
But, Ben reckoned, anything these punks did would probably be offensive.
Everything fit according to what Homer and Nola and the others had told him, right down the mag wheels on the vans. Ben rose from the porch and stepped out into the street. He wanted them to come to him, even though he knew he was taking one large risk. If it had been only three or four of them he would have taken the 7-mm rifle and picked them off one by one. But with this many he couldn’t take a chance of even one getting away, for that one would probably gather more scum and return, and the revenge on the elderly would be terrible.
No, he had to kill all the punks.
The lead van roared to a stop amid squalling tires. Four vans in all.
Ben did not know that Ms. Browning had slipped away from the church and made her way up the alley and into the general store. She sat behind the front counter, watching Ben. She was a good Christian lady, believing strongly in helping those who could not help themselves. She had never mistreated a human being or an animal in her life, and would rather bite her tongue than be rude to a civilized person.
When integration had come to her school, back in the sixties, she had not retired, as had so many of her friends. Instead, Nola had gone right on teaching—in the public schools. She had been raised, from a child, to hold “Nigras” just a cut beneath her (or a full one hundred eighty degrees, as the case may be), and while she did find many of their ways alien to her own way of life, she also found many exceptional Negro children with a genuine desire to learn and advance. Ms. Nola Browning concluded (and it was a horrendous decision for a Southern lady and a member of the D.A.R. and the Daughters of the Confederacy to make) that we are all God’s children and to hell with the KKK and George Wallace. She had been booted out of the Daughters of the Confederacy, but that was all right with Nola; they had to live their lives and she hers.
But on this day, Ms. Nola Browning wished and hoped and prayed with all her might this young man (anyone under sixty was young to her), who had more guts than sense, would kill every one of those trashy bastards who had terrorized her town.
She hoped God would forgive her dark thoughts and slight profanity.
She felt He would.
“What’s on your mind, hotshot?” The punk on the passenger side sneered at Ben.
Ben knew the only thing a person outnumbered can do is attack. And that’s what he did. At the sound of the roaring mufflers, Ben had pulled the pin of the fragmentation grenade and held the spoon down. He smiled at the punk.
“You know anything about Constitutional rights?” Ben asked.
“Yeah, pops—we all got ’em.”
“Wrong,” Ben said, releasing the spoon. It pinged to the ground. “You just lost yours.”
He tossed the grenade inside the van.
He was leaping for the protection of the stacked feed bags before the punks could get the first scream of fright past their lips.
The grenade mushroomed the van, and Ben knew that was four shitheads out of it permanently. As he leaped for the protection of the feed bags, he rolled another grenade under the front of the third van: a high- explosive grenade. The grenade lifted the van off its front tires, setting the punk-wagon on fire.
On his belly, looking out the side of the stacks, Ben leveled the Thompson and pulled the trigger, holding it back, fighting the rise of the powerful SMG. He sprayed the remaining two vans.
If nothing else, Nola thought, he’s stopped that damnable music.
Ben emptied the sixty-round drum into the vans, then pulled out both .45s, hauling them back to full cock. He waited, crouched on one knee.
