Circle OF DEATH
A crowd of ragged men and women had gathered around the pickup. They were armed with clubs, axes, knives, and spears.
“The welcoming committee,” Ben Raines said softly.
“What do you want here?” a woman shouted at Ben and Judy.
“We don’t mean you any harm,” said Ben calmly, hoping for the best. “We’re just traveling through.”
“Why did you stop?” a man called. He held an axe in his hands.
“People on the roofs with bows and arrows,” Judy whispered.
“I see them. If shooting starts, you take the south side of the street, I’ll take the north.”
“All right.”
“We don’t want any trouble,” Ben called out. But he was going to get trouble-and plenty of it!
'All I want of you is a little servility, and that of the commonest goddamnest kind.'
'Them’s my sentiments.'
Prologue
Ben knew he should feel some sort of regret; some feeling of sadness or sorrow at leaving his people-and they were his people-behind.
But the only feeling he could muster up was a feeling of freedom.
“Free at last,” Ben said aloud, with only the wind and the truck to hear him.
And they gave no reply.
He shook his head at the paraphrasing of Doctor King’s famous statement, and wondered how many young blacks, a decade and a half after the world had exploded in nuclear and germ warfare, could even say who King was? Or for that matter, Ben pondered as he drove, how many young whites knew anything about J. F. K., or Watergate?
Most were too busy just staying alive in this world gone mad, Ben concluded. They didn’t have time for school-even in those areas where school was available.
He sighed, the rush of cold wind carrying the sound away, out into the brisk autumn afternoon air.
He was not making very good time, even with the new truck his people had provided for him. The highways were getting worse and worse. And for some reason Ben could not fathom, highway maps were becoming as scarce as hen’s teeth. Any map printed between ‘89 and ‘98 was to be treasured. He had heard that people were killing over highway maps. A good map could bring food, weapons, ammo, and on occasion, women.
Ben could not prevent a bitter laugh from pouring past his lips.
If a person could not understand the written word, how could they comprehend a map? And Ben knew from experience that a full seventy-five percent of those born after the World War of ‘88 were illiterate.
He had turned west at the deserted Tennessee town of McMinnville. A crude sign had stated Highway 70 leading north was closed to traffic, and another sign had stated Highway 56 north was closed to traffic. Ben doubted they were closed for any other reason except the whim of a local warlord or some religious nut who wanted a closed society to practice his or her mumblings upon.
On impulse, Ben jerked his Thompson submachine gun free of the clamps that held it upright, and laid the old weapon on the seat beside him.
“You and me, old boy,” he said with a smile, “are outdated.” He patted the smooth stock. “But we can still spit and snarl, can’t we?”
Ben wore a .45 semiautomatic pistol belted around his waist and a long bladed Bowie knife on his left hip. In the rear of the camper-covered bed of the pickup.
Ben carried a myriad of survival gear. Tent and sleeping bag, extra clothing, a case of grenades, and two cases of .45-caliber ammunition. A rocket launcher and a case of rockets for the tube. Cases of food and jugs of water. He had a Weatherby 30-06 with scope, and a Remington model 1100 S. W.a.t. shotgun with an extended tube that held enough three-inch magnums to stop a rampaging Cape buffalo. Strapped to both sides of the Chevy pickup, and on a special framework built on top, he carried five-gallon cans of extra gas. He had enough radio equipment in the truck to transmit anywhere within what used to be known as the United States of America.
After more than a decade of leading his people, constantly searching for a place to put down roots and live and work and grow and rebuild from out of the ashes, Ben Raines was pulling out, heading out by himself.
He would be alone. In the ashes.
BOOK ONE
Chapter 1
Ben pulled off the highway just outside of what remained of Woodbury, Tennessee. Tucking his truck behind a farmhouse on the east side of the highway, Ben sat for several minutes, his eyes searching for signs of life. Falling back on years of experience, Ben knew after only a moment that he was alone.
He inspected the house, cautiously going from room to room. The house was, of course, ankle-deep with the litter left behind by rats and mice. When the rodents had eaten everything they could find to eat, they had left. But once they had done that, the roaches had followed.
The house was crawling with living waves of brown movement.
Ben pulled out of that locale and spent the night sleeping in the cramped space under his camper.
He awakened to a cold dawn, under a sky that promised rain very soon. The dull grayness of the sky matched the landscape that surrounded Ben. Everything around him seemed lifeless.
He didn’t like this area, didn’t like the feeling of foreboding it offered him. Skipping breakfast of any sort, Ben cranked the engine and pulled out, finding Highway 53 and taking that until connecting with a road that would take him to Interstate 40, at Lebanon. There, he drove over the interstate and pulled off the highway at the outskirts of town.
Smoke from wood and coal fires drifted up from houses in the coolness of morning. But, as Ben had so often sadly observed over the years, the homes were not centralized or grouped for safety or work. They were widely separated, which meant to Ben-and it had been proved time after time-that the people were not organized. And in these times of anarchy and warlords, and roaming gangs of thugs and punks and creeps and assorted savages, not to be organized was an invitation to die quickly.
And to let what was left of civilization die.
Ben spotted the gang of young men and women long before they spotted him.
Go on, Ben! he urged himself silently. Go on. Just pull out and avoid trouble.
But he knew he would not. That flaw, if it was a flaw, and Ben thought not, within him was rearing up.
Ben lifted his Thompson and cradled it, clicking the .45-caliber submachine gun in his arms. He got out of the pickup and stood by the hood of the truck, watching as the young people spotted him.
Back in my day, Ben thought, they would be called punks.
I’ll still call them punks, he thought.
Ben stood tall and rangy and loose by his truck. The years had peppered his hair with gray and had put a few lines in his face. But as Doctor Chase had told him, “For a man your age, Raines, you’re in disgustingly good shape.”
“Clean living,” Ben had said with a smile, knowing what response that would bring from the crusty old ex- Navy doctor.
“Horse shit!” Doctor Chase had replied. “You’re going to be a dirty old man, Raines.”
“What do you mean, “going to be?”
“Hey, Dads!” one of the young men called. “They’s a toll for passin” through here.”
The young man was tall and slender and blond. He was dressed in dirty jeans, heavy boots, and wore a black leather jacket. His hair was very long and very dirty and very unkempt.
The knot of young men and women around the punk were, except for coloring and size, his mirror image.
