she’d have cases of pneumonia on her hands.
And there was the not-so-small matter of that goddamned self-proclaimed warlord who called himself Vic.
Crazy Vic.
And his men were just as nutty. She thought they were all escapees from a nuthouse.
She had started her little orphanage up in north Oklahoma, taking in wandering kids. Some stayed with her, though most had left, the lure and pull of the road having been all they’d ever known. She’d worked very hard on her little wayside home for kids. And at one time she’d had almost forty kids to care for. She loved doing it.
Then Vic and his men had arrived.
They had taken her guns, and then raped her. Vic had told her if she didn’t become his woman, he’d pass the kids around to his men and Rani could damn well have what was left of them after his boys got done butt-fucking them.
Rani had endured Vic’s perversions for a week, until she got her chance to escape. Most of the kids had already run off.
Now she had Crazy Vic and his bunch following her.
But she also had a pistol and a rifle she’d found in a house along the way, and lots of ammunition. And Rani was a good shot.
If that truck will just start, she thought, we might make it.
If.
“Crossing into Texas, Jordy.”
“I never been so far, Ben. But I sure am glad we got away from them outlaws.”
“You running out of underwear?” Ben kidded him.
Jordy blushed.
The pair had stayed not one night, but four nights, camped along the river. The weather had abated, actually turning rather warm. They fished, rested, and Ben told the boy stories of how it used to be, back when the Tri- States had been in operation.
“You really mean nobody went hungry and you wasn’t always scared somebody was goin” to get you?” the boy asked.
“Nobody went hungry, Jordy. Not if we knew about it. And no, you didn’t have to be scared. We didn’t have crime in Tri-States, Jordy. The cost to the criminal was just too high. Besides, everybody that wanted to work,
could work. There was no need to steal.”
“That must have been a nice place to live,” Jordy said wistfully.
“Oh, it was, if a person obeyed the law and respected the rights of others.”
“What happened if they didn’t?”’
“There was somebody around to bury them.”
Ben and Jordy had rambled around on county roads, picking up Highway 62 at Lawton and taking that into Texas. They turned south and headed for Childress, crossing the Red River.
This was an area of the once-proud-and-mighty nation the rats had hit hard. Ben had not expected to see many survivors, but he hadn’t thought it would be this bad.
There just wasn’t anybody.
Or anything.
“What happened around here, Ben?” Jordy asked. “There ain’t a go.a … darn thing alive.”
“Rats, Jordy. For some reason-and I don’t know why-the rats hit this part of the country hard. Very few people made it out alive.”
The boy looked nervously around him. “We ain’t stoppin”, are we-, Ben?”
“Not even to pee, Jordy.”
At Paducah, Texas, Ben spotted the first human being he’d seen in a hundred miles of absolute desolation.
He pulled off the highway and drove slowly up to the small group of people. Ben let a white handkerchief flutter from his left hand, held out the window.
Ben called, “We’re friendly, folks.”
A man smiled and waved at him. “Then come on out and sit and talk, friend.”
“The last hundred miles looked a little grim,” Ben said, accepting a cup of coffee-or what presently passed for coffee.
“To say the least,” a woman said. “The rats have been long gone, died out, but everybody in that area was killed. We try to stay out of that part of the country.”
“What’s your name, friend?” a cowboy asked.
Jordy grinned.
“Ben Raines.”
The knot of people grew still and silent. The man who had first waved and spoken to Ben shuffled his booted feet. “General Ben Raines?”
“Yes. But why don’t we just keep it Ben?”’
“Mr. Raines,” a woman stepped forward, “you like stew?”
“I sure do, ma’am.”
“Then let’s eat.”
Rani looked at the body of the man she’d just shot through the head. She recognized him as one of Crazy Vic’s men. And she knew Vic and the rest of his gang would not be far behind.
“Robert, Kathy!” she called to the two oldest of her adopted brood. “Help me drag this body over there and hide it.”
She gave Robert, twelve years old, the man’s pistol, and Kathy, also twelve, the man’s rifle. Rani was working so fast she wasn’t thinking properly.
“Rani?” Kathy said. “This man had to get here someway. He sure didn’t fly. He probably hid his car or truck.”
Rani gently ruffled the girl’s hair. “Good thinking, Kathy. Pray it’s a truck.”
It was a king-cab pickup. And best of all, the pickup started at the first touch of the ignition. Rani put her forehead on the steering wheel and said a little prayer.
“Prayin” ain’t gonna help none, cunt!” the man’s voice said.
Rani raised her head and looked into the mean eyes of a man.
“You kill Harry?” the man asked.
Rani nodded her head.
The man grinned. His teeth were no more than blackened stumps. “Didn’t lak him noway. Git outta the truck, bitch, and take me to that fine-lookin’ little big girl travelin’ with you. I want me a taste of young pussy. Then I’ll get to you.”
The man’s entire lower jaw disappeared in a roaring boom and gush of blood and bone. He was flung to one side, the blood from his wound staining the concrete floor.
Rani, temporarily deafened by the gunshot, looked around. Kathy was standing by the rear of the pickup, the .30-30 rifle in her hands. She had shot the man from a distance of no more than six or seven feet.
The man flopped on the floor, his boot heels drumming in agony. He tried to speak. Only horrible bubbling sounds came from his ruined face.
In normal times, the child would have probably been sick after what she’d done. But these were not normal times. Normal times would probably never come again. At least not in her lifetime. Kathy looked at the jerking, bleeding man.
“Get his guns and bullets, Miss Rani,” she said. “We got to stay ready for Vic when he comes. And you know he’ll be comin’ after us.”
“Yes,” Rani came out of her fog of shock. She took several deep breaths, calming herself. The kids had gathered around. God! she thought. What a pitiful looking crew. Her eyes touched Robert. “Robert, you find all the gas cans you can round up, start filling them with gas from those drums.” She looked at eleven-year-old Jane, pale and too thin, always susceptible to colds. “You help Robert, honey.”
“Yes, ma’am.” The kids scurried off.
