them.
No sooner had that thought passed through Ben’s mind than a tire blew on the trailer.
Thinking some extremely vulgar phrases, Ben changed the flat and silently prayed the old spare would hold until he reached a town and could search for another tire.
They reached Ruidosa with plenty of daylight left them; to his surprise, Ben located a tire in the looted,
burned, and deserted little town that would fit the trailer.
Something about this part of Texas was jogging memories in Ben’s mind, but as yet, he could not bring them to the fore. He knew it was something he’d found doing research years back, when he had made his living as a writer.
Then it came to him.
Near Redford, still many miles away, there was a huge private library. If he could just recall where it was. If he could bring the location to mind, he wanted to visit the place; hopefully, it had escaped looters. He knew that people who looted were not interested in literary flights of fancy; theirs was a much more baser regard.
Ben and Jordy made camp during the daylight hours just outside Ruidosa, ate dinner, and then moved on to a different location to camp for the night, halfway between Ruidosa and Indio. Ben had spotted no one, but the short hairs on the back of his neck were beginning to stand up-or so it seemed to Ben-like the hair on a dog’s back upon sensing danger.
Ben would sleep lightly this night.
“Got about a platoon of Raines’ Rebels bearing down hard south,” one of Campo’s scouts reported in. “They’re travelin’ in a hell of a hurry.”
“How you know they’re Rebels?” West asked.
“Tiger stripe,” the scout replied.
“Huh?”
“Raines’ people wear tiger stripe,” Campo told the man. “Black berets.” He looked at his scout. “Leave them be,” he ordered. “Tanglin’ with sixty of those people is like tanglin’ with six hundred other folks. Fuckers are crazy. And they travel with enough mortars and artillery to cause a lot of trouble.”
Campo was quiet for a few moments, slurping at his coffee. Then he smiled.
West caught the smile in the light of the camp fire. “What is it?”
“Even short-range transmissions are gettin’ pretty scratchy, right?”’
“Yeah. So what?”
“Asshole! Think about it. If we can’t get through on the radios, then neither can Raines or his people. They don’t know where he is neither.”
West grinned, the light from the fire giving his face an evil cast. “Oh, I got it. Right.” He rose from his chair and hobbled off to his tent.
“He ain’t the sharpest fellow I ever met, Jake,” a man said.
“Yeah. Did you guys round up any women?”
“Found a half a dozen.”
“Bring me the best-lookin” one. Then you pass the others around to the boys.”
And the screaming began in the outlaw camp. It would last all night long.
The night passed quietly and uneventfully for Ben and Jordy. At first light, Ben tried his radio. He could reach no one. The air was filled with static, overpowering all else.
And that left him with an uneasy feeling. Not for himself, but because of Jordy. Ben was not afraid of fighting one, or ten, or a hundred; he had been in so many firefights over the years since the collapse of the government, it was second nature to him. But he didn’t want any harm to come to Jordy.
He pondered his options.
He could hunt a hole and stay down. But smoke from campfires would eventually be spotted by some sharp- eyed outlaw. And he didn’t know how long this radio interference would continue.
He made up his mind.
“We’re pulling out, Jordy. We’ll take our chances on the road.”
Rani had reached the outskirts of Marathon and was desperately searching for a road that would bypass the town. She found an unpaved road leading off to the south and turned on it. After only a short distance, that road connected with the old scenic route. A few miles down that road, and she came to the bodies.
The naked men and women had been staked out on a flat rise. Wild dogs and coyotes were feasting on the cadavers. Using her binoculars, she viewed the ugliness. She could tell the bodies had not been dead for very long.
She reached for her CB mike, then pulled back her hand. Best to warn the kids in person, for even if she could send a clear transmission for no more than five hundred yards, someone else might be listening.
And they were getting too close to their destination to fail now.
She rolled down the window and waved the short convoy on past the hideousness. Leaving the dogs and coyotes to continue their feasting.
Overhead, lazily circling in the sky, ever patient, the carrion birds were waiting their turn at lunch.
Rani and the kids put some distance between the bodies and themselves.
Ben switched over to the scenic route, avoiding the town of Presidio. The going was slower than ever, now. The highway was choppy and littered with the rusting, broken frames of cars and trucks. And there was death in the air. It came to the nostrils of Ben and Jordy clear and pungent.
“Ben? …”
“Death, Jordy,” Ben told the boy. “And that other smell is gunsmoke. Been a battle around here, and damn recently, too.”
“Between who?”
“I don’t know. If I had to guess, it was between the good guys and the bad.”
“We’re in trouble, aren’t we, Ben?”’
“Kind of, Jordy. But we’ll get out of it.”
The boy shook his head. “I don’t know. I dreamed about that old man again last night.”
Ben felt a chill in his guts. He knew, he knew what old man Jordy was speaking of. But he had to ask. “What old man, boy?”’
“I seen this real old guy last year, Ben. God! He looked like he was maybe a hundred years old. Wore a robe and carried a big stick. Had a long beard. He pointed that stick at me and said, “Make good use of the time left you, boy.” Then when I looked up again, he was gone.”
Ben had seen the old man, too. Back in Little Rock.* He hadn’t known what to make of him then, didn’t know what to make of him now.
“What do you think that old fellow was trying to tell you, Jordy?”
The boy looked at Ben. His eyes were somber. “That I ain’t gonna live to be very old.”
“Nothing?” Colonel Gray asked his radio operator.
“Nothing, sir. Nothing but a solid wall of static, and it’s getting worse by the hour.”
Colonel Dan Gray’s eyes were worried as he looked toward the west. “That belt of radioactivity above us is causing it. And it might continue for weeks. It might never clear up.”
The young Rebel looked up. “I hope that shit stays up there.”
Another Rebel said, “I hope it goes away. Will it, Colonel?”’
“Yes,” Dan said. The Rebel’s face brightened. “In about five hundred years.” The young Rebel looked stunned.
The convoy was on the interstate, just outside Meridian, Mississippi, waiting for scouts to report back. Radio contact was impossible.
“You’re sure Nolan’s last broadcast said the general was heading for West Texas?” Dan asked.
“Southwest Texas, sir,” the radio operator corrected. “I’ll bet my life on it.”
“Or General Raines is betting his,” the Englishman said softly. *Fire in the Ashes
Chapter 16
Rani and her kids called it a day about twenty-five miles inside the Big Bend National Park, with Croton Peak to their west, Sue Peaks to their east. The Tornillo lay to the north. If their luck held, they would be in Terlingua the
