Jake started laughing when he saw who it was. West and Texas Red flushed with anger, but wisely kept their mouths closed.
Jake waved the leaders to one side and said, “All right, tough-boys. What happened?”
Jake stopped laughing as the story unfolded. He began getting madder by the second. Finally he waved the men silent.
Jake glared at the outlaws. “Do you mean to tell me-honestly-that one man, and one woman, along with a handful of snot-nosed brats, managed to beat back two hundred and fifty grown, fully-armed men?”
“That’s about it, Jake,” West said.
Texas Red said, “All that talk about Ben Raines being some sort of god, Jake. I don’t know. But something is damn sure spooky about him, and those that follow him.”
“I don’t believe that shit!” Jake snapped. But after this? … He shook that thought away. “You boys look like crap. Get some food in you and some sleep. We hit that skinny son of a bitch, that uppity broad, and them kids at first light.”
Ben and Rani sat in the yard of the old mine owner’s home. Rani did her best to keep her eyes from the piled-up bodies in the yard and on the porch.
“And you really think you and your followers can bring a return to civilization?” she asked him.
“The way it was?” Ben looked at her. “Oh, no. Never in our lifetime, Rani. Probably not even the grandchildren of those kids in the house will know civilization the way we knew it. But those of us who believe strongly enough can carve something out of the ashes. We don’t have to be alone in that, either. Sometime within the next few months, we’ll start setting up the outposts I told you about. It’s a start,” he said philosophically.
“Where would the dream have been if you had not come along?”
“Oh, Rani, don’t give me more credit than I’m due. Believe me when I say I didn’t want the damned job to begin with.”
“You mean you tried to get out of it?”
“I sure did.”
She sat by his side on the stone fence and stared out at the emptiness around them. “Where will you go if … when,” she corrected, “we get out of this bind?”
“Wandering, probably.”
She abruptly stood up. “I’ve got to check on the kids.”
And you’d like to go wandering, too, Ben thought.
Like me, you’re tired of the responsibility. But you’re also tired of hunger and danger and of the feeling that you are the only person in the entire country who gives a damn about the kids. “When we get out of this,” Ben muttered. “You were right, Rani. If is the word.”
Ben spent the rest of the day checking weapons. He unpacked his rocket launcher and checked the grenades. Then, with a shovel in his hand, he prowled the area around the house, digging a dozen and a half punji pits, rigging the bottom of the pits with sharpened stakes, then camouflaging the opening the same way he’d done the shaft openings.
Using old wire he found, he rigged another dozen and a half ankle traps.
He emptied out several boxes of shotgun shells and made some crude bombs, filling them with rusty nails and the shot from the shells.
It was nearly dusk when he finished. He could not think of anything he’d missed in his preparation for war.
Other than wishing he knew of some way to keep the piled-up bodies from stinking.
“Nothing?” Ike asked, standing in the door of the communications building.
“Nothing, sir,” the young woman told him. “But for some reason, the static is not as bad as it was yesterday.” She looked at a chart. “It’s down by twenty percent.”
Gale and Tina entered the room.
“What’s the word on Dad?” Tina asked.
Ike shook his head.
“Ike,” Gale said, “you look like an old hound dog. Come on! You’ve known Ben for years. You know he’s an expert at getting out of tight spots.”
Ike grinned. “Gettin’ into them is a speciality of his, too.”
“Why does this Mississippi redneck always have to make something sexual out of everything people say?” Gale asked, winking at Tina.
“What’d I say?” Ike asked, rolling his eyes. “What’d I say?”’
“Uncle Ike,” Ben’s adopted daughter said, “you’re impossible.”
Cecil stepped into the room. “We have a revival in here?” the black man asked.
“Yeah,” Gale said. “With preachin” and singin’ and dinner on the grounds. That’d be a first for me, let me tell you.”
Ike put his arm around Gale’s slender shoulders. “I’ll make a Baptist outta you yet, darlin’.”
Gale looked at him, feigning great horror. “Do I look like a yold to you?” she asked him.
“Say that in American, darlin’,” Ike grinned. “My French never was very good.”
Ben opened his eyes and looked at the luminous hands of his watch. Four o’clock. He could not believe the night had passed without an attack from the outlaws.
He rolled from his blankets and pulled on his boots.
He climbed upstairs and relieved Kathy at her lonely lookout, sending her to bed.
Ben checked the dark terrain surrounding the house. He could not see any movement in the inkiness, but his senses were working overtime.
Something, or somebody, was out there. Waiting. Watching.
He didn’t need anyone to step down from the Mount to tell him who it was and what they were about to do. He waited and watched until five thirty.
He shook Rani awake. “We have company,” he told her. “Get up and very quietly wake the kids. Get them to their posts. I think they’re going to hit us-for some reason-at first light.”
The last thing Ben had done before calling it a day the afternoon before was to take the belts from some of the dead men and rig suspended harnesses for the M-16’s. From the ceiling, the harnesses would hold the M-16’s at the right height for the young people manning them; from the floor, the harnesses would prevent the weapons from jumping out of their young hands on full auto, and still keep the weapons aligned-more or less.
The gun slits Ben had built had been constructed with each young person in mind; just to the right height to afford the maximum protection from bullets.
Now, each person, with Ben being the exception, had twin M-16’s suspended and ready to go.
Ben was ready with his homemade bombs, his RPG launcher, and his stack of fully loaded automatic shotguns taken from the dead men; along with several automatic weapons and, of course, his old faithful .45-caliber Thompson.
Rani joined him on the ground floor with a cup of steaming hot tea. Together, they sipped tea and watched the horizon begin to lighten in the east.
Ben was impassive as the sky grew brighter, allowing them to view what lay before them.
Rani sucked in a hard gulp of air and let it out with a hiss. She clutched at his arm.
“I see them,” Ben said.
They were totally surrounded. Cars, trucks, vans, and motorcycles lined the area around the ghost town. What seemed to be hundreds of men stood quietly in a circle, facing the house from all conceivable directions.
“I’ve tracked you across five states, Raines,” Jake spoke through a bullhorn, his electronically magnified voice booming out of the dawn.
“Four states,” Ben calmly corrected.
Rani looked up at him. “Please excuse him,” she said sarcastically.
“But I’m open to a deal,” Jake said.
“I can just imagine what it might be,” Ben muttered.
“Yes,” Rani said.
“You hear me, you skinny son of a bitch!” Jake roared.
Rani looked Ben up and down andwitha smile, said, “You could stand to put on a few more pounds.”
