“You don’t think Wally has his share of guts, do you, Ben?” Judy asked.
“I’m sure he is a very brave man, Judy. But being a brave man and being a survivalist are two entirely different things. Wally has a reluctant trigger finger, that’s all. And at times like these, that is a drawback to those who might be depending on his reactions.”
“He’s killed before,” Judy defended her brother.
“When absolutely pushed to the wall and then only after putting his life, your life, or somebody else’s life in jeopardy.” It was not posed in question form.
“How’d you know that?”
“Wally’s about ten years older than you, right, Judy?”
“How’d you know that? Yeah, that’s right.”
“Wally remembers when a person could call a cop. His formative years were in the late ‘60’s and ‘70’s. He probably feels guilty just at the thought of picking up a big, bad gun to defend himself against all these poor misguided souls that roam the country, raping and killing and stealing.”
She laughed softly at the expression on his face. “You ever been married, Ben?”
The sound of labored engines was growing louder.
“Yes. A long time ago.” Long ago and far away, the line came to the one-time-writer-turned-warrior. “Here they come. Stay very still, Judy.”
“Campo won’t come in with his men,” Judy said. “He always lays back until it’s clear. I’ve watched him do it a half-dozen times.”
Ben nodded and watched the lead vehicle turn the corner, its ugly, squat nose poking arrogantly around the corner. The truck was not a one-ton truck but a heavier bob truck. The front and sides had been fortified with steel plate. Gun slits bad been cut into the steel plate. The muzzles of automatic weapons stuck out of the slits.
Ben watched as two more fortified trucks pulled around the corner. “They’re going to strafe first,” Ben whispered. Whispering was not really necessary. The trucks had no mufflers and were making enough noise to almost cover a gunshot. “You climb down into that bay there. I’ll join you very soon, believe me.”
Then Ben was alone as the woman scampered into the protective old bay. He heard the metallic sounds of radio speakers barking out their static. Another truck pulled around the corner, then another. He watched as the muzzles of the guns on his side lowered. He slipped into the concrete protection of the bays just as the machine guns opened up, the slugs tearing great jagged holes in the old wooden doors of the service area. Bits of broken glass sparkled in flight, showering Ben and Judy with shards of glass. Several of the big .50-caliber slugs struck the inner frame of the sliding door and knocked the door ajar.
The strafing stopped. “Remember, Jake wants that cunt alive. Fan out and search both sides of the block. They got to be here. They didn’t make it to McKinnon and they ain’t on the east side of town. Most out.”
Ben had tucked his truck into a ravine a half-mile out of the town proper and covered it with brush. The ravine wound around and connected with a dry creek bed that ran just behind the old station. That would be their escape route.
They hoped.
Boots crunched on the broken and littered street and sidewalks. Ben and Judy tensed as the boots stopped in front of the service station.
“Shit!” they heard a man mutter. “Ben Raines ain’t nowhere around these parts. And if n he was, I don’t want no truck with him.”
“You better not let Jake hear you say that,” another man said. “Jake hates Ben Raines.”
In the darkness of the bay, Ben felt Judy’s eyes on him, asking silent questions. Ben shrugged. So far as he knew, he had never met Jake Campo.
Hell, he’d never even heard of the man until that morning, back at the lake. But Jake may have been one of the many thugs and hoodlums and slime Ben had run out of Tri-States, years back, when he and his Rebels were moving in to start their own country within a country.
“Somebody’s been in and out of this building!” the shout reached Ben and Judy.
“Here, too!” another man called, the shout coming from across the street.
“Check “em out!” the order came down the line.
Judy looked at Ben. The man was smiling. Strange man, she thought.
Two tremendous explosions, one coming only a heartbeat after the other, rocked the old deserted town. Ben ran up the steps of the bay, a Firefrag grenade in his hand. He was pulling the pin before he reached the top of the bay, the spoon pinging away. He rolled the grenade across the street, under the lead truck, and jumped back, unseen, into the bay of the service station.
Shouts of confusion and fear filled the dusty air. Then a huge explosion ripped the air as the Firefrag grenade exploded, the incendiary capabilities of the grenade blowing the gas tank of the truck. The truck was lifted off its tires and tossed to one side, those inside trapped in the raging inferno. Their screaming echoed up and down the street.
That was Wally’s cue. Crouched in a building at the other end of the street, Wally tossed a burning firebomb into the debris piled around the drum of gasoline. He ran to the rear of the store, took aim with his pistol, and fired into the concealed drum. The fumes ignited, turning that end of the street into a firestorm.
Ben tossed a cocktail into the debris at his end of the street and leveled his Thompson at the hidden drum, pulling the trigger.
“Out the back and to the ravine!” he called to Judy.
She was running for the ravine as the gas drum exploded.
Ben tossed cocktail after cocktail into the confusing conflagration. Through the blaze, he could see Wally running for the ravine.
Without a second glance, Ben ran out the back of the station, throwing his last Molotov cocktail into the station, near where he had placed the materials left over from his bomb-making.
The hot blast almost knocked him off his booted feet. Ben stumbled, caught his balance, and continued running for the ravine and the truck.
“Get in front with Wally!” Judy panted, a rifle in her hands. “I’ll get in back and lay down cover fire if they follow.”
She knows more combat than her brother, Ben thought.
Ben dropped the truck into four-wheel drive, roared out of the ravine, and headed across a field. He found a dirt road that ran some distance from, but parallel to, the blacktop road leading out of the town. He stayed close to the woods and circled the town, coming out on the blacktop that would take them to the town of Tennessee Ridge. On the blacktop, he cut out of four-wheel drive and drove as fast as he could on the littered road, weaving and dodging the fallen limbs, and in some cases, entire trees that had fallen across the road.
He bounced onto Highway 13 and followed that for some twenty-five miles, until connecting with Interstate 40. There, he cut west. He didn’t stop until they had crossed the Tennessee River. There he pulled off the interstate and they all took a well-deserved breather.
Ben and Judy stood patiently as Wally bowed his head and spoke a short prayer, thanking God for His help in delivering them from the hands of savages.
Brother looked at sister. “Time for us to think about heading back home, Judy.”
“Wally,” she said gently. “We don’t have a home.”
“Home is wherever God sends me,” he said. “And I have to go back to spread His word.”
Ben stood quietly. He wasn’t about to interfere between brother and sister. And he’d seen enough lay preachers-and Judy had told him that’s what her brother was-to know that many times they were as stubborn as a mule.
“They’ll kill you, Wally,” Judy said bluntly.
“Perhaps. But if you go off to live in sin with this man,” he looked at Ben, “you’ll be worshipping a false god. You know what we’ve heard about him for years.”
Ben stirred as the old rumor flared up once more.
“I am not a god,” Ben said. “I am flesh and blood and bone like everyone else.”
“I shall worship, in my own way, the only true God, Wally,” Judy said. “The God whose words are contained in the Bible.”
Wally looked at Ben. “May I have a small bit of food for my journey, General?”
