No more was said of it until the column rolled onto the bridge. There, in the cold January winds, Ben told his people what had happened to the scouts.
Roanna told Ben of the AP messages she had received, and of her sending Jane Moore to Michigan.
Ben was openly skeptical. “Mutant beings, Roanna? Are you serious?”
“Yes, I am. Same copy that told of mutant rats. Received the same night from AP.”
Ben could but stare in disbelief.
“It’s entirely possible, Ben,” Cecil said, as the cold winds whipped around them. “I recall hearing some doctor say that after the initial wave of bombings that God alone knew what type of mutations the radiation would bring in animals and humans.”
When Ben spoke, his words were hard and firm. “Now I don’t want a lot of panic to come out of this. None of us know what happened to our scouts. They were killed. By what or by whom, I don’t know. What I do know is this: We are going to make Tri-States. Home, at least for a while. We’ve got some rough country to travel, and we’ve been lucky so far. I expect some fire-fights before we get there. So all of us stay alert.
“Well be traveling through some … wild country, country that has not been populated for some time-more than a decade. So it’s entirely possible that we’ll see some … things we aren’t, haven’t witnessed before. I hope not. But let’s be prepared for anything. When we
do stop at motels, we’ll double the guards and stay on our toes. But I won’t have panic or any talk of monsters. Let’s move out. Let’s go home.”
And now, more than a year later, as the Rebels traveled northward, they began to see more and more evidence of the mutants’ existence: destroyed stores that looked as if bands of madmen had descended upon them; absolutely no sign of human life; and that awful odor that was the trademark of the mutants. For a time, it was a drive of utter desolation. And it was making the Rebels nervous.
“Steady down, now,” Ben spoke calmly over the radio. “Keep your weapons at the ready and your eyes open. But stay calm and keep your cool.”
His voice and words and relaxed attitude seemed to do the trick.
“Keep your cool?” Gale looked at him, a smile on her lips. “Boy, that sure dates you, old man.”
“Wanna hear my imitation of Chuck Berry?” Ben asked. “Who?”
“Forget it,” Ben told her.
“Was he a singer or what?”
Ben ignored her. She grinned at him.
A few miles south of where the highway turned due east, Ben halted the column and put out guards while he consulted a roadmap.
“I was going into Keokuk,” he said to Colonel Gray and Lieutenant Macklin. “But now I don’t think I’ll take the chance. We’ll pick up this secondary road here and take it up to Highway 2, take that all the way until we
junction with 63. Then well cut right straight up the center of the state. Stay on 63 all the way into Minnesota.”
“You want me to send out advance recon, General?” Colonel Gray asked.
“No,” Ben said. “I think, if what Kat said is true, and I have no reason to doubt her, this General Striganov will probably attempt to contact us.”
“And then?” James Riverson asked, the M-16 looking like a toy against the hugeness of the big ex-truck driver.
“We’ll have to play it by ear. But unless provoked, we are not hostile. Let them open the dance.” He looked around for his radioman. He thought of Gale. He smiled as he realized his radioman was a woman. All right. Radioperson. “Corporal, get in touch with Ike back home. Tell him to put two companies on stand-by and have planes standing by ready to go.” He glanced at Colonel Gray. “Do we have two companies of personnel who are jump-qualified?”
“Only by stretching the point, sir, and by pulling them all in from the three-state area.”
“Mary?” he looked around for Lieutenant Macklin.
“Sir?” She stepped forward.
“You know of more riggers down home?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, that’s that,” Ben said. “Good idea while it lasted. Colonel, when we get back, I want you to personally train at least two companies of airborne.”
“Sir.”
To the radio operator: “Tell Colonel McGowen we can’t risk a jump if his people are needed. The pilots will just have to land the planes on a strip or in the damn road.”
“Right away, sir.”
Fifteen minutes later, Ben ordered the column out. A half hour later, they rolled into Iowa.
“Radar O’Reilly,” Ben remarked with a smile as they approached Ottumwa, Iowa.
Gale laughed. “I remember watching that show when I was a little girl. But mostly I remember the reruns. It was funny.”
“What did you do directly after the bombings of ‘88?” Ben asked.
Gale thought for a time. She was so long in silence Ben asked, “First time you’ve talked about it?”
“Yes,” she replied, the word just audible over the highway rush.
“If it bothers you, don’t speak of it.”
“No. I think it’s time. It’s not all that great, anyway. I mean, as compared to what happened to a lot of other people.”
Ben let her gather her thoughts.
“I was sixteen,” Gale began. She cleared her throat and spoke louder, firmer. “Sixteen. I didn’t know crap about the real world. I was still going to a damn summer camp when I was fifteen years old. That summer I didn’t go to camp. Raised so much hell with my parents they finally threw up their hands and told me I was impossible.
“On the day … the day it… happened, I was out driving with a girlfriend. We went into a panic. We just couldn’t believe it was happening. We were way out in the country, miles out of the suburbs. But when we tried to get back into the city, all the highways and streets were blocked for miles. I tried shortcuts, got lost. Then I
calmed down some and pulled an E.t. Managed to call home. My mother said my father was at the hospital, working. I remember she was very calm. She told us not to attempt to enter the city, but to drive into the countryside-even further out than we were-get miles from St. Louis. She said to get food and bottled water and clothing-if I didn’t have the money to buy them, steal them. I was shocked. Really. This was my mother telling me to steal. She said to find a sturdy house or barn, hide the car, and hide ourselves. Don’t come out for anything or anybody. She said it might take days for this thing to wind down. Something like that.”
“Your father was a doctor?”
“Yes. A surgeon. A very good one. My mother was a psychologist. I still remember how incredibly calm she was over the phone. Anyway, the girl I was with, Amy, she became unglued. Said she wasn’t going anywhere except back into the city. She jumped out of the car. I tried to stop her. I yelled at her and screamed at her. She just kept on running. I never saw her again.
“I drove … I guess maybe thirty miles from the city. Then I stopped at a country store and got gas. No one was there. It was eerie. I mean, the place was deserted. I rummaged around and got all sorts of food and bottled water and pop and clothes and stuff. I felt so … so guilty about just taking it. So I put all but five dollars of my money on the counter and left.
“I drove. Just drove aimlessly. Ben, to this day I can’t tell you how long I drove, but it was fifty or sixty miles further from the city. And I can’t tell you where I finally hid. It was terrible, though, I can tell you that. I hid like some animal in this barn. I mean, I never left that place. I had hidden my car, a little Chevy, in some kind of stall
thing and covered it all up with straw and hay and stuff. Except to go to the bathroom and to wash my face and hands, I stayed the whole time up in the second floor.”
“The second floor of a barn?” Ben questioned, looking at her.
“Whatever you call it.”
The loft.”
