up, people. We’ll make it work again. On a smaller scale, certainly; but we will make it work once more.”
The Rebels stood in silence for a few moments, then slowly began to disperse. Denise stood with a wistful expression on her face. “I just want to live in peace,” she said. “Yet here I am carrying guns. It’s crazy, General.”
“Crazy world, Denise. But it’s always been my belief that the olive branch of peace only gets partial attention. Especially to people who aren’t really interested in peace. It gets their full attention if the other hand is holding a gun.”
“But isn’t one the contradiction of the other?” she asked.
“So is the term fair fight.”
She laughed and turned to leave. “Wish us luck, General.”
“Break a leg, kids.”
She walked away to join the other young people in one final check of supplies and equipment and weapons.
“When I first heard about Tri-States,” Gale said, moving to Ben’s side, “I thought what you people were doing was monstrous.”
“Little liberal got all outraged, eh?” Ben smiled at her.
“That’s putting it mildly, Ben.”
“Our success stuck in the craws of government, Gale. They just couldn’t stand our proving them wrong on nearly every social issue they had advocated and bled the taxpayer to implement and keep going for years. Government just couldn’t believe we could bring it all back to the basics and make it work. But we
did and it outraged them.”
“And you are going to do it again, Ben.” It was not put as a question.
“If I can.”
The man and woman stood in silence for a few moments. Stood and watched as the young people began leaving. Gale said, “I wonder if they know what they are facing?”
He took her small hand in his. “No. No, they don’t. But those that survive this will grow wise to the ways of this ravaged planet very quickly, I am thinking. Either that or die.”
Gale glanced up at him, horror evident on her face. “Those that survive?”
“We will never see thirty to forty percent of them again,” Ben said flatly.
“Knowing that, you still sent them out?” There was genuine outrage in her voice.
“It had to be, Gale. I tried to tell them what they were going up against, but I’m not sure how much of it registered on them. I really hope my words sank in. We’ll know when we see the number that return.”
“I can’t believe you would do something like that, knowing that many of them faced death, would be sure to die.”
“The survivors will make it. The rest will either get tough or die. That’s the way of the world now. Those that don’t have the right stuff will die along the way. There is no momma to write home to, now, honey. No USO, no Red Cross, no State Department. This nation, the very laws upon which it was founded and which the high courts and our elected leaders chose to spat upon for decades, is standing on the brink, teetering,
first in one direction, then the other. A lot of people will die before any type of democratic process is ever again in force. If, in fact, any type of democratic government is ever again adopted. And I have very grave doubts about that. Right now, Gale, this moment, we are facing the greatest challenge since the bombings of ‘88. And if we don’t win, we can all kiss any hope of freedom and democracy goodbye.”
She looked at him. Blinked, then smiled. “Thank you, Professor Raines,” she said. She rose up on tiptoes and kissed him.
The small column, now minus the young people from the college, backtracked to Ottumwa. There, Ben told the villagers what was soon to go down.
“What do you want us to do, General?” he was asked.
“I’d like for you to come with us, back to Tri-States.”
The people of Ottumwa had already discussed this. The man shook his head. “No, sir, we won’t do that. This is our home, and we have agreed to die defending it. We may be making the wrong decision, but we’re going to stand firm.”
Ben knew there was no point in arguing. He shook hands with the spokesman and pulled out, heading south, leaving them with their shotguns and hunting rifles. Against trained troops and experienced combat officers, with mortars and long-range howitzers. Maybe, Ben figured, just maybe, if they were lucky, and had the time to group before the IPF hit them, they might last six hours. If they were lucky. But Ben
could understand the desire to defend homes and a free way of life.
Ben ordered his column to head west until they intersected with Highway 65, then to cut down into Missouri, staying to the west of Kansas City by about sixty miles, for Kansas City was radioactive and would be for centuries. During the trek, they found survivors in Princeton, and Trenton, and about a hundred in Chillicothe. Thirty families elected to go with the Rebels, the rest stayed, despite Ben’s warnings they didn’t have a prayer of defeating General Striganov’s IPF.
But they would not leave their homes.
The column crossed the Missouri River and found more than a hundred people at Missouri Valley College. It was there Ben made up his mind, there Ben put the smugglings of his brain to rest.
“Get me General Striganov,” he told his radio operator. “You’ll have to search the bands, but I feel sure he’s got people waiting to hear from me.”
“Yes, sir.”
She began searching the bands, carefully lingering over each frequency. She would broadcast for a few moments, then listen, seeking some reply.
Ben looked over the band of people on the campus of the old Presbyterian college. They were a grim-looking lot. Most of them wore a defeated look, and once more, that flaw appeared in Ben. He was not now and had never been the type of man to give up. No one who was ever a part of any hard-line special military unit was a quitter. One could not make it through the training by being a quitter, and very few special troops have anything but contempt for a quitter. Past training had been too brutal, too dehumanizing
for a man to face failure by just rolling over and giving up.
With very rare exceptions, no man who was once a part of any tough military unit, the elite, if you will, will ever beg or quit in a bad situation. And they do not like to be associated with those that do.
Ben shoved his personal feelings back into the dark recesses of his mind and asked, “Where are you people from?”
“South Dakota, mostly,” a woman replied. “Aberdeen-Watertown area. Thought we were making a sort of life for ourselves. Then the IPF came in. They suckered us, General Raines. They were nice, at first. Real nice young people. They helped us. But our minister, Ralph Dowing, he was the first to figure them out, what they were really all about and up to. He called them on it. They didn’t do much about it, at first. No rough stuff, nothing like that. But we noticed that after that, they all started carrying automatic weapons. So my husband-no, he’s not here, he’s dead-he started carrying a pistol wherever he went. He and several other men. They-the IPF’-THEY didn’t like that. They told my husband they would rather he not wear a gun. They would protect us if the need arose. My husband told them he didn’t give a jumping good goddamn what they liked or disliked or wanted.” She wiped a hand across her face and sighed heavily. “Shortly after that, there was an accident-so the IPF called it. My husband was run over by a pickup truck. The IPF said my husband fell in front of the truck.” She shook her head. “It was no accident, General. He was deliberately killed to get him out of the way.”
“Yes,” a young man standing beside her said. “Then
they started rounding up all the privately owned guns. That’s when we started to fight them. But let me tell you, General Raines: They’re tough and mean. And Lord, are they quick. Those of us you see here got out just in time, “bout fifty of us. We picked up the other people outside Watertown. Same thing happened to them. General, what in the hell is going on?”
Briefly, Ben told them what he knew. He could see by the expressions on their faces many did not believe him, but the majority did.
“I’ve got General Striganov’s HQ, sir,” the radio-operator called from the communications van.
