Ben laughed at her. His smile vanished as one of the young scouts hurriedly approached.
“What’s the problem?” Ben asked.
“About fifty motorcyclists have blocked the road a half mile ahead, sir. They’re all armed.”
“Were they hostile to you?”
“Yes, sir. Said if I tried to push through they’d kill me.”
“Well, that makes my job easier. What do they want, son?”
“Women, sir. And guns.”
Mary tensed beside Ben, her hands tightening on her M-16.
“Tell them to clear the road and get out of the way, or we will forcibly remove the blockade, and them with it.”
“Yes, sir.” The scout used a bull-horn to relay the message.
“You don’t own the goddamn road!” The shout was electronically hurled back to Ben. “We got you outnumbered anyways. Give us your women and guns and you can drive on through.”
Ben looked behind him. Colonel Gray was standing in the center of the road, calmly reviewing the situation.
“Colonel Gray?”
“Sir?”
“There is a pile of garbage in the road ahead. Please remove it, if you will.”
“Sir.”
The Englishman saluted, gave an order, and a team
Colonel Gray put down his range finder. “Nine hundred meters,” he called over his shoulder. “Fire for range, adjust, then fire for effect. HE and WP. G.”
The mortars thonked and delivered Ben Raines’s reply. The highway ahead exploded as range was found and clicked in. Saddle tanks on the motorcycles exploded as Ben’s Rebels opened up with mounted ring-type .50-caliber machine guns, spraying the area.
“Cease firing!” Colonel Gray yelled.
The morning grew hot and still once more. Moaning and screaming from up the road drifted to the men and women of the Rebel contingent. Snipers began firing, stilling many of the cries.
Ben glanced at James Riverson. “Clear it out, James. We don’t have time to jack around with prisoners.”
APC’S rolled forward. After a few moments of automatic weapons’ fire, no more moaning was heard. A deuce-and-a-half with a front-mounted scoop rolled forward, lowered the scoop, and unceremoniously cleared a wide path through the smoking, bloody rubble.
Mary was outwardly calm, but her pale face betrayed her inner feelings. “I was told you don’t believe in fucking around, General.”
Ben smiled. “That depends entirely on the connotation one places on that vulgarity, Mary.”
Her mouth closed with a snap.
“Let’s roll it!” Ben yelled.
At Poplar Bluff, Missouri, the Rebels found two
dozen or so survivors. They were not in good shape.
“Can you help us?” a man asked. There was a whine to his voice that cut at Ben’s nerves.
The group consisted of nine men, fourteen women, and half a dozen young people and babies. They all looked to be in sad shape.
Ben’s first emotion was pity-but only for the children, not for the adults. Every good man has his fault, and that was Ben’s. He could not work up pity for a grown man that did not know how to survive. It was his flaw, and he knew he possessed it.
“What do you want us to do?” Ben asked, his tone harsher than he intended.
The speaker appeared to be in his early-to-mid-thirties, in reasonably good physical shape. Indeed, most of the men appeared in good physical shape. But they were dirty and stank of filth and body odors.
Don’t be too harsh, Ben silently cautioned himself. You don’t know what they’ve been through.
The question seemed to confuse the man. “Why-help us.”
“In what way?” Ben asked.
The man backed away several steps. “You’re just like all the rest,” he said, an accusing tone to his voice. “I-we-thought the government would help. But they haven’t. You look familiar. Who are you, mister?”
Ben ignored the question. “There is no government.” His words were deliberately harsh. “How long does it take for that to sink into you people? Goddamn it, you’ve got to help yourselves this go round. The government doesn’t exist. It was suspended some months ago, along with the Constitution and the Bill
of Rights. It probably will never exist again, not in the way you people remember it. You survived the bombings of ‘88, what the hell happened to your guts this time around?”
The man began crying, the tears cutting trenches down his dirty cheeks.
They disgusted Ben.
Ben looked around for Colonel Gray. “Dan, we’ll bivouac here in the city. Doctor Carlton-was he glanced at a young M. D.-“after these people have bathed this filth off, check them out-all of them. Then see to it they are fed. They all appear not to be able to take care of themselves.” The last was said very sarcastically.
“Hey, mister!” a woman with a small baby in her arms yelled to Ben. Anger was evident in her voice. “Just who in the hell do you think you are, anyway? And what do you know about what we’ve been through these past months? Yeah, we look pretty bad, I know all that. But we’ve been on the run for two months. A gang of motorcyclists have been killing and raping and kidnapping around here. They’re all armed with guns. Then over at Lake Wappapello there’s about fifty or sixty people that blew in here from I don’t know where. They’re murderers and rapists and scum. Mister whoever-you-are, the government collected all the guns some years ago. Where have you been, under a rock? What in the hell are we supposed to fight with, you bastard!”
Ben smiled at her outburst. Here was one with some guts. He looked at her without speaking. She would maybe hit five feet-ninety-five pounds to a hundred, if that much. But definitely female. She had more fire in her than all the others combined.
Ben walked over to her. She stood her ground and met his gaze without flinching. “What’s your name?”
“Gale Roth. And that’s G-A-L-E.”
Ben chuckled. “I can damn sure see why it’s spelled that way. Your husband among these tigers?”
“I don’t have a husband. Never been married. You going to make something out of that, too?”
Ben laughed openly as he studied her. Black, angry eyes, very short dark brown hair, a sensuous mouth. And a dirty face. Made her look like a tomboy. From the neck up.
She glared at him. “If you’re quite through undressing me, mister-what’s your name?”
“Ben Raines.”
The woman paled, stepped back, opened her mouth, then closed it without speaking. She appeared to be in mild shock at the mention of his name.
“A speechless Jew,” Ben needled her, and from somewhere in the ranks of the Rebels came a laugh. The laugh sounded suspiciously like Leon Lansky’s laugh. “I believe I’ve met a first.”
Gale stuck out her chin. “Well… fuck you!”
Ben laughed and held out his hands and the baby came to him. Of them all, Gale and the baby appeared to be the cleanest, but neither of them could be called a rose.
“Is the child in good health?” Ben asked.
“As well as could be expected. I’m a nurse, so I know something about health.” She was still very defiant. “Are you going to take my baby, Mr. President?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Gale. Of course I am not going to take your baby. And I am not your president.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she mimicked him, “of
course you are. I haven’t heard of anyone calling any special elections to replace you.
Everyone within hearing range could feel the electricity popping back and forth between the man and woman. Especially the man and the woman.
And neither of them could really understand it.
Not yet.
Ben looked around him, meeting the staring eyes. “What the hell is everyone looking at? You have your jobs-
