presence.
“We don’t think we’re better,” she replied. “But we do believe we had a good society.”
“Perfect one?”
“No. I don’t think that’s possible with humans being the carpenters of that society.”
“Isn’t that profound?” Hartline said, his voice ugly with sarcasm. “Did you make that up in your pretty little head?”
“No. Ben Raines did.”
“I’m sick of his name!” Hartline yelled at her. “You hear me? I don’t want you to say it around me, you understand that?”
“Yes.”
He changed as quickly as the flit of a fly. He was now calm, smiling at her. He reached out and cupped a breast. “That’s nice, Jerre baby. I bet you could give a guy a ride, couldn’t you?”
“I … don’t know how you want me to answer that.”
“You like to fuck?”
“I like to make love.”
“Tell me about love, baby.”
“Are you serious?” she blurted. Then realized that was a mistake.
He slapped her.
Through her tear-blurred eyes she watched as the mercenary unzipped his pants and took out his heavy penis. She was pushed from her chair to the floor, on her knees.
“Kiss it, baby,” Hartline ordered. “Just pretend it’s a pork chop and lick it. Unless, of course, you’re a Jew. Then you can pretend it’s a bagel.”
He thought that funny and laughed.
Jerre bent her head.
With the death of President Addison, and the wounding of Ben and his appointment to the office of the president, Ike, Captain Gray, and Matt led teams into the Midwest to rescue Jerre. Hartline got out just in time, but his mercenary army had been routed.
Jerre and Matt returned to the West Coast, and Ben
began the awesome job of rebuilding America from the ground up.
Then the rats came, bringing with them the plague.
A year later came Striganov and the IPR
General Striganov punched a button set into his desk top. Seconds later, an aide stuck her head into the room.
“Sir?”
“Have my equipment laid out and my car made ready. Tell my guards to prepare for a move south. This time I shall personally see to it that President-General Ben Raines is destroyed.”
“Yes, sir,” the young woman replied.
But she was not so certain about the mission of the IPF as she once had been. So much of what she had heard about Ben Raines was disturbing. So many of the Americans believed the man to be a god-and that disturbed her. She had been taught from birth that the Christian God did not exist. Now the Russian woman was beginning to have doubts about the validity of that philosophy. President-General Ben Raines had been shot so many times, had been stabbed and blown up-still he would not die. Or, the thought chilled her, could not die. He had single-handedly fought and killed a massive mutant, and had come out of that fight without a scratch on him. And there was that story circulating about him having spoken to some sort of God’s messenger. That filled the young woman with dread. It caused her-and many more of the IPF-TO suffer bad dreams during her sleep.
No, the young woman did not look forward to traveling
south with General Striganov. She wished the IPF could have just stayed in Iceland and lived in peace. But she was more than just an aide to the general. She was his sex partner upon command. And she was a soldier, and she had her orders, and she would obey. Like a good soldier.
CHAPTER TWO
To the north, to the west and to the east, the IPF was running into more trouble than even the most cynical among them had anticipated. To the north, even though Striganov had sent four companies of IPF to fight the “grandfathers,” as the Russian had referred to the old soldiers, the IPF found they could not punch through the lines of the old men. The “grandfathers” were holding firm.
The old soldiers knew warfare and knew it well. Thousands of hours of actual combat lay among the men: They were experts in the art of ambush; experts in tactics; experts in producing and deploying explosives; experts in long-range sniping and experts in guerrilla tactics; experts in building and camouflaging hidden bunkers.
As one IPF commander put it, “The old bastards are there one minute, then they are gone the next. They just vanish. You never know where they might pop up: behind you, in front of you, at your flanks, snapping and biting like a small dog. Then they cut a
throat or two and disappear. I hate these old men. I hate this country.”
And the IPF troops, for the very first time, met the horror of true guerrilla warfare. The men and women of the IPF became fearful of entering the dark timber, for they had found the areas mined with Claymores. And the deep timber and brush contained deadly swing traps and punji pits.
On the fourth day of fighting in the north, what was left of the four companies of the IPF found themselves in the unenviable position of having themselves surrounded, with no place to run, no place to hide, facing either surrender or death.
To the west and the east, the young people fought just as cunningly, but with much more savagery. For most of the young had been on their own for years, and they had learned the hard facts of postwar: If one is to survive after a holocaust, one had best learn how to kill-silently, stealthily, and without mercy or pity. Most could just barely read and write, but all-boys and girls-were experts in the art of survival. Those that did not learn the art of survival while very young … usually died.
The boys and girls were small-due to years of bad diet-but they were quick, for they had lived their lives on the fringes of civilization, learning the savage lessons on how best to avoid the mutants and the sudden explosion in the population of bears and wolves and bobcats and mountain lions. Just as Ben Raines had learned back in
1988….
I’ve got to search the town for survivors! the
thought came to him just before he went to bed. Surely there will be somebody left alive.
The next morning, after shaving and showering and eating a light breakfast, he took his coffee outside and stood for a moment by his small house in the country. He viewed the silent scene that lay before him. Birds still sang and dogs still barked in the distance, and that puzzled him. A nuclear war that would kill humans and leave the animals alive? Not likely. So it had to have been some type of germ warfare. He had to find out what happened.
He went to several stores in search of a worldwide radio. But the stores had all been looted. He finally found one at the Radio Shack. He sat on the curb outside the store and studied the instructions on the operation of the radio. He turned it on. No batteries.
“Wonderful, Ben,” he muttered. “Marvelous presence of mind.”
With fresh batteries in the radio, Ben worked the dial slowly, going from band to band. Sweat broke out on his face as he heard a voice from the speakers.
The voice spoke in French for a time, then went to German, then to English. Ben listened intently, a feeling of dread washing over him. “We pieced together the story,” the voice spoke slowly. “The whole story of what happened. Russian pilot told us this is what happened-from his side of the pond, that is. They-the Russians-had developed some sort of virus that would kill humans, but not harm animals or plant life. Did this about three years ago. were going to use it against us this fall. Easy to figure out why. Then they learned of the double cross; the Stealth-equipped sub. That shot their plans all to hell. Everything became all
confused. If we had tried to talk to them, or they with us, or the Chinese, maybe all this could have been prevented. Maybe not. Too late now. Some survivors worldwide. Have talked with some of them. Millions dead.
