Don’t know how many. Over a billion, probably. Maybe more. Ham operators working. It’s bad. God in heaven-it’s bad.”
This message was repeated, over and over, in four languages.
“A goddamned tape recording,” Ben said.
A snarling brought him to his feet, the .45 pistol in his hand. A pack of dogs stood a few yards away, and they were not at all friendly.
Ben leaped for the hood of his truck just as a large German shepherd lunged for him, fangs bared. Ben scrambled for the roof of the cab as the dog leaped onto the hood. Ben shot the animal in the head, the force of the heavy slug knocking the animal backward to die in the street.
The dogs remembered gunfire. They ran down the street, stopping on the corner, turning around, snarling and growling at the man on the cab of the truck. Ben emptied his .45 into the pack, knocking several of the dogs spinning. Ben slapped a fresh clip in the pistol and climbed down. He got his .45-caliber Thompson SMG from the cab.
“From now on, Ben,” he said. “That Thompson becomes a part of you. Always.”
And now the young of the new century found themselves facing an animal explosion, with many of the animals mutant in size and nature. Flesh-eaters. And
the young, without benefit of parental guidance and formal education, without adults helping to shape their minds and lives and actions, and teachers to help shape the mush of their minds into facts, became even more savage than the usual child, for without education, training, discipline and love, we would all be savages.
This then was the shaping of the future generations of the world. The less than auspicious start of the long, slow drift downhill into ignorance and barbarism.
Unless one man could stem the tide, plug the dam, rejuvenate the fountain of knowledge. And do it all in time.
Ben Raines.
But this tragedy-that was all foreseen and forewarned, from Orwell to Meade-was not confined to the land that was once known as America. And to place the brunt of the blame solely on the young would be grossly unfair. For the same was occurring worldwide. In the once-civilized land called England, home of the Magna Carta and the birthplace of law, the Druids were once more flourishing, with the survivors of that once-beautiful and civilized land now robed and hooded, gathering at Stonehenge to ponder the mystery of centuries. And to worship there, all praising and calling to an unknown god. And to sit in caves, painting themselves blue with dye from the berries of wild plants, tracing dark and mysterious lines on their bodies in some ritual of a religion that until only a few years ago had been an evil and unknown memory in the dim reaches of their brains, only now springing forth to sit and snarl and pick at themselves
in the real but confused light of consciousness.
In France-or what was left of that germ and nuclear-torn country-the people had gathered and again broken off into formations of Burgundy, and Orleans, and Bourbon and Brittany; and, God save King Louis, into groups of Celts and Normans and Chouans and Gaul and Huguenots.
In Germany, there was not much left, for that country had taken the brunt of much of the nuclear warheads. But a few survived, and they raised their heads out of the rubble and ashes and roaming mutants and thought: There is no God, not the God we were taught to believe in and worship and praise. For if God did exist, He surely would not have permitted this. And there, as in so many other once-prosperous and reasonably civilized nations, statues and man-made Baal-like places and objects of worship began to spring up throughout the countryside, in basements and caves and underground burrows now inhabited by human beings; they would be called the Children of the Darkness. And they would worship the Prince of Flies, the King of Beasts, Lord of Filth-Satan.
Around the world, in Peru, India, Italy, Holland, Hawaii, all around the war-torn globe, many of the survivors began worshipping a false god, in the mistaken belief that they had displeased him or her in some manner, and it was now time for them to make amends … in some way.
In many cases, the amends were of the sacrificial nature-human beings.
Civilization was crumbling. Not yet dissolved-many years would pass before that would happen, many more battles involving Ben Raines and his
descendants. Civilization was not finished, but well on its way if something or someone did not step forward to take the reins of responsibility in a firm hand, provide direction and leadership and replace myth with truth, ignorance with knowledge, hate with love and compassion and justice. But that man had his hands full at the moment.
It was the third full day of fighting. Why the phrase came to Ben, he could not understand, for he had no idea yet that the enemy was beaten. But Perry’s message to General Harrison leaped into his mind: We have met the enemy, and they are ours.
I hope, Ben silently thought.
At that moment, a mortar shell burst very close to Ben’s bunker. The ground shook with a fury, sending bits of dirt and dust floating down into the hastily dug and sandbagged bunker. Ben did not flinch. He continued gazing at the battleground through field glasses.
Lt. Mary Macklin and Sgt. Buck Osgood could but look at each other and shake their heads. Ben Raines’s courage was unshakeable and unbelievable.
A sniper from the IPF lines began shooting, several slugs whining through the small opening in the reinforced sandbags.
Ben calmly turned and spoke to Mary. “Mary, have someone neutralize that long-distance shooter, will you?”
Mary’s hands were shaking as she rang up the mortar teams and called in the coordinates Buck gave her.
Mortar rounds began fluttering overhead as several
teams walked the rounds in, both from the north and the south.
The sniper was neutralized.
Ben was certainly no coward, though he did know the taste of fear on his tongue. But also knew that to show any cowardice in the face of fire would be highly demoralizing to his people. Therefore, he did not.
“Get me heavy artillery on the horn, Mary,” Ben ordered.
The colonel on the line, Ben spoke into his headset. “Let’s do it again, Bert. And this time let’s give them everything we’ve got. 105’s, 155’s, 90mm, 152’s, 81mm, and Shillilaghs. Keep pounding them until the metal gets so hot rounds are in danger. Keep pounding them until I give the order to stop. We’ve pounded their brains out for two-and-a-half days, let’s give them some more. Commence firing in one minute.”
It was as if the battered troops of the IPF knew something hot and heavy and lethal was in the wind, for the battleground fell strangely silent as Ben’s troops dug in deeper for the barrage.
The booming began from the rear of Ben’s Rebel lines. Within seconds, the landscape in front of them was transformed from a peaceful country scene to one out of the mind of a raging psychopath in the final grips of destructive madness.
Huge trees were flung into the air, as if ripped from the ground and hurled about by a giant child in a fit of temper. Vehicles and human beings were ripped apart and thrown high into the air amid an assortment of arms and tires and legs and fenders and severed heads and axles.
“Order all troops to prepare for chemicals,” Ben spoke into his headset.
The countryside became quiet, with only the moaning of the wounded and the smoke to remind anyone of the battle just past.
The battle just seconds away would be much quieter, but much hideous in the pain and suffering it would wreak.
“Now,” Ben said.
Moments later, the air was once again filled with the sounds of incoming death, as chemical warfare began from the side of the Rebels. The faint screaming and shrieking of the IPF troops could be heard as the acid and mustard and modified nerve gas touched living tissue and burned and ravaged and destroyed the flesh and the eyes and the organs of the IPF troops across the ripped and smoking and wasted no-man’s-land.
“High explosives,” Ben ordered. “Every third round white phosphorous.”
Then the screams of the IPF personnel began in bone-chilling earnest as the WP rounds began dropping, the
