“The nation’s elderly have been getting crapped on for years, Gale,” he said. “Right up to and including 1988.” He spat on the littered sidewalk. “A goddamned criminal gets better treatment and has more of his rights protected than the nation’s elderly.”
She had looked at him in the fading June sunlight and replied, “Maybe you’re not so tough after all, Ben Raines.”
He had not replied. But his thoughts had been flung back to the spring of “89, when he had been traveling with a very idealistic young lady by the name of April. He had found her in Florida and gotten rid of her in Macon, Georgia. He had been relieved to see her go. But before they had parted company, never to see each other again- and Ben did wonder, occasionally, what had happened to April-they had happened upon a
small gathering of elderly.
“As to our troubles, Mr. Raines,” Ms. Nola Browning, an elderly schoolteacher had told him, “it seems we have a gang of hoodlums and roughnecks roaming the countryside, preying on the elderly-those who survived God’s will, that is.”
“They’ve been here?” Ben questioned. “Bothering you people?”
Ms. Browning, who had been an English teacher for fifty-five years, then told Ben and April that yes, the hoodlums had indeed been bothering the elderly. They had raped and tortured some of the members of the small group. And they were coming back to perform some, well, perverted acts on the person of one Mrs. Carson, a very attractive woman of sixty-five. There were fifteen hoodlums, and only one Ben Raines. So what could he hope to do?
Ben smiled, and Ms. Browning noted that his smile was that of a man-eating tiger who had just that moment spotted dinner.
“Oh, I imagine I can think of something suitable for them, Ms. Browning.”
Ben had killed all but two of the punks; the elderly had hanged them.
Ben wondered how long the old people had survived after he left them.
Ben pulled his thoughts to the present as he continued to stare into the darkness. The darkness seemed void of any life. He wondered about the people left
alive, not just in Poplar Bluff but around the nation. How many had made it? He did some fast math. Was a half million shooting too high? Only a few percentage points of the population. And was it the responsibility of Ben Raines to take every damned one of them under his wing like helpless chicks to raise?
Resolution stiffened within him. No, it was not. Then compassion touched him. If he-or someone like him-did not do it, where was civilization heading?
Back to the caves? Probably. Already, Ben knew, the nation was well into a generation of young men and women whose education was spotty, at best.
Ben Raines could not attempt to educate the entire nation. But he could start with his own people. If time would allow it.
And he had doubts about that.
He sighed, the soft expelling of breath lost in the whispering of the night wind. Again, his thoughts drifted back in time, bringing a smile to his lips.
All he wanted to do was travel the nation after the bombings, as a writer, from coast to coast, border to border, chronicling the events, talking to the people, putting their opinions and his views down on paper, in the hopes that someone, sometime in the future, would take the time to read it.
Instead, he had found himself as the leader of a people. And he had not wanted the responsibility.
But maybe it was his responsibility. Perhaps that was his purpose in life. But as he thought that, the ageless question rose silent in his mind, as it had done so many times: Why me?
As usual, he could find no answer.
Ben hefted the old Thompson, shifting the weapon from right hand to left. The submachine gun, modeled after the old 1921 Thompson with several improvements added over the years had been called the Chicago Piano in its heyday. It was as closely identified with Ben as the FBI had been with J. Edgar Hoover. Ben did not know, could not have known, that the Thompson was held in almost as much awe as the man who carried it, that youngsters believed the weapon held some special power. There was not a child in the entire Rebel-controlled areas who would have touched the weapon.
And quite a few adults felt the same way.
Ben Raines did not look his true age, nor did he feel it-except in memory. Discounting the light touch of gray in his hair, Ben looked years younger than he was. And he was in excellent physical shape, just as randy and horny as any young buck.
He fought back a smile in the gloom of night. Perhaps his true mission in life was to procreate the earth.
He turned at the sound of footsteps behind him. Doctor Carlton.
“I’ve checked out the survivors here as best I could, General,” the young M.d. informed him. “They’re scared and suffer from lack of confidence-life’s beaten them down pretty badly-but surprisingly, their physical condition is good.”
“Do they know how they beat the plague?”
“No. But Ms. Roth took the same type of medicines we took.” He laughed softly. “That, General, is one feisty lady.”
“I’ve noticed. Thank you, Wes. Oh, by the way, do you know if the teams found suitable transportation for the survivors?”
“Yes, sir. And they are eager to join us.” He hesitated for a moment. “General, the people are scared, sir. Even after the bombings of ‘88, we still had some form of government, some hope, if you will. Now they have no government, nothing to look forward to, no one to tell them what to do, and they don’t know what to do.”
“The de-balling of America,” Ben muttered under his breath, the words tossed unheard by the breeze.
“Beg pardon, sir?”
“The government got what it wanted,” Ben told him. “The goddamn liberals and the goddamned lawyers and the goddamned courts succeeded in de-balling the American people.”
“That’s a sexist remark if I ever heard one.” The voice came out of the darkness.
Neither man had to turn around; they both knew who it was. Ben said, “You wander around out here in the dark, Ms. Roth, around my people, and you’re very likely to get your butt shot off.”
“The de-balling of the American people, Mr. President?”
“Ms. Roth,” Ben said patiently, “I am not your president.”
“For a fact. I damn sure didn’t vote for you,” she told him.
“I don’t recall anybody voting for me, Ms. Roth.”
“Do you always carry that gangster’s gun around with you, Mr. President?”
Ben kept his patience. He sighed heavily. “I’ve found it to be the wisest thing to do, Ms. Roth.”
Dr. Wes Carlton found his cue. “I think I’ll say
goodnight,” he said. He quickly disappeared into the darkness.
“Coward,” Ben muttered to his fast-vanishing back.
“What if I don’t want to accompany you and your Rebels, Mr. President?” Gale asked. She stepped closer to Ben. A very slight figure in the dark.
“Then you may stay here.”
“You’ll leave troops behind to protect me?”
“Hell no!”
She stamped a foot. “Mr. President, I think you are-was
Ben cut her off. It would turn out to be one of the very few times he would be able to do that. “Goodnight, Ms. Roth. Go to bed, Ms. Roth. We pull out at 0700, Ms. Roth.”
“What the hell is oh-seven hundred, Mr. President?”
“Seven o’clock in the morning, Ms. Roth.”
“Where are we going?”
“Why don’t you just let it be a surprise?”
“I don’t like surprises.”
Ben turned to walk away. “Give the old college try, Ms. Roth. Boola-boola, and all that.”
Ben did not see her tongue sticking out at him or the perfectly horrible-looking face that she made next.
