Neither did he see her toss the bird at him.
Then she smiled gently.
CHAPTER THREE
The convoy took Highway 60 out of Poplar Bluff, staying with it until they came to state Highway 21 angling off to the west. Ben wanted to stay with the lesser traveled roads, feeling more survivors would be found in the less-traveled areas. He was right.
As they slowly traveled through the small towns of rural Missouri, slowly edging northward, the Rebels found survivors: ten in Ellington, a half dozen in Reynolds, twelve in Bunker, four in Stone Hill.
“Do you know of more who stayed alive around here?” Ben asked a middle-aged man outside Stone Hill. The man had been hoeing in his large garden. He wore a .45-caliber pistol around his waist, and had picked up a bolt action .30-06 upon first sighting the small convoy. He looked as though he was perfectly able and willing to use either weapon.
“A few more,” he replied, relaxing when he learned who he was speaking with. “We’re trying to gather up as many as possible and rebuild. That is, providin’ the IPF leaves us alone.”
“The what?” Ben asked.
“Call themselves the IPF International Peace Force. They talk funny, with kind of an accent. Can’t rightly place it. You ask me, they’re just too damned nice. Ain’t nobody that nice to a perfect stranger “less they want something in return, or they’re tryin” to hide something.”
Ben kept his smile a secret. He thought: Leave it to a farmer. Rural folks could spot a ringer a mile off.
“They say where they were from?”
“Nope.” The man shook his head. “And I asked them flat out.” He spat on the ground. “Personally, I think they’re communists.”
“Why do you say that?”
was “Cause you can ask the same damn question to every damn one of them. The answer don’t never vary. It’s down pat-like they’ve been drilled over and over. A few folks around here have taken a shine to them.” Again he spat on the ground. “Personally, I don’t like them worth a shit!”
“Are they armed?”
“I’ll say they are. Well-armed.” He described the weapons.
“AK’S,” Colonel Gray spoke. “Or AKM-74’S. Maybe the AKS’S. Soviet bloc weapons.”
“Did they give you any names?” Ben asked.
“Yep. But first names only. No last names. And I got the feelin” they was lyin’ about the first names. I don’t like them people.”
A sergeant standing nearby mused aloud. “How in the hell did they manage to keep it a secret for so many years?”
“By careful planning,” Ben told him.
“Well,” the civilian said, “you probably right about that, Mr. Raines. But I’ll tell you this-all of you. We’re organizing around here. So far, it’s comin’ along slow, but it’s comin’. We’ve got about a hundred people so far, and we’re all reasonably well-armed and know how to use the weapons-and will use them. I’ve defended this place several times since the rats and fleas come last year.” He pointed to a graveyard in back of the house. “Them’s the ones who come to steal and rape and kill. They didn’t make it but just that far. Anyways, it’s them damn young people up to Rolla that’s playin’ footsie with the foreigners.”
“Young people?” Ben quizzed.
“Bunch of them have gathered up there at the old college. My cousin over to Dillard says his boy went to one of the lectures given by the IPF, come back home sayin’ it was communistic. The workers this and the workers that-free this and free that. I’ll be goddamned if I’ll see this nation go back to that kind of crap; fucking unions damn near ruined us back in the sixties and seventies. Quality workmanship was hard to find back then. Time the eighties rolled around, if it was made in Japan, buy it. If it was made in America, odds were good it wasn’t worth a shit.” He looked hard at Ben. “You still the president, Mr. Raines?”
“No,” Ben said. “No, I’m not.”
“Shame. You might have been the one to pull us all back together. I think you might have been the only one able to do it. You’re a hard man, but you’re a fair one. But now …” He shook his head.
“But now what, sir?”
“Come on, Mr. Raines-we’ve had it. Oh, I’m not giving up. Don’t you ever think that. But I’ve been
doin’ some arithmetic. Say, on the average, and this might be shooting high or low, ten percent of the American people made it out alive from the rats and fleas and plague. What does that leave us, Mr. Raines? A half million folks? A million? Most of them scattered all to hell and gone in little groups of twenty and thirty. No organization, no goals, no plans except survival of the fittest. No nothing. And the young folks!” He laughed bitterly. “Hell, you know how a kid’s mind works: They’re easy prey for anyone with a slick line, holding out a carrot, preaching love and peace and an easy time of it. We’re old enough, Mr. Raines, you and me, to remember the peace and love movement back in the sixties. The hippies and the flippies and the Yip-pies. No, sir. If the IPF people can reach our young, us older folks can bend down, put our heads between our legs, and kiss our asses goodbye.”
“I’ve got some three thousand fighting men and women who just might have something to say about that, sir,” Ben told the man.
“I don’t care if you’ve got thirty thousand,” the man stated flatly. “If a time has come, it’s come. Mr. Raines, you ever seen a young person-any young person of any generation-who would rather work than play? I haven’t, and neither have you. That’s why they’re young folks; they have yet to learn the work ethic.” He tapped the side of his head. “The IPF people, now, they’re smart-give them credit for that. I think they’re evil, but they’re smart. They’re sending kids into the countryside-nineteen, twenty years old, good-lookin’ young people. The young people are all blue-eyed and blond, and they’re pulling in our young folks faster than eggs through a hen.”
Something ancient and evil stirred within Ben. That remark about blond and blue-eyed triggered something … a memory recall. But he couldn’t pin it down. It would come to him.
The man was saying, “Now you on the other hand, Mr. Raines, you’re the picture of toughness, discipline, hard work-a fighting man. Many of the young people-not all of them, but many-won’t be able to relate to you, sir. They’ve had enough of war and disaster. And if these IPF people can convince them you stand for war and they represent peace, we’ve had it.
“Now, your people know what you’re doing is right; I know it and most people my age know it. But you’re going to have one hell of a time convincing a lot of the young people.”
Earthy wisdom, Ben thought. Plain, old-fashioned common sense. Why in God’s name did the American people ever turn their backs on this type of thinking?
“Are you suggesting I don’t even try to talk with them?” Ben asked.
“Oh, no. You can try. But I recall tryin’ to talk to my youngest boy back in ‘87. Like tryin’ to talk to a fence post. His mind was made up, and there wasn’t nothing I could say or do to change it. He pulled out one morning to see the world. I guess he seen it, “cause I damn sure never saw him again.”
Caught up in the hell of global warfare, Ben mused. “Anything else you can tell us about these people from the IPF?”
“Not a whole hell of a lot more to tell. I heard one of them talk about Iceland, wonderin” how things was goin’ back home. But if these folks is originally from Iceland, I’m a Baptist preacher.” He smiled. “And I’ve
been a Methodist all my life. Their leader is a man calls himself George. But I heard some of his people call him General Strogonoff. That’s not the right way to pronounce it. Something like that, though.”
“How do they conduct themselves?”
“They’re well-trained and polite. But I get the feeling they’d as soon kill a man as look at him. And the few black people left around here walk real light around them, as if they can sense something nobody else can.”
The memory recall leaped strong into Ben’s brain: Hitler. The master race. He kept that to himself.
Ben thanked him and the man returned to hoeing in his garden. Ben turned to Colonel Gray. “Dan, get Judy Stratmann and Roy Jaydot. Have them dress in jeans and tennis shoes-like the young people. Get them duffle bags or knapsacks and tell them to look trail-worn. We’ll pull back and bivouac in Greeley, keep our heads down. Tell Judy and Roy to find out what’s going on up at Rolla. We’ll sit back and wait.”
The Englishman saluted and left.
