down south-Silver’s bunch, along with some of our own-could set up skirmish lines to hold Raines up until we got the job done up here. Yeah. I like it. All right. Let’s get to it.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
“Swing trap,” Ike told Nina. She stood quietly, watching the man work. It was obvious Ike had done this many times before. The sharpened stakes he had attached to the limber sapling looked lethal. She said as much.
“You bet they are. It’ll catch whoever trips it gut-high. I’ll build a half dozen of these. Plus some punji pits. I wish I had some monkey shit for the punji stakes, but they’ll do the job without it. Then we’ll leave signs we came this way, sucker them in. After they hit two, three of these little darlin’s, it’ll really slow them down. They’ll be afraid to move in the woods.” He laughed grimly, a warrior’s laugh.
Nina could certainly understand how it would affect their minds. “The dogs worry me, Ike. I’m scared of bad dogs.”
Rising to his booted feet, Ike smiled and held out the shotgun. “This is a dog catcher, sweetheart. If I they get that close, that is.” He secured the piece of rawhide that would trigger the trap. He once more grinned. “Somebody is goin’ to be awful unhappy about this. This is one stomach ache there just ain’t no cure for.”
Ike tore a piece of cloth from his shirt. He jammed
the cloth on a dead branch, sticking out chest-high on the old nature trail, actually a centuries-old Indian path. “That ought to do it,” he said.
They could hear the dogs far away, circling in confusion, attempting to separate scents. Their baying was frantic and angry, a frustrated yelping. There was a moment of near dead silence, then the baying changed.
“OK, kid,” Ike said. “The Baskerville Bastards have picked up the scent. It’s time for us to cut out.”
“What kind of a dog is a Baskerville?” Nina asked.
Ike shook his head. “Just a joke, kid. Forget it. Let’s go. Now the fun begins.”
She picked up her rifle and slung the bandoleer of cartridges around one shoulder. “You sure have a funny idea of fun, Ike.”
“I’ve heard that before. OK, baby-wiggle your ass.”
She looked at him and grinned. “Now?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Tony Silver was wild with rage. His humiliating defeat at the hands of Ben Raines was something he could not get off his mind. And he was taking his rage out on the new young girl, Lilli.
Tony had torn into the young girl savagely, her pitiful screaming only making him that much more angry. She now lay beneath the man, only occasionally moaning, a mewing, pitiful sound as Tony raped her brutally, again and again.
Finally exhausting himself, mentally, physically and sexually, Tony heaved himself off the child. Her blood dotted the white sheet. “You got good gash, baby,” he said. “But you need to learn to move your ass. You lay there like a goddamned log.”
Tony showered and dressed, stepped outside his room, and walked toward his communications room. “What’s the word, baby?” he asked the woman on duty.
“Sister Voleta’s people called about ten minutes ago.” She grinned nastily. “I told them you were busy.”
Tony returned the grin. “Damn right, I was. What’s up?”
“They’re sending troops down from the north.
You’re to mass everybody available and meet them at dawn, day after tomorrow.”
“Where?”
“On Highway 24. Louisville. It’s something about killing Ben Raines.”
Tony flushed for a moment, then regained his composure. “Must be something big in the wind,” he muttered.
“That’s all they told me, Tony.”
Tony met her eyes. He watched as the woman licked her lips. He smiled at her. “Yeah, Patsy, you can play with one of the new girls. Get someone to relieve you and go eat a pussy.”
“Thanks, boss.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Tony dismissed her with a wave of his hand. “Go on now. I’ll sit in here until your relief shows up.”
She left the cramped and littered radio room and Tony sat down behind the big transmitter. He changed the frequency dial and called his base in north Florida.
“Yeah, boss?”
“Roll two full companies out right now, Johnny,”” he ordered. “All the ammo they can stagger with. I want “em up here by noon tomorrow. You got all that?”
“Gotcha, boss. What’s up?”
“Killin” Ben Raines.” “Awright!”
Tony cut off the mic and leaned back in the chair. There was a grim smile of satisfaction on his lips. First Ben Raines would be taken care of. After that, Sister Voleta was going to get a bullet up her stupid
ass. After Tony shoved a dick up it just to hear her squall. He’d taken just about all the guff he was going to take from that bitch.
At first it had seemed like a good idea, linking up with her. Goddamned ex-whore from Nashville. She’d had some good ideas-at first. Now she was taking all this religious crap too seriously. Christ! The broad actually believed she was some sort of God. Perverted bitch. Tony knew all about Sister Voleta. Betty Blackman from northwestern Arkansas. A two-bit hillbilly singer who used her pussy to fuck every record producer and agent in Nashville trying to land a recording contract.
She had never made it. Instead, she turned to running a whorehouse.
Then the bombs came.
No doubt about it, though: Sister Voleta was a persuasive bitch. She began building a following right after the world exploded. Back then she confined her activities to the hills of Tennessee, gradually branching out as word spread. Now she had over two thousand followers. More than Tony, but many of Sister Voleta Betty Blackman’s group were yo-yos and fruitcakes.
But still dangerous.
Yeah, she was weird, all right. Tony sent many of the more uncooperative men and women up to Sister Voleta. She got her rocks off torturing them to death. But somehow the positions of the two had changed. Now Voleta thought she could give him orders. No way Tony was going to put up with that kind of crap for very long. Just no way.
It was too bad in a way, Tony mused, alone in the
silent radio room. The arrangement had been pretty good for several years. Till Voleta started gettin’ too big for her panties.
Well … all things must come to an end.
First Ben Raines gets his ticket punched. Then Sister Voleta gets sent to that big revival in the sky.
Tony laughed at that. “Pretty good, Tony,” he said. “Maybe you should have been a writer.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
“First we take care of Ben Raines,” Sister Voleta told her inner circle. “Then Mister Tony Silver gets put out of commission. But I want him taken alive.” Her smile was ugly. “I have plans for Tony Silver. He shall amuse us all … right to the end.”
The robed and hooded inner circle smiled and nodded their approval.
“Get word to our people in the timber. Keep up the harassment of Colonel McGowen and the whore-woman. Leave enough men in the timber to do that. I have given instructions for the bulk of our fighters. Go now. We all have much to do.”
“Ike’s alive,” Cecil’s voice crackled through the speakers in the communications vehicle. “Gray’s Scouts captured a man from the Ninth Order. They got the information from him. He’s in the company of a young woman whose boyfriend was killed by the Ninth Order, at Sister Voleta’s orders. He was sexually tortured and then burned alive at the stake. Ike’s leading his pursuers on a merry chase, so I’m told.”
