close. Tony had visions of a rib-eye, rare. He shot the bull four times in the head with his .38.
After making a large mess with a butcher knife, Tony gave up his dreams of a rare steak. He couldn’t figure out how to get the hide off the ugly goddamn stinking brute. He found some chickens, only to have them peck his hands when he tried to grab some eggs.
“Mother-fuckers!” Tony yelled in frustration. He blasted the hens with his .38. Maybe he’d have to settle for fried chicken. But how in the hell do you get the feathers off them?
Tony pilfered the farmhouse, looking for guns and food. He found both. Plus a very frightened twelve-year-old girl. Tony raped her several times. He’d always preferred young pussy. Liked to hear them squall when he stuck it in. But this one wouldn’t quit hollering. Tony cut her throat. Stupid cunt. If she had cooperated, Tony reasoned and rationalized the issue in his punk mind, she could have made both of them some money. Guys like to make it with young chicks. A hundred bucks is nothing to a guy with a hard-on for young gash. Stupid cunt.
Tony couldn’t believe the next few months. The whole fucking world went nuts. People running around like scared rabbits. And the broads. Christ! They’d do anything for protection from the gangs that began cropping up all over the place.
Tony had never had so much pussy in his life. Black pussy, brown pussy, yellow pussy, white pussy. It was all the same when the lights went out
and a guy got it hung in there good.
Soon Tony had teamed up with a dozen other thugs, all about his age. In six months time, they had more than a hundred women of all ages. And a dozen boys for those who leaned in that direction.
President Hilton Logan almost screwed all that up for Tony, with Logan’s police state and secret agents snooping around and relocating the citizens all over the goddamn place. But crime will out if it’s worked right, and Tony was far from being stupid. He knew how to keep his head down and to roll with the flow. And who to pay off. And he knew to keep far away from Ben Raines’ Tri-States out west. Ben Raines was fucking nuts on the subject of law and order. Screw up in Ben Raines’ Tri-States and a guy’s chances of getting much older dropped to damn near zero.
Tony kept his people far, far away from Tri-States. And he hoped Ben Raines’ conception of crime and punishment wouldn’t catch on nationwide. There wasn’t just a little crime in the Tri-States. There wasn’t any crime. Period.
By the time Tony Silver hit his twenty-fifth birthday, he was on his way to being an empire-builder. An empire built on pain and the suffering of others, to be sure, but still an empire. And Tony had learned his hard lessons about the true wilderness. He wasn’t in Ben Raines’ league yet, but he was learning. His gang was more than five hundred strong. He ran all kinds of scams, from whores to gambling to extortion to dope.
When Tony was thirty, the bottom dropped out. First came the mutants-ugly bastards-then the
bugs and the rats and all that other gross shit. Tony had figured that if he could live through Ben Raines as president, with his high-handed tactics and methods of law and order, Tony could live through anything!
That bastard Raines was a law and order freak. Hadn’t the dude ever heard of loopholes and technicalities and all that other good liberal shit?
Guess not.
Christ, Raines was putting people against the wall and shooting them just for rape. How unconstitutional. Hell, Tony knew all cunts liked it once a guy got it in. Everybody knew that.
Tony and his gang of thugs and slime and punks lived through Ben’s short term as president of the United States by being very careful and keeping an extremely low profile.
But the fleas and the rats and the disease almost finished Tony’s career in crime.
But not quite.
Tony Silver bounced back, bigger and stronger than before. He now ramrodded a gang of more than a thousand men. Over a thousand of the most undesirable and socially unredeemable assholes ever assembled.
And Tony controlled all of north Florida and south Georgia.
“When are we going to return to the group, Ben?” Gale asked.
Truth was, Ben really didn’t want to go back. By nature, Ben was a loner, and the pull of the highway
was getting strong. What he really wanted to do was put Gale in the pickup and pull out, just the two of them. He wanted to be free of duties and responsibilities and overseeing rules and laws and regulations and moral conduct.
Ben sighed. He knew he could not turn his back on a group of men and women who depended on him. Even though he wanted to do just that. Wanted that so badly it was almost a tangible sensation at times. But maybe when his people were settled in and this power play concluded … maybe then.
“We head back when Cec gets word to me that the coup attempt is something firm. Gives me something I can sink my teeth into. That’s all I can tell you at this time, babe.”
“And when Cecil does that?”
“We go back and I take out Mr. Bennett, Mr. Willette and Mr. Carter.”
“Take out?”
“Dispose of them.”
“You’re a hard man, Mr. Raines.”
“Hard times, Ms. Roth,” he said with a smile.
Ben knew his plans could backfire, knew he was taking a chance going at it by this route. But he had known for some time many of the younger Rebels in his command were unhappy at the way Ben was running things. Ben was, for the most part, a steady type of man, a man who tried to think matters through, very carefully, before implementing them. Many of the younger Rebels were not too happy about Ben’s demands that they all receive some formal education. They reasoned that there were no more rocket ships to be built, no more searching for
the stars. If they were going to start rebuilding from scratch, it was more important to know how to build a house than to understand higher math.
Ben had told them he understood their feelings. He. also added, “But you will have to know how to read a blueprint in order to build more permanent structures.”
He got through to a lot of them. Some of them he did not reach.
But Willette had.
Most Rebels, of all ages, were really afraid of Ben. Afraid not to obey him. Rumor was the man was close to being a god. It not only confused them, it angered them, because if the man was a god, and everybody knew he was, kind of, then goddamn it, why didn’t Ben Raines behave like a god? Why didn’t he get himself a big ol’ house, with people to wait on him, and just sit there with that old Thompson submachine gun by his side, and let those with troubles come to him so he could solve them?
And that old Thompson was something to be feared, too. Only a few would even touch the thing. That Thompson was synonymous with Ben Raines. A part of the man.
And then General Raines really pissed many of the Rebels off by saying when they received some education , they would then see he was no god, just a mortal being, just like the rest of them.
Well, that was a crock of crap and they all knew it. The young man from the east, Ro, said Ben was a god. The young man from the west, Wade, said Ben was a god. Travelers who came in to seek refuge said monuments and tributes and places of worship were
built all over the nation-all erected toward Ben Raines.
That had to prove something. And nothing Ben could say would make them believe otherwise. The man was a god. Sort of. But … maybe a human god. That way Ben could have human emotions and stuff like that. But he couldn’t die. Everybody knew that. That was accepted as fact.
No, Captain Willette and Lieutenant Carter and Sergeant Bennett were right. Ben needed to be in some … special place. By himself. A place where he could just sit and hand down judgments and make decisions. But it would have to be a place befitting Ben Raines’ stature.
And none of the Rebels involved with Willette were too thrilled about Gale, either. She wasn’t right for Ben Raines. She just wasn’t the right woman. Goddesses were tall and blonde and … what was the word? Magnificent. Yes. Grand in appearance.
It wasn’t the fact that Gale was … well, not one of them. That wasn’t it at all. Didn’t have anything to do with it. That’s what Willette told them. Very convincingly, too.
And nobody thought to mention that of all Captain Willette’s followers, there were no blacks, no Jews, no
