“The J stands for Jew?” Gale asked, a husky quality to her voice.
“Yes,” Nancy replied. “B for black. O for Oriental. H for Hispanic. I for Indian. M for mental defective. I’ve seen other letters but I don’t know what they represent.”
Ben felt sick to his stomach.
Gale was silently weeping.
Ben looked around at the silent circle, more than one man had tears in his eyes.
Nancy resumed her horror story. “Sam Hartline and his men took me, tried to make me tell what I knew about the resistance movement. But I didn’t-still don’t-know anything about it, other than that it exists. They … really had a good time with me,” she said, keeping her eyes downcast. “I … don’t know how many times they raped me or how many men. And women. The women would strap… would strap huge penises on and … rape me. There is something terribly perverted about many of those people-maybe all of them. I was raped in every way possible. Over and over. It got so I could sometimes block it out.
“They beat me, shocked me. They attached wires to my breasts and my … my genital area. The voltage was never strong enough to knock me out. It just hurt so bad. They forced objects up my … you know. I know they are doing some kind of experimental medical work up there in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Like the Nazis used to do way back then. But I don’t know what kind of experiments. Something to do with the mutants, I think. Mutants and humans.
“They kept questioning me, but I think they knew I was telling the truth. They just wanted to see how much I could take. I guess I’m stronger than I thought. What could I tell them? I didn’t know anything. I think I would have told them anything. Anything to stop the pain and the humiliation. The pain.” She
shook her head.
Nancy held up her left hand. All her fingernails were gone.
“I’m not a coward, but a human being has limits,” she said. “They finally stopped. Just quit. I thought I was dreaming. Maybe dead. I didn’t know a person could hurt so much in so many places. I don’t even remember the ride down to Missouri. When I woke up tied to that tree, I was naked and cold and hungry and sick. They left me with a little reminder of them. The men, I mean. They had attached a dog collar around my neck and defecated on me.”
Ben was then conscious of a pain in his right hand. He had clenched his fingers into a tight fist.
“I managed to get loose from the tree and found an old farmhouse and cleaned up. I wrapped up in an old quilt and walked down the road until I came to another house. I found some old clothes there. I found a gun and some bullets on a dead man and taught myself how to shoot the thing. I’m not very good at it, but I sure scared the shit out of some mutants, I know that. I hit a couple of them. Then they began tracking me.”
She lifted her eyes, looking at Ben. “They-the mutants-have some kind of intelligence, and some sort of communications system. They have to have that, because they were always one jump ahead of me.”
“Interesting,” Doctor Chase said. “That confirms what I thought all along.”
“And that is?” Ben glanced at him.
“The mutants have leaders, pack leaders, den leaders, if you will, who possess more intelligence than the others. And they have organized them; they have their own form of pecking order.”
“And the males like human women,” Gale added.
“How ghastly,” Colonel Gray remarked. “I believe I could have gotten on quite well without that knowledge.”
“And me,” Gale said. “Gross!”
“Best to know the type of enemy we are facing,” the doctor said. “And it appears we have more than one enemy.”
Chase did not look or act his age. His wife, a woman forty years his junior, could well attest to that. She had just borne him a child.
“What can you tell us about the IPF, Nancy?” Ben asked.
“Not a whole lot,” she admitted. “But I did hear the men talking some when they weren’t torturing me. Something about some new people coming in from Iceland. I kept fading in and out, but I think-no, I’m sure-they said several battalions.” She looked at Ben. “Does that help any?”
His smile held no humor. “Well, yes and no, Nancy. I don’t know the size of their battalions, but we’ll call it twenty-five hundred personnel per battalion. Let’s call several three. That would mean we now have approximately seventy-five hundred more troops to contend with.”
“My Lord,” Colonel Gray said after a soft whistle of alarm.
“Yeah,” Ben said. “I hope He is on our side in this upcoming fight.”
“We’ve been thinking that for five thousand or more years,” Gale said. “Believe me, sometimes I have serious reservations.”
“Let’s not tempt fate by becoming sacrilegious at
this stage of the game,” Ben said.
“For the first time in a long time,” Nancy said, “I feel a little bit of hope for the future. I feel like I’ve found a home.”
“Right.” Gale once more took her hand. “Believe me, I need all the help I can get with this bunch of schlubs.”
“Ben,” Doctor Chase said, “have you ever considered taking a hickory stick to her tush?” He jerked a thumb toward Gale.
Gale glared at him. “I didn’t know you had turned to wife-beating, Lamar.”
“Only when she needs it, baby.” Chase grinned at her.
Nancy laughed at this exchange, her first laugh in weeks.
Ben patted her gently on the shoulder. “You’re safe, now, Nancy.”
“Yes,” the young woman said. “But I keep thinking about all those poor people north of here who are anything but safe.”
“We’re going to do our best to stop the Russians,” Ben told her.
“I really hope God is on our side,” Nancy spoke to no one in particular. “I really, really do.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
The column covered only seventy-five miles the next day due to numerous equipment breakdowns and the worsening condition of the roads. The terrible roads contributed to the mechanical problems. The mechanics stayed busy, cussing as they worked frantically, for they realized they had no time to waste. Each hour meant someone in the IPF’-CONTROLLED areas was being tortured and killed.
Before limping into Rolla, Ben told Colonel Gray, “Take a full platoon in there, Dan. If you find any of the IPF or any civilian who has tossed in with them-kill them.”
The Englishman smiled coldly and knowingly, saluted and pulled out. The ex-British SAS officer was one of the most savage fighters in Ben’s command.
The first thing Colonel Gray observed just outside of Rolla was the body of a black man. He had been hanged by the neck and his features were horribly disfigured. A crudely lettered cardboard sign was hanging about his neck: “NIGGERS-STAY IN
YOUR PLACE.”
Sgt. Mac Cummings, a young black, swallowed audibly. “My momma used to tell me they’d be days like this, but she didn’t tell me they was goin” to come in bunches.”
Colonel Gray said, “When-or if-we find those responsible for this, Mac, you may lead the firing squad.”
“My pleasure, sir.”
A team lowered the body and a medic inspected the stiffened corpse. “Colonel,” he called, “this man’s been tortured and castrated.”
Sergeant Cummings made a low sound of anger and spat on the ground.
“Scouts out,” Colonel Gray ordered. “Heads up and steady on, now, lads.”
“And lassies,” Cpl. Anne Lewis reminded him with a smile.
“I could never forget the lassies.” Dan grinned.
“What do you want us to do with the body?” a medic asked.
“Leave it,” Dan said tersely. “It will be a pile of rotting bones in a month.”
Sergeant Cummings’s face registered no emotion. He knew they didn’t have the time to bury the body; and what the hell difference did one more rotting body make at this stage of the game? But he had never gotten accustomed to the necessary callousness.