Mary was outwardly calm, but her pale face betrayed her inner feelings. “I was told you don’t believe in fucking around, General.”
Ben smiled. “That depends entirely on the connotation one places on that vulgarity, Mary.”
Her mouth closed with a snap.
“Let’s roll it!” Ben yelled.
At Poplar Bluff, Missouri, the Rebels found two
dozen or so survivors. They were not in good shape.
“Can you help us?” a man asked. There was a whine to his voice that cut at Ben’s nerves.
The group consisted of nine men, fourteen women, and half a dozen young people and babies. They all looked to be in sad shape.
Ben’s first emotion was pity-but only for the children, not for the adults. Every good man has his fault, and that was Ben’s. He could not work up pity for a grown man that did not know how to survive. It was his flaw, and he knew he possessed it.
“What do you want us to do?” Ben asked, his tone harsher than he intended.
The speaker appeared to be in his early-to-mid-thirties, in reasonably good physical shape. Indeed, most of the men appeared in good physical shape. But they were dirty and stank of filth and body odors.
Don’t be too harsh, Ben silently cautioned himself. You don’t know what they’ve been through.
The question seemed to confuse the man. “Why-help us.”
“In what way?” Ben asked.
The man backed away several steps. “You’re just like all the rest,” he said, an accusing tone to his voice. “I-we-thought the government would help. But they haven’t. You look familiar. Who are you, mister?”
Ben ignored the question. “There is no government.” His words were deliberately harsh. “How long does it take for that to sink into you people? Goddamn it, you’ve got to help yourselves this go round. The government doesn’t exist. It was suspended some months ago, along with the Constitution and the Bill
of Rights. It probably will never exist again, not in the way you people remember it. You survived the bombings of ‘88, what the hell happened to your guts this time around?”
The man began crying, the tears cutting trenches down his dirty cheeks.
They disgusted Ben.
Ben looked around for Colonel Gray. “Dan, we’ll bivouac here in the city. Doctor Carlton-was he glanced at a young M. D.-“after these people have bathed this filth off, check them out-all of them. Then see to it they are fed. They all appear not to be able to take care of themselves.” The last was said very sarcastically.
“Hey, mister!” a woman with a small baby in her arms yelled to Ben. Anger was evident in her voice. “Just who in the hell do you think you are, anyway? And what do you know about what we’ve been through these past months? Yeah, we look pretty bad, I know all that. But we’ve been on the run for two months. A gang of motorcyclists have been killing and raping and kidnapping around here. They’re all armed with guns. Then over at Lake Wappapello there’s about fifty or sixty people that blew in here from I don’t know where. They’re murderers and rapists and scum. Mister whoever-you-are, the government collected all the guns some years ago. Where have you been, under a rock? What in the hell are we supposed to fight with, you bastard!”
Ben smiled at her outburst. Here was one with some guts. He looked at her without speaking. She would maybe hit five feet-ninety-five pounds to a hundred, if that much. But definitely female. She had more fire in her than all the others combined.
Ben walked over to her. She stood her ground and met his gaze without flinching. “What’s your name?”
“Gale Roth. And that’s G-A-L-E.”
Ben chuckled. “I can damn sure see why it’s spelled that way. Your husband among these tigers?”
“I don’t have a husband. Never been married. You going to make something out of that, too?”
Ben laughed openly as he studied her. Black, angry eyes, very short dark brown hair, a sensuous mouth. And a dirty face. Made her look like a tomboy. From the neck up.
She glared at him. “If you’re quite through undressing me, mister-what’s your name?”
“Ben Raines.”
The woman paled, stepped back, opened her mouth, then closed it without speaking. She appeared to be in mild shock at the mention of his name.
“A speechless Jew,” Ben needled her, and from somewhere in the ranks of the Rebels came a laugh. The laugh sounded suspiciously like Leon Lansky’s laugh. “I believe I’ve met a first.”
Gale stuck out her chin. “Well… fuck you!”
Ben laughed and held out his hands and the baby came to him. Of them all, Gale and the baby appeared to be the cleanest, but neither of them could be called a rose.
“Is the child in good health?” Ben asked.
“As well as could be expected. I’m a nurse, so I know something about health.” She was still very defiant. “Are you going to take my baby, Mr. President?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Gale. Of course I am not going to take your baby. And I am not your president.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she mimicked him, “of
course you are. I haven’t heard of anyone calling any special elections to replace you.
Everyone within hearing range could feel the electricity popping back and forth between the man and woman. Especially the man and the woman.
And neither of them could really understand it.
Not yet.
Ben looked around him, meeting the staring eyes. “What the hell is everyone looking at? You have your jobs-get moving!”
“Right-o, General,” Colonel Gray said with a smile. “All right, lads and lassies, get cracking, now. Step lively. You civilians over there.” He pointed.
Ben turned back to Gale. The baby reached for the woman and Ben let him slip into more familiar arms. “Mrs. Roth…”
“Ms.,” she quickly corrected.
“I never would have guessed,” Ben muttered, “Ms. Roth, I will not apologize for coming down hard on men who will not fight.”
“They don’t have any guns!”
“Then they should have killed those who did have access to guns and then fought.”
“Now how in the hell does one go about that?” Out came the chin.
“One goes about that, Ms. Roth, by the use of booby traps, Molotov cocktails, dynamite, punji pits, C-4, rocks, clubs, bottles, chains, wire, ambushes….”
Awright awready-enough!”
“But first one must possess enough guts to do the deed with any or all of the aforementioned articles. And where are you from? Awright awready?”
“I was born in New York City. Moved to St. Louis with my parents when I was thirteen. I’m twenty-nine years old and this isn’t my kid. He belonged to someone else.”
“Is Gale your real name?”
She smiled. She was very pretty. Reminded Ben of an NBC correspondent he used to enjoy watching. Rebecca something-or-another. He couldn’t remember her last name.
“Of course not. It’s a nickname.”
“Well?”
“Well, what?”
“What is your real name?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“Oh, forget it. Leave it Gale. It certainly fits. You said the baby belonged to someone else?”
“She’s dead.” Gale did not elaborate.
Ben let it slide. “How’d you get hooked up with this bunch of losers?”
Out came the chin. She glared at him for a few seconds. “Mr. President, sir, General, whatever in the hell you’re called, has it ever occurred to you that not everyone in this world is as tough as you?”
“Ms. Roth, there are varying degrees of toughness. There used to be a football player, a giant of a man called Gorilla Jankowski. Gorilla could have, on any given day, without working up a sweat, broken me in about thirty-seven different and separate pieces, and then kicked my head the length of a football field-providing he could catch me. That’s one degree of toughness. But put us both on a jet on a HALO/SCUBA mission, where we had to drop in from about thirty-five thousand feet, free-falling down to seven