hundred before our “chutes opened in order to avoid radar, use tanks and wet suits to swim ashore from about three or four miles out, crawl ashore on an unfriendly beach, slit a few throats, blow up a bridge or two, then successfully complete a silent op-a body snatch … all without being detected by the enemy. That is another degree of toughness. Do you understand the parallels I’m drawing?”
“He was trained to do one thing, you were trained to another.”
“Right on target, Ms. Roth.”
“But those men I was-am-traveling with, they weren’t trained to do …” She paused, a slight smile touching her lips. “Ben Raines-sure. You wrote a book one time-one of your best, if not the best, I think-called When the Last Hero Is Gone. In it you advocated compulsory military training, for everyone, male and female, starting immediately upon completion of high school, and you would have made a high school education mandatory. The length of service would have lasted three years. After the military, the government would then finance a four-year college plan, picking up the tab for all expenses for those who went into math, science or English, and stayed with teaching for a minimum of ten years. You maintained that in ten years the nation would no longer have a shortage of those teachers. I did a book report on that novel in the tenth grade. I got a C on it because the teacher didn’t like the other books you wrote.”
“My apologies. Doctor Carlton is motioning for you to come over to that aid station just set up. He’ll check you out and also the baby. I’ll see you later.”
Gale seemed hesitant to leave. Something about the man exuded confidence and safety. “Those … animals from up at the lake sent word to us that they might be back tomorrow to … get the women. What are you going to do if that happens?”
“You mentioned a gang of motorcyclists that had been bothering you?”
“Yeah.”
“We killed them all about ten o’clock this morning. Just west of the St. Francis River. Does that answer your question?”
She blinked. She had very pretty eyes now that the anger had vanished. Eyes that looked as though they could dance with mischief. “I guess you are as tough as people say.”
“I guess so, Ms. Roth.”
He stood and watched as she walked away. She looked exhausted. Colonel Gray walked up.
“What are we going to do with them, General?”
Ben shook his head. “I can’t leave them to be killed, Dan. We could arm them, but without proper training, they would still get killed. Those civilian men aren’t exactly man-hunters.”
“I will certainly agree with that, General.”
“Send out a team to round up some vehicles. We’ll outfit them and take them with us.”
Dan smiled. “Yes, sir.”
Ben looked at the Englishman. He could not understand the smile. “What are you smiling about, Dan?”
“Nothing,” the colonel said innocently. “Nothing at all, General.” He walked away, chuckling softly.
“Crazy Englishman,” Ben muttered.
Had he but noticed, everyone in his command was grinning.
Eight more ships from Iceland had put ashore personnel and equipment: two ships every four days. The IPF troops based on American soil now numbered ten thousand, and they had spread out into Wisconsin from northern Minnesota.
The IPF teams used no force in dealing with the survivors they found. They left food, clothing and medical supplies; they worked with the people in repairing equipment and restoring such services as electricity and running water. The doctors with the IPF treated the sick and consoled the elderly and despondent. They promised that conditions would soon get better. They promised they would restore order and a government. They promised they would have jobs for everyone. They promised proper medical treatment and better living conditions. If one had been a farmer before the holocaust, then you could again be a farmer; if you had been a mechanic or a carpenter or a teacher or whatever, that job would soon be opening for you. They promised a lot. They did it all with a smile and a gentle pat on the arm. They were such nice people. So considerate. They never fussed or snapped or became angry or upset. They never used force.
They didn’t have to.
Yet.
Lenin would have been so proud.
Ben stood on the outskirts of Poplar Bluff and stared out into the darkness, his thoughts busy. Gale
had told him her group was not the only group of survivors in the small city. She said there were others, but their numbers were smaller, and they were much more elusive. And they were well-armed. She didn’t know where they got the weapons.
Ben didn’t have the heart to tell her guns were easy to find.
Being a curious sort, Ben had prowled through what remained of the local library, his heart sore at the sight of the books ripped and rotting and torn and gnawed by rats and mice. He had located a World Almanac-circa 1987-and looked up Poplar Bluff, Missouri. Population 17,139.
Gale had told him that maybe-maybe-there were a 150 people left in the small city. There had been more, but about 50 had died during the winter. Mostly old people, she said.
“The nation’s elderly have been getting crapped on for years, Gale,” he said. “Right up to and including 1988.” He spat on the littered sidewalk. “A goddamned criminal gets better treatment and has more of his rights protected than the nation’s elderly.”
She had looked at him in the fading June sunlight and replied, “Maybe you’re not so tough after all, Ben Raines.”
He had not replied. But his thoughts had been flung back to the spring of “89, when he had been traveling with a very idealistic young lady by the name of April. He had found her in Florida and gotten rid of her in Macon, Georgia. He had been relieved to see her go. But before they had parted company, never to see each other again-and Ben did wonder, occasionally, what had happened to April-they had happened upon a
small gathering of elderly.
“As to our troubles, Mr. Raines,” Ms. Nola Browning, an elderly schoolteacher had told him, “it seems we have a gang of hoodlums and roughnecks roaming the countryside, preying on the elderly-those who survived God’s will, that is.”
“They’ve been here?” Ben questioned. “Bothering you people?”
Ms. Browning, who had been an English teacher for fifty-five years, then told Ben and April that yes, the hoodlums had indeed been bothering the elderly. They had raped and tortured some of the members of the small group. And they were coming back to perform some, well, perverted acts on the person of one Mrs. Carson, a very attractive woman of sixty-five. There were fifteen hoodlums, and only one Ben Raines. So what could he hope to do?
Ben smiled, and Ms. Browning noted that his smile was that of a man-eating tiger who had just that moment spotted dinner.
“Oh, I imagine I can think of something suitable for them, Ms. Browning.”
Ben had killed all but two of the punks; the elderly had hanged them.
Ben wondered how long the old people had survived after he left them.
Ben pulled his thoughts to the present as he continued to stare into the darkness. The darkness seemed void of any life. He wondered about the people left
alive, not just in Poplar Bluff but around the nation. How many had made it? He did some fast math. Was a half million shooting too high? Only a few percentage points of the population. And was it the responsibility of Ben Raines to take every damned one of them under his wing like helpless chicks to raise?
Resolution stiffened within him. No, it was not. Then compassion touched him. If he-or someone like him-did not do it, where was civilization heading?