William W. Johnstone (3 page)

They talked deep into the night, with Ben doing most of the talking. Sylvia was content to just listen. Even though she didn’t know, sometimes, what the general was talking about. He spoke of things she had never heard of, but she never let on. She felt he knew her education was spotty, at best. She reached the conclusion that Ben Raines was a lonely man. Had been a lonely man for a long time. There were questions she wanted to ask of him, but felt it was best to wait.

“Any family left, Sylvia?”

“No, sir. Not that I know of.”

Ben looked at her. She noticed his eyes were a mixture of sad and hard. She had never noticed that before. But then, she had never really been that close to the general.

“Thank you for coming by and talking with me, Sylvia,” Ben said. “I needed someone close to me this night.”

Was that a dismissal? Damn! she didn’t know. “ enjoyed it, General.”

“All the chutes repacked?”

“Yes, sir. We’re sittin’ on go.”

Ben smiled at her. “Going to be a tough one, Sylvia.”

“Yes, sir. I know. But I’ve been fighting seems like all my life. I’ll probably be fighting when I die.”

Is that the sum total of it all? Ben silently wondered. Will we ever know peace? No, he answered his own question. We will know moments of peace, perhaps weeks or a few months of peace, but never know it as my generation did. “I’m afraid you’re probably right, Sylvia. And for that, my generation owes your generation a deep and profound apology.”

“I don’t understand, sir.”

She really doesn’t, Ben thought. The girl has no concept of what life was like Before. Only After. How sad. As pretty as she is, Sylvia would have probably been a cheerleader or pom-pom girl; perhaps a majorette. Steamy kisses in the dark-darkened seat of a boy’s car while the radio played what passed for music back in the 1980s.

Before civilization was destroyed at the hands of power-hungry men with domination uppermost in their minds.

“Penny for your thoughts, General?” she asked, smiling.

“I was thinking of better times,” Ben said. Not quite a lie. “For you?”

More astute than I first thought. “No,” he said honestly. “For you.”

“How so?”

“What all you have missed.” “But if I don’t know what I missed, how can I miss it?”

Ben chuckled. “Good point, Sylvia. So we won’t talk of what might have been.”

“Why not?” She became a little bolder. “You gettin’ sleepy?”

Was that a dig at his age? Ben thought not, but he wouldn’t have taken umbrage. Ben enjoyed joking and kidding around as much, or more, as the next person. But people treated Ben with more than respect—awe. It got a little wearing at times. “Oh, I imagine I can keep these old eyes open for a while longer.”

Sylvia grinned, and with that action years were wiped from her face, making her look more childlike.

Made Ben uncomfortable as hell, and brought back memories of Jerre.

He fought those memories away. Damn, but he had a lot of memories piling up on him.

“I’ve lost you, Ben,” Sylvia said, moving closer to Ben on the old couch he had had moved into his command post.

“I do that occasionally. When you get my age you get a bit senile.”

“I know what that word means. So don’t be pullin’ my leg. Sir,” she quickly added.

“You can knock that off, too, Sylvia. Here, alone with me, keep it Ben.”

“Ben,” she tried the word. “I guess I’d better get used to it. General would be kind of formal and out of place in bed, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes,” Ben said softly. “It damn sure would.”

Sylvia stood up and took off her tiger-stripe fatigue shirt. She wore no bra. Her breasts were small and perfectly shaped. The nipples jutting out, hard and erect. Whether from the coolness of night or sexual excitement, Ben didn’t know.

He sat on the couch and watched her.

“A stripper in combat boots,” Sylvia said, smiling. And Ben had to laugh.

He held out his hands. “Come here, Valkyrie.” She came to him, sitting on his lap, moaning softly as Ben caressed her smooth skin, kissing her breasts. “What’s a Valkyrie, Ben?” she asked softly. “I’ll tell you some other time.” Then fire met ice and melted.

She had left his blankets sometime during the early morning hours. He did not stir when she gently kissed his mouth and slipped away into the coolness of the Northwest. He knew she was leaving as much for her sake as for his, even though both knew the entire camp already knew what was going on.

And Ben knew, while she probably did not, that things were going to change in a very dramatic manner for her. She was no longer just Lt. Sylvia Barris. Now she was Ben Raines’s woman.

After passions had cooled, he had patiently explained what she was letting herself in for … should this continue.

She had looked at him through those pale green eyes. “I didn’t come here because you’re my general, Ben. I came here because … well, Ike said he felt you liked me.”

“And you came here because of that?”

“No. I came here because I felt you needed me.”

He had pulled her close to him, enjoying the feel of her warm skin next to his. She was much closer to the truth than she realized.

Ben stepped out into a cool spring morning in the Northwest. Walking across the busy compound area was Sylvia, carrying two cups of coffee and her pockets bulging with Rebel-produced field ration. She smiled at him.

“Morning, General. Sleep well?” The question was very innocently phrased.

“Like that much-written-of baby, Lieutenant. I’ll welcome the coffee. But if those cans are breakfast rations, I’ll pass. I can’t stand green eggs.”

It seemed that not even the Rebels, with all their vast energy and talent, could better the old military’s efforts at producing a canned breakfast.

“They are full of vitamins, General.”

“I’ll take a pill.”

“You need to eat!”

“Coffee will do.”

She lowered her head and narrowed her eyes. “How would you like for me to plant a lip-lock on you that’d blister your hair, and then grab a quick feel of your ding-dong—right out here where everybody can see?”

Ike and Dan had started over when they saw him leaving his command post. Now the two men had stopped and were busy inspecting the overcast skies … and both of them grinning.

“You wouldn’t
dare!”
Ben said.

“Try me!” she said, a wicked note to her reply.

The bustling, busy camp had suddenly come to a halt, although no one was looking directly at Ben and Sylvia.

Ben leaned close to her, towering over the young woman. “I will not eat those goddamned eggs!”

She smiled sweetly and licked her lips.

“Gimme the goddamned eggs!” Ben said.

A few moments later, Ike and Dan wandered over and took a seat outside the command post.

“Enjoying your early morning repast, General?” Dan inquired.

Ben glared at him.

“Yeah, Ben,” Ike said. “Them eggs sure do look good.”

“You want to eat them?” Ben asked. “Oh, no, Ben! I’ve already had a can. Thanks, though.” He winked at Sylvia. “When?” Ben challenged. “Back in ‘85?” “That’s … close,” Ike admitted.

It misted all that day. Never a full rain, but always a light mist. Ben often glanced up into the sky, knowing he could not, would not, jump his people into a driving rain. They would be going in low. Five hundred feet, with no reserve. No point in it. If the main didn’t open, they would not have the time to pull the rip cord on a belly pack and claw the silk out in time for it to open.

At noon, those that were going in by truck pulled out. Ben had originally planned on a mass assault on the sixth of June. But he soon realized he could not wait that long. Ben Raines and his Rebels had to move, and move now.

The battalion that was moving out by truck had a most unenviable assignment: they would drive as far as possible, and then force-march to the coastline, leaving a thin line of Rebels along the border separating what had once been California and Oregon. They were to be resupplied by air drops, and eventually would be beefed up by another battalion of Rebels. Their job was to contain Hartline and his men and the warlords.

And more Rebels were on the way.

Ro and Wade and their savage bands of woods-children were on the way. Those kids, under the leadership of Ro and Wade, had helped defeat battalions of the best IPF troops that Striganov could hurl at them. The woods-children, most of them, had never known their parents or the security of any type of home life other than the woods. But they all shared one common point: they worshipped and would willingly and knowingly die for General Ben Raines.

For despite Ben’s lecturing on the subject, they all felt him to be a god.
*

The Orphans’ Brigade, as Ike called the woods-children, were as furtive and dangerous in the timber as killer pumas. They were expert with bow and arrow and knife and small axe. They could rig booby traps as well as and better than many of Ben’s Rebels.

As Wade had said, when Ben asked him how he and his bands of woods-children had survived all the years alone in the timber, “We know the ways of the mountains and the deep timber, Mr. Raines. We are as much at home in the wilderness as you are in your house. Have you ever tried to capture sunlight or a moonbeam and hold it in your hand?”

And the dangerous children were on their way west to assist the man they believed to be a god.

Ike walked up to Ben and said, “Just got off the horn with Cecil. He’s comin’ out with his people.”

“I knew he would.”

“You could order him to turn back, Ben.”

“You seem to forget, Ike. I put Cecil in charge.”

“He just resigned. Left Dr. Chase in charge. Chase told him to kiss ass. The old bastard is comin’ out with Cecil.”

Ben could but shake his head.

“There’s more.” He waited until Sylvia had walked up. The young lieutenant had staked her claim and wanted, by God, everybody to know it. Ike hid his smile. “Deep Scouts report that underground society we’ve heard about … you remember?”

“Those that live in tunnels and caves,” Ben said. “Yes. What about them?”

“They’re going to fight with us.”

Ben sighed. “We are certainly going to have some strange allies, Ike.”

“You shore right about that,” Ike drawled. “But there’s more.”

“The
underground
people?” Sylvia asked, her eyes wide.

“Get Ben to tell you about it.” “He’s already promised to tell me about Valkyrie,” Sylvia said.

“Who?” Ike looked puzzled. “When’d you run that one by me, Ben? I don’t remember her at all.” But his eyes were twinkling.

“Ike!”
Ben said. For his bullshit, Ben knew Ike was a highly educated man.

“Them underground people, they been buildin’ shrines in the deep timber. And you know to who, whom, whatever.”

Ben sighed. He had warned Cecil, in a rather heated discussion, that he did not wish to discuss the matter of various peoples worshipping him.

“Ike …” he warned.

“I’m just tellin’ you what’s goin’ on, Ben. Don’t get your ass up at me.”

Sylvia suppressed a giggle and Ike had to grin, the grin taking years from his tanned and rugged face.

“How are these people armed?”

“Clubs and bows and arrows. Just like Ro and Wade, I reckon.”

“I wish I had known about this before the trucks pulled out. We need to have some way of marking our people.”

“They know, Ben. We’re all in tiger-stripe and lizard camo. They’ll know us.”

“How about Ro and Wade and the woods-children?”

“Them people know all about them, too. Everybody’s all right.”

“I’m curious about something, Ike. Ever since I got here, I’ve had the damnest feeling of being watched. Has that feeling touched you, too?”

“Yeah. I think it’s … them underground people, Ben. Both of you come with me. There’s something I got to show you. I wasn’t goin’ to. But you’re gonna see it sooner or later. Or one like it,” he added mysteriously.

With Rebels flanking the trio, for nobody was going to let Ben Raines get too far out of sight—not again—they moved out. About a mile from the compound, in the deep timber, there sat a crudely carved wooden monument; the carvings were very fresh. A thick tree had been felled, the stump about five feet tall. There, the woodcarver had gone to work with knife and axe.

Ben stood and stared in shocked silence.

It was his face carved into the wood. His face, and the outline of something else.

“Jesus, Ben!” Sylvia blurted.

The Rebels seemed very nervous as they gathered about the wooden monument.

Then Ben recalled how nervous Wade and Ro had been looking at his Thompson. And that day when he confronted many of his young Rebels with the weapon, telling them it was
only
a weapon. Nothing more.

Beneath Ben’s profile, there was the outline of his old Thompson submachine gun.

*
Anarchy in the Ashes

Back in ‘88, when the world exploded in war, every nation around the globe, including the U.S., went through a period of disorganization and confusion. And for a time, it appeared the battered nations, most of them, would recover. But the gods of Fate continued to laugh darkly, and through the laughter, hurled thunderbolts of destruction at the world.

First came a deranged President, Hilton Logan, who was instrumental in ordering the wiping-out of Ben Raines and the Tri-States.

Hilton Logan paid dearly for that decision.

With his life.

A full decade after the bombings, the world still seemed unable to pull itself out of the ashes. Only one man and one grouping of peoples had managed to rebuild and pick up their lives: Ben Raines and his Rebels.

Then came the rats, carrying their deadly cargo of fleas, spreading death all over the world, further reducing the earth’s population.

Still, Ben Raines and his Rebels survived and grew in strength. Ben’s dream seemed impossible to kill: He would bring law and order back to America; he would rebuild from out of the ashes of war.

And the man did not, really, seem to age. That phenomenon only served to heighten the myths and rumors about the man.