Part 3 (1/2)

”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 bulls.h.i.+t, 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 wors.h.i.+pping him.

”Ike ...” he warned.

”I'm just tellin' you what's goin' on, Ben.

Don't get your a.s.s 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 sinceI got here, I've had the d.a.m.nest 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 n.o.body 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.

Chapter Four.

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 G.o.ds 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.

Ben Raines was indestructible.

Ben Raines was more than flesh and blood. Ben Raines was a G.o.d.

Nature, as surviving humankind was finding out, could recover much faster than so-called superior humankind. Nature was rapidly reclaiming its own, now that humankind was not fighting her with chemicals and axes and chain saws and bulldozers and choking smoke from millions of cars and trucks and other types of human-produced and often needless pollution.

The trillion-dollar mistake called the interstate highway system now lay like great twisting snakes throughout the land, broken only by the rus.h.i.+ng waters of creeks and rivers.

And nature was slowly but steadily reclaiming much of that, too.

With no maintenance for almost fifteen years, the super-slab was rapidly deteriorating. For the first time since its inception, the 55 mph speed limit made sense.

More than 25 mph now.

And if the interstate system was in bad shape, the two-lane highways could best be cla.s.sified as awful.

Trees were blocking many of the two-lanes, bridges were out, abandoned vehicles squatted like rusting old time machines, mute memorials to an age long ago and far away; an age that would nevermore exist.

And the people. The survivors.

What about them?

Many had forsaken the various religions they had once embraced, believing that if indeed there ever had been a G.o.d, He would never have allowed this ... this awfulness to have occurred. h.e.l.l, you couldn't see Him; you couldn't really talk to Him and expect any reply; there never was really any proof that He existed. So ... all we have is our wits, our strength, our own two hands. Let's stop this other foolishness and survive.