"Oh, yes. Not fatally so, but it would be a nasty wound and difficult to heal. The wound would be much like the bite of some snakes and spiders: the flesh would rot around the wound. These people are walking dead, Ben. Killing them would be an act of mercy."
"Easy for you to say," Ben muttered under his breath, then turned and walked out of the lab.
"Ben!" Lamar"s sharp voice halted him on the steps.
Ben turned around to face the doctor.
"You have to look at it that way, Ben. Pa.s.s that word 286.
to the troops. It"s an act of mercy. These people are much lower than animals. Much lower. Animals are driven by instinct. . . and I believe, some limited ability to think. These people cannot think, they cannot reason, and they don"t have millions of years of instincts to rely upon.""All right, Lamar," Ben said. "I"ll pa.s.s the word."
The troops didn"t like the idea of shooting at insane people any more than Ben did, but all realized they had no choice in the matter.
Ben walked over to where Paula, Alex, and Marilyn were being held under guard. He stared at the trio for a moment, disgust very evident in his gaze, then said, "I"m not going to harm you, so you can relax. As soon as we can get to some sort of airstrip that will handle the traffic, I"ll put you on a plane and ship your b.u.t.ts back stateside. I"m sending all the press back home. Thanks to you people, I don"t know who to trust."
"We did it for our country," Paula replied.
"Your country?" Ben questioned. "No lady, you did it for power. You people just can"t stand the prosperity of the SUSA and the success of the Tri-State philosophy of government. You people didn"t seize control of the government out of compa.s.sion for your fellow man. It was a power grab, that"s all it was. But I don"t have time to discuss it now, and really have no inclination to do so. For now, you people just sit tight.
We"ve got a little minor skirmish to handle here. We"ll be on our merry humanitarian way in the morning."
"After you"ve slaughtered these poor unfortunate survivors?" Alex asked.
Ben laughed at the young man, the mood more scornful than humorous.
"Jesus, you liberals really don"t know up from down, do you? First you send out frantic radio calls to come rescue you, then when we haul your scared a.s.ses out of harm"s way, you criticize 287.
287.
us for doing the only thing we can do with the people who were threatening you. I guess I should feel sorry for you. But it"s rather difficult to work up any sympathy for a bunch of people who crawled into bed with the enemy and tried to have me killed."
Ben left the trio sitting in the tent. He closed the flap and turned to the guards. "If they try to escape, let them."
The sentry in charge of the guard unit smiled. "Yes, sir. With pleasure."
Back at the easternmost edge of the defense line, a company commander said, "If they rush us, General, they"re gonna get slaughtered."
"Oh, they"ll rush us," Ben replied. "You can bet on that. They"re no longer . . . human. You have to think of them in that light. Even though what"s happened to these people is not in any way their fault, it"s all come down to us or them. Keep that foremost in your mind."
"Yes, sir. If you say so, sir."
The buck always stops here, Ben thought, as he walked away to another defense point. Well, my shoulders are big enough to take the load.
Ben walked the eastern perimeter, stopping to chat with troops along the way. It was easy to see from the look in their eyes and the expression on their faces that none of them liked what they were about to do, b.u.t.they would do it. They would do it simply because they had no choice in the matter.
It started with a low rumble in the distance.
"What the h.e.l.l is that?" a young Rebel asked. He was one of the new replacements, fresh from the peace and tranquility of the SUSA.
"The crazy people," a platoon sergeant told him. "That"s hundreds of bare feet slapping the ground. Hold your fire until I give the word."
"Yes, Sergeant."
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Ben met the sergeant"s eyes and the combat-experienced noncom arched an eyebrow in a silent expression of, We"ll see.
Ben checked his CAR and waited. This was as good a place as any to stand and fight.
"Ah, General," the noncom said. "Wouldn"t you like to back off a few hundred yards?"
"No," Ben told him.
"Yes, sir. As you wish, sir." The noncom looked at Jersey and received a hard look that said, Mind your own business, buster. That"s the boss. He can do whatever in the h.e.l.l he wants to do.
The rumble grew louder.
The gunners behind .50 caliber and 7.62 machine guns chambered rounds and waited.
"Are we going to face this all the way down to Bottger"s territory, General?" the noncom asked.
"Probably," was Ben"s reply.
"s.h.i.t!" the sergeant mumbled and returned his attention to the front.
"Hundreds of them," Corrie said, after acknowledging a report.
Ben saw several Rebels cross themselves and mouth a silent prayer. He turned around for a few seconds and met the gaze of one of the chaplains traveling with the brigade. The man smiled and nodded his head.
"Get behind some cover," Ben told the chaplain. "The troops will need you alive when this is over."
"And you won"t?" the chaplain retorted.
Ben turned around and put his back to the man. Yeah, he thought, but I have to give the orders, padre. I can"t show any signs of weakness or indecision. Like ol" Harry said, "The buck stops here."
"There are kids in that mob!" a Rebel shouted, looking through binoculars.
"Stand firm!" Ben shouted.289 Several Rebels were openly crying as they lifted their weapons, silent tears running down their tanned faces.
"There is no hope for these people," Ben shouted. "Their brains have been destroyed. Rotted away. They cannot be cured. They"re walking dead."
Then the mob was around the curve in the road, several hundred yards away.
"Jesus Christ!" the lookout called. "They"re foaming at the mouth like rabid animals."
"Fire," Ben gave the orders. "Fire, G.o.dd.a.m.nit, fire!"
The quiet afternoon blew apart.
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Dozens of tanks and APCs opened up with their mounted machine guns. All around the defensive ring, in the spots where the maddened natives were attacking, hundreds of Rebels cut loose with automatic weapons fire. It was carnage, a slaughter. Still the rush of the insane continued. Still the Rebels cut them down.
The crazed mob almost reached the defensive line. Almost. But the deadly fire chopped them down until the howling mob had been reduced to a moaning ma.s.s.
"Cease fire," Ben called.
"What the h.e.l.l do we do with the ones that are still alive?" the noncom who had stood near Ben asked.
"Finish it," Ben said, a deadness to his tone. "That"s all we can do."
The sergeant cut his eyes to Ben.
"Sometimes, Sergeant," Ben said, "my job sucks."
"Yes, sir," the noncom said. "Mine, too."
"Finish it!" Ben shouted the order. "Move out there and finish it."
"But, sir," a young Rebel fresh from the States said. "The kids? . . ."
"Finish it, G.o.dd.a.m.nit!" Ben roared.
Noncoms and officers began shoving very reluctant troops outside the defensive line and pulling out sidearms to finish off the wounded.
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Ben stood behind the ring of tanks and trucks and hummers and watched.
He kept his face expressionless. Only his eyes moved. Lamar Chase came up to stand by his side.
"It"s the humane thing, Ben," the chief of medicine said. "They would have had nothing in front of them except more madness and a slow, verypainful death."
"I want the chaplains to be very aware of that, La-mar."
"They know. I informed them. And they are ready to counsel the troops."
"Some of these kids are growing up pretty d.a.m.ned fast."
Lamar said nothing.
The commander of the Rebel Army and the chief of medicine stood in silence, shoulder to shoulder, as the gunshot-filled minutes ticked past. Ever so slowly, the gunshots began to diminish, until they became only an occasional sharp crack in the afternoon.
"Get some of the trucks with sc.r.a.pers on them up here," Ben ordered.
"Scoop out a grave for those . . . people. Be careful handling them. No one with any open cuts should touch any of the bodies."
"Right, boss," Corrie said, her voice unusually soft.
"Only experienced troops handle the bodies," Ben added. "Order the young replacements to fall back. I think they"ve seen and done enough for one day."
"Right, boss."
"Lamar, why didn"t this bug kill the animals, too; make them crazy?"
"Because it didn"t reach very many of them, Ben. It"s short-lived and was concentrated in the cities."
"But the animals later ate contaminated flesh."
"Yes. But animals have a digestive system different from ours. They can eat things that would kill us on the spot. Until we get our hands on a sample of this 292.
bug and break it down, that"s all I can tell you. All right, Ben?"
"All right, Lamar. Come on, let"s walk the camp."
Many spots around the huge protective ring had not even seen any of the maddened mobs. They had not fired a shot. Others had dozens of bodies stacked up in front of them. Trucks with sc.r.a.pers were moving out, to gouge holes in the earth for ma.s.s graves.1"
Ben stopped and watched as a young replacement rushed off behind a truck, a tad green around the mouth. Sounds of retching quickly followed. "Corrie, tell the cooks to fix only coffee and sandwiches for this evening. I doubt that many people will have much of an appet.i.te."
"Right, boss."
"I hope this experiment of Brunos was confined to only a few areas," Ben said. "I would really hate to have to go through this all the way across Nigeria.""I think this was the first one," Lamar ventured. "A test case. After a fly-over and observing all the bodies, they concluded it worked and then went for the cities."
"Bruno"s troops must have run into this on their way back after the a.s.sault," Jersey said. "Why haven"t we intercepted anything about it?"
"I think they headed across the lower part of Niger and were picked up by chopper. But only the white troops and a few ranking black officers,"
Ben added. "The local troops-those that survived the attack on us-scattered. They might have run into some of these . . . people. I hope they did. I hope they ran into large groups of them."
"Boss," Corrie said.
Ben cut his eyes.
"Paula Preston hit one of the guards on the head with a club and escaped. The other guards let her go."
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"Good. I hope she runs into some of Bruno"s handiwork. How is the guard?"
"He"s all right. Got a sore head, that"s all."
"How about Marilyn d.i.c.kson and Alex Marsh?"
"They made no attempt to escape."
"Paula"s a pro," Ben said. "She figured the odds and decided they were better if she broke and ran for it."
"But she was going back stateside," Lamar pointed out.