"Meals, Ready-to-Eat. Wouldn"t you like a break from Doctor Chase"s highly nutritious and nearly totally unpalatable homemade goop?"
"Not to take anything away from the doctor, but yes, I would. What does he put in that stuff?"
"It"s his secret. His lab people won"t even tell me. Which is fine. I"m not sure I want to know."
"General, you want to know a truth about Doctor Chase"s field rations?"
"Sure?"
"They taste like s.h.i.t!"
Ben threw back his head and laughed. "Welcome to the Rebels, Linda."
Chapter Four.
The Rebels pulled out the next morning.
Vultures were circling high in the sky, sensing there was food far below them, but unable to spot the buried bodies with their sharp eyes.
The convoy traveled as far as Red Bluff, and Ben ordered the Rebels to stand down and start cleaning up the town. "Nice-sized little place," he remarked, after inspecting the town. "And the airfield is in pretty good shape. This would make a dandy outpost.
Corrie, see if you can raise Thermopolis on the radio."
After a moment, she handed him the mike. "This is Eagle, Therm. Did you find your lost peace-and-love generation?" He winked at Linda as he said it, envisioning the frown on Therm"s face.
"Yes, I did, Eagle."
"Thank you for reporting in, Therm."
"Sorry about that. I truly am. I just forgot."
"Therm, I won"t belabor the point. But I was about to send troops in after you. Some of Pasqual"s bunch might have gotten hurt.""Pasco!"
"Whatever. Therm, ask your friends if they know where any survivors might be who would like to help us set up an outpost here in Red Bluff. The town is the right size and everything else about it checks out."
"As a matter of fact, they do. Ben, they know where there are about three hundred people living. They"re all in small groups and looking to reestablish what they consider to be normal living."
Ben laughed at that. Linda had been listening over the speaker and had a confused look on her face. Ben said, "What Therm means is that these are the types of people who get regular haircuts, in addition to liking life under rules and regulations and saluting the flag and things of that nature."
"He doesn"t like an orderly life?"
"Of course, he does. For a commune to work, they have to have rules and regulations too. He"s just needling me." Ben lifted the mike. "Send them on their way, Therm. We"ll be waiting for them."
"That"s ten-four, Ben. Pasco says they are basically good people for straights."
Ben laughed. "I"d like to meet Pasco."
"He says thanks, but some other time."
"Okay, Therm. You can all go on back to listening to that horrible music."
"How in the h.e.l.l did you know? ... Oh, never mind. Old Hippie out."
Linda looked at him. "How did you know what they were doing?"
"I guessed. But don"t ever tell Thermopolis that."
The first of the survivors in that area of northern California began arriving late that afternoon. They by no means appeared to be a beaten-down bunch, for they were well-armed and carried their weapons like combat-ready troops. They were just tired and very wary. Chase had set up his MASH and was ready to receive them, taking the children first, then the women, then the men.
While the kids were being examined and receiving the first of many inoculations for childhood diseases, Ben met with the leaders of a few of the small groups.
"Pasco radioed us and told us you were in the area,"
a man said. "We just couldn"t believe it. It"s been tough, General. Moving every three or four weeks, always trying to stay one jump ahead of the outlaws."
"They are that strong?"
"Sir," another man said, "I"m not being critical, so please don"t take it that way. You had to move in some direction; it"s only logical that the outlaws would move in the other, getting away from you. They had us out-manned and out-gunned. In this area alone there were once comn that many months ago coma dozen settlements, all doing well. Then the outlaws from the east joined up with those in L.a. and San Francisco. I"d say a conservative figure would be between five thousand and eight thousand men, women, and kids have either been killed or captured over thepast year."
"You are aware of what the outlaws are, or were, doing with the prisoners they took?"
The man spat on the ground. "Oh, h.e.l.l, yes!
Now let me tell you something that you probably don"t know. The largest concentration of Believers in the lower forty-eight is in-was "The Los Angeles area," Ben said, interrupting with a smile.
The men shared a laugh. "Well, you did know."
"We guessed. The few prisoners we took up in Redding confirmed that. Right before we shot them."
The man studied Ben for a moment. "That"s why Pasco will never be a part of your group, General.
He thinks you and your people go too far."
"That"s his right. There are others who agree with him.
And they do not and never will receive any help from us, in any way, shape, or form."
"Pasco knows that. Thermopolis is trying to change his mind."
"What do you think his odds are of doing that?"
The man moved his right hand in a waggling motion. "Not too good, General."
"What"s Pasco"s problem?"
The man stared and studied Ben for a moment, then stuck out his hand. "I"m Les Word."
Ben shook the hand. Hard and callused.
"Why does Pasco have to have a problem, General?"
"Isolating oneself away from any type of open society tells me a lot. And the Rebels do have an open society. A dozen things come to mind, Les: dropout drug users wanted by the law, when there was a law; malcontents; a land-baron mentality; benevolent king ... which one fits Pasco?"
"Which one fits you, General?" Les asked with a smile, no back-down in the man.
"Oh, even though I didn"t ask for this job -I actually ran away from it for six months -I don"t know that any of those descriptions fit me. You see, Les, Rebels know the rules comand in our society there are very few gray areas between right and wrong-and we comwe comobey the rules. Very rarely does anyone come to me with a legal problem."
"Neat job of sidestepping, General," Les said.
"Actually, none of those things you mentioned fits Pasco either. He"s really a lot like you. He just places a lot more value on human life comeven the degenerate type comthan you do."
"And how many times has Pas...o...b..en burned believing that? How many of his followers have been killed or wounded or a.s.saulted because of that belief?"
Les smiled faintly. "More than one."
"I don"t intend to subject my people to that danger, Les. Let"s run it down. Pasco sets up a little empire and isolates his commune from the outside world. The only type of music they will listen to isso-called protest music from thirty or more years ago comn that there is anything wrong with that, I just find it a bit restrictive-their debates are so old and out of step with reality they creak with age. Their generation began and glorified the drug plague that nearly overwhelmed the nation a decade back, and none of them will admit they had anything to do with it.
No, Les, Pasco and I have nothing in common."
Les shrugged his shoulders. "He"s also afraid that you"ll find out where he and his people live and come in after them."
"He"s paranoid too. Do you think I would do something like that, Les?"
"No. And I told him so. You"ve let the Underground People and the Woods Children alone. I pointed that out to Pasco. He wasn"t convinced."
"Then to h.e.l.l with him," Ben said flatly. "I"m not going to bother Pasco and his followers as long as they leave me alone. There are probably several hundred comor more -- communes scattered around the nation, people who just want to be left alone. And I intend to do just that. I most definitely will leave them alone. One hundred percent totally alone and on their own in all respects."
"You won"t help them at all?"
"That is correct, Les. Back when the world was functioning, more or less, I had nothing but contempt for dropouts who, for example, when they needed medical attention suddenly decided that maybe they could conform just a little and oh, so magnanimously on their part allowed the conforming taxpayers to pick up the tab. And then they went back to their communes, or living under bridges, or wherever, and laughed and poked fun at the very people and the system that had just helped them by paying their bills. Sorry, Les. People like Pasco and his followers aren"t contributing a d.a.m.ned thing to the rebuilding of this nation. They want to step out every now and then and eat the fruit, but they don"t want to help in the hard work of cultivating it. To h.e.l.l with them."
Ben walked away, and Les and the other men looked at Beth and Cooper, standing nearby. "I guess if I say that Ben Raines is a hard man, you"re going to tell me that hard men are needed in hard times."
Beth winked at him. "And hard women too, Les."
Thermopolis and those who had gone with him to visit Pasco returned the next day. Ben noticed the long-haired and colorfully dressed Therm seemed withdrawn and silent.
Ben walked over and sat down beside him on the tailgate of a truck. "What"s wrong, Therm?"
Thermopolis cut his eyes. "You"ve been a bad influence on me, Ben. With Pasco and his people, I found myself in the unenviable position of defending you and the Rebel movement."
"You didn"t have to do that."
"Oh, I know that. But the thing that bothers me is, in many cases comn all, but many-Iwanted to."
"I"ve told you before, Therm, there is not fifteen cents worth of difference between us. We both want peace and a chance to live out the remainder of our lives in some degree of happiness and security. The difference between us and people like Pasco is that we"re willing to fight and sacrifice for it."
"Maybe you"re right," Therm said with a sigh. "But I"ll always maintain that Pasco is a good person."
"I won"t argue that. I"m sure he has many good qualities just like I have many bad ones. But Therm, nice guys don"t win wars. SOB"S like me win wars. Real nice gentle sweet people don"t make good cops or good CEO"S or Chairmen of the Board. Real nice idealistic folks can"t run the governments of nations. It takes a person with a certain amount of hard-a.s.s in them to do that. And I knew you had it in you after I"d talked with you for five minutes."
Therm stared glumly at the ground for a moment. "That doesn"t say much for me, then."
"That depends on who is doing the viewing, buddy."
Ben gave the orders for Ike to continue down the coastline highway and for Cecil to split off and take 101 down to Ukiah. He told Colonel Gray to take his people down the Interstate, while Ben and his contingent split off and headed down Highway 99, through Chico, Oroville, Yuba City, and Marysville, then finally over to the old AFB.
Five and Six Battalions, under the command of Striganov and West, would continue their sweep for survivors and link up with Ben on Interstate 80, northeast of Sacramento.
"There were almost a million people in Sacramento when the Great War hit us," Ben told his immediate team as they rode slowly southward toward Chico. Every little town they pa.s.sed through showed signs of having been abandoned recently, and in one h.e.l.l of a hurry.
"Flyovers using heat-seekers have shown a very large concentration of people in the city. Leaflets we dropped telling them to identify themselves have been ignored.
Prisoners have told us the city is filled with creepies. So far this push into California has been a cakewalk. But all that is about to change, people."
"How big was Chico?" Cooper asked.
"A little over twenty-five thousand," Beth said from the center seat of the big wagon. She sat with Jersey. Corrie and Linda were in the third seat of the wagon, Corrie with her radio jacked into the antenna on top of the wagon. "But Leadfoot radioed that the town is deserted."
"How about San Francisco?" Linda asked.
"We"ll take it," Ben said. "But we"re going to have to get close to do it. We won"t be able to stand on the east side of the Bay and sh.e.l.l it comthe Bay is too wide. Our 155 SP"S have a range ofabout twelve miles. We"ll be able to sh.e.l.l in from the north and south ends, that"s all. Once we soften up those areas, the rest will be block by block and, in many cases, hand to hand."
"Sacramento?"
"We"ll be able to surround it and sh.e.l.l it, for the most part. L.a. is going to be a real b.a.s.t.a.r.d, though."
"Huge, sprawling place," Beth said. "About sixty miles wide and forty miles deep."
Cooper whistled softly. "No way in h.e.l.l we can surround that place."
"Not completely," Ben said. "But we can split our forces and attack from three sides. But it"s going to be a very long, b.l.o.o.d.y, and drawn-out process."
"Is it going to be like the taking of New York City?" Linda asked. "I"ve heard so many Rebels say that was a real tough one."
"L.a. is going to be worse," Ben said.
The advance teams of Rebels waved them through the deserted and eerily silenced Chico, then pulled in behind the convoy as a new advance team took their place; it was on to Yuba City. Like Chico, the once-thriving town of nearly twenty thousand was a ghost town. In more ways than one. Just before the outlaws and thugs had pulled out, they"d killed all their prisoners rather than have to drag them along. The bodies of dead men, women, and kids were piled in heaps on the sidewalk in the main drag.
"You"re seeing another reason why we don"t take many prisoners," Ben said to Linda, as he helped her out of the wagon to stand in the deserted street.
A few moans came from the blood-soaked bodies. She jerked away from his grasp and ran to get her medical kit.