Death was preferable to being eaten alive or put on a forced-labor farm or being forced to fight to the death in an arena against some trained gladiator ... all for the pleasure of those who had proclaimed themselves kings and queens of this or that section of whatever country.

Many parts of Europe had reverted back to the Dark Ages . . . and done so very quickly.

And, Villar was reluctantly forced to admit, at least to himself, he had certainly had a hand in bringing about that change.

The battered armies of the terrorists and the outlaw had taken refuge in an old state park just south of Peoria, and just east of the Illinois River.

They would stay only for a day and a night, and then move on. The three of them had decided that the woods of Wisconsin or Minnesota would probably be the safest spot for them to hole up and try to rebuild their shattered armies.

But Villar knew only too well that unless they could beef up their forces, and do it quickly, eventually the Rebel Army of Ben Raines would find them and wipe them out. He also wondered who Raines would send after him; he thought he had a pretty good idea.

A runner confirmed his suspicions.

"We just intercepted a communication, sir," he panted the words that Villar quickly and accurately guessed that he did not wish to hear. "It was an open transmission from a small group of survivors living somewhere not too far south of here. Colonel Dan Gray and a battalion of Rebels just left their zone, moving north."

"No idea where it came from?"

"It was a very strong signal on low band. So it probably was not more than fifty miles away."

"d.a.m.n!" Villar cursed his luck. Dan Gray. He knew the Englishman would track him to the ends of the earth and beyond for an opportunity to kill him. Lan Villar got to his boots and gave the orders to his tired men. "Get up and get moving.

We've got to leave and leave now! We'll cross the river just up ahead and cut straight north. Get moving, people. If you want to live."

"If we are to believe the transmission, there is only one battalion of Rebels," Kenny pointed out. "And many Rebel battalions are short compared to normal size. We have approximately twenty-five hundred men."

Villar did not lose his temper with the young man. For he, too, had once been young and reckless. "But they have tanks and long-range artillery, Kenny. And for more than a decade, one Rebel in battle has been proven to be the equal of five other soldiers. So if you take that into consideration, they have us outnumbered!"

Less than forty miles to the south of where Villar and the others were pulling out, Dan brought his column to a halt and called Buddy and his Rat Team members back in from the point.

"We have about two hours of good daylight left,"

Dan told his people. "Well make camp here for the night. Too risky rolling after dark. Believe me when I say that Villar is an expert in ambush."

They had made less than a hundred miles that day, due to the constant sending out of patrols in all directions in search of the terrorist army.

Dan knew they were not far behind, due to the signs his people had been picking up: a fresh oil slick, a b.l.o.o.d.y bandage, a piece of uniform carelessly discarded or blown out of the back of a truck by the wind.

Dan prepared his four o'clock tea and leaned up against a tree trunk, sipping the fragrant brew.

Dan also felt the general was a bit optimistic with his predictions of ending the battle for North America by fall. But Dan seldom argued with superior officers . . . unless his opinion was asked for, and this case, it had not been.

A runner from communications broke into his thoughts with a message.

"Sir, we've received another of those messages from Malone up in the Northwest."*

*Death in the Ashes -Zebra Books "Still calling for men and women to join him in his fight to, in his inimitable prose, purge the earth of all nonwhites?"

"Ah ... Yes, sir."

"The swine! I wish we could have finished him when we had the chance. If Villar hears the message, he'll perk up like a vulture sensing death."

The runner waited.

"Thank you," Dan said with a nod and a smile, dismissing the young Rebel.

Dan leaned back against the tree and sipped his tea, thinking. He knew from looking at all the gear captured outside East St. Louis that Villar had very fine electronic equipment; capable of scanning all bands, high and low. So the odds were good that he had caught the message.

All right coma.s.sume that he has. So? What to do?

Dan took a map from his case, intending to study it carefully. He knew Villar was close.

Probably no more than fifty or sixty miles away. And Villar, if he was to survive, had to beef up his forces. And Villar, Dan knew, would make a pact with the devil if he had to.

Dan waved Hans Strobel to him.

"Yes, sir?" The German stood at very loose attention. Experienced soldier that he was, he knew not to salute or to show any obvious signs that he was facing an officer. Snipers looked for that.

"Go to the communication van and have the operator send a coded and scrambled message to General Raines.

Advise him that I am breaking off pursuit and will begin a hard drive westward. This is in response to Malone's messages. He'll know what I'm talking about. We cannot let Villar and his people link up with that nut."

"Yes, sir. Right away, sir."

"Hans?" Dan called to his back.

The German stopped and turned. "Yes, sir?"

Dan smiled at him. "Loosen up, my friend.

We're a pretty informal bunch most of the time.

Relax -- you've made the team or you wouldn't be here."

"Thank you, Colonel. That's the best news I've had in years." "What do you know about this Malone person, Khamsin?" Villar asked.

"He's a nut," the Libyan said flatly. "But he's still got a lot of men."

"And with groups monitoring those messages he's sending out," Kenny added, "I'll make a bet he'll add considerably more to his force."

"How large a force currently under his command?"

Villar directed the question at Khamsin.

"I would say between fifteen hundred and two thousand,"

the Libyan said. He opened a map of the West.

"All of them holed up in this wilderness area."

"Food supplies?"

"Voleta told me they have many gardens planted all over this area. It's a short growing season, but they do quite well with it and have canning facilities to prepare and store food for the winters, which are extremely harsh, I was told."

"This Voleta woman seems to be more of a nut case than I care to align myself with," Villar spoke. "At least for any period of time. However, we might be able to use her to our advantage." He sat back, hard in thought. "We have to get to Malone. That's our second objective. This Malone might not agree with us philosophically, but he needs our strength as much as we need his. If Voleta can keep Raines occupied in Missouri, we just might have a chance of linking up with Malone."

Kenny looked at the terrorist. "You said that was our second objective. What's the first?"

"Avoiding Dan Gray in order to stay alive long enough to accomplish the second objective!"

The women and kids had been checked over and medicine dispensed where needed. Ben was in his tent, listening to Jerre's report.

"The children are all anemic, and of course none of them have been inoculated against the normal childhood diseases. They've been very fortunate in that no epidemic has struck them . . . yet.

Blood-test results show that about half of the women are either alcoholics or addicted to some drug."

"Drugs!" Ben straightened up. "What kind of drugs?"

"Amphetamines, mostly comwhat we used to call speed. PCP, the old angel dust, which can be manufactured anywhere is also widely used.

Several of the women told me that was their boy friends'

chief line of business. They trade drugs for food and medicine."

"Good G.o.d! I thought all that nonsense was years behind us."

"Obviously not."

"Are they worth our time and effort attempting to salvage, Jerre?" Ben had already made up his mind about that; but he wanted some input from Jerre.

The younger woman sighed. She had suspected Ben would throw that question at her, and she had dreaded the moment.

"They're all human beings, Ben."

"They walk upright," Ben tossed that back to her.

"I looked around this town while you people were checking them out. Nothing to resemble a school.

The older kids can't read or write. No gardens planted. The houses they squat in are filth-filled. They have no plumbing facilities. They've made no effort to improve themselves or the town in which they live. In several of the homes, human excrement was two feet deep in the bathrooms. They lie, they steal, and they are accomplices to murder, torture, and rape.

They're losers. Well take the children and tell the women to hit the road." He turned to Corrie.

"Make arrangements to have the kids flown to a secure zone."

"What if the women decide to make a fight of it, Ben?" Jerre asked. "We didn't disarm them ... at your orders."

"It will be a very brief fight."

Few of the outlaw women kicked up any fuss at having their kids taken from them. Most of them seemed relieved and glad to be rid of the children.

Ben had spoken to Leathers by radio, advising him of their actions and warning that the outlaws were still in his area.

Only two of the women were allowed to keep their children and be flown to another zone; one of them was the woman who had the brief debate with Ben. There was a spirit in both of them that Ben liked, and he made up his mind after seeing where they lived. The small houses were clean and some effort had been made toward plumbing and their own personal hygiene. Whether or not the women could make it in a controlled zone was up for grabs. Time would tell. The older kids were allowed to leave with their mothers. Many bitter and heart-tugging past experiences had effectively shown the Rebels that once a child pa.s.sed into their teens, and became hardened to brutality and crime, rehabilita- tion was nearly impossible to achieve. The Rebels had the inclination and desire to try, but neither the time nor the facilities to expel trying. It was a hard decision, but one that had to be made. The Rebels would not jeopardize four younger children in order to save one older teen. It was a situation that none of the Rebels -- including Ben-enjoyed seeing; but it was a decision that was made almost daily somewhere in the shattered nation, by some Rebel commander.

The Rebels pulled out just after dawn, following the river road toward Jefferson City. Ham and his team of Scouts took the point. They were followed by two Dusters, five hundred meters behind the point.

The Rebels saw no other living being on the way to Jefferson City. They pa.s.sed through towns that were rapidly falling apart, having been looted dozens of times over the decade since the Great War. Many of the buildings had burned . . . most of them deliberately set on fire by c.r.a.pheads who enjoyed seeing things burn, and knowing they could get away with it now with only a degree or two more impunity as they had when the nation was whole.

Ben said as much as they rolled and rumbled through the charred remnants of a small town.

"What do you mean, General?" Corrie asked.

"They were punished back before the Great War, weren't they?"

Jerre laughed, knowing more than the others what was coming.

Ben smiled. "They were slapped on the wrist by judges, told they were naughty, naughty boys, and usually turned loose to do it again."

"That doesn't make any sense," Beth said.

"Neither did our judicial system. And as long as I'm alive it will never return to that ridiculous degree of incompetence."

Ben looked out the window of the big wagon. "We're going to be an island standing in the middle of anarchy, people. Surrounded by human sharks with nothing in their pea brains but blood l.u.s.t. Once this continent is secure, we're going to have to shift our base of operations -- or somebody is comand secure the rest of the world, country by country. And that is going to take a lifetime. Maybe several lifetimes. We cannot permit our ideals and goals to die. That is why I put so much emphasis on education.

"When this nation was intact, our public schools commostly due to court decisions -- failed the nation for several decades. Our school systems became staffed with personnel obsessed with excellence in athletics and rot of the mind. We allowed games to reach the stature of a religion. It was downhill from that point.

"Our society became the most materialistic society on earth. Many of our elderly died alone and afraid, hungry and cold; the young could not receive proper medical care; victims of crime were ignored while we sobbed and moaned over the poor criminal, and endangered species of animals were slaughtered into extinction, while a good fifty percent of Americans spent literally billions of dollars pleasuring themselves on the most idiotic and meaningless of games or events . . . stepping over the homeless and mentally ill and young and old and sick and dying on their way to those dubious proceedings.

"As long as G.o.d allows me to live and pick up a gun, and as long as one person will follow me comor if I have to do it alone -- I will never see this nation return to those shameful days."

Those in the wagon were silent for a mile or so until Jersey wiped her eyes and broke the silence. "That was beautiful, General. If I wasn't a soldier, I think I'd just bust right out and bawl. I might anyway."

Ben started laughing at the expression on her face and the laughter became infectious. They were still laughing and wiping their eyes when they rolled into the ruins of Jefferson City, with Rebels they pa.s.sed looking at them and wondering what in the h.e.l.l was going on?

Ben drove through the looted and trashed city. He was not surprised to see several trucks with the bodies of dead creepies in the beds. "Have a little trouble, Tina?"

"A little. Six and Seven Battalions stayed out of the city. As soon as we rolled in the creepies attacked. It didn't take them long to realize they'd made a bad mistake. By that time it was too late. Jefferson City isn't that big a place so there weren't that many creepies here. I think we got most of them. Only a few of them escaped.

Dad, have you heard from Dan and Buddy?"

"Both of them are all right. They haven't made contact with Villar yet."

He explained Dan's change in plans and his daughter nodded her head in approval.

"If they link up with Malone and his squirrels we'll be right back in the fire again. And you can bet that Villar will never again allow his men to be trapped like they were in Illinois."

Ben certainly agreed with that. The Rebel's victorious battle with Villar was the only campaign that Ben could remember where the Rebels had no dead or wounded. Odds of that ever happening again were astronomically high against it.

"Dad? We don't really know the size of Malone's army, do we?"