"That must have been a nice place to live,"Jordy said wistfully.

"Oh, it was, if a person obeyed the law and respected the rights of others."

"What happened if they didn't?"'

"There was somebody around to bury them."

Ben and Jordy had rambled around on county roads, picking up Highway 62 at Lawton and taking that into Texas. They turned south and headed for Childress, crossing the Red River.

This was an area of the once-proud-and-mighty nation the rats had hit hard. Ben had not expected to see many survivors, but he hadn't thought it would be this bad.

There just wasn't anybody.

Or anything.

"What happened around here, Ben?" Jordy asked. "There ain't a go.a ... darn thing alive."

"Rats, Jordy. For some reason-and I don't know why-the rats. .h.i.t this part of the country hard. Very few people made it out alive."

The boy looked nervously around him. "We ain't stoppin", are we-, Ben?"

"Not even to pee, Jordy."

At Paducah, Texas, Ben spotted the first human being he'd seen in a hundred miles of absolute desolation.

He pulled off the highway and drove slowly up to the small group of people. Ben let a white handkerchief flutter from his left hand, held out the window.

Ben called, "We're friendly, folks."

A man smiled and waved at him. "Then come on out and sit and talk, friend."

"The last hundred miles looked a little grim,"

Ben said, accepting a cup of coffee-or what presently pa.s.sed for coffee.

"To say the least," a woman said. "The rats have been long gone, died out, but everybody in that area was killed. We try to stay out of that part of the country."

"What's your name, friend?" a cowboy asked.

Jordy grinned.

"Ben Raines."

The knot of people grew still and silent. The man who had first waved and spoken to Ben shuffled his booted feet.

"General Ben Raines?"

"Yes. But why don't we just keep it Ben?"'

"Mr. Raines," a woman stepped forward, "you like stew?"

"I sure do, ma'am."

"Then let's eat."

Rani looked at the body of the man she'd just shot through the head. She recognized him as one of Crazy Vic's men. And she knew Vic and the rest of his gang would not be far behind.

"Robert, Kathy!" she called to the two oldest of her adopted brood. "Help me drag this body over there and hide it." She gave Robert, twelve years old, the man's pistol, and Kathy, also twelve, the man's rifle. Rani was working so fast she wasn't thinking properly.

"Rani?" Kathy said. "This man had to get here someway. He sure didn't fly. He probably hid his car or truck."

Rani gently ruffled the girl's hair. "Good thinking, Kathy. Pray it's a truck."

It was a king-cab pickup. And best of all, the pickup started at the first touch of the ignition. Rani put her forehead on the steering wheel and said a little prayer.

"Prayin" ain't gonna help none, c.u.n.t!"

the man's voice said.

Rani raised her head and looked into the mean eyes of a man.

"You kill Harry?" the man asked.

Rani nodded her head.

The man grinned. His teeth were no more than blackened stumps. "Didn't lak him noway.

Git outta the truck, b.i.t.c.h, and take me to that fine-lookin' little big girl travelin' with you. I want me a taste of young p.u.s.s.y. Then I'll get to you."

The man's entire lower jaw disappeared in a roaring boom and gush of blood and bone. He was flung to one side, the blood from his wound staining the concrete floor.

Rani, temporarily deafened by the gunshot, looked around. Kathy was standing by the rear of the pickup, the .30-30 rifle in her hands. She had shot the man from a distance of no more than six or seven feet.

The man flopped on the floor, his boot heels drumming in agony. He tried to speak. Only horrible bubbling sounds came from his ruined face.

In normal times, the child would have probably been sick after what she'd done. But these were not normal times.

Normal times would probably never come again. At least not in her lifetime. Kathy looked at the jerking, bleeding man.

"Get his guns and bullets, Miss Rani,"

she said. "We got to stay ready for Vic when he comes. And you know he'll be comin' after us."

"Yes," Rani came out of her fog of shock.

She took several deep breaths, calming herself. The kids had gathered around. G.o.d! she thought. What a pitiful looking crew. Her eyes touched Robert. "Robert, you find all the gas cans you can round up, start filling them with gas from those drums." She looked at eleven-year-old Jane, pale and too thin, always susceptible to colds. "You help Robert, honey."

"Yes, ma'am." The kids scurried off.

Sarah and Becky, the three-year-olds, stood off to one side, eyes big as they looked at the dying man on the concrete. "Lisa," Rani said."You look after Sarah and Becky. Come on, kids, we've got to get busy."

"Is Crazy Vic gonna get us, Rani?"

Six-year-old Danny asked.

"No!" Rani said. "I swear to you all-no!"

Chapter.

"Be like my great granddad," one of the men said, after Ben touched on his outpost idea. "Back when they was fightin' the Indians."

Another man, obviously with strong Indian blood flowing in his veins, looked at the spokesman and smiled. "But now we're all in it together. Right, Frank?"'

"Thank G.o.d," his friend said, returning the smile. "I'd hate to think we had to fight you heathens, too, Roland."

A woman said, "Don't pay them no mind, General. They've been friends for forty years."

The man jerked his thumb toward the Indian.

"His ancestors scalped my ancestors."

"Your ancestors stole our land," Roland retorted. "Besides, Indians didn't invent scalping. They got it from the white man."

"And away they go," the woman said.

"Been doing it for forty years," another man said.

"I think the Indians are winnin"," another man said.

"If we have enough time," Roland said. Then he laughed. "And enough Indians."

The people in the small town warned Ben that there were outlaw gangs roaming about everywhere, and that they were vicious, cutting another page from the dark history of the Texas Comancheros, the band of Mexicans, half-breeds, and Caucasian Americans who had looted and raped and killed until finally being wiped out when the citizens of Texas and Mexico got their guts' full of the outlaws.

Ben and Jordy pulled out early in the morning, heading south on Highway 83.

Guthrie was a ghost town, with anything of value having been looted long ago.

Without having any good reason to do so, other than the fact Ben was on no timetable, he cut west at Guthrie, heading for Lubbock. He did not see one human being until reaching the town of Rails, and his curiosity almost got them both killed.

"Yeah," Campo said, surveying all the carnage Ben had left behind. "Raines was here, all right." He laughed, an ugly bark of derisiveness. "These p.e.c.k.e.r-woods thought ol' Ben would be an easy touch. I could have told them different."

"Me, too," West said sorrowfully, looking at his stump. "I don't know, Jake. Sometimes I get a plumb spooky feeling thinkin' "bout Raines." He looked around at the charred bodies lying on the Oklahoma highway. "You know what I mean?"

Campo didn't want to admit it, but he knewvery well what West was talking about. He just didn't like to think about it.

Campo chose not to answer West's question. He turned away from the scene and walked back to his van. He told one of his men, "Somebody who lives around here saw something. You get some boys and scatter. Find out what you can; especially which direction Raines went from here. G."

Standing by his van, Campo looked toward the west. "You may think you're a G.o.d, Raines. But I'm gonna prove people wrong. 'Cause I'm gonna kill you, mister. I'm gonna kill you and hang your scalp on my belt buckle. Bet on it."

Rani got as far as Lamesa before running into trouble. But she had vowed the next time she was confronted with trouble, she would shoot first and take her chances with her conscience later.

There was a CB radio in the truck, along with some sort of military-looking short-wave radio.

She was amazed at the traffic on the CB radio, most of it very unfriendly and extremely vulgar.

And it was the CB radio that warned her of impending trouble.

"Blue king-cab rollin" south on 87," the voice sprang out of the speaker. "Fine-lookin'

c.u.n.t behind the wheel. Truck's packed with kids."

"Stay out of this," a man's voice blasted the cab, obviously pushed by a booster. "That's Vic's woman."

"Vic who?"'

"Cowboy Vic. Warlord of the West."

The first voice laughed. "Never heard of the son of a b.i.t.c.h. Tell him to keep a.s.s out of this part of Texas or we'll feed him to the rattlers."

Rani pulled off the highway and drove behind a falling-down old farm and ranch complex of buildings.

"Lost her!" the first voice said. "She's somewhere between O'Donnell and Arvana."

"Keep lookin"," a new voice was added.

"She won't be that hard to find."

Another voice was added to the growing number of voices. "If you're hiding, lady," a man's voice spoke, "stay down. We're sending out a patrol from Lamesa to help you. Don't reply to this transmission. Just stay quiet."

"It's them Christian mother-f.u.c.kers," the first voice said contemptuously.

"Yeah," yet another voice said. "You a.s.shole Jesus freaks come on. We'll run your psalm-singin' a.s.ses back to Lamesa."

"You've tried that before, Red," the calm, steady voice replied. "The Lord will forgive me for saying this, but this time I intend to kick your worthless a.s.s all the way up to the Red River."

"You the warlord called Texas Red?" Vic's man asked.

"Yeah."

"Pull it over, Red. Let's talk. Wemight stand a better chance if we joined forces. You know what I mean?"

"Yeah. Mayhaps you're right, friend. Me and my boys will meet you on the south side of O'Donnell. Be there in about fifteen minutes."