"No, ma'am," the cotton-headed little boy said.

"Got it from the ground."

"You got it from the ground?" Rani asked. "Show me, Cotton."

They trooped up the stairs and back into the sunlight. Cotton marched the group to a barren spot in the back yard.

"Weeds and gra.s.s everywhere else,"

Rani said. "But none on this spot. This is the spot, Cotton?"

"Yes, ma'am."

The area he had pointed out was s...o...b..x shaped, about twenty feet long and ten feet wide. And it was barren of gra.s.s or weeds.

Rani walked across the spot several times. The ground felt soft beneath her shoes; it had a completely different feel from the ground around it.

"Get me a shovel, somebody," Rani said.

She began digging and soon struck something solid.

Further investigation revealed a sheet-metal top of some sort.

"Help me, kids," Rani said.

The sheet-metal top covered the entire pit, and it took all of them to pry it up and tip it over.

Rani started laughing at what the sunlight revealed.

"The man actually buried a small truck,"

Rani said.

The compact pickup was covered with sheets of thick plastic. It sat almost-new-looking inside the wooden walls of the boxlike hole, concrete blocks holding the tires off the ground.

Rani found a jack and took the truck down from its blocks. She checked the oil and battery and gas. The keys were in the ignition. She pumped the pedal a few times, once more for luck, then turned the key. The engine fired, caught, thendied. She tried again. This time it roared into life.

She dropped the truck into gear and went up the gradual incline the man had built.

"We're gonna make it, kids," she said to herself. "We're gonna make it. Please, G.o.d, let us make it."

"Yeah, tell "em OK," Campo said, speaking into his mike. "The more the merrier."

"What's up?" West asked.

"More fodder for the fire," Campo told him.

"Some ol" boys named Cowboy Vic and Texas Red want to link up with us. We're gonna meet tomorrow between Plainview and Lubbock, on the interstate."

"Not a bad idea," West agreed. "We can cover a h.e.l.l of a lot more ground this way. Send teams out all over the place. Then when we find Raines, we kill him-or maybe take him alive for trade-and get rid of the new guys."

"Sometimes you can make sense, West."

While Rani and the kids, with Robert driving the small truck, wound around county roads, finally coming to 669 and taking that south, Ben and Jordy bypa.s.sed Big Spring and set up camp for the night just a mile or so from the junction of Highways 669 and 350. Rani and the kids decided to spend the night at the deserted town of Luther.

Ben and Rani, two of the most hunted people in Texas, were camped just six miles apart.

"What do we head for next, Ben?" Jordy asked, warming his hands over a small fire.

"Oh, I think we'll head southwest, Jordy.

Get on Interstate 20 and see where it takes us.

That sound all right to you?"

"Yes, sir."

Man and boy retired to their blankets early, both of them staring up into the starry skies.

"Reckon what's up there, Ben? You think they's other people up there?"

"Yes, I do, Jordy. I always have. Maybe not like us, but other life-forms."

"If there is, reckon what they think about us? I mean, what we done to this world?"

"They probably think we're a bunch of d.a.m.ned idiots."

"I "bout got the hang of drivin" that truck, Miss Rani," Robert said. "Where do we head for in the morning?"

"I don't know," she admitted. "But I do want to get us down into south Texas for the winter.

Get you kids healthy again."

"We'll make it, Miss Rani," the boy a.s.sured her. "What did you make of all that talk on the radio about Mister Ben Raines, Rani?"

"I don't know. I can't imagine General Raines out traveling by himself. I thought he and his people were in Tennessee or Georgia, setting up a new government out there."

"Well, even if he is out here, can't nothinghurt Ben Raines," Robert said.

"He is flesh and blood, Robert," Rani tried to dispel the rumors about Ben. "He is a human being. Not a G.o.d."

She knew what was coming next, and the boy did not disappoint her. "Then how come we seen all them shrines and things to Mister Raines?"

The other children had gathered around, listening. For all except the very youngest had heard of the exploits of Ben Raines and his seemingly undefeatable Rebels.

Rani had just completed her second year of college when the bottom had dropped out back in 1988, and for a moment, she was flung back in time.

She had awakened that morning with a terrible headache.

She was disoriented and unsteady on her feet. She looked across the bedroom she was sharing with her sister, and a scream boiled out of her throat.

Her younger sister was on the floor, stiff and cold in death. Her face was twisted and blackened in death.

She looked as though she had been dead for some time.

Rani got to her feet and promptly fell down, her legs unable to support her. She crawled from the room, down the hall. The house was so still and quiet. She staggered to her feet and lurched into her parents' bedroom. She had steeled herself as to what she might find.

Both mother and father were dead, lying in bed. Blood had poured from nose, ears, and mouth, staining the whiteness of pillow.

She backed out of the room, fear gripping her like a band across her chest.

She jerked on a housecoat and stumbled into the living room, then out onto the porch. The scene that lay before her eyes was something out of a sci-fi thriller.

Men and women and children lay scrawled on the street, all twisted in various shapes as death struck them and dropped them.

Rani ran back into her house and, keeping her eyes averted from her sister's body, she slipped into blue jeans, tennis shoes, and blouse. She backed her parents' car out of the drive and slowly drove the streets. She could find no one alive.

She still, after all these years, was not certain exactly what happened after that first day. Not for some time. She remembered driving until she ran out of gas. Then she wandered for days, maybe weeks; she still wasn't certain. The death that lay in stinking heaps around her had numbed her mind. Perhaps that was the most merciful thing that could have happened to her. She had only very dim memories of being raped and abused. And she had no idea how she arrived a thousand miles from her home. But she did. Only then did she begin to be aware of her surrounding.

And she never fully understood why she was spared when so many others died.

"People lost faith," Rani said quietly. "They just couldn't believe that G.o.d would do something this awfulto the human race. Many of them needed someone ...

something they could see to worship. They found Ben Raines.

This one human man that rose up out of the ashes and built a nation within a nation. Against all odds, he did it. He fought mutants, warlords, outlaws, and the entire central government of the United States ... and won. A lot of people thought him blessed, so to speak. But he is not a G.o.d, children. He is flesh and blood and bone. Just like us."

But she could tell by the expression on the children's faces they were not convinced.

"Have you ever met Ben Raines, Miss Rani?"

Paul asked.

"No." She shook her head.

"Then you don't know for sure, do you?"

"No," Rani admitted. "I don't know for sure."

Chapter 13.

For just a fleeting moment, Ben thought of turning off the interstate and checking out Webb AFB at Big Spring. But he knew from experience what he would find. Nothing. The place would have been picked over a hundred times. And, he smiled, more than likely, most of the gear taken by my own people.

Was it Webb AFB that Sergeant Buck Osgood and his small band of men had barricaded themselves in a concrete bunker against the hordes of mutant rats8*

Ben couldn't remember. He knew it had been someplace in Texas.

He drove on past the exit sign for Webb AFB.

"Got anyplace in particular you'd like to see, Jordy?" he asked.

"Don't know no place, Ben. Don't make no difference, long as I'm seein' it with you."

Ben grinned. "OK. Now say your ABC'S.

for me."

*Fire in the Ashes The boy got them all right-first try.

Already, with three squares a day, the boy was gaining weight, filling out. The pinched look of poverty was leaving his face, and the boy was smiling more.

"We make a pretty good team, don't we, Jordy?"

"Sure do, Ben. Are you gonna keep me?"

"Am I going to what?"

"Keep me."

Ben laughed. "Why, I haven't given anything other than "keeping you" any thought, Jordy.

What did you think I was going to do-toss you out by the side of the road?"

"Naw. I didn't figure you'd do that. But nothing good ever lasts long. Not for n.o.body livin' out here, anyways."

"Well, we're going to last, Jordy. You andme. We'll hole up this winter and I'll teach you how to read and write-as best I can. Then, in the spring, we'll head on back to Georgia and you'll have a permanent home."

"With you, Ben?"

"With me, Jordy."

"Is that a promise, Ben?"

Ben ruffled his hair. "That's a promise, boy."

"Close to five hundred men, Jake," West said. "With more comin' in. With five-six hundred salty ol' boys, we could rule half of Texas if we played our cards right."

"That's what I'm thinking, too," Jake said.

"And I know where to get more."

"Oh?" West looked at him.