A young boy, no more than nine or ten years old, lay still in the center of the road. The child was dressed in rags, and was, or had been, painfully thin. From malnutrition, Ben was sure. Four men stood perhaps two hundred yards from the dead child, west and slightly south of Ben's location. Too far away for Ben's Thompson. A hundred yards wa.s.straining it for the Thompson, even though Ben's Thompson was a newer, more rapid fire model than the old 1921 Chicago Piano, as the gangsters used to call them. The older model Thompson spat out between 40 and 50 rounds a minute; a person could almost take a breath between rounds. Ben's newer submachine gun was capable of about 60 to 70 RPM'S.

Ben looked behind him at Jordy, and once more motioned for the boy to lie very still and not make a sound.

Jordy nodded his head.

The men began walking toward the body of the child. They were all armed, and were laughing, as if a dead child was a big joke to them.

"You shot that little s.h.i.t right square in the back of the head, Also," a man complimented the rifleman. "d.a.m.n good shootin'."

"Yeah. But I'm gonna miss the little b.a.s.t.a.r.d.

He sure had some tight a.s.shole."

"Sh.o.r.e did," another man said. "But what the h.e.l.l. We'll find us some more kids."

Ben silently cursed the perverted b.a.s.t.a.r.ds for what they were and slipped from the notch, working his way closer to the boy, keeping the rocks between himself and the road. He closed the distance to about sixty yards and waited until the men reached the boy.

Then he stood up, the rocks partially protecting him from the two-legged filth.

The men spotted him and pulled up short. They wore confused looks on their faces. Then the man who had shot the boy grinned.

"What the f.u.c.k do you want, buddy?" he asked.

Before Ben could reply, the man added, "And what the f.u.c.k are you lookin' at us so funny for, you skinny b.a.s.t.a.r.d?"

Ben's frame often fooled people. Those so inclined to do so, usually guessed him a full thirty pounds under his actual weight. Ben smiled a grim grimace. "What I'm looking at is a quartet of horses.h.i.t, sorry, trashy mother-f.u.c.kers," he replied, his voice low, but carrying to the men.

The men stirred. The bearded rifleman said, "I don't know who you think you are, mister, to talk to me like that. But you about five seconds away from dyin'."

Ben met the man look for look. He shifted his eyes for a second to the dead child. "Why did you kill that boy?"

The man laughed and looked at his friends. The four of them stood almost shoulder to shoulder, facing Ben.

""Cause he were my slave and my private f.u.c.k mate. He heared about that there Rani havin"

lef Oklahoma and maybe comin' this away. He run off tryin' to find her. I kilt him. My right to do so. He belonged to me. He were my property to do with as I seen fit."

"No human being has the right to enslave another human being," Ben said. "Not even if the person being enslaved is filth like you. I've heard the name Rani. What about her?" "You ask a lot of questions for a man about to die, mister."

Ben stood quietly, meeting the man's gaze.

"Rani's a broad that takes in homeless kids. Used to be up in Oklahoma "til some warlord got to want to f.u.c.k her steady-her and the kids." He grinned. "We think she's took up livin" over to Terlingua.

Now me and my boys are goin' over there and git her and them sweet young kids of her'n."

"No," Ben said softly.

"No!

Whut the h.e.l.l you talkin' "bout now, boy?

Huh?"'

"I said no."

"Well, just how in the h.e.l.l are you figurin' on stoppin' us, mister?"

Ben smiled. "When you human trash meet the devil, tell him Ben Raines sent you."

"Ben Raines!" one man shouted.

Ben stepped from behind cover and lifted the Thompson, pulling the trigger, working the weapon from left to right, spraying the filth, fighting the natural rise of the powerful submachine gun.

The .45-caliber, hollow-point ACP slugs slammed the men around in the road and sprayed blood into the air and onto the sands. The men fell to the highway, dying in their own blood.

Ben inspected the bodies and took two of their M-16's and two of their pistols. He removed all their ammo belts and left them where they had fallen, their features twisted in that one last hot moment of dying.

He pulled the boy off the highway and then went to find the men's vehicles. The trucks were about five hundred yards up the road. Using one of his blankets to wrap the boy (ben could not bear the thought of wrapping the boy in one of the outlaws' blankets; he could give the boy that much, anyway), Ben dug a shallow grave and covered it with rocks to keep the coyotes and dogs from digging up the remains and eating them.

He and Jordy broke camp and loaded up, driving back up the road to the dead men's pickups. There, Ben found boxes of ammo and cans of water; several cases of food and five five-gallon cans of gasoline.

Ben looked at Jordy and grinned. "Think you could drive one of these trucks, Jordy?"

"I reckon I could if I set my mind to it, Ben."

"Well, all right, then. Let's just spend the morning having you practicing, then. How does that sound?"

"Better than a kick in the a.s.s with a steel-toed boot, Ben," the boy replied with a grin.

Just after the sun had broken Over the horizon, Rani had thought she heard the faint sounds of gunfire. She thought they came from the west, but she couldn't be certain of either the shots or the direction. Rani ran her fingers through her light brown hair, cut short. She was glad there were no mirrors in the old house; she must look like the devil.

She walked outside and stood for a time on the breezeway of the home.

Where have the years gone? she silently questioned. It seemed to her that she had been fighting for survival all her life-even though she knew that wasn't true. She turned her green eyes toward the west and wondered how many tms she had left?

That's stupid! she thought. No one has the power to know that.

In her early thirties, Rani was more beautiful now than when she had been a cheerleader in high school. Only now, hers was a mature woman's beauty. She was, she often thought with a smile, just vaguely remembering the old TV commercial, a full-breasted woman. She leaned her five foot, four inch frame against one of the columns of the old house and once more looked out over the quiet ruins, her arms folded under her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

She thought: I still don't have enough books or paper and pencils for the kids. Have to make do with what I have.

I can't chance another run outside this area.

She shook her head and walked inside to make a pot of tea. Tea, it seemed, was still relatively easy to come by. People would pa.s.s up the little tins of tea in their search for coffee.

The kids were still asleep.

She quietly fixed her tea, andwitha handful of crackers, walked back outside to sit on the porch.

She was certain she had heard gunshots. And that made her very uneasy.

Jordy practiced for several hours behind the wheel of the smaller truck. For a kid who had never driven in his life, the boy caught on very fast. He, of course, was no expert, but he could keep it between the ditches. And the going was very slow, anyway, the highways in such bad shape. Averaging thirty mph was doing very well.

They pulled out at eleven o'clock that morning.

Terlingua was only about three miles away.

On the outskirts of the ghost town, Ben pulled over and told Jordy to stay in his truck while he prowled a bit. Smiling, Ben thought the warning a bit unnecessary. It would have taken a team of mules to forcibly remove the boy from behind the wheel.

Ben's trained eyes soon picked up on someone's attempts to hide vehicle tracks. It had been a pretty good job, but not done by an expert. And after fifteen minutes of looking, Ben straightened up, a puzzled look on his face. The footprints he'd found were all small.

He searched the ruins, suddenly sensing he was not alone. His eyes kept drifting to the big house overlooking the ruins. He walked toward the house. Just the faintest finger of smoke came from the chimney.

The small footprints led straight to the house.

Standing beside a crumbling old adobe building, Ben called, "h.e.l.lo, the house. I'm friendly.

Anybody home?"

A bullet whined off the adobe, sending chunks of it flying. The slug missed Ben's head by only a couple of inches. He ducked back.

"Now, Vic!" a woman's voice came to him.

"Now, I've got you. And this time I'm going to kill you."

Chapter 18.

"Madam," Ben called. "My name is not Vic. If you will put away that cannon you're firing at me, I'll sling my weapon and step out with my hands in the air. I'm traveling with a small boy named Jordy. He's with the trucks about a quarter of mile west of here. My name is Ben Raines."

"You're a G.o.dd.a.m.ned liar!" Rani yelled.

"General Raines is a thousand miles east of here."

"Is your name Rani?" Ben called.

"Yes." This time, the reply was softer.

Briefly, Ben told her, from his hiding place behind the adobe, the events of that morning. He ended with, "... I killed the men who had kept the boy enslaved. They were thoroughly despicable types."

"Oh, G.o.d!" he heard her say. "The whole world's gone mad."

"Not all of us, Rani. Believe me, there are pockets of civilized behavior still to be found."

"Step out, Mr. Raines."

Taking a deep breath, Ben slung his Thompson and stepped out from behind the old building, his hands in the air.

A very shapely lady stepped out onto the long porch. She held an AR-1S in her hands.

"Ben!" Jordy called. "Are you all right?"

"I'm fine, Jordy," Ben called. "Stay where you are until I come for you."

"Yes, sir."

Rani lowered the rifle. She walked from the porch to the old stone fence around the mansion and stood looking down at Ben. "I'm Rani Jordan, Mr.

Raines. Nice to meet you."

"You might change your mind, Miss Jordan.

I think I've got about half the outlaws and warlords in the southwest chasing me."

"I think I know the feeling," Rani told him.

"I don't know the other warlords after me, but I do know Crazy Vic. Cowboy Vic. And he is crazy. Dresses like Sunset Carson, or one of those old-time cowboys. But don't sell him short. He looks stupid with those six-guns hanging left and right; but he's rattlesnake quick with them, and a dead shot with rifle or pistol. Do you know how many men we have chasing us?" "I'd say about six hundred," Ben informed her.

Rani paled under her summer tan. "Six hundred?

Are you serious?"

"Oh, yes. So I would suggest we join forces and try to stay alive."

"But there's only two of us!" she protested.

"We can't fight six hundred men."

"Sure, we can," Ben said brightly. "Unless you want to surrender to them."

"No way!" she said grimly.

"Then we fight to stay alive and free. There is no other way."

Colonel Gray and his company of Rebels were literally fighting their way across Mississippi, then into Louisiana. It seemed they were in a firefight every twenty-five miles.

And race had once more reared up.

Everybody, or so it seemed, was fighting everybody else.

"Madness!" Colonel Gray said. "If there was ever a time for everyone to work together, this is it. Why can't they see that?"

Every thirty or forty miles, the heavily armed convoy of Rebels would enter some new warlord's territory, and the fighting would begin anew.