Either way, what right do you have to play G.o.d, rearranging peoples" lives? Who named you the Great Overseer? n.o.body came down from the mountain and whispered in your ear, Raines.

He shook away those thoughts and concentrated on his driving.

But his mind refused to stay idle; the outpost idea kept jumping to the fore. The outposts would, out of necessity, have to start out small. Because of the recent revolt within his ranks, his Rebel number had been cut by forty percent.*

They could not, as yet, stretch coast to coast; there weren't that many Rebels left. Perhaps a thousand miles without strain. From Base Camp One in Georgia to the middle of Colorado. Maybe.

Just maybe. But due to the aftereffects of the limited nuclear strikes, the jet stream had shifted, so he needed to get some people down south, to where the growing season was longer.

"s.h.i.t!" he said aloud. "Raines, this is supposed to be a vacation for you. You're supposed to be doing some writing."

But he doubted that would ever happen.

Something always came up to keep him from paper and pencil.

Blood in the Ashes Suddenly, one of those "somethings" reared up from the left side of the road. Ben braked and stopped.

He checked both mirrors. It was clear behind him.

He was still a good hundred yards from the man with a gun in his hands. Ben got out of the truck, taking his Thompson with him.

The hood of the truck protected him from the chest down. Ben clicked the Thompson off safety as the man slowly raised his rifle.

"I want your truck," the man called.

"Gimme it here and there won't be no trouble."

"Why do you need my particular truck?" Ben called. "There are thousands of vehicles for you to choose from."

""Cause yours is runnin"," the man said.

"Sorry, friend. Find your own mode of transportation."

"Then I'll just kill you," the man said.

Ben stepped from behind the door. Holding the Thompson waist-high, the muzzle pointed at the man's legs, Ben pulled the trigger and held it back.

A hundred yards is straining it for a Thompson, and the first six or eight rounds whined off the road in front of the man. But as the powerful old.45-caliber spitter roared and bucked, the muzzle pulling up and right from the weapon on full auto, a dozen or more rounds struck the man, starting at his ankles and working up, st.i.tching him from ankles to head. Part of the man's skullbone flew out into the field behind him as the man was knocked backward, dead before he hit the ditch.

Ben quickly ejected the drum and slapped in a full thirty-round clip. Crouching beside the truck, Ben did a slow sixty count before moving out. He ran to the body and crouched down in the ditch. The back of his neck was tingling with suspicion. Something was all out of whack here. Working quickly, Ben jerked the web belt off the man. The man was loaded down with M-16 clips, all full. Ben grabbed up the M-16 and inspected it for damage. None of his slugs had struck the weapon. He looked at the dead man.

The man wore new boots, reasonably fresh trousers, and clean- discounting the fresh blood stains and bullet holes- shirt and jacket.

"I don't know what your problem was, buddy,"

Ben said, walking back to the truck. "But you've been relieved of it."

He stowed the M-16 and extra ammo in the camper and drove on, thinking it was another mystery that would never be solved.

Ben drove on into Kennett, Missouri, stopping at the edge of town. He could see smoke from fires pluming into the sky, but as it so often was, the smoke was not centralized, but widely separated, as if the people wanted no part of each other.

"You're making a mistake, folks," he said aloud. "Now is the time to come together, not drift apart.

Black, white, red, yellow, tan; we all bleed the same color."

At the crossroads, Ben flipped a silver dollar he had carried for years into the air.

"Heads, I go right; tails I turn left," he said.

The coin came heads up.

Ben cut the wheel right, heading north.

He did not see another living soul, nor any sign of human life for the next twenty miles. At Campbell, Missouri, sitting out front of a long-unused service station, Ben spotted a man leaned back in a cane-bottomed chair. The man waved in a friendly gesture and Ben pulled over."

"Howdy, neighbor," the man said.

"h.e.l.lo," Ben returned the greeting.

"Been waitin' for you to show up," the man said.

"Folks over to Kennett radioed you was headin' this way."

"I see. Then they are a bit more organized than I thought."

"We're pretty well organized around here.

They told me you was travelin' alone and didn't appear to be hostile. d.a.m.n, you look familiarto me, mister."

"Ben Raines."

The man turned several shades paler.

"The Ben Raines?"

"I guess so. Is the world ready for two of us?"

Ben kidded.

"Well, I'll just be d.a.m.ned! Well, come on out and let's talk some. Let me get on the radio and get the folks together. Not that there's that many of us, mind you."

"How many?"

"Oh, "bout two hundred and fifty. And that number is made up of about twenty different bands and knots of folks."

Ben decided to keep his mouth shut about the man he'd killed on the road.

"I know what you're thinkin", Mr. Raines,"

the man said. "Are we under one leader, right? The answer is no. There's about sixty or so of us that would like that, but the rest of the folks are against it."

"Then get them together," Ben said. "I'm not interested in speaking to or meeting any of the other people."

The man smiled. "I heard you was a hard, hard man, Mr. Raines."

"So I've been told, sir. So I've been told."

Chapter 8.

Ben liked what he saw when the group of people was a.s.sembled in the old gym. There were sixty-eight adults gathered, their ages ranging from early twenties to what used to be called the Golden Age.

But, Ben thought with a smile, this bunch of elderly folks looked fit and hard.

Ben had met and shaken hands with them all. He'd met a couple of musicians, several farmers, mechanics, former small business people, accountants, two doctors, several lawyers ... a pretty good cross-section of small town America.

Briefly, Ben explained his idea of outposts stretching across the land. He explained the advantages to that plan, and then let the people talk about it among themselves for a time.

"And we can count on help from your Rebels, General Raines?" he was asked.

"Once you people are committed to the plan, yes,"

Ben said. "But I'm not going to send my people in here to waste their time and yours if you're not ready for organization and law and order. I think you're all familiar with how the Tri-States operated.

That's the way I'll expect you to run your community. You people have the beginnings of a good operation here.

All you need to do is break away from the dissidents among you and set it up. And you don't need my help to do that. You're well armed and you look fit.

I've given you the frequency of our Base Camp One. If you hit a snag, contact them. The next outpost is just across the river, in Dyersburg. Whydon't you send someone over there to look around, compare ideas. All I can tell you is, "good luck.""

Ben pulled out, alone, early the next morning.

For some reason he could not fathom, Texas was pulling at him, and he wanted to get there and spend the winter there, exploring and writing and being alone. He had been surrounded by people for more than a decade, training and fighting and organizing and being pushed and prodded into something he had never really wanted to be: A.

leader.

He just wanted to be alone for a time.

Ben headed straight west, or as straight as the road would allow after he took a county road down to Highway 142. At Neelyville, Missouri, he filled his gas tanks and prowled the deserted town-and this town was definitely deserted.

He sat for a time in an old barber shop and thumbed through what was left of an old Field and Stream magazine he'd found stuck up under some hair tonic behind the closed doors of a cabinet. He leaned back in the old chair and muttered, "A shave and haircut, please."

Then the old chair collapsed and dumped him to the floor.

Laughing at himself-something Ben had always been able to do-he continued westward.

Just outside of Gatewood, Missouri, he found the highway blocked by a fallen tree. Using his chain saw, Ben cleared the road and drove on for a few more miles before deciding it was time to hunt a place to spend the night.

He stopped on the west side of the Eleven Point River and caught a mess of fish for his supper, cooking them on his camp stove on the closed porch of a once-fine old home.

When he awakened the next morning, dawn was breaking and the ground was white with frost.

He was also looking down the muzzle of a double-barreled shotgun.

"Well, now, if that ain't the sorriest lookin'

sight I ever did see," Jake Campo said.

"A one-footed warlord ridin' a G.o.dd.a.m.ned mule, and a-leadin' a pack-rat bunch of whupped rednecks."

The big outlaw lifted his ugly face to the sky and howled with laughter.

"Laugh, you lard-a.s.sed son of a b.i.t.c.h!" West snarled at the man. "I got more men than you have, and if you want a fight you d.a.m.n sure got it."

"Now, now," Jake said, wiping tears from his eyes. "Don't get your bowels in no uproar, West. How in the h.e.l.l did you lose your foot?"'

"That b.a.s.t.a.r.d Ben Raines shot it off!"

"It appears Raines not only took your foot, but your ear and cars and most of your guns as well,"Jake observed. Campo helped West down from the mule and to a camp chair in front of his tent. He poured the man chicory coffee.

West slurped his coffee and sighed. "Good," he said. "Warms my belly but don't do nothin" for the hurt in my leg."

"That'll pa.s.s, I reckon," Jake said.

"Or else you'll die. One of the two. Tell me what happened."

West tried to ease his aching stump by propping it up. He told Campo what had happened, greatly embellishing the heroism of himself and his men against overwhelming odds.

"Uh-huh," Jake said, slurping his coffee.

"Now that we got the bulls.h.i.t outta the way, tell me the truth."

"I just tole you!"

"No, you didn't. You told me a bunch of lies. Raines probably pulled together a gang of civilians and then proceeded to kick your a.s.s.

He's good at doin' things like that. Now, West, ain't that what really happened?"

West slumped back in his chair. His face still silently expressed the ache in his severed stump.

"Yeah," he said. "That's just about it. Jake? You reckon they's any truth in all them stories about Raines?"