FIVE

 

Ben walked over to the clearing where the outlaws were being held and stood for a moment, staring at them. Ben noticed with a small amount of amusement that whoever had assigned the guards, had assigned all women Rebels to guard the outlaws, and the women were very grim-faced.

“Them damn kids lie, General!” one outlaw called. “We ain’t abused nobody.”

“Yeah, General,” another shouted. “Them kids had already been buggered out good when we got them.”

One of the women guards slowly lifted the muzzle of her M-16 with white-knuckled hands, then got control of her temper and lowered the muzzle.

A Rebel interrogation officer walked up to Ben’s side and stood for a moment. “General, I honestly believe this is the most worthless gathering of human trash I have ever encountered.”

“They’ve all been tested?”

“Every one of them. They’re the biggest pack of liars we’ve ever tested.”

“I thought we had more prisoners than this?”

“They’re beginning to turn on each other, trying to save their miserable lives by ratting each other out.”

“You’ve talked to the kids?”

“Oh, yes, sir. Those that are capable of talking, that is. Some just point to their tormentors.”

“Are these men and women all ex-bikers?”

“No, sir. Actually, only a few are. The rest are just plain old-fashioned scum.”

“I see. The women with them, they took part in the sexual abusing, too?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well . . . I mean, how? Women aren’t exactly equipped for that sort of thing.”

“Artificial means, sir. If you know what I mean.”

Ben sighed. “Son of a bitch!”

“Yes, sir. General, some of the prisoners wish to talk with you.”

“I suppose I owe them that courtesy.”

“If you say so, sir.”

“Very well.”

“We’ve set up a squad tent over there, sir.” He pointed.

Ben walked over to the tent and sat down behind a portable field desk. Jersey stood behind him and to his right, Beth behind him and to his left. Both of them were stony-faced. Cooper and Anna elected to remain just outside the tent. Corrie was busy with her radio.

Ben had a file on each prisoner in front of him, placed in alphabetical order. He opened the first file, read the first few paragraphs, felt queasy in his stomach, and closed the file. “Send the first son of a bitch in,” he called.

The man stepped in and stood defiantly in front of Ben. “If you have something to say, say it,” Ben told him.

“I’m a prisoner of war and I demand to be treated as such,” the man said. “I know my rights and them kids lie!”

“A prisoner of war,” Ben repeated softly. “I know of no declaration of war that exists between our two groups.”

“Don’t have to be none. You and your army invaded our state. We got a right to defend our sovereign territory.”

“Really?”

“That’s right.”

“I suppose you are going to tell me you never sexually abused any of the children?”

“That’s right. I never done no such of a thing.”

“You’re a liar! Some of your own people have rolled over on you.”

“Them kids wanted it, General. They ain’t nothin’ but a bunch of lyin’ little faggots. Some of ’em’s goofy in the head, anyways. They ain’t never gonna be good for nothin’.”

Ben wrote two words on the first page of the file, then signed his name below that. “Cooper!”

“Boss?” Cooper stuck his head into the tent.

Ben handed him the file. “Give this to the interrogation officer, please. And take this walking piece of shit out of here.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What’d you write in that file, Raines?” the outlaw demanded.

Ben opened the file and held it up so the hulking oaf could see it. Just above his signature he had written, in capital letters: HANG HIM.

 

The battle for the old national forest fizzled out after only one day of fighting, with the dopers and the outlaws and the various other human scum and crud turning themselves in by the droves. Some of them were tried and hanged, but most were merely disarmed and turned loose, after being photographed and blood samples taken for DNA identification . . . should they ever again screw up in Rebel territory.

“You can bet they’ll screw up in somebody’s territory,” Jersey opined.

“Just as long as it isn’t in the SUSA or any town or settlement who subscribes to our philosophy,” Ben said.

The Tri-States philosophy was becoming a real problem for newly elected mayors and governors all over the divided nation. There were thousands of people in all sections of America who wanted to live under the banner of the Tri-States doctrine, but did not want to leave the place where they were born and reared. So they decided to stay right where they had lived for most of their lives and adopt the Tri-States system of justice . . . which was not at all to the liking of anyone who subscribed to the hanky-stomping, sobbing-sister, take-a-punk-to-lunch-bunch, it’s-not-the-criminal’s-fault, give-me-something-for-nothing liberal crowd who were once more surfacing in hand-wringing, snot-slinging whiny bunches outside of the SUSA.

They knew better than to cross the borders into the SUSA with their bullshit.

Unknown to either Cecil Jefferys or Ben Raines, the governors of a dozen Northern and Eastern states had agreed to meet secretly to discuss how best to deal with those people who insisted upon living outside the SUSA but still refused to recognize any law other than the common sense laws as set forth in the SUSA charter . . . . known halfway around the world as the Tri-States philosophy, and practiced in many foreign countries.

But what really irked the governors and mayors and other elected officials was while they were battling apathy and high crime in their areas, in those areas that subscribed to the Tri-States philosophy, neighbor helped neighbor to rebuild, and crime was practically nonexistent.

It was all very irritating to those officials who adamantly rejected the Tri-States philosophy . . . and they were determined to smash the movement before others could adopt it.

“Attempt anything like that,” one newly elected governor said, “and we’re going to have Ben Raines and his Rebels breathing down our necks. I don’t want that.”

“President Altman has pledged his support,” another governor said.

“It will be years before Altman has an army of any size,” the mayor of a rebuilding small city said. “And Altman is weak; he’s afraid of Ben Raines and the Rebels.”

“And you’re not?” a governor questioned with a smile. “I can tell you all I am, and I’m not ashamed to admit it.”

“The problem is,” Governor Bradford, a newly elected governor from the northeast region of the separated nation spoke up, “those who subscribe to this Tri-State philosophy are well-organized and well-armed.” He grimaced. “Ben Raines has seen to that. And they seem to have no respect for anyone who doesn’t agree with them.”

Governor Willis, a newly elected governor also from the northeast, but a moderate in his political views, shook his head. “I have to disagree with that, Brad. It isn’t that they don’t have respect for others. I’ve found Tri-Staters to be, for the most part, a very law-abiding, hard-working, and respectful group of people . . .”

Bradford snorted in derision.

Willis ignored him and continued, “. . . They have agreed to pay their fair share of taxes, they certainly are willing to help each other rebuild—we’ve all observed many shining examples of that. It’s just they . . .” He paused and reflected for a few seconds; smoothed back his thinning and graying hair. “. . . won’t tolerate crime or people who refuse to work and want something for nothing. In many ways, ladies and gentlemen, they personify the spirit of America of three hundred years ago.”

“That is pure nonsense,” Ellen Simmons, the governor of another Northeastern state and liberal from head to toe snapped. “They’re outlaws and rebels. Their society is built on gunsmoke. My God, they’ve hanged people in those areas.”

“But they have no racial prejudices, no crime, full employment, and a simple, workable set of laws,” Willis pointed out. “What is the very first thing those people did? They rebuilt the schools . . .”

“And they’re teaching things that should not be taught,” Ellen persisted. “They’re teaching morals and values and their concept of what is right and wrong. I wouldn’t doubt but what they secretly have prayer in school. We just can’t have that. I won’t tolerate it. I will not tolerate it.”

Governor Willis leaned back in his chair and hid his smile. He knew that the Tri-Staters, at least those in his state, did not have prayer in school. They had a moment of silence, during which the kids could pray silently if they wished, or they could think about homework or the boy or girl across the aisle from them, or whatever they chose to think about. And as far as teaching morals and values and right and wrong . . . what the hell was so wrong with that?

“And they also teach the kids warfare,” Mayor Danbury said with a frown as he wriggled in his chair. “I find that most repugnant.”

“They have their equivalent of Junior ROTC,” Willis corrected patiently. “For both genders, with no discrimination. What is wrong with that?”

“They’re homophobic,” another mayor said.

“Oh, they are not,” Willis said, more of an edge to his words than he intended. “In many ways they’re much more tolerant than we are.”

“I resent the hell out of that!” Ellen Simmons shouted. “Don’t you dare cast me in a dimmer light to that bunch of right-wing gun-nuts.”

“Me, either,” Mayor Danbury said, then tightly compressed his lips into a bloodless pouty slash.

Willis sighed. “Don’t move against these people. I warn you all. Don’t do it. They’ll fight, and believe me when I say, they’re experts at it.”

“Thanks to Ben Raines and his Rebels,” Ellen said. “I just hate that man!”

Willis started to say that it was common knowledge that Ellen hated all men, but curbed his tongue just at the last second.

“These people have to be made to toe the line,” another governor said. “We simply cannot have little breakaway colonies all over the nation.”

What’s left of the nation, that is, Willis thought. And it appears to be growing smaller each time I look around. And speaking of looking around, he mused, looking around at this gathering I can see why so many free-thinking and God-fearing men and women don’t want to have anything to do with us. What a bunch of ninnies.

“And once we stamp out these little pockets of anarchy,” Governor Bradford was saying, “we can turn our attentions toward rebuilding the army and then once and for all defeat Ben Raines and the Rebels.”

Governor Willis couldn’t contain himself. He started laughing at that ridiculous statement. He was laughing as he stood up and pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and was wiping laughter-tears from his eyes as he walked out the door.

“Where are you going, Ed?” a mayor called after him. “And what is so damned funny?”

But Ed merely lifted a hand and kept on walking. Damned if he was going to be part of any group who declared war on Ben Raines and his Rebels. And Raines would hear about it; Ed had absolutely no doubt about that.

 

All the ramshackle huts and hooches and shacks in the national park were torn down and the materials used were stacked and burned. Ben knew it was only a stop-gap measure: others would soon inhabit the woods. But perhaps they would not be outlaws and thugs. The Rebels could only hope.

The column moved on, and the other west-bound columns moved out as well, for when the lead battalion stops, the others must stop as well to maintain the ordered distance.

Even though neither Ben nor Ike had so much as whispered the rumors about Simon Border and his sexual appetite for young children, the talk was spreading rapidly among the troops. Ben and the other batt coms could sense the tension growing among his people, for the talk was that if Simon was a molester, it was only reasonable to assume that so must be others in the hierarchy of his organization. At the very least, Simon’s people knew of it, and were doing nothing to stop it.

When the column was only a few hours away from the ruins of San Diego, bivouacked for the night, Jersey came to see Ben as he sat alone in his mobile HQ.

“I gotta talk to you, boss,” Jersey said.

Ben waved her to a chair. “What’s on your mind, Jersey?”

“Simon Border being a pedophile.”

“The talk is spreading, right?”

“Right.”

“And the troops are getting restless and angry about it?”

“Right.”

Ben nodded his head as he toyed with his empty coffee mug. “Okay, Jersey. It’s been confirmed. The rumors are true.”

“And Simon’s followers know of it?”

“Well . . . some of them, sure. But I don’t think the knowledge is widespread.”

“How could it not be, boss?”

Jersey had a point and Ben knew it, but he just refused to believe that once good decent people (before Simon filled their heads with verbal nonsense) would allow such a monstrous thing to happen, and keep on happening, without doing something to stop it.

He said as much.

Jersey shook her head and frowned.

“Say what’s on your mind, Little Bit. We’ve never held back from each other.”

“It can happen, boss. It has before. We’ve all been reading some of Beth’s books and journals . . . .”

Ben had to smile despite, or perhaps because of, the seriousness of the charges against Simon. Beth had half of the bed filled to overflowing with her research material, and was forever collecting more. Well, that was part of her job. Hell, it looked as though Ben would never get the chance to write his final book about the Great War and the changes in the world thereafter, so perhaps Beth would do it. She certainly had the talent and the material.

“I’ve been hearing more and more about Beth’s gathering of material, Jersey.”

“She’s doing it for you, boss,” Jersey said softly.

Ben looked up. “What?”

“She knows you want to write one more book about how the nation was rife for trouble before the Great War, and how the people coped with the collapse of government and the rebuilding and all the trouble after the Great War. We all help her collect every scrap of information we can find. We’ve been doing it for years.”

Ben was filled with a sudden very warm sensation of deep feeling for his team. Hell, he must be getting old; he should have seen what was happening. He turned his head away quickly and cleared his throat.

Jersey, sensing what was happening, jumped up and grabbed his coffee mug. “I’ll just refill this cup for you, boss.”

“Thank you, Jersey.”

Ben turned in his chair for a moment, until he heard his coffee mug being placed on his desk. He swung his chair around. “I’ll address the troops soon, Jersey. I’ve just been putting it off, hoping against hope the talk about Simon wasn’t true.” Ben frowned. “But . . . I just received word by messenger not thirty minutes ago that pretty much confirms the rumors.”‘

“Two points to consider, boss: Maybe the followers of Simon just don’t believe the rumors. Or maybe the people think that Simon is such a God that they’ll forgive him for it.”

“I think it’s the former, Jersey. My God, I hope it is.”

“I hope it is, too, boss. ’Cause if it’s the latter, God help his followers as we roll north.”