Out of the Ashes

“A lot of our people went into the cities.” She shook her head. “They never came out. Then we started getting smart; rigged up our cars and Jeeps and pickups with CBs—and boy, did we get wary. We finally got it through our heads that if we were going to survive, we'd damned well better get with the program; get ourselves some guns and learn how to use them.” She waved her hand. “You see those two hundred-odd kids here, Mr. Raines? This is it. With the exception of one small group, this is all that's left out of about thirty-five hundred young people who left Chapel Hill. This is it! I never knew what that expression about it being a jungle out there really meant ... until we ... went out to save the world.” Her laugh was bitter, and not suited to the young woman.

Ben looked around him at the beaten-down, disillusioned young people. He thought: all your fancy cars and pretty clothes and gold throat jewelry and extravagant allowances from overindulgent parents didn't prepare you for this, did it, kids? All the fancy words from college professors didn't do a damned thing to help you cope with hard reality. But when he spoke it was, “So now what, kids? All of you just going to give up?”

Two dozen pairs of eyes shifted to him. Hostile, hurt eyes. Ben grinned, knowing he had hit a tender spot.

“What's it to you, man?” a boy asked.

Ben shrugged. “Maybe nothing. Maybe I should just move on. Losers never appealed to me.”

“Hey!” The spokeswoman almost shouted the word at him. “What do you want from us, mister? Huh? We tried to do what we felt was right. So O.K.... maybe we blew it this time around; that doesn't mean we're not going to try again. So why don't you just get off our case, O.K.?”

“And what are you young people going to do when your favorite liberal hotshot-turned-two-bit-dictator sends his troops in here to move you out to a relocation center? Just be herded like stupid cattle?”

“We talked about him. O.K., so he wasn't what he appeared to be. But he was a damned sight better than Nixon, wasn't he?”

“No,” Ben said. “He damned sure wasn't—isn't. And what the hell do you people know about President Nixon? You were babies when Watergate went down. All you know is what you've read, written by biased newspeople, and what you've been force-fed by feather-headed college professors who are so far out of touch with reality they should be forced to wear earphones, plugged into the vibrations of history.” He sighed, grinned, and said, “I didn't mean to lecture you, kids.”

“It's all right, Mr. Raines,” a young man said, a grin on his face. “I kinda enjoyed it. Anyway ... we don't know what we're going to do. You got a plan of some sort?”

“Yes. You might like it, you might not.” He was thoughtful for a moment. Committing yourself, Ben? he asked himself. Maybe, came the reply. “But first let me ask you this: was there no group that fought back from the outset? Fought against the slime and the scum and the looters and such?” He had mentioned nothing of Jerre.

“There was one person,” the young woman replied, choosing her words carefully. “She came into Chapel Hill with a pistol belted around her. She ignored the laughing from a lot of us—me included. She went around talking to bunches of people, like she was choosing her group very carefully. She picked about twenty-five-thirty people, then they split; didn't even stay for the speeches. Which were a bunch of shit,” she said with a grimace. “I heard later the girl made all her group get guns and practice with them. She ran it like a military unit. She was the boss—no doubt about it. Blonde girl, real pretty.”

Ben smiled.

“Name was ... Sarah ... no! Jerre, that was it.”

“Where did her group go?”

“West, I think. Yeah. Said she was going to Idaho or Montana, maybe Wyoming.” She paused. “Why would anyone want to go there?”

“To be free,” Ben said.

“Would you please explain that?”

He did.

And knew then he was committed.

“When will he be here, Jerre?” a young man asked her.

Jerre turned her eyes eastward. Her face was burned dark from the sun, as were her arms; her hair was sun-streaked and cut short.

She was not the leader of this group, which included Steven Miller, the college professor; Jimmy Deluce and his group from Louisiana, Nora Rodelo and her friends, Anne Flood and her group, James Riverson and Belle, Linda Jennings, Al Holloway, Jane Dolbeau, Ken Amato, and a few of the western-based Rebels. But she knew Ben Raines, and Bull Dean had put Raines in charge, so that made the girl somebody special.

“He'll be here,” she said. “I don't know when, so don't ask me, but he'll be here.”

“Equipment coming in,” a Rebel called.

They all moved to the line of trucks rolling up the mountain road. The young man who had asked the question put his arm around Jerre's shoulders.

“Will you still be my girl when he gets here?” he asked.

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“I'll know when he gets here. Then I'll tell you.”