THE JUDGES RULE
“Just like Gene Savie and his bunch.” Cecil put it together for them all. “Only these people fit right in with them-with the possible exception of being cannibals, and I’m not so sure I’d rule that out.”
“Chuck, tell our people to go on middle alert. Warn them that the city might be filled with creepies.” Ben stood for a moment, mentally sorting out some facts.
“Cecil, didn’t you tell me that the group of people you talked with seemed upset when they learned that we were going to tour the city?”
“Seemed that way to me, Ben.”
“What was that spokesman’s name?”
“Allen.”
“Let’s go see this Allen person.”
Ben walked up to Allen and pointed his .45 at the man’s head. Allen paled under the dirt on his face and his hands began to tremble.
“The Night People, Allen, where are they?”
“General Raines … I don’t have no idea what you’re talking about. I ain’t never seen no Night P.”
Ben eared the hammer back, the metallic cocking sound loud in the silence.
“If you think I won’t blow your goddamned head off, Allen, then you don’t know much about me,” Ben warned the man.
“They all pulled out!” Allen screamed. “They done left.”
“That’s better. Why did they leave and when?”
“Nearabs a week ago. They got some sort of message from New York City. I don’t know where they went.”
“How long have they been in the city?”
“Forever, I reckon! Don’t kill me, I don’t want to die.”
“You and your scummy-assed bunch worked with them, right?
And don’t lie to me, you bastard!”
Allen bobbed his head up and down.
“You filth! You and your bunch procured people for them to eat, right?”
“Yes, sir! But we was forced to do it.”
“You’re a liar. You could have left anytime you wanted to leave. There are no blockades around this city. You weren’t chained or imprisoned. Everything you and your scumbags did you all did willingly. Now, isn’t that the truth?”
“We had to live!” the man shouted.
“I hope you enjoyed it, because you haven’t got much longer.”
Allen looked around him, searching for any sign of compassion in the eyes of the Rebels.
He found none.
“They’ll get you, Raines,” Allen hissed.
“They’re everywhere. In every city still left standing in the world. They been here for a couple of centuries, growin”, and growin’, and growin’. They’s a couple hundred thousand of them in the States alone. Maybe as many as half a million. You’ll never defeat them, Raines. They’ll cut your heart out and eat it!” He screamed the last.
“How many left in the city?”
Allen just grinned at him, and to Ben’s thinking, the grin of a Nazi SS man must have looked the same way.
Ben pulled the trigger. The force of the big .45-caliber slug, fired at almost point-blank range, knocked Allen off his feet. The man was dead before he bounced on the dirty street.
Ben walked up to a woman and placed the muzzle of the .45 between her eyes, the muzzle touching the dirty flesh of her forehead.
“You want to die?”
“No, sir! I’ll tell you anything you want to know. I promise I will.”
Not one of the filth-encrusted citizens made a move. They were all looking down the muzzles of Rebel weapons.
“How many Night People left in the city?”
“I don’t know, sir! Maybe a couple of thousand. When it was learned that you and your troops were winning in New York City, the message come that they was to scatter; to split up and fan out, seek new places to live. I swear to God that’s the truth!”
“God!” Ben’s voice was harsh. “You profane His name by speaking it from that cesspool you call a mouth!”
“We had nothin’,” the woman said, her words shaky with fear. “Not “til they surfaced and we struck a deal with them …”
“I get it. Now I know. You were instructed, or you volunteered to join us to infiltrate our ranks.
Where do you live?”
She said nothing.
“Speak, goddamn you!” Ben shouted.
“When did you put it together?” she finally spoke.
“About fifteen minutes ago. Dan? Are the kids all clear?”
“Ten-four, sir. They’re at the hospital.”
“Order security at the hospital to go to full alert, Chuck.”
“What’s up, Ben Raines?” Thermopolis asked.
“They’re all Night People, Therm. Every one of them.”
The woman tried to grab for Ben’s pistol. The .45 roared, the slug striking her on the jaw and angling up to exit out the top of her head.
The crowd of men and women grabbed for weapons concealed under their ragged-appearing clothing.
It was no contest.
The Rebels opened fire, most firing from a distance of no more than thirty meters.
“Death before defeat!” a man shouted.
Ben shot him in the head.
“The Judges rule!” a woman screamed, leveling an Uzi at Thermopolis.
Rosebud stitched her with her Mini-14.
Rosebud loved most living things. She loved her man more.
The battle was very intense, and very short.
Within seconds the street was littered with bodies, the gutters
running with blood.
Silence crept over the battleground, broken only by an occasional moan from a dying creepie.
A shot from a Rebel hastened the process.
“Jesus God!” West shouted, driving up in a Hummer and viewing the carnage. “What the hell happened, Ben?”
Ben very quickly briefed the mercenary.
West’s driver, Curly, arched one eyebrow.
“Looks like we got a long war ahead of us, Colonel.”
“To be sure, Curly. But that is our chosen destiny, is it not?”
“From Africa to Central America to the States,”
another of his men said. “I never would have thought it.”
“What now, Ben?” West asked.
“We’ve got to be here for at least several more days, getting resupplied for the run back home. West, you and your men take everything north of Market Street. Cecil and his battalion will take everything south of it. That’s up to the Schuylkill River. I’ll take everything west of the river.
Hunt them down and kill them!”
Ben set up his CP just across the river, in an old Post Office building-after first clearing the building of creepies. Then the gruesome task the Rebels thought they’d left behind them in the ruined rubble of New York City began anew. Although not on such a huge scale.
There were no defined battle lines; this was deadly house-to-house search and destroy, with no one knowing what lay behind a closed door or at the darkened end of basement steps.
Sister Voleta, Monte, Ashley, and their forces had seemingly dropped out of sight; however, Ben knew he had not seen the last of them, and when they did resurface, he felt they would be much stronger and more difficult to deal with. But for now, another deadly hunt was on.
Ben’s teams spread out all over the city, looking for any elderly people. There were none. Only bones.
“Ghastly business, what?” Dan commented, over a cup
of tea during a break in the SandD.
“Looks like the creepies disposed of the elderly first,” Ben said. “I guess they were fattening up the kids, not of their persuasion, for later dining.” Ben spat his disgust on the sidewalk.
“Speaking of the kids…”
“The doctors say the younger ones will be all right. But the ones thirteen and over, for the most part, are hardcore crawlers, so thoroughly brainwashed they will never come around.”
And you plan to do what with them?” Thermopolis inquired.
“Leave them here when we pull out. What’d you think I was going to do, shoot them?”
“I hoped not. But let me play devil’s advocate for a moment.”
“Go ahead.”
“When you turn them loose, they’ll just return to their cannibalistic ways.”
“That is true, sadly.”
“And they and their kids and all their kind will grow up despising you, Ben Raines.”
“That is also true. But I still can’t kill a thirteen-or fourteen-year-old, Therm. Not unless he or she is pointing some type of weapon at me.”
“They’ll be a threat to me and to others as well as to you and yours, Ben.”
“That is certainly true. Do you want to be the one to kill them, Therm?”
He shook his head. “No. No. I could not do that, and there is no one in my group who could.” He was silent for a few seconds. “And I wouldn’t have anyone around me who could. I think,” he added.
“It’s like I keep telling you, Therm. You and me, we’re not all that different. We both want a cool shade tree in the summer and a fire to keep the chill away during the winter. We want to be able to sit on our front porch and watch the squirrels play and the hummingbirds feed. We like to have friends around us for companionship and
conversation. We both want peace, Thermopolis.
The only real difference between us is how we were going about attaining it.”
“How we