CHAPTER 12
Ben’s eyes popped open. He felt rested, wide awake, and ready to go. He looked at his watch on the nightstand before buckling it around his wrist.
Three-thirty. He dressed quietly and then slipped into his boots, blousing his field pants.
Buckling into his battle harness, he picked up his Thompson, knew from the feel of it the drum was full, and stepped out into his office.
Beth and Jersey were sleeping soundly on their cots, air mattresses softening the canvas of the cots.
Very pretty ladies, Ben observed. And should be very desirable. But the sleeping beauties produced no feelings of sexual arousal within him. Jerre had a habit of doing that to him, he recalled. Just her memory could produce the same effect as a cold shower in December.
When he held some other woman up to her, that is.
And it wasn’t that Jerre was so beautiful. She wasn’t, not in the classical sense. She was just … It was just … love.
“Screw it!” Ben muttered, jerked open the door and stepped outside.
He almost scared the sentry out of his boots.
“Easy, son,” Ben told him. “Settle
down.”
The young man grinned, embarrassed. “Sorry, sir. It’s kind of a jumpy night.”
“And cold, too,” Ben added. “You want some coffee, son?”
“That sure would be nice.”
“I’ll stand your post. You go to the mess and bring us back some.”
“Sir!”
“Go on. I’ll stand your watch. Put a little sugar in my coffee. No cream. And I’d like to have a garlic bagel, too.”
The young man stared at him.
“Just kidding, son. Did you have to stand outside my door all damn night?”
“I came on at midnight, sir. My relief will be here at four.”
“What’s your name?”
“Carson, sir.”
“I assume there is no password?”
“No, sir. But there’s a bunch of creepies out there. Problem is, you can’t get a clear shot at any of the jerks.”
“Take off. Stretch your legs and get back here.”
“Yes, sir.”
Ben stepped back into the darkness of the stoop. Neither time nor age nor circumstances had dulled his enjoyment of the early predawn hours. It was, to Ben, the best time of the day, although certainly not everyone shared that opinion. Ben enjoyed watching the world come alive after a period of rest. But, he cautioned himself, in this city, while one segment rested, another much more deadly species came out of their dank and stinking hovels.
A quick flash of dark movement caught his attention.
He knelt down, the Thompson coming up, Ben easing the SMG off safety. There it was again. But what was it? He looked left, then right. Carson had rounded the corner, heading for the mess. Ben could see no other Rebels, although he knew he was not the only sentry on duty.
He remained motionless, squatting in the darkness. His vision was still excellent at a distance, although he had, of late, been forced to wear glasses when doing extended close-up work. Whatever it was skulking across the street was laying low. Waiting. But for what?
The click of metal against stone faintly reached Ben’s ears.
A gust of wind came whipping and spinning coldly down the stone and steel and rubble-littered trails of the city, picking up bits of trash and winding them up like a top before hurling the debris in all directions as the wind devil lost power.
But the slight noise of the wind was enough for the hidden person across the street to make his move. Their move, Ben corrected, as three shapes darted from the darkness, their robes flapping, heading for his position.
They never made it. Ben leveled his Thompson, and the SMG began chugging out .45-caliber justice, the big slugs knocking the creepies sprawling.
But one had been carrying something, Ben was sure.
That one got to his feet. Ben could see the suitcase-like object.
Rebels began running toward the sounds of action.
“Get down!” Ben shouted. “Get your butts down! Satchel charge!”
He pulled the trigger back and held it back. The entire street seemed to mushroom into blazing balls of light and fury. Ben was knocked back against the door, hard into the door, and then through the door, rolling and tumbling into his outer office.
The tinkle of falling glass and the thudding of larger objects torn loose, slung into the air, and returning back, smoking and ruined, came to him faintly. His hearing had been momentarily dulled by the tremendous explosion and his vision impaired by the sudden flash.
He got to his knees, still holding onto the Thompson, and looked around him. The hastily boarded-up windows to his office-done the day before by Rebels-had been shattered, blown completely out.
His office was a wreck. Jersey was on the floor, the cot on top of her, with her turning the air pink with cussing, so Ben assumed she was fine. He looked around for Beth. Found her standing up in a corner, clad only in very skimpy bra and panties. Ben grinned at her.
“Now that is a very nice way to greet the morning, Beth.” His voice sounded as though it was coming from the bottom of a water bucket. “Thank you?”
She finally realized what he was talking about, yelped, and grabbed up a blanket. Jersey flung
back
the cot and sat up, wild-eyed.
“What the hell happened, General?”
“Satchel charge, Jersey. You ladies get some clothes on. Lovely as you both are, if we start romancing now we’re going to draw a
crowd.”
He got up and stepped outside. What a mess.
Windows blown out all over the place. His boots crunching tiny shards of glass littering the ground, he walked to the knot of Rebels gathering in the middle of the street.
“You all right, General?”
“Oh, yeah. There were three or four of them. I’m not sure. Jesus. There must have been fifty or sixty pounds of C-four or comfive to make this big a bang.”
“Lemme through, damn it!” a voice shouted, a man shoving his way through the crowd. Carson. He looked at Ben. “Are you OK, General?”
“Sure.” Ben smiled. “But you forgot the coffee.”
There was not even a greasy spot left of the man who had carried the satchel charge. And of the others, they had been spattered all over the place.
Ben had looked up at the sky. No stars. And the air was wet as well as cold. “It’s going to rain anyway. No point in us wasting our time scraping them off the buildings. Let Mother Nature do it.
Let’s go get some breakfast.”
In the building that was serving as a mess hall, Ben ran into one of Chase’s doctors and waved him over. “What’s the word on those prisoners we brought in yesterday?”
“No help at all, sir. It appears that only Monte and maybe a couple of his closest people know anything at all about the Night P.” He hesitated. “What do you want us to do with them?”
“Turn them over to Dan Gray.” The doctor seemed relieved to hear that. His jaw dropped when Ben added, “We’ll try them for crimes against humanity and then shoot them.”
Ben buttered a piece of bread and resumed eating, leaving the doctor sitting, staring at him from across the table. Ben looked up. “Pass the salt and pepper, would you, Doc?”
The rain was coming down in cold silver slashes when Ben stepped out of the mess hall. He was glad he had returned to his shattered office and rummaged around until he could find his poncho. He looked at Beth, standing beside him, the radio a covered hump on her back. He grinned at her.
She knew what he was grinning about and blushed.
“Come on. I want to see Trinity Church since it’s been cleared.”
“Do we drive or walk?” Jersey asked.
“Walk.”
“That figures,” she muttered, dutifully trudging along beside Ben.
Ben laughed at her. “You’d have made a greater character to add to Willie and Joe, Jersey.”
“Yes, sir. Whatever you say, sir.” Mentally adding, Whoever in the hell they are.
They slogged along toward Broadway, with Ben stopping at every little shop and store, peering in, the expression on his face that of a little kid looking into a toy shop.
“How come,” Jersey asked, “we haven’t really seen much signs of looting, General?”
They walked on. “I don’t know, Jersey. It’s puzzling to me, too.”
“Nothing down here to loot, you ask me,” Beth said.
“What was this place, General?”
“The financial hub of the world, ladies. From Whitehall over to Wall and up to Cortland.
Billions and billions of dollars, in currency and stock representing all nations, were traded and bought and exchanged here in this area every day. Monday through Friday,” he added.
“I don’t remember much about anything before the war,”
Jersey admitted. “Just bits and pieces.
Maybe I just don’t want to remember.”
“Hell of a lot of things I’d like to forget myself,”
Ben told them.
They ran across the street and into Trinity Church, Ben, Beth, Jersey, and Ben’s ever-present squad of bodyguards.
Ben glanced at Beth. “This OK with you?”
“Doesn’t make any difference to me, General.
My mother and father were not practicing Jews.”
They stepped inside and Jersey cried out in dismay, automatically crossing herself.
“I didn’t know you were of the faith, Jersey.” Ben cut his eyes at her.
“I was raised a Catholic. Doesn’t make any difference. Just
look
at this mess. And I bet it was once so beautiful.”
The interior had been vandalized and slashed and ruined.
Profanity had been spray-painted all over the walls. The place stank of the odor of Night P.
“Anybody who would do this to a church ought to be hung up by their balls!” Jersey said, considerable heat in the statement.
Several of the Rebels sat down in pews and bowed their heads, praying softly.
Ben walked up the aisle. “Well, Jersey, some people blamed God for what happened to the world. The Great War. They did, and are doing, some pretty terrible things.”
“You think God had anything to do with the war, General?”
“I don’t know. I’ll ask Him if I ever see Him. But personally, I doubt if He did. I think He just let humankind screw it all up on their own.” He shrugged, drops of water dribbling from his poncho onto the dirty floor. “But that’s just one man’s opinion.”
“I don’t wanna go into no more churches, General,” Jersey said, tears in her eyes and running down her face. “Let somebody else do it.”
“All right, Jersey.” Ben patted her shoulder.
“If you don’t want to, you don’t have to.
Let’s get out of here.”
By ten o’clock that morning, the temperature had turned around, dropping, and the steady rain was mixed with bits of sleet. West and his people were battling up the Chase Manhattan Building, and it
was slow going, as well as gruesome. Bits and pieces of human bodies littered each floor.
West guessed that some of the bones were a year or two old, while others had been stripped of flesh only days before.
By midmorning they had battled their way up to the eighteenth floor. Then Ben gave the welcome orders. “Seal it off, Colonel. Weld the doors shut wherever possible and build barricades for any others. Let’s concentrate on the basement floors.”
The lower floors had been saved for last, all knowing that they would be the worst.
Ben had not forgotten the people under the streets of Manhattan. He simply had not had time to try and contact them.
Construction Rebels went to work sealing off the eighteenth floor. “Let the bastards eat each other,” Ben was heard to mutter.
There had been no sign of Ian. Tina had reported in, saying the roads were getting terrible and she was still some miles from the Teterboro Airport.
Ben told her to pack it in and wait until tomorrow.
It was still early in the season for this kind of weather to last long.
The day was wet and cold and gloomy.
“Look at them, looking at us,” Jersey said, her face uplifted to the center of the bank building.
Ben looked up. He could see a few
black-robed figures staring down at them from what was going to be their tomb.
“Order gas masks on, Beth. Everybody get into position. Are the hoses in place?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Start the trucks.”
Ben had hooked into the building’s ventilation system, running hoses from the exhaust of the trucks and Jeeps and Hummers. Once the carbon monoxide started filling up the bottom floors, it would not be long.
The rain and the cold dulled the gunfire and the senses, for it was an awful job, even for the most hardened of Rebels. The Night People began trickling out, coughing and screaming their hatred until gunfire silenced them forever.
Doctor Chase had come to stand beside Ben across the street from the carnage, protected somewhat from the rain by an awning.
“Why,” Chase asked, his voice just audible over the driving drops of rain and sleet and the cracking of gunfire.
“Why … what, Lamar?” Even though
Ben knew perfectly well what his old friend was talking about.
“What turned them into this manner of … creature?
What did it to them? I’ve got to have some alive, Ben. For the sake of history a hundred years from now-and you above all should understand that-I’ve got to talk with at least some of them.”
Ben sighed. “All right, Lamar. But answer me this: What are you going to do with them when you’ve finished your … conversations?”
Lamar picked up on the sarcasm in Ben’s tone.
“You let me worry about that, Raines!”
“No. We’ll worry about that
now,
Chase.”
“You want an honest answer or a lie?”
“I would prefer an honest answer.”
“I don’t know.”
“I was afraid you’d say that. You have a yearning to play Doctor Schweitzer in your advancing years, Lamar?”
“Screw you, Raines!”
Ben looked at Dan and West. “What do you people have to say about it?”
West shrugged his total indifference and Dan said, “If you want some alive, General, we’ll take some.”
Ben instructed Beth to radio the orders to take some of the night crawlies alive for observation and study.
“Anything else, Doctor Chase?” Ben asked.
“One of my doctors came to me this morning. He was very upset about the fate of the prisoners you brought in for interrogation.”
“I’m sure he was.” Ben’s return was a complete opposite of the weather.
They stood in silence for a moment, rain shrouding the dreary gray of the captive city.
“Well?” Chase demanded.
“Well … what?” Ben looked at him.
“The prisoners, Raines. The damn prisoners.
You know perfectly well what I’m talking about.
What about the prisoners?”
“Hell, I don’t know. That’s not my department.
I called for a military tribunal to convene. That’s all I know about it.”
Chase wore a disgusted look on his face. “Then who do I ask?”
“Try Dan.”
“Well, Gray?” The doctor glared at the Englishman. “What about it?”
“I was the presiding judge,” Dan admitted.
“When?”
“This morning.”
“It must have been a damn short trial.”
“It didn’t take long.”
“And the verdict?” Chase’s words were bitter. He’d already reached a conclusion about that.
“Guilty of numerous heinous crimes against humanity. They admitted it.”
“And their punishment?”
Dan Gray looked at the doctor and put an end to the conversation. “They were hanged several hours ago.”