"We're on our way. See if you can make friendly contact with them."
"Yes, sir."
The community stretched for several miles, with lots of space between houses, so the residents would not feel hemmed-in. The lawns were neat and well-kept, spring flowers just beginning to bloom.
But what really caught Ike's eyes were the four missile silos he'd seen spread out over the four miles or so. A grin began crinkling his face.
Now he knew how and why these people were left alone.
But old soldier that he was, or sailor, as the case was, he also knew these people were, in all probability, running one hell of a bluff.
But he'd play it their way for a time; see what developed.
As his column rolled past the homes, with Ike's Jeep in the lead, the people had stepped out of their homes, watching. Watching with no apparent fear.
All were heavily armed, and very capable looking.
"Pull in right up there," Ike ordered his driver. "Looks like some sort of community center."
Ike stepped out of the Jeep and slung his weapon, leaning against the Jeep, watching as a well-built man walked toward him. The man appeared to be just about the same age as Ike, fiftyish, and in good physical shape, with close-cropped hair and big, work-hardened hands. Ike guessed him about six feet tall.
"I'm Ike McGowen," Ike said. "Commander of this contingent of General Ben Raines's Rebels."
The man grinned. "You people finally decided to check out the west coast, huh. Good. Glad to see you.
I'm John Dunning. The people sort of put me in charge around here. From what radio messages we have intercepted, you people @.re kicking the hell out of the IPF and those mercenaries. Welcome to our little community, Ike."
John and Ike shook hands. "Tell your people to park and relax. And get ready for a good home-cooked meal. You're safe here,"
John said.
"Yes," Ike said drily. "I saw the ...
ah, silos."
John caught the twinkle in Ike's eyes. His own eyes twinkled. "You doubt we would use them, Ike?"
"Oh, you'd probably use them ... if you had any activated missiles in there to use."
"Well, let's put this way, Ike. We have a lot of electronics people who came here from Silicon Valley after the bombings. They can be quite convincing; were quite convincing when the IPF came in here. If you get my drift."
"I get it, John. But you're playing a dangerous game. What if Striganov calls your bluff?"
"Then we fight with what we have, Ike," the man's reply was simply stated.
"One more thing, John. How do you know I am who I say I am?"
"Because our people have been tracking you and Ben and Dan and Cecil since you first came to California. Well, not exactly our people. But people who are aligned with us against the Russian and the mercenary."
"The underground people?"
"Yes."
Ike sighed. "But how in the hell do you meet with them? They refuse to meet with us."
"That is a problem," John admitted. "But we've overcome that by working out a series of drops.
We leave messages for them, they leave messages for us."
"What is their problem, John? Why do they live the way they do?"
John shrugged heavy shoulders, packed with muscle. "Call them dropouts, I suppose.
They just reject things modern. They feel that the ancient ways were the best. They have tiny, well-hidden gardens in the timber. They trap, hunt, fish, and live underground. And before you ask, I don't know their numbers. I would guess in the hundreds."
"That many?"
"Yes. And they are either good friends, or vicious, terrible enemies. Luckily for us, we started out befriending some of them. They always returned the favor in some small way. Then some of our children became friends with some of their children. It just grew from there."
John opened the door to the large community building. Ike stepped in. He could smell the aroma of fresh-cooked food. Men and women were busy setting plates and silver on long tables.
"Looks like we were expected, John."
John smiled. "Yes. We'll talk as weeat. I feel the time has come for us join up with General Raines."
"Oh, little girlie!" the man panted, hunching between Kim's wide-spread legs. "That's the tightest I've had in a long time."
The half-dozen men from the warlord Popeye's group had grabbed Kim as she scouted ahead of her friends just inside Oregon.
Bird bent his head and began licking Kim's nipples. She accepted the assault on her with stoicism. She had already spotted her friends moving up, silently, through the timber by the roadside.
"Move around some, Bird," an outlaw said.
"Let her get on top so's I can screw her butt."
Hurry up, gang! Kim thought. Please hurry.
Bird shifted, getting on the bottom, his gross nakedness on the grass, the girl on top.
He pulled her head down to his slobbery lips and licked at her mouth.
Kim almost puked in his face from the stink of his horrible breath.
She felt the cheeks of her buttocks being spread apart. She looked up as a third man dropped his dirty trousers to his ankles and stepped out of them. He stroked his hardness and glared at her through mean little piggy eyes.
"If you bite me, you'll die hard," he said.
"Real hard. You understand?"
Kim nodded her head and then screamed as the outlaw behind her penetrated her tightness.
Where were her friends?
"Hey!" through the foggy mist of pain that filled her she heard an outlaw say. "Where in the shit is Tiger?"
"Prob'ly sitting out the woods jackin' off!"
another man laughed.
Then somewhere in the bright light of pain, Kim heard a man scream.
"Jesus God!" the man howled.
"What the hell's that?" the outlaw behind her panted.
If there was a reply, he never heard it. Something smashed into the side of his head, dropping him into unconsciousness, knocking him backward.
At the same time the outlaw standing in front of the girl caught the butt of an AK-47 on the side of his head. He fell to the ground like a dropped sack of potatoes.
The outlaw called Bird looked up from the ground from beneath Kim-smack into the muzzle of an AK-47. Lifting his eyes, he looked into the face of Judy.
Kim rolled away from him and began gathering up her torn clothing, getting dressed as best she could with what she had left.
"You kids got yourselves into a peck of trouble,"
Bird said. "Y'all know that?" Judy reversed the AK and smashed the butt into the man's mouth, shattering what remained of his front teeth, top and bottom. Bird squalled and rolled on the ground, holding both hands to his bleeding mouth.
"Get some rope," Kim said. "These the only ones left alive?"
"Yeah," Sandra said. "We killed the others.
You better clean yourself up," she said, looking at Kim.
"You don't wanna come up pregnant."
"I can't get in no family way," Kim told her. "I was raped when I about seven or eight. Tore me up bad. Old Dr. Chase done told me I can't never have no kids. But I do wanna wash."
"Stream over yonder," Judy said, jerking her head to the south. "We'll get "em ready for you."
"What the hell you gonna do?" Bird moaned the question, his mouth bleeding.
"You'll find out," Sandra told him, the words hard out of her young mouth.
The girls poked and pushed and prodded Bird to a tree. There, they tied him securely, his back hard against the bark of the tree.
"What's them oPeople boys" names?" Sandra asked, pointing to the outlaws on the ground.
"That'n over yonder is called Big Dave.
The other one is called Daddy."
Big Dave and Daddy were spread-eagled on the ground, their ankles and wrists tied to stakes driven deep into the earth. When they awakened, they immediately knew they were in for a very bad time.
They were to soon discover just how bad a time.
Kim stood between Bird and the two men staked out on the ground. She had a knife in her hand. She had started a small fire burning in the clearing. One of the outlaw's knives lay among the coals, the blade turning cherry-red.
Judy opened a map and held it out for the men to see.
Sandra said, "Tell us the location of every warlord Sam Hartline has. How many men in each spot.
Name names."
"Fuck you, girlie!" Big Daddy said with a laugh.
Sandra looked at him. She smiled. But her smile was totally without mirth. She looked at Kim. "Cut it off," she said softly.
Big Daddy began screaming and before Kim was finished he'd passed out from the pain. When it was over, the girl picked up the knife from the fire, holding it by the stag handle, and seared the wound between his legs, closing it.
Sandra glanced at Bird. "You'll tell us everything you know, won't you?"
"God, yes! If you promise not to do that to me!"
"Oh, I promise I won't do that to you," the girl said. She turned to Big Dave. "How about you, mister?" "Anything you say, girl," Big Dave said, fear causing slobber to leak from his mouth. "I'll tell you anything you want to know."
"Move Bird," Sandra told the others.
"Separate the men so they cannot hear the questions or answers. Then we'll compare what they say."
Bird was untied and moved a hundred yards from the staked-down Dave. The locations of the warlords were compared, found that they matched, and were marked on the map.
Daddy was still unconscious on the ground. The odor of seared flesh clung close.
"All the answers match," Kim said.
"And so do the numbers of men," Judy said.
"And Daddy is still out," Sandra said. "Shoot the other two. Well turn Daddy loose. He won't know they have talked."
"But he'll never rape another girl," Kim said, grim satisfaction in her voice.
And deep in the now-uncontrolled and wildly growing timber, hidden among the shrubs and bushes, those underground people who had been tracking the young women nodded their heads in agreement with what had been done.
It had been a just sentence. They would have done the same. Rape was not tolerated among their society.
Crime was virtually nonexistent among their members. It simply was not tolerated.
The underground people had taken another chapter from the book of Ben Raines, emulating what he had done in the old Tri-States.