The Last Rebel: Survivor (17 page)

Within twenty minutes, a select group of twenty-five Rejects, the “escape unit,” gathered in the center of the compound. Also present were two bloodhounds and their handlers, a permanent part of the escape unit.

Otto Krill, the escape unit leader, stood in the front of the men, and reiterated what the premier had told them.

“It is very important that we track down and neutralize Morton Rosen. He has information that is of the utmost sensitivity. I expect everyone to keep pace with the group. If anyone here feels that they cannot do this, drop out now. Anyone?”

No one raised their hands. In fact, all the Rejects were expected to stay in good physical shape, but the elite group that gathered here were special. Each man ran a minimum of five miles before breakfast, did multiple sit-ups and pull-ups with palms facing forward, and innumerable push-ups. There wasn’t a person in the group who couldn’t do more than a hundred pushups per session, and many of them could do thirty or forty one-arm pushups.

The escape unit was also well schooled in reading the countryside they traveled. Two of them were, in fact, full-blooded Apache Indians who had lived in the Wyoming area their entire lives and were almost otherworldly in their ability to read the slightest disturbances in the natural world, such as the breaking of a twig, the crushing of a leaf. These things spoke volumes to them and they were almost always able to know if the disruption was made by a man or an animal.

But at the heart of the escape unit’s success was the special, physically altered bloodhounds: their voice boxes had been surgically removed. While this did not interfere with their olfactory prowess—it was said that the average bloodhound could detect smell hundreds of times better than a human being, even follow a scent underwater—it did allow them to lead the escape unit to an escapee without uttering the usual baying sound that would warn him or her (or them) of the proximity of the unit.

So far, in Compound W, there had been eight attempts at escape, none successful. One of the escapees had had a losing encounter with a grizzly bear, while another had fallen to his death, and another had drowned. The others—except for one—had been captured alive, and the premier personally beat all to death with a three-foot section of lodgepole pine. Just before they took the other man, a forty-five-year-old scientist, into custody, he sprinkled cyanide powder on a pear and ate it, killing himself instantly.

Suicide was preferable for some of these escapees because, as Rosen had told Jim and Bev, the punishment was only limited by the imagination of the premier and his henchmen. One particularly malevolent treatment of women, for example, was what happened to one slightly overweight forty-year-old ex-nurse who escaped and was caught. She attempted her escape in the early fall, and premier Szabo told her, in front of most of the people in the compound, that he was going to give her another chance to escape. But there were going to be a few changes. One was that she would only be allowed to wear a pair of sneakers. All other clothing would be removed from her. She would then be given a half-hour head start, released into the woods, and then three of the escape specialists, armed only with knives, themselves nude, and carrying along a video camera, would pursue her through the woods. If she was found, she would be returned, but first she would be gang-raped by the three pursuers who would tape the entire experience for the pleasure and edification of others in the camp.

As it happened, the woman was caught within two hours, and then raped and sodomized repeatedly over a three-hour period and then, bleeding profusely from her rectum—because someone had also used a part of a tree branch on her—had been returned to the camp. Sometimes during the night, while being sodomized by one long line of soldiers, she died from loss of blood and shock.

The escape unit knew that going after Rosen was not without hazards, the main hazard being the Believers. They would instantly kill every Reject they came across or sometimes emasculate captives, then release them. The Rejects viewed them as every bit as savage as they were. And, at least with them, they were. It was a holy war and anything went.

Exactly forty minutes after O’Brien was killed, the handlers of the bloodhounds pressed a piece of Morton Rosen’s soiled clothing in the nose of each of the silent bloodhounds, and within seconds they were pulling on their leashes, his scent found, and fresh, as clear to them as highway signs leading to a particular road, and the escape unit was trotting to keep up with the bloodhounds as they emerged from the compound entrance and started to thread their way through the woods where, less than twenty-four hours earlier, Morty Rosen had slipped out of the compound and started to run for what he knew might be his life. If he had been there, indeed he would have reflected that now his analogy was accurate. He was the hare.

THIRTEEN

For a moment, Bev didn’t know where she was, and when she reached over, expecting to feel Jim, he wasn’t there. She opened her eyes and sat up. It was windy, the shadows of adjacent tree branches moving on her tent almost ominously.

Where, she wondered, could he be? She felt a quick surge of loss and was surprised very much by her feeling. She cared about him very much. When he had asked her about the loves of her life, she never explained—why, she didn’t know—that there had been one boy in high school, Jeff Grimes, whom she loved very much. And one day Jeff and his family had moved away, almost without warning, and she had felt as if her stomach had been hollowed out and she would never get over it. That relationship was on the same level of feeling as this one.

But Jim was all right, she thought, she was making a big deal of this. He probably went to relieve himself.

She looked over at where he slept. Certainly, she thought, it wasn’t something he heard that he was investigating. His AK-47 was lying right next to where he had lain. He would have taken that with him.

Then where was he?

She slipped on her denim pants and a long-sleeved cowboy shirt and put on the lace-up shoes—first checking inside the boots for snakes—without tying them and stood up. She pushed open the flap in the opening of the tent and went outside. It was cool outside, maybe fifty degrees, but not chilly, though there was that wind, most of it blocked by trees. The moon was up, full, so she could see fairly clearly, this helped by the always incredible number of stars.

So where was Jim? she thought, trying to quell a rising sense of panic.

She looked around, and then relief flooded her. She saw his silhouette. He was maybe fifty yards away, standing next to a large evergreen. She saw a brief glow of orange. He was having a smoke.

She took a couple of steps and he turned around—God, his hearing was unbelievable—and waved to her. She waved back. She walked toward him and as she did a simple but profound thought occurred to her. She knew absolutely that their relationship was much more than two people making physical love. She was falling in love with him. He was one of the long-distance runners, the kind of guy that women start looking for when they are little girls, the guy who will walk them down the aisle in a fairy-tale wedding. And then she had a thought that she held until she walked up to him and put her arms around him and kissed him tenderly on the mouth. He made her feel so wanted, so beautiful, so loved, so cared for. It was wonderful.

“I thought of something as I was walking toward you that really sums you up,” she said.

“What’s that?”

“You’re as pure as these mountains that you love so much. And just as strong.”

He kissed her again.

“Hey,” he said, “that’s high praise. I think of you that way too. I mean, not the mountains, but you’re one of the good people. People who care. I always thought that the strongest people in life are the ones that are capable of caring and loving.”

She looked up at him.

“Is there a difference?”

“Sure,” Jim said, “but what it is I don’t know right now. I do know one thing. They’re very close.”

Bev nodded.

“So what are you doing out here?”

“I was thinking about the future,” he said, “and what it might hold. I had a dream that woke me up. It was pretty chaotic; all kinds of creatures warring with each other, and in the end, nothing being resolved—except the loss of the lives of a lot of people who couldn’t defend themselves.”

“What do you think it means?”

“When I left Idaho,” Jim said, “it was just to get away. I was really lonely. Every person that mattered to me was gone. I had no real direction, just some vague idea to go east.”

He paused, dropped the butt of the cigarette on the ground, and crushed it out with his boot very carefully.

“Now,” he said, “I think about what’s going on in this country, not only in an intellectual way but an emotional one, and I’ve really come to realize that if the Rejects come to rule it, civilization as we know it in America will be gone. But if the Believers win the day, it will also be gone. I think the chaos in the dream represents those things.”

Jim paused, then continued. “I was also thinking about what would be best for us. And I realized that I’m really hoping that someone like Ben Raines comes along who can carve out something good and lasting from this mess. But I don’t know. How many Ben Raineses come along in our lifetime?”

“What about you?”

“Are you kidding?”

“No, I’m not. Ben Raines himself saw something in you that he liked. Maybe the potential to lead. He had to be a quick study when it came to reading personality. I think great leaders can always evaluate people quickly.”

“He actually gave me a note to introduce me to the Rebels. And he told me the locations of their supply depots for food, water, ammunition, and the like.”

“Really? There you go.”

Jim shook his head.

“Like I said, I’m not a warrior. This is a job for a soldier. And I don’t want to be part of any war. I’ll defend myself, and you and others, but I have no plan to fight for a new government, or be willing to neutralize the bad guys—unless they’re trying to neutralize me. Like I said, I was really burned by war with my father and brother dying. And there were others, too. My dream is that at one point people can sit down and talk it all out.

“I remember once,” Jim continued, “when a neighbor was in a dispute with another guy over grazing land, and the situation was getting hot and heavy, close to violence. And in Idaho that means guns, because everyone owns a gun. Anyway, somehow my grandfather got enlisted—he was a very wise man—to mediate it. And he succeeded in settling it.”

“How?”

“By having the people compromise, give up land and certain water rights. They shook hands and that was that, even though neither was very happy when they left the bargaining table. My point is that people have to give ground, actually or . . . what’s that word . . . ?”

“Figuratively?”

“Yes. They have to do that or you’re still in conflict. The best example I have of that is in World War I, when the Allies, after crushing Germany in the war, crushed them at the Treaty of Versailles. They left them with a big hole in their pocket and their national pride, so when they left the table they smiled but they were enraged. And one fine day, when Hitler came along, they expressed their anger through him.”

“That’s very true,” Bev said, “but I still think that sit-downs can be very unrealistic if the people you’re dealing with are psychotic, or won’t bargain in good faith. The only way things are going to get better in America against people like this is to fight them and win the fight.”

Jim thought a moment.

“You’re absolutely right,” he said.

Bev smiled, kissed him again.

“You know what I love about your mind?” she asked.

“I thought you only loved my body.”

“That too,” Bev said, “but you’re capable of being objective, to admit you were wrong or modify your position if someone makes a stronger case than you. I mean you have an emotional investment in something, but not so much that you hide what your brain is telling you.”

“I guess.”

“I don’t think any of us who want a good life is going to be able to avoid taking part in some sort of conflict. I mean, I’m the last one who wants war, or battles or anything like that. My life as a religious person has espoused the opposite of that. But like Ben Raines said in that SUSA manifesto, sometimes it’s the only way.”

Jim looked at her and kissed her on the mouth, but this time, though tender, there was some other urgency.

“Let’s go back to the tent,” he said. “I just can’t keep my hands off you.”

“You won’t see any hands-off sign on me.”

They both laughed, then started to walk arm in arm back to the tent when suddenly they heard a commotion back near the tent area. It was Rosen. He was screaming, and two people were assaulting him, or trying to get him under control.

Jim reached for his sidearm preparatory to advancing when, from the adjacent woods, someone barked a guttural command.

“Keep your hand off your gun and raise your hands high, stretch. You too, beautiful.”

Jim looked to his left. Someone—someone large—was partially obscured behind an oak tree, and he had some sort of guerilla-style weapon pointed at him. An AK-47. There was no way he could respond to that, and Bev, he had noticed, was unarmed. He raised his hands slowly and so did Bev, but as he did, his mind raced with tremendous speed though his face was calm. Who were these people? he wondered. It was logical to assume they were Rejects, but then again it wasn’t, based on one of the escape unit troops getting back to their home compound, and assuming that they traveled by foot through the woods. The maps didn’t show any roads going from east to west into the area. Bottom line: they wouldn’t be here yet. They were forty miles away.