The Last Rebel: Survivor (5 page)

“Okay.”

Bev went to find a spot, and Jim drove the HumVee back and next to Ida.

Over the next fifteen minutes Jim, his stomach somewhat used to the smell, cut Idea down, wrapping her in four sheets and some plastic he had in the HumVee. Then he carried her back to where Beverly was digging in a place just inside the woods but well out of sight. Jim came over and placed her on the ground. No part of her was visible to Beverly.

“Good spot,” he said. “Let me try for a while.”

Ten minutes later, the hole had been dug deep enough and long enough to accommodate her body. Jim placed her in and covered her over with dirt, then covered the grave with leaves and twigs. The grave was invisible. Beverly had placed a small stone at the head.

“Okay,” he said. “Do you want to say a prayer?”

“Yes, I do.”

With tears in her eyes, Beverly said a silent prayer and Jim stood by respectfully. Then Beverly wiped her eyes.

“Where are you headed?” she asked.

“I was going to go east. But I think I’m going to go north now. Maybe I can get out of the Zone.”

“Do you mind if I come with you?”

“Not at all,” Jim said.

“It could be dangerous. The Rejects are not going to stop looking for me.”

“It wouldn’t matter if you’re with me or not. These guys are into killing.”

“I think you’re right. By the way, my full name is Beverly Harper. Everybody calls me Bev.”

“Okay, Bev,” Jim said. “But before we leave we have to do one important thing.”

“What’s that?” she said.

“Have coffee, “Jim said with a straight face.

For a moment she didn’t read him. Then she did and smiled.

“I’m kidding,” he said. “By the way, I hope you like dogs. I have a puppy with me.”

“I love dogs. What kind of puppy is it?”

“I don’t know. Heinz 57. He sort of adopted me a couple of weeks ago. I’ll show you.”

Beverly and Jim went out of the woods and around the house to the HumVee and opened the driver’s-side door. Reb was looking up at them, his eyes glistening.

“Good dog, “Jim said, mussing the hair on the top of his head. “Good dog.”

Jim turned to Bev.

“One bark today could have meant disaster. I wonder what he’s got in him.”

“Malumute, German shepherd, and some wolf.” She smiled. “I used to work in a vet’s office part-time. I was studying to be vet at Cornell Veterinary College but I had to drop out. Whatever, he’s a cutie pie.”

“The war?”

“No. Money. But I was saving to go back to school.”

“Okay, let’s go.”

“No coffee?”

“Later,” Jim said.

Bev got in and sat on the passenger side and Jim climbed up onto the driver’s side. Before settling in behind the wheel he put the Thompson back under the seat, but kept the Glock and AK-47 out. Then he fired up the HumVee. They pulled out onto the road and soon were in a nonpopulated area, miles of flanking forest.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Not a problem,” Jim said.

He could feel Bev’s look linger on him.

THREE

Ten miles from the spot where Jim almost had the confrontation with the Rejects, he and Bev stopped for coffee, turning off on a road that the HumVee, again, was barely able, because of its width, to fit through. Jim had the coffee already made. Last time he had stopped when alone he made two thermoses full.

They stepped outside. Jim took the thermoses from the bed of the vehicle.

“I hope you like it black,” he said. “No latte available.”

“I do. Black and strong. I don’t even use sugar.”

Jim poured the coffee, which was hot enough so it steamed, into two foam cups.

They both sipped it.

“Delicious,” Bev said.

“You made fun of me wanting coffee,” Jim said, “but maybe you don’t know the power of it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I remember about ten years ago when meat prices really started to go up, and women were up in arms. So they stopped buying meat and brought the vendors to their knees. The prices went back down.”

Bev nodded.

“And then the stores did the same thing with coffee.”

“And what happened?”

“Nothing! They paid the price. Coffee is as addictive as heroin.”

“Well, I love coffee too. It just seemed you weren’t worried enough at the moment.”

“I’m worried,” Jim said. “But I try not to let it get the better of me.”

“I think you succeed,” Bev said. “While you waited for them it seemed to me that you were so calm that I expected to see flies swirling around your head.”

“I was calm,” Jim said. “It’s later that I shake.” And he stuck out his free hand and shook it in mock fear.

Beverly smiled.

“So, which way are we going?”

“Like I said, I was heading east, but I was thinking of going north. I want to stay off main roads. I figure when I get far enough north in Wyoming I’ll head east. Maybe. These Rejects can’t be everywhere.”

She paused, and coughed.

“Do you have any water?”

“Help yourself. There’s a whole case of bottled water behind the passenger seat.”

Beverly took a bottle, opened it, and drained it empty.

“You were thirsty.”

“Yeah, that’s something even coffee can’t solve.”

They finished their coffee, then got back in the vehicle, as did Reb.

Back in his seat, Jim knew her eyes were on him again. He smiled.

“Thinking you might have made a mistake coming with me?”

“No. You have a good face, nice eyes, and you like dogs. You can’t be all bad. Plus, I’d like to live.”

They laughed.

“Don’t forget I’m a fellow coffee lover too.”

Jim paused.

“So, what do you think about continuing north?”

“Good. I think you’ll have a better chance of going without meeting more Rejects than if you continue east. I don’t know how far up the Rejects are. But I haven’t seen any Believers in this area.”

“I guess for the time being they own it.”

Bev shook her head in wonderment.

“They’ve had many, many battles with the Rejects. And towns and positions are regularly fought for and won and lost. The Believers can retake a town and hold it for several days, then the Rejects will counterattack and drive them out—or vice versa.”

“Who’s winning overall?”

“I don’t know. No one.”

Jim shook his head in disbelief. “I guess I’m not really surprised about the Rejects and Believers.”

“My dad told me this has been building for a long time,” Bev said. “He said he remembered back before the Great War certain factions in America were trying to remove religion from all aspects of American life. And when the plague came and knocked everything askew, that was the signal for bad people to do their thing.”

“I remember my grandpa saying something about that too.”

“Did you come from a religious family, Jim?”

“Well . . . when I was a little boy we said grace before our meals and sometimes on Sundays we would go to Mass. That’s about it.”

“Catholic, huh? Do you go to Mass now?”

“Not in years.”

“But you believe in God?”

“Oh, sure. What’s not to believe?”

“That’s a relief. I thought there for a moment you might be a Reject in disguise.”

Jim smiled. Then: “Bev, how much do you know about what is happening outside this area?”

“May I ask you a question before I answer that?”

“Of course.”

“You don’t seem to know much about what is going on, so where have you been?”

“I lived in a very remote area of Idaho, way up in the northwest. All the network newscasts had gone off the air before this stuff started, and the only news I could get was on radio, which was intermittent. And that wasn’t much.”

“And your family?”

“All passed on. What I know about this plague thing and what it’s done to the world I learned from speaking to Ben Raines.”

Bev’s eyes widened. “General Ben Raines?”

“Yes. I was with him for the last few days of his life—when he died. I buried him.”

Abruptly, a darkness swept across Bev’s face. Jim picked up on it.

“That’s it then,” Bev said.

“What do you mean?”

“Ben Raines was the one man who might have been able to build something out of this godawful mess. With him gone, it’s . . .” She paused, shrugged her shoulders. “Over.”

“You’re giving up, just like that?”

Bev paused before she spoke. Then she held up her hand and waved it, as if waving away what she had just said.

“No,” she said, “I don’t think so. I was just feeling sort of melancholy for a moment.”

“I’ve felt that way several times myself recently. That, and angry at God.”

“I’ve experienced that too.”

“Things have a way of righting themselves though. At least I hope so. But you do need people like Ben Raines. I also know that history’s quirky, and individuals matter.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just a little change here or there can shape the course of humanity. I remember reading a book that spoke about how important individuals were in history. Just a little change in an event might have eliminated one person and made all the difference.”

“Like who?”

“Well, for example,” Jim said, “there was this British diplomat who was in New York City in 1931 and was crossing a street and got hit by a car. He survived. Good thing.”

“Why?”

“His name was Winston Churchill.”

“Interesting.”

“And during World II a guy seated next to Franklin Delano Roosevelt was almost but not quite assassinated, but Roosevelt survived. Lenin got typhoid but didn’t die, and Hitler was in a war in 1923 in Germany and unfortunately for humanity he didn’t get killed. Just think about where the world night have been without Hitler having come on the scene. No one was that nuts or zealous.”

“I agree.”

“Yeah, that’s one of the pleasures of life in northwest Idaho.”

“What’s that?”

“No TV. You’re forced to read—and think. Nothing like a cup of coffee and a book.”

Bev laughed.

“Tell you what let’s do, Bev. Let’s find us a house that has heat and take a shower or bath. I could sure use one.”

Her face brightened. “Yeah! That sounds great to me. But I don’t have any clean clothes.”

“So when we stop at houses we’ll look for some. We’re sure to find something that will fit you. First, we have to find some houses.”

They got back in the HumVee and on the road. Over the next twenty miles or so, they found three houses, none directly on the road—which of course Jim liked—and all reachable by roads that were just wide enough to accommodate the HumVee.

All of the homes had been ransacked and pillaged. Only one of them was powered by propane, and there was no chance of taking a bath there: all the propane had been depleted. But Bev found some clean clothes around her size and took them. They also found some blankets and loaded these into the HumVee, as well as a winter coat for Bev, which they took, since they would be traveling into the mountains, and Jim knew that it could be eighty-five degrees during the day, as it was now, and drop down to thirty-five or forty at night.

At another of the homes they found a new pair of lace-up boots that fit her and a half dozen pairs of socks.

“You should put those boots on,” Jim said.

“Why?”

“If we stay off the main roads and camp out you never know what’s in the ground cover.”

“What do you mean?”

“Wyoming has its share of rattlesnakes. Sometimes they give a warning by rattling, but sometimes they’re just in the bushes or under a rock. You got to be careful.”

Jim had gotten Bev’s attention.

“What will we do if one of us gets bitten?”

“Die,” Jim said with a straight face, then smiled. Bev laughed. “Actually, “Jim said, “the prairie rattlers aren’t that dangerous. You won’t die from their bites but you can get sick. The one that’s really dangerous is the smaller midget rattlesnake. They’re found just about where we are within the lower Green River valley. They’re ten to thirty times more poisonous than the prairie variety. Fortunately, they’re very timid and pose little or no threat to us.”

“Okay,” Bev said, smiling, “no problem wearing the boots.”

In one of the houses Jim also found a pistol that the Rejects had overlooked, a Soviet TT-33 automatic pistol, which Ray had once shown to Jim in a book and said it was very widely used by guerillas. He also found several hundred rounds of 7.62-by-39mm cartridges for it. It was a simple, well-made gun and seemed ideal for Bev.