The Last Rebel: Survivor (9 page)

“That coffee smells wonderful.”

“Tastes wonderful too. Pull up a chair and have a couple of cups. We got plenty.

“Also,” he said expressionlessly, “how about some ham and eggs and biscuits?”

“Dream on, big boy,” she replied. “I’ll just settle for a bowl of cornflakes.”

“Gee, that’s what I’m having too.” Pouring two mugs of coffee, Jim asked, “Did you sleep well?”

“Like that much-talked-about log.”

“Me too. But I did wake up several times to give a listen, just in case anybody might be prowling around outside. Then it dawned on me that Reb would sound an alarm if that were the case. I’m pretty good about hearing noises that don’t belong, but I’m not better than a dog.”

It occurred to him that he might tell her the analogy of hearing a flea pass wind, but he held himself in check. His instincts told him she would laugh, but he might embarrass her—and himself also. She was not only a sexy and attractive woman, she was a lady.

Bev mixed some milk in her mug and then carefully sipped it.

“Delicious,” she said.

“Have you listened to the CB this morning?” Jim asked.

“No,” she said.

“I was out and nothing was moving—except an antelope I saw—and I didn’t hear the sounds of any shooting,” he said.

“That’s a good sign. Maybe,” she said.

“What do you mean by maybe?”

“I know the Rejects are up to something. People like that are always planning something,” she said.

Jim nodded. “Down through history they’ve been plenty of groups like the Rejects, and they always seem to show up when the world is in chaos.”

“Like a mob after a riot,” she said.

“How about the Believers?” he asked.

“I don’t know what they’re planning now. Perhaps getting ready to invade the Zone. It’s just back and forth, back and forth between them and the Rejects,” she said.

“It really galls me that they say they’re Christians. No blacks allowed, no Hispanics, and no brand of the Christian religion except theirs. Christians! What they forget is that the word Christian comes from Christ, and He didn’t die on the cross just for white people. His greatness is that He died for us all,” she said.

Jim looked at her.

“Are you crying?”

“Just a little misty. I guess part of it is my father. He always said that God is love, and that love is blind—color blind, sex blind, and blind in every way imaginable. Jeez, I miss him.”

“In reading the SUSA manifesto, it’s clear that that was the way Ben Raines felt too.”

“Absolutely.”

“Do you think that the Believers will be able to stop the Rejects?”

“I don’t know. As bad as it would be, at least, like I said before, they’re not murderers.”

“Not yet,” Jim said. “But it has always struck me that narrow-minded thinking can lead to violence.”

“Hey, that’s pretty good.”

“Yeah.” Jim smiled. “Jim LaDoux, philosopher.”

He paused.

“Well, I guess,” he said, “we should be moving on.”

Bev nodded.

“I guess we should.”

Fifteen minutes later, they were back on the road.

At a few points during the journey north, to stay off the main roads they had to take some very narrow, out-of-the-way roads, one of which was not even on Ben Raines’s maps.

And once, for a while, the lodgepole pine forest they were traveling through gave out to high desert and sagebrush, and continued as they traveled past the town of Green River and through the Flaming Gorge—named for its spectacular red color—and they were relatively exposed to danger. But they saw no one or more importantly, no one saw them.

Once they stopped for a bathroom break, and then they were on their way again.

So far, they had not seen anyone, hostile or friendly. It would be easy to think that they were the only two people left on earth.

At one point, Jim, smoking a cigarette, looked over at Bev.

“We have a decision to make,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“Should we go around Jackson, or through it?”

“I’d rather go through it,” Bev said.

“Why?”

“Maybe we could hook up with someone. There’d be more safety in numbers.”

“Maybe,” Jim said.

“What about trying to find the Believers? Maybe we could hook up with them.”

“I don’t think so. I don’t want to be associated with them.”

“For the reasons mentioned?”

“Absolutely.”

Bev thought before answering.

“You’re right,” she said.

“How about taking 191 into Jackson?” Jim said.

“That’s the main highway.”

“I know. I figure we’d get on and off it fairly fast.”

“Okay,” Bev said. “I have a feeling you have good instincts.”

“I do when it comes to mountain trails. I hope it spills over onto asphalt ones!”

Bev laughed, and Reb, sitting on the floor beneath her, wagged his tail as if he got it too.

Jim nodded.

About five miles up they turned west, and soon they were on 191, heading into Jackson. It was weird. Jim knew 191 was a well-traveled road. But now, there was no one on it.

He wondered what would be going on in Jackson.

“How you doing?” he said to Bev.

“Okay,” she said.

“I find it curious that there’s no one on the road. But I’m also glad.”

As they got to within a few miles of Jackson they saw their first sign of human life. They had spotted three passenger cars going south at a high speed on 191. They knew that the people in the cars saw them but did not attempt to make any contact.

“I’m hoping those cars we saw are a sign that Jackson is free of hostiles,” Jim said. “They didn’t try to stop us, so they’re not Rejects, and if Rejects had taken over Jackson I doubt very much if they would have been traveling so freely.”

“You said you had visited Jackson.”

“I visited there when I was ten. I went with my father. I think it’s mostly a tourist town, everything designed to separate the tourist from his dollar.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“I know. I’m just telling you what it is.”

“Okay.”

“I think the population is less than ten thousand, but on the day we went there it had to be three times that many, and I remember seeing license plates on cars from every state in the union. Don’t expect to see an old western town. From what I’ve heard about it over the years, there’re all kinds of gift shops, art galleries, fine restaurants, western-style saloons, and fancy boutiques.”

“Oh.”

“My father told me that other people in Wyoming don’t like Jackson, maybe because they’re jealous, but also because they consider it a false town, all just geared to sell things to tourists. But the country around it is pure. You got Grand Teton National Park or Bridger Teton National Forest.”

“That’s good.”

“The thing I remember most about it, though, is the antler arches.”

“What’s that?”

“Jackson has a town square, and they build arches of elk antlers.”

“Where do they get them from?”

“Bull elk. They fall off every year and people pick them up.”

“Oh.”

Almost abruptly, Jim and Bev stopped talking because they could see the town. They would soon be in it, and whatever it held. Both were alone with their own thoughts as they approached, but they shared one idea: it could be dangerous.

SIX

The HumVee rolled slowly into Jackson.

Jackson held no sign of life, but plenty of signs of death. It was horrific. The streets were virtually lined with dead bodies in various states of decomposition from skeletal to black and bloated. The stink seemed worse in certain sections as they drove along—and it was a cool day—thick enough to be visible. Jim rolled up his windows.

The entire town had been trashed. Buildings, exclusively stores, were intact, but it seemed that every one of them had their windows broken. Some of the buildings had the doors pulled off, while two had the roofing ripped off, and one small building was totally collapsed.

“It looked like a tornado touched down here, “Jim said.

“How horrible,” Bev said. “Let’s keep going.”

“Okay, but first I want to check something out.”

He stopped the HumVee and took a handkerchief from his breast pocket, then reached back and grabbed a bottle of water, opened it, and poured some on the handkerchief so it was damp.

He handed it to Bev.

“Here,” he said, “just breathe in it and concentrate on not breathing through your nose.”

“Okay.”

“I’ll be right back.”

Jim had brought the HumVee to a stop in the middle of the town square where, indeed, U-shape arches made of elk horns were intact. One of them had a pair of bodies under it, a man and a woman, lying side by side. They were lying face up and looked as though they were taking in the sun. Jim grabbed the AK-47 and headed over to them.

Bev watched as he looked at the male body, then knelt down. He lingered a moment, then got up and went to the female body.

What, Bev thought, could he be doing?

At the point when she was about to join him—as ugly as she found the whole thing—he headed back to the vehicle. He got back in the HumVee and did not say anything until he had closed the door.

“Okay, let’s go.”

“What’s up?” she said as Jim put the HumVee in gear.

“It looks like half of these people died of plague,” he said. “But the rest were shot.”

“The Rejects?”

“I wouldn’t bet against that. The woman I looked at was a Believer.”

“How do you know?”

“She was wearing a Believer medallion, and she wasn’t alone.”

“This is like a holy war,” Bev said.

“I think it’s more like a fight for survival. A fight to the death. What I don’t understand,” Jim said, “is what Believers were doing in Jackson. These people have been dead about a week, I’d say, and it doesn’t look like it was an all-out battle. More like plague mixed with executions.”

Jim was silent for a moment.

“It’s quite a shock,” he said. “This was once, like I said, a tourist town, full of life and kids and . . . just a shock. Hard to believe it could happen.”

Bev took the handkerchief off her face.

“I know,” she said. “I was shocked when I first encountered the Rejects near Salt Lake . . . and all the rest. I mean, you go through your life thinking that God will protect you from stuff like this. No, not even that. You can’t imagine it happening to you. And then it does.”

Jim nodded.

“Are you game to cruise some of the residential areas?”

“Where are they?”

“Outside the town.”

“Why?”

“In case someone asks about this place, I want to be able to give them a complete report on what’s going on.”

“Who, someone like General Raines?”

“Maybe someone like him. I hope there’s someone around like him.”

“You sound like a GI out on patrol.”

“Maybe in this instance I am.”

“Okay,” Bev said. “It can’t get worse than this.”

Jim glanced at the CB. Nothing. He put the HumVee in gear.

For the next fifteen minutes they drove up and down the residential streets that were close to the center of town, and then to one or two of the condos. When Jackson had started to grow exponentially because of the hordes of tourists that visited the place each year, so did the homes of people involved in the town’s activities, creating a host of expensive private homes and condos.

Jim did not check out all the homes, but he saw enough to realize that quite a force had been through. Windows were broken and dead bodies, some shot, some having died of the plague, abounded, ordinary people as well as Believers.

And a number of the buildings had signs on them in red paint that said god is dead as well as ones that were a lot worse, including fuck god.

“It’s just as bad as town,” Bev said.

Jim nodded, and after a while he didn’t have to be asked again by Bev to drive out of Jackson. It was depressing, and there wasn’t much to do, wasn’t much to say, and he felt that he had grasped, for the first time, just how sick the Rejects were.

“The Rejects have their own religion,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“Murder. They believe in it totally.”

“I couldn’t agree more.”

Jim drove back to 191 and got on it, heading north. Both he and Bev couldn’t wait to get back into the country, God’s country, and cleanse themselves as much as possible of what they had just seen, smelled, and felt.