Ben Bova - Test of Fire

Most of them. The satellite sensors could not warn Alec about the few crazed, ghoulish lunatics who haunted the dead, empty buildings. Nor of the rats and diseases that lingered there with them.

Alec’s band numbered twenty-three when they reached Pittsburgh. The newcomers were youngsters, several still in their teens, with only the faintest fuzz on their chins. They had joined Alec’s band from the villages, for adventure, for safety, for loot or women or to get away from parents or for any of the ancient reasons that turn a boy into a would-be warrior.

When they staggered away from Pittsburgh only nine of them were left. The city was teeming with rats and ferocious, feral dogs—and with wild-eyed, half-starved ragged screaming things that could barely be recognized as human. They fought as madmen fight, swarming into Alec’s men by the hundreds, oblivious to the murderous fire that mowed them down, piling up their dead on the broken filthy streets and still coming, clawing over the corpses to get at the living.

It took two days to get out of the city, and they had never penetrated close to the heart of it. Constant fighting, night and day, until the men and their ammunition were both exhausted. The only way they got out at all was to torch the buildings on all sides with the precious fuel they had discovered in a cargo truck. They built a wall of fire between themselves and the attacking barbarians, retreating slowly back toward the hilly countryside behind a curtain of flame and smoke.

They left Pittsburgh on foot, nearly unarmed, limping, bleeding, smoke-blackened, totally exhausted.

Of the fifteen men who had stayed with Alec at Oak Ridge, only six still lived. The three other members of his gaunt-faced band were newcomers: Ferret and two farm boys.

They moved northward again. They stole or bluffed or bartered meager possessions for guns and ammunition. Ferret kept them well-fed, by his own standards. There was no extra fat on any of them. When Alec felt strong enough, they raided a few small villages, mostly at night. They even picked up a few more recruits.

Alec learned from a woman in one village that the local raider band had been trailing them for several days and planned to destroy them. He retreated from the village hurriedly, leaving a plain trail for the raiders to follow. They walked into his forest ambush. Alec’s fourteen men, using a mixture of weapons from automatic rifles to crossbows, killed eighteen and took the weapons from their bodies as their comrades fled in panic. Then he returned to the village and took what he needed.

Now Alec travelled with a heavy automatic rifle either slung over his shoulder or cradled in his arms. Its weight was his comfort. He nurtured the weapon, kept it carefully oiled and working smoothly. It protected his life. He slept with it at his side, like a woman.

Now it was autumn. They were in the lake country, the area where Douglas had been born and to which he had returned to carve out his primitive empire.

Alec lay on the damp leaves with his rifle comfortably tucked beside him, watching the village down in the valley through his binoculars. He was convinced the village supplied Douglas with corn.

“We’ll hit them tomorrow,” Alec told Jameson.

“Take the village and hold it long enough to replenish our supplies, get fresh horses, and question them about Douglas’ headquarters.”

“Maybe they’ve got a truck,” Jameson said, almost wistfully. It was such a difference from his usual matter-of-fact tone that it startled Alec. He doesn’t like riding horses any more than I do!

“Maybe,” Alec said, keeping his smile inward.

“Tonight,” Ferret hissed. “Go when it’s dark, huh?”

Shifting slightly in his prone position, enough to make the leaves crinkle under him, Alec disagreed.

“No. Tonight they’ll bottle themselves up inside their wall. Probably they’ll have dogs out among the huts that would set up a yowl as soon as we approached. I wouldn’t want to try to climb over that wall while the villagers are shooting at me.”

Ferret’s narrow, pinched face pulled into a scowl.

“We’ll hit them tomorrow, when the men are out in the fields working. We can work our way through the corn right up to their gate.”

Jameson added, “We’d better also take that supply wagon while it’s on the way into the village. Don’t want anybody riding off to spread an alarm.”

“Good thinking,” Alec agreed.

The Sun was high in the early afternoon sky. The day was warm and drowsy with the buzz of insects. An old man, paunchy, mustacheoed, sat on a chair in the open gate of the village wall, his head on his chest, snoozing gently. An ancient shotgun lay across his lap.

Alec lay prone at the edge of the cornfield, watching the old man, giving his other men time to work their way through the tall rows of corn. It had taken nearly an hour, inching through the field slowly, crawling on their stomachs, avoiding the men picking the corn down at the far end of the field.

Now they were ready. Alec got to his feet and stepped out quickly, head ducked low, and snatched the shotgun from the old man’s hands.

“Huh… wha…”

Alec handed the gun to Ferret, on his left, as he hissed, “Not a sound, grandfather. We don’t want to hurt anyone.”

They stood him up and marched him inside the gate. “Close it,” Alec ordered. The old man did it, with help from one of Alec’s men. Alec left the youngster there to watch the old man and marched the rest of his troop past the quiet huts toward the center of the village. He could hear the horse-drawn wagon clattering and creaking up ahead, but could not see it because the narrow village street twisted between rows of huts. Then a man’s deep voice rumbled, “Hey, what the hell’s going on here?”

Quickening his pace, Alec made his way to the cleared area at the center of the village. Jameson was standing atop the wagon, an automatic rifle resting casually on his hip, its muzzle pointing at the handful of villagers who stood in the clearing, looking shocked and alarmed. Gianelli and the other men whom Alec had sent out to capture the wagon were already fanning around the edges of the clearing. Down the lane by which the wagon had come, Alec could see two of his young bowmen swinging shut the village’s other gate.

Most of the villagers in the clearing were women. A few small children clung to their mothers, already frightened. A couple of older men were easing back away from the wagon, their eyes on Jameson and his gun.

From behind them, Alec said, “You’d better stand still, all of you.”

They jumped with surprise, then froze. Alec walked past them, up to the horses that pulled the wagon. They stood stolidly, placid-eyed, neither knowing nor caring about the games the humans played.

“We don’t want anyone hurt,” Alec said loudly enough for everyone to hear. “We don’t intend to hurt any of you.”

Standing under Jameson’s protective gun, Alec ordered, “Gianelli, take your men and search every hut. I want everyone out here in the open. If there’s any trouble,” he pointed to the three men who now stood glaring at him, “these three will be shot immediately. Then the others.” Alec said it without looking at the women and children.

“There won’t be any trouble ’less you make it,” one of the women spat. She was lean and hard and splintery-looking as the logs from which the huts were made.

“Good,” Alec said. “Then we’ll get along fine.”

They secured the village quickly, Gianelli’s men rousting out another half-dozen old men and women and a few more children. Plus a fair-sized array of guns, including a carbine and a submachine gun. And many crates of ammunition, all new-looking. Made in the past year, Alec thought.