The Last Rebel: Survivor Read Free Page B

maybe three inches in diameter, and inside the circular edge was a cross, the ages-old symbol of Jesus Christ, a modern depiction of the crucifixion.
    The tall man looked at Jim with narrow blue eyes.
    “What do you want here?” the man demanded.
    “Just passing through,” Jim replied. “Heading east.”
    The man’s eyes narrowed to the point where they were just about slits. Jim tried to read what was in them, but couldn’t. The other man’s hazel eyes were blank.
    “Everything east of here,” Slit Eyes said, “is known as the Zone, stranger. It’s no-man’s land.”
    “Why is this so special?”
    The shorter man stepped forward.
    “Are you a Christian?”
    That was, Jim thought, none of their business. But if he didn’t answer he didn’t know if it would lead to violence. He decided to answer, but he also wondered if he should tell the man that he was born Catholic though, in truth, he hadn’t been to Mass or confession in more years than he could recall. Churches were few and far between in Idaho’s wilderness. Still, he felt that he and his family had lived a Christian life. But something inside would not let him go into all this. His attitude was accommodating—to a point.
    “I believe in God, yes. Why do you ask?”
    “Them folks in the Zone—that’s what we call it—don’t,” the man replied.
    Jim stared at the man for a moment, then shrugged, and said quietly, “Well, so what?”
    The man nodded slowly, his eyebrows arched a little.
    “You’ll find out, fella,” he said. “You go in there and you’ll sure find out. We’re suggesting you don’t.”
    “I’ll be okay,” Jim said.
    The man backed away, apparently a signal that Jim would be allowed to pass.
    “Go on,” the man said. “Just don’t say we didn’t warn you.”
    The man waved and the two of the other four men went over and swung the big I-beam out of the way.
    Jim put the HumVee in gear and drove forward slowly, very conscious of the Glock under his haunch. As he passed the other men, he noticed their expressions. They were looking at him as if he were a steer going into a slaughterhouse. And then, twenty or so yards beyond them, he glanced in the rearview mirror still wary that this might be some sort of trick, that they were going to open up on him. But he saw only one action: one of the men was making the sign of the cross.
     

 

 
    TWO
     
     
    The so-called Zone did not seem dangerous to Jim. It was very ordinary. Just mile after mile of evergreen forest, an occasional home spotted through the trees, and a few times some animals. Once he had seen an elk, another time a buck deer, and another—the treat of the ride so far—a black bear sow and two teddy-bear-size cubs trailing after her. And once he had a close call—or the skunk did—when Jim narrowly missed turning it into roadkill which he did not need, with what he had put his nose through already.
    Despite the lack of an open threat, Jim stayed alert. He was sure that the medallion men on the barricade were not telling him that the Zone was dangerous as a joke. Jim knew that there was always the possibility—and it could be a strong possibility—of being attacked. He knew this was the time of the predator, because when people were down was when predators emerged. They preyed on the sick, the young, the old, the helpless. So, too, men. They would much rather attack someone who was defenseless than someone who was not. Such people always struck Jim as not only evil, but shortsighted, just plain stupid. He had always been raised to believe that far and away the most important person in anyone’s life was the one looking back at you from a mirror, and when you prey on the helpless, what did that make you? Of course people like that had a very simple solution to self-image. They never looked in the mirror.
    But Jim also knew something else. That it was in bad times that always produced the best people, like Mother Teresa, who would work the streets of