Chapter 13

[Preservation – Janice]

A few moments later, they brought another man into the room. He was younger than the rest had been, early twenties if that. He looked at me like I was a prime piece of meat. I said, "Number one is that I'm not interested and number two is that I'm married to a wonderful man who is great to me. Number three is that I can lay you on the floor screaming in pain without breaking a sweat. You will answer questions. Ben won't stop you from trying something though if you don't believe me."

He stood up and said to me, "You don't look so tough."

I answered, "We'll see. Which leg, Ben?"

Bennie's dad, Ben, smiled slowly and said, "Lower right. You might as well hurt him badly as he isn't likely to be worth having unless he sits down real fast and keeps a civil tongue in his mouth and a polite look in his eyes."

"Well, there you go. Ben's a softy and will give you a chance to sit down and talk. If you don't do that, I'll break your right leg below the knee. I am told that it hurts, a lot, to have that happen."

He looked at me. Then he looked at Ben. He grimaced and sat down. "What do you want to know?" He asked.

"Tell us your name and your history." Ben said in his usual gruff, deep voice.

"If I talk, you'll let me live?"

I said, "Let's put it more correctly. If you don't talk, I will hurt you and then you'll die. That's a fact. If you talk and tell the truth, you will have a chance to live. Time's up. Either start talking or stand and fight."

"I am called Able Baker. I know it sounds crazy. When I was found, I was very sick and couldn't and still don't remember my original name or anything before the Day. Sometimes, snippets of memory pop to mind but I still don't know my real name. Someone called me Able Baker as a joke and it stuck.

"Like I said, I don't remember anything before the Day or even much for almost a year after then. I think I'm in my teens but, again, I don't really know. I've never had a memory of a birth date or any dated event that would give me an age. On the other hand, generalized things I know suggest I was a young teen before.

"Ma'am, I want to apologize for looking at you that way. I can't remember a time when women were treated with respect except those who were really old. You aren't old and you're very, very pretty. Your husband is a lucky man.

"That's an example of my memories. I know what marriage is even though I haven't seen a marriage that I can remember. It's confusing.

"My story is simple. An old woman found by me. She had been a nurse before. She brought me back to health and I lived as her son until Jim's group found us and forced us to join them. It wasn't too bad. Momma Carol worked with me to teach me from what books we could find. I had to learn to read again but learned quickly. That's another reason she thinks I was twelve or thirteen when I got sick. My vocabulary and knowledge fit that age as did my growth after I was feeling okay.

"We were part of Jim's group as it took over other small groups and then merged. It was a rough existence but Momma kept teaching me over the years and I have tried to take her lessons to heart. I was made to do some things that I know were wrong but Momma told me to do them and go on. Nothing I did was worth dying over. Three years ago, I killed my first man in a fight to take over a group. He had come at Momma and I protected her. After that, the men spent more time teaching me to shoot and I had to go on raids and fight.

"I've enjoyed the traveling but I really don't like fighting and having to take women. That was another thing that I was made to do. I was interested in women and still am but the girl who they made me take was young and crying the whole time. What they did after that to her was really bad.

"I would like to live differently but don't know much of anything or how to do things other than what I've been doing."

It was strange how many of the survivors weren't happy with their lives I thought. They just didn't seem to understand that, if they had banded together, they could have stopped the Triple-A's. I had Able put in the second group. If Carol survived, it would be interesting to see her reaction. It would tell us much about the young man with the funny name.

The day went on and Ben and I continued to interrogate the captives. Poppa Jack came in with sandwiches for us and told us that his Aunt Mary and Cindy were questioning the women. I suggested that we compare notes over supper. He said he would pass that on to them. He said that the women's stories were heartbreaking. Their treatment had been cruel.

Out of the seventy-three male captives, we had ten for group two, which were the good guys, twenty-eight for group one, and thirty-five left for group three. That third group had two more broken arms and three broken legs. There were a number in that group who didn't have names because they refused to talk to me. The treatment of women that the Triple-A's espoused brought out the worst in men. Some of these men survived by their cruelty and it became their identity. We weren't a rehabilitation clinic. Poppa Jack took a simple view on that because he was adamant that there would be no repeat offenders.

There was one woman in the third group. She had attacked Cindy. We later found that she was one of the Six's women and had used her position to harm any woman who didn't do as she desired. She was not happy to find out that she would not be in charge of anything or anyone unless elected. As he had done with the Blasters, Poppa allowed the women a say in the men who were spared. Two moved from the middle group up to the third group of bad guys and two went down to the middle or second group. No one in the third group moved up. No one had a good word for any of them.

Poppa asked if I would see to the execution of the one woman. I gathered a couple of men planning that I would just put a bullet in her head. Three of the other women heard and volunteered to be part of an execution squad. Cindy quickly explained that many of the women had been whipped and some others killed because of this woman. I asked the three if they could shoot and none said they could. I told them they could come with me but that I would shoot her. I found her in the same area as the group three men. I grabbed her by the hair and lifted enough to get her on her knees. I said, "As authorized by the Director of Preservation, you are to be executed at this time." She gasped and began to sob. I stepped behind her and pulled my pistol shooting her in the back of the head. She was dead by the time her body hit the ground. It saddened me to realize that a woman could sink that low. The three that accompanied me thanked me for shooting her. They were going to tell the others the news.