Ben caught a piece of a ricochet on the side of his head that caused his world to darken and spin momentarily. He staggered back against the old junk car he’d been using for cover, and felt the blood pour from the cut. He shook his head, and the blood flew. His vision cleared just in time for him to see a wild-eyed punk jump into the small cleared space and lift his Uzi, a wide grin on his face.
Ben leveled his CAR and gave the grinning punk some lead to the belly and chest that completely wiped the smile from his lips and sent him sprawling to the floor, wide-eyed in death.
Ben ejected the nearly empty magazine from his CAR. Before he could slip a full magazine home a gang member scrambled over the mound of debris and jumped onto Ben’s back. Ben flipped him off and gave him a jump boot to the side of the head, directly on the temple. The punk lay still, blood leaking out of his nose. His body convulsed for a few seconds, then was still.
Ben jammed home a full magazine and spun around as the sounds of a vehicle pulling away reached him, tires spinning and howling on the tarmac.
Ben wiped the blood from his head with his shirt sleeve and caught his breath. It looked as though there were two people in the dune buggy.
“Come back here, you bastard!” Marcie screamed at the rapidly disappearing buggy.
Ben stepped out of the hangar, using what was once the side door, now minus the door. Marcie turned and blew some lead in Ben’s direction. Her burst missed Ben and knocked holes in the side of the hangar. Ben returned the fire and the woman jumped for cover.
Ben pulled a grenade from a side pocket of his pants and jerked the pin free. He lobbed the grenade toward the pile of rubble. The mini-bomb landed in the rubble and blew, sending crap flying and caving in one side of the pile, collapsing the junk onto the woman.
Ben squatted down for a moment, until his breath leveled out. He wiped more blood from the side of his head and stood up, quickly stepping to the protection of the side of the hangar.
The airport area was quiet except for the moaning of several wounded punks. Ben ignored them for the moment. There was no sound at all coming from the pile of rubble where Marcie had taken refuge.
Ben stepped back inside the hangar and gathered all the full magazines from the dead. He picked up the weapons and laid them on the ground outside, then gathered all the spare magazines and ammo he could find from the dead and wounded and piled them with the others in front of the hangar.
For the moment, he ignored the moaning and pleading and begging for help from the wounded. The Rebel philosophy was: You tried to kill me, partner. I don’t owe you a damn thing. I’ll get around to you when I get the time . . . if I get the time. So for now, just shut up.
Ben had fixed a compress for his head wound. The bleeding had just about stopped. He took two aspirin and walked over to the pile of rubble to see if the woman was still alive. She did not appear to be hurt much. Pinned under a mess of rubble, she was doing some serious cussing, all of it directed at Ben.
“You have a really filthy mouth, girl,” Ben said. He could not see her from the waist up, but he could sure hear her, loud and clear.
“Go fuck yourself!” Marcie said.
“Would you like to try working yourself out of the mess that is covering you?”
“Ah . . . no, I guess not.”
“Then watch your mouth.”
“Yes, sir.”
“That’s better. When I get this crap off you, Marcie, if you have a gun in your hand, I’ll kill you. Do you understand?”
“I understand you. Real clear. I don’t have a gun, Ben Raines. I lost my rifle when the grenade exploded, and I can’t get to my pistol.”
“That’s good. Just don’t try to move around, this crap might shift. I’ll get you out of there.”
“I don’t believe I have any pressing engagements today.”
Ben smiled. “You have a better vocabulary than most gang members I’ve encountered.”
“My life is a long sad story.”
“I’m sure.” Ben’s reply was drily given. He worked steadily for a few minutes, clearing away some sort of twisted metal framework and cutting his hand while doing so. He said a few cuss words and sucked at the small cut for a few seconds.
“What’s the matter, Ben Raines?” Marcie asked.
“I cut my hand. Nothing serious.”
“That’s good. Man, you sure played hell with the gang.”
“A couple got away, including Slick.”
“That figures. I’ve noticed he talks tough as hell when he’s got a gang behind him. Alone, there isn’t much to him.”
Ben pulled the last bit of debris from the woman and noted that she had been telling the truth: she was unarmed, except for a sidearm in a flap holster, the flap secured.
“OK. You’re free.”
Marcie rolled over on her back and stared up at him.
Ben was somewhat startled. Marcie was a beautiful young woman.
Eight
Ben stepped back several yards and watched as Marcie got to her feet and climbed out of the jumble of twisted metal. She made no hostile moves, and the expression on her face was not one of hate or anger.
She faced him, Ben maintaining several yards distance between them. “Now what, Ben Raines?”
Ben shrugged his shoulders. “That’s up to you, Marcie. I’m not going to take you prisoner, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’m pulling out as soon as I can get loaded.”
“You mean I could just get into one of those buggies or trucks and leave?”
“Why not? I’m not going to shoot you.”
“Where would I go?”
“Hell, Marcie, I don’t know. Back to your gang, I suppose. Wherever you want to go.”
She ran fingers through her short hair—light brown, Ben noted, and really in need of washing. Her heart-shaped face was smudged with dirt marks, and could use a good scrubbing. She met Ben’s eyes and grimaced. “I’m a mess, right?”
“Nothing that a bar of soap and about an hour in a tub full of hot water wouldn’t fix.”
She laughed at that, and Ben noticed that her teeth were very white and in very good shape . . . most punks teeth were yellow and rotted. “It isn’t my gang. And if you’ll show me a tub of hot water and a bar of soap I’ll sure use them both.”
“Slick’s gang, then. Go back to them, if that’s what you want to do.”
“I don’t want to. I’ve only been with them a few weeks, and never planned to stay very long. And no, I’m not Slick’s old lady, if that’s what you were thinking. I’m not anybody’s old lady.”
Ben stared at her for a moment, then made up his mind. “All right. Help me load up one of those pickup trucks and we’ll get the hell out of here before Slick returns with his gang . . . if that’s what you want to do.”
“Suits me. I’ll go with you, and be glad to get away from Slick and his idiots.” She pointed to a vehicle. “That truck is almost new.”
“Let’s do it, then.”
“How about the wounded?”
“You concerned about them?”
Marcie hesitated. “Well, not really. But I’d feel sort of funny about leaving them here to die if we could help them.”
“But you were all ready to kill me a few minutes ago.”
“I’ve never shot anybody in my life. I swear it. When I shot at you it was instinct. I thought you were going to kill me.”
Ben nodded his head. “All right, Marcie. You look at the wounded and see what you can do for them, if anything, and I’ll start loading up. Then we’ll get gone from here.”
Thirty minutes later, they were on the road.
“Both of Dave’s legs are broken,” Marcie said, munching on a high-energy bar. “He’s gonna be crippled the rest of his life, I bet.”
“Probably. Unless he gets to a doctor.”
“Doctor? Out here? Forget it. Nearest doctor is hundreds of miles away. I haven’t seen a doctor since I left Wisconsin. No, don’t turn here. Those roads are all
blocked. Everything north and east is gang controlled. We’ve got to go west . . . I think I know a way west that will get us clear. I think.”
“How many gangs are operating out here?”
“Dozens of them. Some have four or five members, others have a hundred or so. The main gang leader is a guy who calls himself Duane. He’s got a mob with him.”
“And his territory is . . . where?”
“We’ve got to go through it to get clear. He operates out of the town that used to be called Van Horn.”
“There was a time, a few years ago, when Texas was entirely clear of gangs of punks.”
“Not anymore, and you can believe that. Not in this part of the state, anyway. Gangs are making a fast comeback all over America.”
“Not in the SUSA,” Ben said with a smile.
“So I hear,” Marcie replied. “The life expectancy of a punk in the SUSA is kinda short, isn’t it?”
“Real short. You said you came from Wisconsin. Why did you leave?”
“I also said it was a long story.”
“We’ve got time. We’ll be lucky to average thirty miles per hour over these old roads.”
“OK. If you really want to hear this sad tale. Here goes. My parents survived the gas and the gangs, and the really terrible times after that. They schooled me at home until things started running halfway back to normal. Then I went to public schools, such as they were . . . are, I guess would be a better word. They’re still lousy as crap . . .”
“Not in the SUSA.” Ben had to say it.
“Yeah? Well, I heard about that, too. Anyway, I graduated high school and went to college for a year. I was a few years older than many of the kids—I’m twenty-four now—and my parents taught me to read when I was three. I’ve been reading everything I could get my hands on ever since.” She cut her eyes toward him. “You mind if I smoke, Ben Raines?”
“Not at all. I smoke cigarettes. But it’s a habit you should quit. It’s bad for your health.”
“Then why don’t you quit?”
“I don’t want to.”
She dug in a pocket of her military style, cargo-pocket britches and held out a pack of cigarettes. “You want one of these?”
“I thought those were outlawed outside the SUSA. Big Brother so decreed?”
“They are. But small cigarette factories are a big, thriving business. People are growing tobacco in basements and flower gardens, and in the woods, and God only knows where else. Big black market in cigarettes. People are gonna smoke if they want to smoke.”
Ben took a cigarette and lit up. It wasn’t bad, but it sure as hell wasn’t smooth, either. Then he had a thought: The best tobacco land was in the SUSA. Why not start bootlegging cigarettes across the border into Left-wing Liberal La-La Land? That would piss off the left wingers in power. He laughed, and Marcie looked at him strangely.
“The cigarette that bad?” she asked.
“Oh, no. Not at all. I just had an amusing thought, that’s all. Go on with your story.”
“Well, I learned to read from books that were published long before the Great War . . . many of them published before the political correctness crap came to be. I read about cowboys and Indians, not Western Horsepeople and Native Americans. You know what I mean.”
“Oh, yes, I sure do, Marcie. Firsthand.”
“When I got to public school, high school, I began to notice the textbooks were, well, different. History was not depicted the same way as in the old textbooks I had read as a child. Putting it bluntly, it was all screwed up.”
Ben chuckled softly as they drove along. The liberals finally got their way: they had officially changed history. He had known about this, of course. He had reviewed the textbooks. But Marcie was the first younger person he’d talked with who would actually admit to noticing the change.
“According to the history books I was forced to study in high school and during the year and few months I attended college, America was the aggressor toward Japan during the Second World War. America was the aggressor in every war we were ever involved in. Especially against the Native Americans.”
“There was right and wrong on both sides during the westward expansion period in America. That’s the only fair way to view it. The Indians didn’t ‘own’ the land in the European concept of ownership—no title or deed or other proof of ownership. They were just there. Some settlers did try to make friends with the Indians, and did. Some wanted to kill every Indian they saw, and did. The same philosophy held with the Indians: some wanted peace, some wanted war. I know all about the left wingers screwing up history. They screw up practically everything they touch. Go on with your story.”
“Well, about mid-year in my second year of college I’d had enough of it, and I stood up in class and challenged one of my history professors on a point. He got so angry I thought he would have a heart attack. I was called into the office of some college official and bluntly told that I was out of line, blah, blah, blah. Big long boring lecture. I told them to go to hell and walked out.”
“And your parents did . . . what?”
“Oh, they got upset with me, not with the college. They’re lifelong Democrats—very liberal—and believe everything the party hands out, i.e., if the textbooks were changed there must have been a good reason for it. Men and women who are much more learned than me discovered flaws in the old textbooks and corrected them. I didn’t buy it then, and I don’t buy it now. Wrong is wrong. Call me stubborn or hardheaded, or whatever.”
Ben cut his eyes to the young woman. He felt she was telling him the truth. Just a hunch on his part. “Marcie, you’re an intelligent person. How in the hell did you ever link up with Slick and his gang of dickheads?”
“I drifted around after leaving home, spent about a year just wandering and seeing the country. But I was afraid to try to get into the SUSA.”
“Afraid? Why?”
“Because of all the press you people have received over the years. According to the press, you have a really violent type of society. You shoot people for the slightest infraction. Is that really true?”
Ben had a good laugh and then shook his head. “No it isn’t true, because of the type of people who live in the SUSA. Our code of day-to-day living involves honor, ethics, decency, integrity. We’re a society that respects the rights of others.”
“And if the people in the SUSA don’t live up to those qualities?”
“They’re in trouble.”
“From the government?”
“Oh, no. Very rarely will the government take action unless they break the law. The people they cheat, however—that’s quite another story.”
“They shoot the person who cheated them?”
“No . . . I don’t recall any shooting. But there have been several real good ass whippings.”
“And the police do?”
“Very little, if anything at all. They investigate, of course, but almost always find that the man who got his ass whipped had many citizen complaints already filed against him.”
“What happens to the man who cheated the people?”
“Oh, he usually leaves the SUSA without being asked. For health reasons,” Ben added drily. “Marcie, you haven’t told me how or why you hooked up with Slick and his bunch.”
“I wandered down this way and found myself lost and very much alone one day. I was out of food and water. Some of the women in the gang found me and felt sorry for me, I guess. Slick wanted to make me his old lady, but he already had a woman. Mean bitch called Big Sadie. And she’s big, too. Not fat, just tall and tough. She could probably whip Slick.”
“What’s Slick’s real name?”
“I don’t know. Slick’s all I’ve ever heard him called.”
“I figure we’re about ten or twelve miles from Marfa. Look on that map on the dash and see if there’s a way around the town.”
“I know a way around it. I think I remember it. It’s dirt but hard packed, and we’ve had no rain to speak of. We should
be able to make it all right. That storm the other night was wind, mostly.”
“Tell me where to turn.”
“It’s not far . . . if I remember correctly. It’ll be off to the right. Watch for it, ’cause it’s hard to spot.”
“Anything on the road? Off of it, I mean. Old houses, maybe?”
“I think I remember a few old places. Awfully rundown, though.”
“That’s all right. We just need a place to hole up for the night. You keep ducking the question. Why did you leave home to wander?”
“Oh, that’s easy to answer. I got into it with my folks. That’s all. I see things differently. And it was their way or the highway. I chose the highway.”
They rode in silence for a few minutes, with their own thoughts. Ben believed the young woman’s story. Her manner, personal appearance, and vocabulary helped back it up. If one young person was rebelling against the left-wing form of government outside the SUSA . . . might there not be others? Ben felt there surely would be. It was something to think about, and perhaps use in some sort of peaceful campaign.
Then Ben shook his head. Peaceful? Not likely, not with Harlan Millard and Claire Osterman in charge. While Ben disliked both of them, he knew they hated him with a very deep burning intensity, and had for many years, since long before the collapse of government and the Great War.
Marcie broke the silence. “You’re deep in thought, Ben Raines.”
“Yeah, I guess I was. Thinking about the government outside the SUSA. That always depresses me.”
“I know that those in charge are determined to reunite America. They hate the SUSA.”
“They hate everybody who dares to stand up for their guaranteed constitutional rights.”
“Does that include my parents and my brothers and sisters?”
“You never mentioned them, Marcie, but yes, I guess it does, if they’re embracing the strict party line of Osterman and Millard.”
“Embracing it? Hell, they’re in bed with it one hundred percent—all the time, all the way.”
Hatred in the Ashes Page 8