Hatred in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  “I want to avoid Van Horn. If the largest gang in West Texas has taken control there, we won’t stand a chance against them. The way I figure it, we’re only a few miles south of this old highway that will lead us to Highway 166 and back into the Davis Mountains. That will take us to this highway,” he said, pointing to the map, “that will end at the Interstate. Once we get there we’ll have to decide where we’re going next.”

  “I’m following you. Wherever you go, I’ll be right behind you.”

  “OK, Kiddo. As the fat man on TV used to say, ‘Away we go’.”

  “Who said that?”

  “I’ll explain it someday. The liberal feminazis have probably banned reruns of his old show, proclaiming him to be a male chauvinistic pig.”

  “Feminazis?”

  Ben laughed. “Another slightly overweight man used to use that term. Come on. Let’s get rolling.”

  They reached Highway 166 by mid-afternoon and turned north. A few miles later they were brought to an abrupt halt: a bridge over what appeared to be a dry wash had been knocked out.

  “This is getting discouraging,” Marcie said, eyeballing the torn up remains of the bridge, a disgusted look on her face. “Was this bridge blown up?”

  “I can’t tell. I think it’s been out for a long time. All we can do is backtrack. We’ll try to make Fort Davis before night, and in the morning we’ll take Seventeen up to the Interstate. It’s all we can do.”

  “Ben, has the thought occurred to you that we just might be trapped in this area?”

  He met her serious gaze and nodded. “I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t thought of it.”

  “And if that’s the case?”

  “We fight our way out.”

  “Against a hundred or more to one odds?”

  “Do we have a choice?”

  “Good point.”

  “Hang in there, Kid. We’ll get clear.”

  They backtracked and made it to the ruins of Fort Davis with about an hour of daylight to spare. Both of them were tired and more than ready for something to eat and a rest.

  “We’ll reopen the cache of supplies out at the old airport in the morning and load up your truck,” Ben told her. “Let’s hope we won’t be back to this area.”

  “Sure suits me.”

  Ben smiled and winked at her. “Keep the faith. I told you—we’ll make it out of here.”

  They ate supper and were in their sleeping bags just as the sun was sinking behind the Davis Mountains. Both were sound asleep in minutes. Ben awakened about four the next morning and silently slipped from his sleeping bag, being careful not to wake Marcie. The town and the hills and mountains surrounding it were silent. Ben made coffee and heated something that looked and smelled disgustingly inedible from a breakfast pouch of field rations. He sipped his coffee and waited for Marcie to wake up.

  “What’s that god-awful smell that’s overpowering the wonderful aroma of coffee?” Marcie called in a sleepy voice.

  “Breakfast,” Ben said with a grin.

  “Yukk! Did you just kill it, or is it still alive?”

  “It’s dead, I promise you, but it’s good for you. The Rebel doctors have assured me of that many times.”

  “Do they eat it?”

  “Somehow I doubt it.”

  Both managed to eat the breakfast mess and, amazingly, were able to keep it down. Then they relaxed over cigarettes and coffee.

  “The coffee is delicious, Ben.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I just can’t find words to describe the breakfast, though.”

  “Some things are best left unsaid.”

  “I agree.”

  At first light they drove to the airport. The bodies of two of Slick’s gang lay where they had died, rotting, and the flies that swarmed the bodies were having a delightful time.

  “I think it’ll be best if you don’t look at them,” Ben cautioned her.

  “You really didn’t have to tell me that. Phew!” she waved her small hand in front of her nose.

  “Let’s see about getting the cover off that hole in the ground, load up the trucks, and get the hell gone from here.”

  “Wonderful idea.”

  By mid-morning they had reached the ruins of a tiny town a few miles south of the Interstate. There was very little left there, the buildings burned.

  “What hit this place?” Marcie questioned, standing by Ben in the center of the main street.

  “The Rebels, fighting gangs of punks years ago,” Ben told her. “The people who tried to resettle this area never got around to cleaning up this little town.” He smiled at her. “But I’m sure the lake is still there, and probably still good to swim in . . . or to take a bath.”

  “Lake?” She brightened. “What lake?”

  “Oh, about five miles northeast of here.”

  “I could use a bath, Ben. Or haven’t you noticed?”

  “We both could.”

  “So what are we waiting for?”

  “I meant to tell you. I found some small size BDUs back at the cache. They look like they’ll fit you. Come on. Let’s get cleaned up.”

  The five hundred acre lake was spring fed, and the waters clear and surprisingly unpolluted, considering all that had occurred over the years.

  Ben checked the area carefully, but could find no recent sign of human visitation. “You take your bath, Marcie. I’ll stand guard. Then you can keep watch while I bathe.”

  Needing no second invitation, she grabbed a bar of soap and hit the water. Ben backed off a respectable distance and stood guard while Marcie giggled and splashed and soaped and had a good time ridding herself of days of dust and dirt.

  Then it was Ben’s turn, and he carefully bathed and washed his short hair. He threw away his old BDUs, ripped and torn from his hard landing a few days past (his body still carried a few deep bruises and cuts) and dressed with new ones from the cache at the old airport. Marcie discarded her old clothing and Ben buried their old outfits in a stand of trees.

  After their baths, now dressed in fresh clothing, they were beginning to look and feel human once more.

  “Being clean is such a wonderful feeling,” Marcie said, brushing her hair with a broken-handled brush from her rucksack. “One of the simple things in life. Are we going to spend the night here?”

  “No. Lots of animal tracks around the lake where they come to water. No point in tempting any to attack. We’ll find another spot to bed down.”

  “And tomorrow?”

  “Try to find a way out of this punk-infested place.”

  “That’s going to be difficult, Ben. They’re all over this area . . . hundreds of them.”

  “But mostly south of the old Interstate, right?”

  “That’s true. But this whole area is sort of like a no-man’s-land—no law, and no decent people. South of Marfa and Alpine it really gets bad, gangs from Mexico crossing the border to fight gangs over here, and vice-versa. While you and your army were in Africa it seems the whole world went crazy . . . again. From the news I get, Europe is all torn up again, the Nazis back in power in some places. Some factions in China have made an alliance with the Nazis, and that country is in the middle of a civil war. Mexico, Central America, and South America are nothing but one great big battleground. The United Nations doesn’t seem to be able to do anything.”

  “Hell, they never could do anything . . . except ask for American troops to be sent all over the fucking world . . . and get a lot of American troops killed.”

  “You didn’t have much use for the United Nations, did you, Ben?”

  “I didn’t have any use for it. As far as I was concerned, America should have gotten out of the U. N. years before the Great War and told them all to go right straight to hell. I wasn’t an isolationalist, but this nation was far too open for far too long to suit me.”

  “I never got that side of history. Not from the new textbooks being used in schools.”

  Ben nodded and looked around. It would
be dark in a couple of hours, and they needed to find a place to hole up for the night.

  “Let’s pack it up and get out of here, Marcie.”

  “Is something wrong?”

  “No. Nothing like that.” He turned around, facing her, his back to the woods. “We’re just too open here, and that makes me edgy.”

  “We are kind of exposed, aren’t we?”

  Just as Ben turned to one side a rifle cracked, the slug missing his back and howling off the metal of the cab of the truck and ricocheting away with an ugly whine. Ben and Marcie hit the ground, belly down, Ben swinging his CAR around, his eyes searching the timber around the lake.

  “You all right?” Ben called.

  “Yes, but if you hadn’t turned when you did—”

  “Yeah. You’d have been the proud owner of one dead body and two pickup trucks.”

  “Asshole!” she told him.

  Ben chuckled as his eyes picked up movement in the timber. He cut loose with half a thirty round magazine and that produced a couple of yelps from the darkness of the woods.

  “Jesus Christ, Whopper!” someone hollered. “Them things come too clost for any comfort.”

  “I’ll say.” Ben assumed that was Whopper speaking. “One of them slugs just missed my ass.”

  “Whopper?” Marcie muttered, crawling closer to Ben. “Is that what I heard?”

  “Yeah. I can’t wait to hear what the other is called.”

  Despite the precarious situation, she giggled. “Maybe there’s more than two.”

  “It wouldn’t surprise me to discover we’re facing a dozen or more. Hand me that rucksack to your right, Marcie.”

  Ben fished out a grenade, jerked the pin, and heaved it with everything he had. It landed just at the edge of the timber and blew.

  When the dirt and rocks stopped falling and the sound of the explosion had died away, someone shouted, “Holy shit, Dinky! That there feller’s got hisself some dynamite.”

  “You be rat about that, Dobber. Purty good arm on him, too.”

  “Dinky and Dobber?” Marcie whispered. “I don’t believe it.”

  “Son of a bitch blowed a tree down on me,” another voice called. “I’m all covered up with limbs and leaves and bird’s nest and shit.”

  “Can you get free, Whacker?”

  “I reckon so, if I work on it a while.”

  “Whacker?” Marcie breathed. “What the hell have we gotten into here?”

  “I keep waiting for James Dickey to show up,” Ben said.

  “Who?”

  “Deliverance. ”

  “What’s that?”

  “A novel. I’ll tell you about it later.”

  “Did you see the bush on that bitch?” one of the cretins yelled. “Man, I gots to have me some of that. Some fine lookin’ titties, too.”

  “You have some admirers, Marcie.”

  “Thanks, but I don’t believe they’re my type.”

  “You be rat, Snake.” Ben recognized the voice as belonging to the one called Whacker. “Nice lookin’ pussy on her. I want to see her when you run that root of yourn up her snatch. I bet she’ll holler.”

  Beside him, Ben heard Marcie sigh.

  “Nice people, eh?” Ben asked.

  “Just lovely. Their conversational abilities are truly astounding.”

  Ben smiled and burned the rest of the magazine into the woods.

  Another voice added to the litany of ignorance. “Gawddamn! That one damn near took my haid off.”

  “You hit, Toot?”

  “Naw. I be’s allrat.”

  “Now we have Toot,” Ben said. “Marcie, ease your way down to the rear of the truck and blow a full mag into the woods. Try to keep it about eighteen inches off the ground. Let’s really get their attention.”

  Thirty seconds later, Marcie cut loose and filled the timber with 5.56 rounds.

  “You rotten bitch!” one of those in the woods yelled. “I know that was you doin’ that shootin.’ You’ll pay for that. You sorry cunt.”

  “Rooster’s hit?” Whacker shouted. “That whore got him in the leg.”

  “You hurt real bad, Rooster?” Ben couldn’t put a name to the voice.

  “Naw,” Rooster said. “It’s just a graze. I’m allrat.”

  “Now we have Rooster,” Marcie said, slipping a full mag into her weapon.

  “I’m gonna wear your pussy out for that, bitch!” Rooster yelled.

  “What is we gonna do with the guy, Whooper?”

  “Kill him, I reckon. He’s too old to cornhole.”

  “What a wonderful choice I have,” Ben muttered. He reached up and cracked open the door of his truck. Reaching inside, he managed to pull out a regulation M-16 with a bloop tube. He groped around until he found a rucksack and pulled it out, laying his short-barreled CAR on the seat.

  Marcie watched him for a few seconds, then asked, “What is that thing attached to the barrel?”

  “Just watch and learn, Kiddo. I’m about to liven up this little picnic.”

  Ben reached into the rucksack and dragged out half a dozen rifle grenades, slipping one into the tube. He smiled at Marcie. “Now we’ll really give them something to ‘holler’ about.”

  Ben gave them a 40mm grenade.

  That got them all to yelling and cussing. He gave them two more grenades as fast as he could load and fire.

  “Oh, shit, Whopper!” Dinky squalled. “My ass is on far. I got lead in my ass! Gawddamn, it burns!”

  “Wonderful,” Ben muttered, fitting another grenade into the tube.

  He quickly sent two more grenades into the timber, and those two scored a direct hit on the person of one of the gang called Snake. One grenade landed in the middle of Snake’s back and exploded.

  When the sounds of the explosion faded away, Whacker started hollering, panic in his voice. “Oh, shit, I got pieces of Snake all over me. Oh, Lordy, he’s all tore up. Oh, Gawd, his legs is over yonder, and his haid’s over there!” Whacker started puking violently.

  “Jesus Christ. This ain’t worth a shit,” Toot yelled. “They got us outgunned real bad. I’m fixin’ to haul my ass outta here, Whopper.”

  “You stay put, Toot!” Whopper shouted. “This ain’t over by no long shot. We gonna kill that son of a bitch and then have us something to fuck in jist a little while.”

  “How we gonna do that, Whopper?” Rooster hollered.

  “We gonna rush ’em from all sides, that’s how. That’ll confuse ’em.”

  “That’ll get us kilt, is what it’ll do,” Dobber said. “They got what little high ground there is and good cover. We got a stretch of open ground ’twixt us and them, in case you hasn’t noticed.”

  “I can see that, you asshole! I ain’t blind. Hit’s a chance we gotta take.”

  “Then you take it, Whopper. Hit’s all yourn. Leave me out of it.”

  “You sorry bastard,” Whopper yelled. “You done lost your guts, you yeller-belly.”

  “You can go fuck yourself, too,” Dobber yelled back. “I ain’t gonna git myself kilt just on your say-so. Ain’t no pussy worth dyin’ over.”

  “I don’t know ’bout that,” Whacker stuck his mouth into the debate. “That there is some prime gash if I ever seen any. She’d last us a good long time, and when we wore it out and it got all sloppy we could trade her off.”

  “I got to go ’long with Whacker,” Rooster said after a few seconds of silence. “That there’s ’bout the bes’ lookin’ piece of ass I’ve seen in a long time. We could trade her off down in Mexico for a goody ’mount of stuff we need bad. Y’all better give that some thought.”

  “I say we got to avenge Snake too” Whopper argued. “We cain’t let these two go. That’d be a-smearin’ Snake’s memory. ”

  “Fuck Snake, too,” Dobber said. “Man was a fool. He kept what little brains he had in his dick.”

  “He shore musta been a genius then,” Toot spoke up.

  “Enough of this. We gonna stay and fight,” Whopper
said. “I run this outfit, and I give the orders. I done give ’em, and that’s that. Rooster, you start workin’ your way around the north side. Git on now.”

  “We gonna pay hard for this, Whopper,” Dobber said. “You mark what I say, all of you. But you be rat. You the boss. We agreed on that.”

  “You boys listen to me,” Ben called. “Why not give it up and get on out of here? There’s been enough shooting for this day. How about it?”

  “You go right straight to hell!” Whopper yelled. “You in our territory, you do what we say you do.”

  “Yeah,” Toot hollered. “Tell you what, you give us the woman and your trucks and supplies and sich, and we’ll let you walk outta here. How about that, mister?”

  “No deal, boys,” Ben called. “I’m telling you, give this up and back off. That’s my best offer. Think about it for a couple of minutes. OK?”

  “I vote we talk about it,” Dobber called. “How ’bout the rest of y’all? What do you say?”

  “Talkin’s done!” Whopper shouted. “It’s shootin’ time.” Whopper fired a couple of rounds at the trucks. One round punched a neat hole through the windshield of Marcie’s pickup, and the other flattened a tire on Ben’s truck.

  “Now that pisses me off,” Ben said, sliding another 40mm grenade into the tube. “OK, boys,” he muttered. “I gave you your chance. Now it gets real nasty!”

  Twelve

  The rifle grenade landed within a few yards of Rooster and blew. Only the thick brush and the small tree he was behind saved him. He still took some shrapnel.

  “Shit-far!” Rooster hollered. “I been hit. Oh, Lordy. I thank I’m dyin’!”

  “Where it is you hit?” Whopper shouted.

  “All over more ’un anywheres else,” Rooster yelled. “Lemmie look some.” A few seconds passed in silence. “Wal . . . maybe I ain’t dyin’ lak I thought. I reckon I ain’t. Mister!” he squalled, “I’m a-gonna git you for pepperin’ me lak this. I’m gonna cut your nuts out and set your dick on far. And that there’s a promise, you bastard!”