Out of the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  “I didn’t think you were—”

  “Pure coon,” she cut in, but she was smiling.

  “That was not my choice of words, Salina.”

  She looked up at him, then abruptly put her hands on his shoulders and kissed him on the mouth. She turned and walked away.

  Ben watched her leave; watched all of her leave, from her ankles up. She was very shapely. He touched his lips with his fingertips, then called after her, “Remember, my home is Morriston.”

  Her reply was a wave; then she rounded the corner of the motel. Ben sensed eyes on him. He looked around him, then glanced up. The face of Kasim, pure animal hate in his eyes, was staring at him from the second floor of the motel. His mouth was swollen from Salina’s backhand slap.

  “Goddamned, no good, honky motherfucker!” he hissed.

  “I thought Muslims weren’t supposed to use bad language,” Ben said.

  “I’ll kill you someday,” Kasim promised.

  “I doubt it,” Ben said. He got into his truck, cranked it, and drove away.

  He could still feel the warmth of Salina’s lips on his and Kasim’s wild hatred.

  It was disconcerting.

  Ben headed south, driving until he came to highway 14, knowing it would take him through only a few towns, and eventually lead to Fort Wayne. He stopped at each small town, finding two or three alive in each. In almost every case, there was no direction to them, no leader; they were accomplishing nothing: not burying the dead, not cleaning the litter—nothing. Just waiting. For what, Ben didn’t know, so he asked.

  “Help,” a man said.

  “From whom?” Ben asked.

  “The government, who else?”

  “Man ... there is no government. I doubt there is a stable government anywhere in the world. Don’t you understand what has happened?”

  The man looked at him and walked away. He called over his shoulder, “The government’ll help us. You’re wrong, mister. If the government wasn’t gonna help us, they wouldn’t have made ever’body so dependent on them. You’re wrong.”

  “And you’re a fool,” Ben muttered. He drove on.

  He found a dozen people alive in Rochester, all in their mid-to-late thirties; a few kids. They seemed genuinely excited to see him, asking where he’d been, what he’d seen, what he was doing. And, where was government help? Here, the women outnumbered the men, two to one; one woman made it very plain she would go with Ben; he had only to ask.

  He did not ask, although she was a good-looking woman and Ben was beginning to feel sexual urges rise in him. He told them to be careful, told them what was happening in Chicago; then, after asking a few questions as to why they thought they had survived when others hadn’t (none of them had any idea), he pulled out.

  In one small town, he found three men alive. They were having a party. A long one. Drunk, and they had been that way for days. No, they weren’t from town; come up from Marion, just wandering. Had Ben seen any broads?

  He sent them to Rochester.

  Ben cut off 14 for a time, then took a county road east to US 24, approaching Fort Wayne from the southeast. On the edge of that city, a billboard brought him up short, brakes smoking.

  BEN RAINES—IF YOU’RE ALIVE AND READING THIS, OR IF ANYBODY KNOWS THE WHEREABOUTS OF BEN RAINES, HAVE HIM CONTACT US ON MILITARY 39.2. KEEP TRYING; WE’LL BE LISTENING. WE NEED ORDERS.

  “Orders?” Ben said. “What fucking orders? From me?” Then it hit him: the Rebels. The colonel hadn’t been kidding; the Bull had really done it.

  “Well ...” Ben muttered. “I’m not your commanding officer. Good luck, boys.”

  On the outskirts of Fort Wayne, he tucked his truck behind a motel and stayed the night, his sleep punctuated by sporadic gunfire.

  He decided to leave Fort Wayne to whomever held the most firepower.

  At dawn, after a cold breakfast, and feeling just a bit depressed, Ben gassed up his tanks. He had long since ceased trying to use the pumps; electricity was gone at nearly ever place he stopped, and the pumps were useless. But gasoline tankers were in abundant supply and bulk plants were full. Eventually fire or the elements or crazies might destroy the storage areas, but now he wasn’t worried about fuel.

  Until things began to settle down, and he felt they would in time, and until people accepted what had happened and tried to rebuild, Ben decided to skip the cities. But he would get as close as possible—within CB range, if he could—attempting to keep a pulse on what was happening.

  The weather was raw when he pulled out, crossing into Ohio and picking up highway 24. Before he had left Louisiana (it now seemed so long ago), Ben had anticipated highways and interstates clogged with stalled vehicles, but that had not been the case, and as he drove, he saw why. On the interstates, exits and on-ramps were hopelessly snarled; traffic was backed up, in many cases, for a mile or more. It was hard work getting off and on the interstate system, and Ben knew that soon he would have to find a four-wheel drive with one hell of a good PTO winch on the front.

  He stopped at an Ohio State Police building and prowled around until he found a Geiger counter; he wasn’t that far from the area that had taken the most nukes and he wanted something to test with.

  He did not want to get too close to Toledo for fear the bridges would be blocked and he might get himself into a bad situation. He crossed the Maumee River and took the river road on the east side up to Perrysburg. That was as close as he wanted to get to Toledo. And that almost proved too close.

  Engrossed in CB chatter, he did not notice the motorcycles until it was almost too late. He was gassing up, the motor still on. He took an almost perverse pleasure (childlike, he realized) in wasting gas, since it no longer cost an arm and a leg to buy a gallon. He hoped the Arabs, who had gouged the world for years, were all rotting in their oil-rich beds, their imported French water growing bugs in it. It was American know-how that had brought in their fucking oil in the first place.

  Ben pulled out onto the highway just as he heard the roar coming at him. A pistol barked and a slug spider-webbed the windshield. He squalled onto Ohio 199 just as another slug slammed through the rear window. Ben glanced at his side mirror; the motorcyclists were gaining on him, waving guns and shouting.

  Two were tailgating him. Ben smiled grimly and jammed on his brakes. He felt a jarring impact as the bikers ass-ended the pickup; one was thrown over the cab to land on his head in the center of the road. Ben spun the wheel, corrected his slide, and stopped in the center of the highway. He grabbed his Thompson, opened the door, and cleared the highway of two-wheel vermin.

  Those that were left wanted no more of Ben Raines. Whooping and hollering and shouting curses at him, they tucked their tails and split, man, leaving their wounded behind. Ben ignored the pleas for help from the riders sprawled in bleeding pain on the concrete. He didn’t think they would have helped him had the situation been reversed.

  Ben inspected his truck for damage. The rear was caved in, but the wheels would roll without scraping metal. A spring had popped, and one side stuck up in the air. But the motor was still running.

  The truck limped along the highway for miles, while Ben looked for a national guard or reserve armory. He finally found one and pulled in. He selected a heavy-duty three-quarter-ton truck with only a few thousand miles on it and began transferring his gear, installing his CB. The truck had a military radio in it, so Ben set that for 39.2. He changed the oil and filters in the truck, tossed two spare tires in the back, then went prowling through the armory to see what he could find.

  He picked up a few cases of C-ration and some dehydrated rations. That was about all he could find that he felt he could use.

  He secured the place for the night, fixed some supper, and turned in.

  “Lucky again, Ben,” he muttered, just as sleep took him.

  EIGHT

  By the middle of October, Ben had traveled as far to the east as he dared go. Transmissions on the CB had dwindled to practically nothing, and latel
y he had been seeing some fresh bodies, all with signs of radiation sickness marking them. He knew they had died hard.

  He cut south, and as he drove, he felt a sudden craving hit him. He chuckled as he recorded the craving for fresh sweet milk. He began looking for cattle, flexing his fingers as he drove. Been a long time since he’d milked a cow—years. Way back when he’d helped his dad on the farm. Those cows that had needed milking when the bombs struck; those cows that had been hooked up to milking machines. Agony, slow agony dying.

  Then another thought struck him, driving out the craving for milk; the jails and prisons; the institutions that house the old, the sick, the insane.

  Oh, my God!

  Had anyone thought to check on them?

  Why didn’t I? he asked silently.

  He headed the nose of the truck southwest, through Pennsylvania. He would skirt the cities and check the small towns, the jails and hospitals, work his way southwest, through West Virginia, then cut into Virginia, giving the hot areas of Washington and Baltimore lots of room.

  He finally gave up on the jails, the hospitals, the institutions: they were stinking pestholes, rotting bodies, and many of them had died in the most horrible manner. He drove on. Then, just a few miles north of Charlottesville, he saw a figure trudging along the road.

  The figure whirled around at the sound of the truck, then jumped for the ditch, trying for the woods. But the jump was short, and the boy fell hard, grabbing at his ankle. By this time, Ben was on the scene. He stepped out onto the shoulder and turned, finding himself looking down the barrel of a small automatic pistol, held by a very pretty young lady.

  “I don’t mean you any harm, miss.” Ben tried to calm her.

  “Yeah? That’s what the last bunch of guys said, while they were trying to tear my clothes off me.”

  “How’d you get away?”

  “I kicked one of them in the nuts and split, man!”

  “You want me to take a look at that ankle?”

  “Not particularly. Why don’t you just head on out? I’ll be all right.”

  “I don’t mean you any harm, miss. Please believe me. What’s your name?”

  “None of your damned business.”

  “O.K., None-of-Your-Damned-Business, my name is Ben Raines.”

  “Big deal. Who cares? Ben Raines. That sounds kinda familiar.”

  “I’m a writer. What are you, seventeen?”

  “I’m nineteen, if that’s any of your business—which it isn’t.” She fixed her dark blue eyes on him. “O.K., you can look at my ankle if it means that much to you, but I’m gonna keep this gun on you all the time. One funny move and I’ll shoot you.”

  “All right, that’s a deal.” Ben didn’t have the heart to tell her that with an automatic of that type, one first had to cock it before it would fire. She had not cocked it.

  Ben knelt down beside her and looked at her ankle. It was swelling badly. Sprained, he hoped, and not broken. She was wearing tennis shoes. Exactly what she should not have been wearing on a hike; no support to the ankles.

  “It’s sprained, None-of-Your-Damned-Business. We’ve got to find a creek with cool water and have you soak that for an hour or so.”

  “My name is Jerre. J-e-r-r-e.” She spelled it out slowly. “Jerre Hunter.” She looked down at her ankle. “It looks gross.”

  “Yes, it does, and it will probably get worse before it gets better. Come on, Jerre, put your arm around my shoulders and keep your weight off that ankle.”

  She gazed at him for a moment, then shrugged. “What the hell? You might rape me, but that’s not gonna hurt as bad as my ankle hurts.”

  Ben laughed at her. “You can put that pistol away, too, Jerre. It’s not going to fire unless you cock it first.”

  She laughed with him. “Doesn’t have any bullets in it, anyway. Least I think it doesn’t. I don’t know how to load it.” She tossed the pistol into the ditch.

  The automatic bounced off a large rock, fired, and blew a chunk of wood out of a tree.

  Ben looked at her and slowly shook his head.

  Ben found a little fast-rushing creek with water cold enough to turn one’s finger blue just from testing it, and for an hour the two of them sat on the bank talking, while she soaked her ankle and bitched about the temperature of the water and how she probably would catch pneumonia, or how her foot would probably rot off from radiation.

  She told him she had just started her second year of college in Maryland when the war talk started. Then the panic hit. She had been sick for a week or so while others around her had been dying.

  Gross, she called the experience. The absolute pits, man.

  “You want to know something else, Ben? I mean, on top of all this stupid war stuff, there is no music.”

  “By music, I assume you mean rock and roll?”

  “Is there any other kind of music?”

  “I wasn’t aware rock and roll was music.”

  She cocked her head, blond hair falling over one eye, and stared at him for a time. “I think, Ben Raines, if we’re going to be friends, we’d better not discuss our tastes in music.”

  “At least until you grow up.” He smiled at her.

  “Whatever.”

  When Ben asked why she was walking and not driving, she shrugged her shoulders and said she felt like walking, that’s why. Plenty of cars and plenty of time should she decide to drive.

  Ben knew better than to question the logic of the young (do the young have logic?), so he let that slide.

  “How come, Ben,” she asked, “we’re not all falling over dead from radiation sickness? I mean, I thought great clouds of that stuff would be floating around.”

  “Clean bombs,” he replied.

  “Clean bombs?” She looked at him. “What kind of silliness is that? Sounds like a contradiction to me.”

  “It is, after a fashion.” Then he told her of the tape he’d heard, and of the Rebels and of the triple cross.

  “All that is so confusing to me. Coups. Takeover. Rebels. You’re really a commander of a Rebel army, Ben Raines?”

  “I guess so.” He chuckled.

  “Where are they?”

  “I have no idea, Jerre. It wasn’t my idea.”

  “I heard rumors of the Rebels. Just a little bit. Are they radical people?”

  “I don’t believe so. Law-and-order types, I’m sure. But Bull Dean was no radical.”

  “But he advocated the overthrow of the government, Ben. That’s pretty radical, don’t you think?”

  Ben slowly nodded his head. “Yes ... yes, that’s true. But one would have to know the Bull, what made him tick. He would not have assumed power for any length of time. What Bull wanted was a return to law and order and morals and discipline. He wasn’t a Castro or some two-bit dictator; just a man who believed very strongly in a government of the people, for the people, and more importantly, by the people.”

  “I don’t believe we’ve had that type of government in a long time, Ben. Do you?”

  “No,” he said quickly and flatly. “Government got too big—too powerful. Agencies like the IRS had entirely too much power. Same with most government agencies. Well, it’s all moot, now.”

  “But ... what’s that line, Ben, about ashes?”

  “Tabb. ‘Out of the dead, cold ashes, life again.”’

  “Snap judgment time, Ben Raines.” She looked at him, her gaze serious. “I think you’re a pretty good man—decent guy. I think you’ll probably link up with those Rebels.”

  “No way, Jerre.”

  “Yeah, I think you will, Ben. You’ll have to get your shit together first. But after that ... yeah, you will. I’ve read some of your stuff. You’re a dreamer and a romanticist and you’d like to go back about a hundred years—have those kinds of laws. Hell, Ben, maybe you’re right. Maybe that’s what the country needs. No harm in trying, is there?” She winked at him. “General.”

  “You’re a nut.” He smiled at her.

  “But I�
�m pretty.”

  “Yeah,” he said softly. “Yeah, you sure are.”

  “Gonna be dark soon, Ben.”

  “Yes.” He looked at her ankle. Some of the swelling was gone. “We’ll find a place to sleep down the road. You’ll be all right—safe.”

  “I know it.” She spoke the words as though she trusted him. “But the dark scares me,” she admitted. “It didn’t used to scare me until ...” She let her sentence trail off to an awkward end. She sat staring into the rushing waters.

  “Your parents?”

  “It ... it was dark when I got back home. Back to Cumberland. I found them in the back yard. All swelled up and gross-looking. I just sat in the den and bawled and hollered. I never felt so alone in my life. Then the guy who lived next door—he made it through, never got sick, or anything—he came over. He lost his whole family and it didn’t seem, at first, to bother him. He said he was going to take care of me, just like I was his daughter. I believed him, so I went with him.” She kicked dirt into the creek.

  “He tried to get me drunk later on that night; said it would make me feel better. Then I knew what he was all about. Guys think they’re so smooth, but given a little time, most girls can see through them. If the girl’s got any sense. So I knew what was coming.

  “Later on—I thought he’d gone to bed—I tried to slip out of his house, but he was watching for me. We had quite a tussle there on the floor; I marked him pretty good.” She put those startlingly Prussian blue eyes on Ben. Honest eyes. “I’m not a virgin, Ben Raines, but I don’t give it away wholesale, either. And that bastard really pissed me off. I think, had he played it right, I probably would have gone to bed with him. He was a handsome man, and I’d always thought him a nice person. Not that I cared anything about him, but . . . it would have been ... well, someone to hold you—you know. I mean, everything was all screwed up. I don’t know how to explain it.”