Courage In The Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  A man stepped out of the line, pulling a battered old map from his hip pocket. He pointed to a town. “There.”

  “Any women or kids with the group?” Ben asked.

  “No kids. And the women are trash. Just as bad as Barlow and his men,” a woman spoke up. “Maybe worse,” she added.

  “Prisoners, slaves?” Ben asked.

  “No.”

  “Check it out,” Ben ordered. “Let’s start sweeping with a big broom.”

  Ike pointed to a company commander. “Go.”

  “I’ll be leavin’ now,” Jack said.

  “You’ll stay here and enjoy our hospitality,” Ben told him. “We wouldn’t want your cousin to be tipped off, now, would we?”

  Jack looked at the Rebels, looking at him. One of the Rebels smiled and lifted the muzzle of his M-16 ever so slightly. Jack got the message. He nodded his head. “Law and order and follow the rules, huh, Raines?”

  “Those rules and regulations are helping to pull a nation back together, Jack,” Ben said.

  “How about those of us who like it the way it is?”

  “If you like conditions as they are outside any secure zone, Jack, that makes you either a damn fool or a damn outlaw. I could excuse a fool, but I have nothing but contempt for the lawless.”

  “So where does that leave me, Raines?”

  “Well, Jack, once we deal with your cousin . . .” He paused as half a dozen gunships hammered into the air, heading for the outlaw town. “. . . and his pack of crud, I’d suggest that you give some hard thought to what it’s going to be like living outside of a secure zone. It isn’t going to be pleasant.”

  “I think I’ll take my chances on it, Raines.”

  “Your ass, Jack,” Ben’s words were void of emotion. He turned and walked away.

  “That’s a troublemaker, General,” Jersey said, keeping pace with him. “We’d better deal with him before we leave.”

  “He hasn’t done anything, Jersey.”

  “But it’s a pretty good bet that he will.”

  “Yes. But I can’t shoot him because I think he’s going to turn bad. Dealing with him is going to be up to the people of this outpost. We can’t hold their hands, Jersey. They’ve got to take control and enforce the rules. If they can’t do that, the outpost will fall. It’s just that simple.”

  Jersey turned and looked back at Jack, standing alone, outside the line of citizens being processed. “I don’t like him. I think he’s a creep.”

  Ben laughed at his little bodyguard. “Chill out, Jersey.”

  “Chill out, General? Chill out?”

  “That’s an expression that was popular about the time you were being born, I would imagine. Means calm down, cool it, take it easy.”

  “Chill out, huh? Chill out. I like it. Wait’ll I spring that on Cooper. He’ll . . .”

  “Fuck you, Raines!” Jack screamed from behind them.

  Ben was lifting the muzzle of his M-14 as he turned in a crouch to offer a smaller target.

  Jersey beat him to the shot. She gave Jack a three round burst of M-16 5.56 lead into his chest. The man dropped his pistol to the ground and was only seconds behind following it. He was still alive when Ben and Jersey reached him, standing over the dying man.

  “I’d have been famous,” Jack managed to gasp. “I’d have been the man who killed Ben Raines.”

  “He’s a hard man to kill, mister,” a medic said, ripping open Jack’s shirt, looking at the wounds, then looking up at Ben and shaking his head.

  A chaplain pushed through the knot of Rebels and knelt down beside Jack. “Are you religious?” he asked.

  “Shit!” Jack said, then closed his eyes, shuddered, and died.

  Moments later, a woman yelled from the line, as she pointed north. “Look!”

  Smoke was billowing into the sky.

  “You won’t have to worry about that bunch of outlaws anymore,” Ike said. “Or the town,” he added.

  Jersey clicked her M-16 back on safety and looked up at Ben. “I told you I didn’t like that damn Jack,” she said.

  FIVE

  The Rebels rolled on, the columns moving slowly. The unit commanders stopped at every crossroads and sent out patrols, checking every tiny dot of a town that showed on a map. And they were, to a person, amazed at the number of people who had surfaced after the Rebels’ first sweep of the States.

  Ben had left the interstate to bypass the ruins of Spokane and had stopped his columns at a settlement about fifty miles north of that city, on the Idaho line.

  The survivors there looked as though they had just been through one hell of a firefight. Some of the buildings were still smoking and many others were pocked from bullets.

  “Bunch of outlaws led by a man calls himself Burl hit us late yesterday afternoon,” a spokesperson said. “We beat them back, but just barely. They outnumber us ten to one and getting stronger while we’re getting weaker.”

  “Where are they operating out of?” Ben asked.

  “Just across the old state line, about twenty-five miles east of here.” She produced a map and pinpointed the town.

  “Kids in there?” Ike asked.

  “Yes, sir. They pick up every stray they can find knowing that we won’t attack their town if it’s full of kids. And it is filled with kids. It’s disgraceful; they don’t take care of the kids and many of them are abused. There are some people in this world who’d trade off anything they had for a young boy or girl . . . depending on their sexual preferences,” she added, disgust in her voice.

  “We’ll take care of it,” Ben said, patting the woman on her arm. “Right now, let’s get you resupplied and settled in on a more permanent basis. Then I’ll arrange to do something about the outlaws and get the kids out of there.”

  Later, over coffee in his big tent, Ben said, “Ike, send a company, tanks with them, and come in behind the town, using this road.’’ He pointed to a map. “I’ll send a company north and block the only other road out of town. We’ll drop tear gas in on them at dawn. It’ll be tough on the kids for a few minutes, but at least that way they’ll be alive. We’ll take the town hand to hand.”

  “I’ll start moving Scouts into position now,” Ike said. He stared at Ben. “Are you going in, Ben?”

  Ben surprised him by shaking his head. “No. I’m not fully satisfied that I’m up to doing that just yet. I’ll know when I am. Until that time, I’ll just stay back and direct operations.”

  Ike grinned. “That will please Chase.”

  “He’s still gloating about it.”

  The Scouts had worked in close to the town and were in position, wearing gas masks, before the other companies, with tank support, clanked up. The outlaws in the town were quick to respond.

  “We’ll kill the brats!” the voice pushed through a bullhorn informed the Rebels. “You attack this town and the brats go first. You better think about that.”

  “That tells you something about the caliber of people who control the town,” Ben said. “Assault troops get into masks. Tell the choppers to drop the gas. Corrie, tell the assault troops to get ready to go in fast and hard.”

  The outlaws were expecting an attack from ground troops, but they were not suspecting the use of tear gas. The choking and blinding fumes caught them off-guard and ill-prepared. The Rebels were all over the outlaws before any child could be permanently harmed.

  “Which one is Burl?” a company commander asked a man, his words slightly muffled by the gas mask.

  “You go fuck yourself!” the outlaw snarled.

  The company commander shot the outlaw between the eyes with a .45 autoloader and walked to another outlaw, pinned to the ground by the muzzle of a Rebel’s M-16.

  The young captain pointed the .45 at the man. “I’ll ask you the same question.”

  “Over yonder!” the outlaw screamed, pointing frantically. Some of the dead outlaw’s brains had splattered on him. “Jesus God Amighty. Ain’t you people never heard of trials and lawyers an
d such as that?”

  “Haven’t you ever heard of common decency?”

  The outlaw slobbered on himself in reply. He was trying hard not to look at his dead buddy lying only two feet away from him. Half his buddy’s head was gone from the hollow-nosed .45 slug fired at nearly point-blank range.

  “All the kids are out,” a platoon leader told the captain.

  The captain lifted a walkie-talkie. “The town is secure, General. What about the prisoners?”

  “You know what to do with them,” Ben’s reply was very blunt.

  Two of the outlaws in the town had escaped by running across a field into a stand of timber. They watched through binoculars as the members of the outlaw gang were lined up and shot.

  “That’s it for me,” one of the two said, lowering his field glasses. “I’m done outlawin’.”

  “I’m with you,” the only other outlaw to escape the wrath of the Rebels said. “You layin’ next to a law-abidin’ farmer from this moment on.”

  Both of them shuddered in horror as the bodies of the outlaws were buried in a mass grave, the hole scooped out with bulldozers from Rebel flatbed trucks and covered over and smoothed out.

  The pair slipped further into the timber and vanished. Outlawing held no more pleasure for either of them. They had seen firsthand what others had told them: you don’t jack around with Ben Raines, ’cause he don’t cut you no slack.

  “You’ll take care of the children?” Ben asked the people of the community, as the outlaw town across the line was being carefully picked over and then demolished.

  “Oh, yes,” the spokesperson said. “Half the children in this community have been taken in from off the road.’’ She stuck out her hand and Ben shook it. “Thank you, General Raines.”

  The Rebels pulled out, moving westward. The outlaw gangs that lay in front of the mighty advance of Rebels also pulled out as news of the Rebels reached them, usually by shortwave radio.

  “Just lined ’em up and shot ’em dead,’’ the word came down the line.

  “That damn Ben Raines ain’t jackin’ around, people,” another transmission chilled the outlaws in front of the Rebels. “If you an outlaw, you dead. He’s settin’ up secure zones all over the country. I’m through, boys. I’m done with the outlawin’ game. You ain’t never gonna hear from me again.”

  “They could have won the war against drugs back before the Great War if Ben Raines had run the show,” another said. “All the government would have had to do is put him in charge and it’d been the shortest damn war in history. This is it for me, boys and girls. This outlaw is a changed man. I done seen with my own eyes too many guys I knowed either shot or hanged. There ain’t no stoppin’ the Rebels. Get out while you can.”

  In Michigan, Sister Voleta, or what was left of the crazy woman, sat in her wheelchair and listened to the shortwave transmissions. She would pause only to curse Ben Raines and the child she had borne him, the child who had turned on her. Her wild hatred for Ben and Buddy Raines helped keep her alive. The once-beautiful woman now would turn the stomach of a buzzard. A tank had crushed her legs. Fire had taken her hair and nearly melted her face. Hatred had done the rest.

  “We will make our stand here,” she told a man standing nearby. “The Ninth Order will either emerge victorious, or we shall all die right here.”

  “Yes, Sister,” the man said.

  Voleta was trapped and knew it. She had no place left to run. Ben Raines and the Rebels had destroyed all her allies. Even Ashley was now dead. The Night People were so pitifully few in number they posed no threat to anyone. Citizens all over the United States were hunting them down and killing them.

  Voleta could not go north. The damn Canadians were just waiting for her to show her ugly face there. She could not move east because of the lake. South were Rebel outposts. And Ben Raines was coming from the west.

  Voleta turned in her motorized wheelchair. “Order all our followers to prepare for war,” she told the robed and hooded man standing nearby.

  “Yes, Sister,” the man whispered, and then left the darkened room.

  * * *

  “Dan on the horn, General,” Ben was told.

  He walked to communication and took the mike. “Go, Dan.”

  “Everything is clean, Ben,” the former British SAS man said. “We’ve had sporadic firefights with outlaws. But they’re losing their steam. Word has gone out that the Rebels are advancing and many of the outlaws and their like are packing it in. We’ve got to talk about surrender terms.”

  “All right. I’ll order all units to hold what they’ve got and we’ll all fly into a central location for a meeting. My bunch has not been approached by any outlaws seeking amnesty.”

  “They’re scared of you, Ben,” Dan was blunt. “That’s the bottom line.”

  “That’s the way I like it,” Ben was equally blunt.

  Dan chuckled over the miles. “Looking at a map here, how about the outpost in western Nebraska?”

  “Sounds good. I’ll bump the others and we’ll get together. See you soon, Dan.” He handed the mike back and said, “Get all the other commanders on a linkup, please.”

  Ben lined up a meeting date then walked back to his tent. He found Ike waiting for him.

  “What’s up, Ben?”

  “I just spoke with Dan. Seems a lot of outlaws have contacted our southern units seeking surrender terms. We’re going to meet in Nebraska day after tomorrow.”

  Ike smiled. “We’ve done it, Ben. They’re givin’ it up.”

  “Yes. But how far can we trust the bastards? Anytime you have to put a gun to someone’s head to make them straighten up and fly right, odds are as soon as you remove the muzzle, they’re up to their old tricks again.”

  “That was true in the old days, Ben. But we—you, mostly—have changed all that. Back before the Great War, the laws didn’t have any teeth to them, and the criminals knew it. They made a mockery out of our judicial system and the people who tried to enforce the laws. It’s not that way now. We’ve buried too many punks and crud and slime on our back trail. They know we mean business and they know that when we set up an outpost, the people we leave there mean business.”

  “There will always be some crime, Ike. But you’re right: we’ve shown the law-abiding people that they can have about a ninety-five percent crime-free society. Oh, well,” he said with a sigh. “Pack your ditty bag, Ike. Let’s get ready to put the cap on this campaign.”

  “Ben?”

  Ben glanced at his friend.

  “Sit down, Ben. Let’s talk about Sister Voleta.”

  Ben poured a mug of coffee and sat down. “What about her, Ike?”

  “I’ve been thinkin’ on it, Ben. I want you to do me a favor.”

  “If I can, sure.”

  Ike pulled a map out of his map case and opened it to the midwest. “When we get into Minnesota, Ben, I want you to take your battalion and cut south; link up with Georgi outside of Chicago.”

  “Now why would I want to do something like that?”

  “You sent Buddy a thousand miles away from Michigan, Ben. And we both know why. Now I want you to stand clear and let me take out Voleta.”

  Ben sipped his coffee and studied his friend for a few seconds. “Tell me all of it, Ike.”

  “I realize that Buddy knows his mother is evil and has to be destroyed. He’s told me that. But if you killed her, Ben, it would never be the same between you and your son. It might make only a small difference; but it would make a difference.”

  Ben nodded his agreement. “She’s a tough bitch, Ike. And she’s evil clear through. You know all that.”

  “Are you giving me the green light?”

  “Yes. And I thank you for volunteering to do it.” He smiled. “Now tell me the intelligence you have on her that you haven’t shared with me.”

  Ike laughed and whacked Ben on the knee with his hand. “Same ol’ Ben. Sharp, boy, sharp. OK. She’s in a box, Ben. She made it thinkin’ she was smart
. But she was stupid. She’s right here, Ben.” He pointed to the map. “The Canadians have moved down this highway and are blocking this bridge. She can’t go north. Some of the new outposts in southern Michigan moved forces north and are blocking her in that direction. She’s trapped by the lakes east and west. She had a pretty good location a few months back; why she moved is anybody’s guess. But she did. And now she trapped herself.”

  “How heavily dug in is she?”

  “She’s dug in tight. But I’ll use gunships and artillery to loosen her up.”

  “All right. It’s your show. Finish her, Ike, once and for all.”

  “I intend to, Ben. And you can bet the farm on that.” He folded his map and replaced it in the case. “Now, let’s talk about these outlaws who want to give it up.”

  “Let’s have your feelings on it.”

  “Have you talked with Cecil about it? He’s the one who is going to have to deal with them once we’re gone.”

  Ben shook his head. “Not yet. Ike, where in the hell will we put them if we decide that prison is the answer?”

  “Prison has never been the answer for anyone yet. Not without rehabilitation, and these are going to be hard cases. All prison is is a classroom for crime. Gang rape and perversion and despair. And these guys are going to be toughest of the lot. They’ve survived for over a decade. We’ve probably fought several of the gangs who are now offering to surrender.”

  “I know that only too well, Ike. That doesn’t answer my question. But I agree with what you said.”

  “Ben . . . I don’t know what to do with them. How many are we talking about anyway?”

  “Several thousand, at least.” Ben was thoughtful for a moment, then he smiled, and soon the smile had turned into hard laughter.

  “You find something funny about dealin’ with these punks and thugs, Ben?”

  “I just had a thought.”

  “Must have been a hell of a thought.”

  It was.

  SIX

  Striganov roared with laughter. Therm looked stunned at the thought that hard-assed, unforgiving and ruthless Ben Raines would even consider it. Dan chuckled. Danjou and Rebet shook their heads. West smiled. Tina and Buddy looked at their father in astonishment.