Trapped in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  “Thermopolis and I have been looking forward to a good debate for weeks.”

  “I hope you realize what you’re getting into,” Cecil told Thermopolis. “I’ve been arguing with him for fifteen years and don’t recall ever winning an argument.”

  Beth stepped forward. “The Scouts are all in position, General. The demolition teams have planted their explosives and are waiting word.”

  The demolition teams had lifted manhole covers and lowered in huge charges. They had stuffed charges into drain holes and planted hundreds of pounds of high explosives into the lower levels of basements. They had worked very fast; it helped to beat the cold.

  Ben hoped that the massive explosions would seal off many of the hidey-holes of the Night People, forcing them up into this area, or driving them south toward West and his people.

  “Brace yourselves, people,” Ben warned. “It’s going to be a mighty bang. Beth, tell them to hit it.”

  Beth relayed the orders, and the street under their boots trembled as the charges blew. Huge clouds of dust shot up into the cold air as Ben was adjusting the shoulder straps of a flamethrower. At least thirty other Rebels were doing the same, including Cecil.

  “Burn it!” Ben ordered. “If it’ll ignite, fire it. Drive the bastards above ground.”

  Ben and his personal team were moving forward before the dust had settled, Cooper carrying extra twin tanks of fuel for the flamethrower.

  Ben stepped into a building that had been long-abandoned even before the Great War. A smile touched his lips as the now-familiar stink of the creepies reached him. He could very clearly see the tracks of their shoes in the snow that had blown in through the shattered windows and empty doorframe.

  The steps led straight to a black hole leading down into the lower level. Old wooden steps that widened Ben’s smile.

  “You enjoy killing, General?” Thermopolis asked, noticing the smile.

  “Not particularly. But when I’m dealing with sub-humans such as these night crawlers, it doesn’t bother me all that much, either.” He met Thermopolis’s steady gaze. Still looking at the man, he said, “Jersey, you and the others spray that lower level. Let’s see how the creepies like ricochets.”

  His team stepped forward, and the empty shell of a building rattled with gunfire and the wicked whining of lead bouncing off concrete and brick. Screams of anguish rose from the stinking cold darkness of the basement as the flattened lead tore into flesh.

  Ben stepped forward and triggered the nozzle of the old flamethrower, the thickened gas whooshing out, setting the wooden stairs blazing, igniting the dust of the basement, and creating an inferno in the lower level of the building.

  “Toss some grenades down there, gang,” Ben ordered, as the smoke began billowing up. He looked at Thermopolis. “You sure you have the stomach for this?”

  Thermopolis’s smile was as lean as the temperature. “You just do your thing, General. I’ll be right beside you.”

  FOURTEEN

  Twice in the next hour Thermopolis saved Ben’s life by shooting creepies who popped out of the burning smoking underground and pointed guns at Ben.

  Ben grinned at the hippie. “Sure you wouldn’t like to join the Rebels on a regular basis?”

  “Thank you, but no. After this is over, I shall have enough excitement stored in my memory banks to last me several lifetimes.”

  “You’re all right, Therm,” Ben said with a laugh. “Probably voted the straight democratic ticket back when such things were around, but you’re all right.”

  “Goddamnedest compliment I ever heard in my life,” the hippie muttered.

  Several black-robes came running out of a burning building, their underground escape routes blocked by the explosions that had started this campaign.

  Ben seared them with a long burst from the nozzle of the flamethrower, sending them dancing and howling into death. Ben slipped into fresh fuel tanks and glanced at Thermopolis. “Want to try this, Therm?”

  The sweet smell of charred human flesh floated on the cold air and settled into the clothing of the Rebels.

  “No, thank you. Pyromania has never been an overwhelming compulsion of mine.”

  Ben laughed at the friendly but caustic remark and moved on.

  “Colonel West reporting heavy fighting in his sector, sir,” Beth said. “He says his men are stacking up the creepies like stovewood.”

  “Good. We’ve been effective in blocking off most of their escape routes. We could conceivably break the backs of the creepies this day and night.”

  “And then all we have to deal with is Khamsin,” Thermopolis reminded them all.

  “No sweat, Therm,” Ben told him. “Trust me.”

  “That’s the problem,” the hippie said dryly. “I’m beginning to do just that.”

  The cracking of burning wood, the thick, sweet-scented smoke, and the occasional collapsing of a building became familiar sounds in the waning daylight as Ben kept up the pressure.

  “Set charges!” he yelled to the men and women handling the explosives. “Bring the buildings down on their heads. You others, use tear-gas grenades to flush them out.” He turned to Buddy. “Son, you remember that fenced-in area we passed on the way up here?”

  “The one with all the fifty-five-gallon drums stacked up?”

  “That’s it. Take some Rebs and some trucks and get down there. Cut the tops off of them and bring them back up here. We’ll fill them with loose-packed dirt and saturate that with gasoline. We can use them for heating purposes and to give us light this night. Go, boy!”

  Buddy was off and running.

  “Beth, bump HQ and tell them to get a truckload of flares up here. When that’s done, tell General Striganov and Ike to go to full alert—everybody up and ready this night.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Thermopolis was curious about that. “Why those last orders, Ben Raines?”

  “If you were in the creepies’ shoes, wouldn’t you call a close ally and ask him to take the pressure off?”

  “Ahh! Yes. I certainly would.”

  Ben smiled and walked away, whistling an old tune from the fifties: “Let the Good Times Roll!”

  “Doesn’t anything ever bother that man?” Zipper asked Thermopolis.

  “Yes.” His reply was slow as he cut his eyes to Jerre.

  “And she’s standing right over there.”

  The demolition teams began bringing the buildings down, the shattering crashes sending huge clouds of dust swirling upward, joining the dark smoke from the burning building.

  Buddy and his teams worked swiftly with the barrels, filling them with dirt and saturating the dirt with gasoline. The barrels were placed half a dozen to a short block, more to a longer block, and into buildings the Rebels would occupy that cold winter night. Portable coal-burning stoves were brought down with the hot food, the Rebels taking shifts eating and sipping scalding hot coffee. The food and the coffee chased away the weariness brought on from the frantic work of that afternoon.

  All of the Rebels longed for a hot bath, but all knew that was impossible. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe. For now, they would tolerate their grimy hands and faces and the stale smell from their bodies.

  South of Ben’s area, the elusive, seldom-seen but friendly Underground People had taken up positions in Central Park. Gene Savie’s people were scattered along a dozen-block area, and Colonel West and his mercenaries had sealed off 86th Street, west to east, over to the Carl Schurz Park. The Rebels had placed many of the creepies in a box, and Ben was determined to put the lid on the box, nail it shut, and bury it.

  Then he would deal with Khamsin.

  The still-burning buildings cast weird dancing shapes and shadows flickering across the snowy street as demolition crews worked in the night, planting more charges and bringing down more of the old long-abandoned buildings. As the Night People tried to make their escape above ground, their underground tunnels blocked and collapsed, the Rebels shot them as they ran.

 
Those creepies who actually made it out of the ruins had but one direction to run—south—and when they did, they ran smack into Savie’s survivors, the mysterious Underground People, and Colonel West and his mercenaries. The few night crawlers who made it into the park in the curve of the East River were hammered to the cold earth by lead from hidden machine-gun emplacements.

  Ben sat in the relative warmth of a ruined building, sipping on a mug of coffee, smiling, savoring the sweet aroma of hot coffee and the equally sweet taste of victory. He knew there would continue to be battles between his forces and the Night People, probably right up to the moment he would lead his forces out of New York City— and he would lead them out—but the back and both legs of the cannibalistic creepies had been broken.

  Thermopolis sat a few feet from Ben, watching the man munch on a biscuit and sip his coffee. “I don’t suppose,” Thermopolis said, “now that you feel the Night People have been routed, you’d care to tell us how you plan on dealing with the Libyan?”

  Ben met his eyes. “He’ll have to come to us.”

  “Why? Why can’t he just sit over there in New Jersey and starve us out?”

  “For one thing, he doesn’t have the food to outlast us. I’m betting I’m right on that. Neither does he have the patience. Those people aren’t accustomed to harsh winters, and this winter is a long way from being over. He knows we have him outgunned with long-range artillery. He has two very shaky allies in Monte and Ashley. He’s going to have to make his move very quickly, or those two will cut and run. Sister Voleta—and keep in mind that she is a nut—and her followers, all trash and scum, will soon weary of the waiting; I’ve dealt with them before. Therefore, to keep his army intact, Khamsin will have to come to us.” Especially after I put the needle to him, Ben thought.

  “You want him to come to us, don’t you?”

  “Yes. Now that his forces have been cut in half.”

  Thermopolis sipped his coffee—real coffee, now that a large warehouse had been discovered in the city—and studied Ben Raines. Jersey and Beth and Jerre were all huddled together. He didn’t think they were asleep, but they weren’t far from the arms of Morpheus. Cooper and Buddy and a few other Rebels were watching and listening to the exchange.

  “You could get us off this island right now, couldn’t you, Ben Raines?”

  Ben smiled at the man. “Now why would you think a thing like that, Therm?”

  “Because you’re sneaky and calculating and would never let yourself be put in a box without an escape hole, that’s why.”

  But Ben would only smile and offer no comment.

  “If you have a plan,” Thermopolis pressed, “and something were to happen to you, how would the rest of us know what to do?”

  “Assuming I have a plan, there will be others I will have taken into my confidence. Relax, Therm, we’re going to win this fight.”

  “And the next one and the next one and more after that, right, Ben Raines?”

  “Sure. Many years of fighting face us. You and your bunch better stick with us, Therm.”

  “Why?”

  “Simple. You’re marked now. All up and down and across the nation, the word has gone out among the filth and crud and warlords and what-have-you: the hippie has traded his peace symbol for a gun. . . .”

  “But we’ve always carried guns.”

  “But you never before linked up with me, Therm. You were pretty much left alone because you people would fight if pressed into it. Now look at you. Combat boots, body armor, battle dress, and you’re commanding your own detachment, a part of a larger army. Ben Raines’s Rebels. And whether you like it or not, you’ll leave here knowing a hell of a lot more about survival than you did coming in. And you’ll put it to use.”

  “So?”

  “Other small groups of people who think like you—and I’m not saying your way of thinking is wrong, because it isn’t—will join your group, your commune, whatever you call it. Your ranks will swell and you’ll have a settlement, a town, with schools and medical facilities and so forth. And others of a different ilk will try to take it from you. And what will you do?” Ben shrugged. “Fight. . . it’s human nature.” He smiled at the hippie. “Welcome aboard, Therm.”

  Thermopolis did not return the smile. “All that you just said need not necessarily be true.”

  “Ah, but it is, my friend. You’re not going to allow what you have built and what you will build to be taken from you. For all your beads and long hair and noble words, you and I are not that much different.”

  “The hell you say!”

  “Don’t you have rules within your commune?”

  “Of course,” Thermopolis said indignantly, but with a sinking feeling that he was going to lose this debate. Bastard was tricky.

  “Why do you have rules if you’re such a free spirit?”

  Thermopolis pointed a finger at Ben. “We have rules, not inflexible laws like you and your group.”

  “Bullshit, Therm. What do you do when one of your group turns bad and rapes or kills or steals?”

  “That has never happened since we’ve been together.” The son of a bitch is about to trap me again, Thermopolis thought.

  “Why hasn’t it happened, Therm? If your society is so free and open and so forth? You just let in anybody who comes wandering up, right?”

  “No, Ben Raines, we don’t do that.”

  “Ah! You don’t. So you must have a certain code, or set of laws—rules, since we’re playing semantics here—that you go by, right?”

  “Yes, Ben Raines,” Thermopolis said wearily. “We do.” Bastard!

  “You have schools, Therm?”

  “Of course, we have schools!”

  “We have schools. You have medical facilities?”

  “Of course, we do!”

  “So do we. Is there a system of government within your organization? Someone to whom people come to make the final decisions.”

  “In some cases, yes.”

  “And that person is . . . ?”

  “Me, Ben Raines!”

  “And there are basic . . . rules that anyone joining must agree to abide by, right?”

  “Yes,” Thermopolis sighed.

  “Do you have a system worked out as far as who does what if you are attacked?”

  “Yes, Ben.”

  “So you have an army. I’m sure you call it a home defense force, or something like that. Maybe it isn’t even named. But you have, nevertheless, people who give orders and people who take them, right? If you didn’t, the force would be unworkable, right?”

  “Yes, Ben.”

  A crashing explosion and the following sounds of a building coming down halted the exchange momentarily.

  “Are you and your group stagnant, Therm?” Ben picked it up.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Are you content with the status quo? Do you experiment with food crops, seeking ways to grow more and better food, say, without the use of chemicals that ultimately poison the earth?”

  “Yes, goddammit!”

  “So do we. Do you believe now, or before the war, that animals of the forest should be hunted for sport?”

  “No, Ben Raines. I never thought of that as sport.”

  “Neither did I. Are you or were you opposed to the trapping of animals?”

  “I used to destroy traps whenever I found them. I think trapping is cruel.”

  “Well, now, isn’t that quite the coincidence? So do I. Damn, Therm, if we keep going this way, agreeing on everything, we’re likely to discover that we’re soul-mates, or something like that.”

  “Good God, spare me that!” Thermopolis’s comment was Mojave-dry.

  “Oh, we’ll always have something to argue about, Therm. But there isn’t fifteen cents’ worth of real difference between us.”

  Thermopolis looked at him, clearly disgusted with himself. “Music!”

  Ben laughed. “I don’t care what kind of music you listen to, Thermopolis. Just as long as you don’t
try to force me to listen to it.”

  “I give up,” Thermopolis said, waving his hand. “You may be a bastard, but you probably can’t help it.”

  Ben jerked his .45 out of leather, jacked the hammer back, pointed the muzzle at Thermopolis, and pulled the trigger.

  FIFTEEN

  Thermopolis felt the heat of the big slug as it passed within an inch of his right ear. The events had taken place so swiftly he had not had time to exit the backless chair in which he’d been sitting.

  He heard a choked-off scream behind him and looked around. A black-robed creepie was draped over the windowsill, blood leaking out of his bullet-torn throat. The creep bubbled and gurgled and then was jerked out of the window by a couple of Rebels. He was finished with a single shot to the head.

  “Sorry about that, Therm,” Ben said, easing the hammer down on the .45. “But I didn’t have time to warn you.”

  “Perfectly all right, Ben Raines.” He rubbed his right ear. “I thought I’d said something to irritate you.”

  Ben smiled and shook his head. “Let’s get a few hours’ sleep while we can. I have a gut feeling that Khamsin is going to pull something this night.”

  “Let them come, let them come,” Ike whispered into his headset mike, as his eyes pierced the darkness through night glasses.

  The tanks had lowered their cannon to the minimum elevation. Rebels knelt and lay behind .50-caliber machine guns. Mortar crews were constantly changing angle, matching the slow movement of the dozens of light boats being paddled and oared across the Hudson from the slips at Hoboken to the docks along Eleventh Avenue, Manhattan side.

  “Flares!” Ike ordered.

  A dozen flares were fired into the air, their brilliance lighting up the night sky and trapping the Hot Wind’s men in a blaze of artificial light.

  “Fire!” Ike yelled.

  From 14th Street all the way down to Clarkson the shoreline trembled and thundered with gunfire.

  “Flares!” Georgi Striganov ordered, from his position on the river’s edge at 155th Street, miles north of Ike’s position.

  And Thermopolis lay in his sleeping bag and looked at Ben. The general was sitting up, rolling a cigarette and chuckling softly.