“How long will this gas remain good?” Rani asked.
“Years, if water doesn’t get into it. Even then, we have the capacity to separate water from gas-so my engineers tell me. We’re going to build a small refinery come next spring. We-was
A bullet smashed into the side of the building, just missing Ben’s head. Bits of broken brick struck Rani in the side of the face, drawing blood. They both hit the ground, weapons at the ready.
“Take the broad alive!” a hoarse voice shouted. “We can use her and then swap her ass for something.”
Rani burned half a clip in the direction of the voice. A man yelled, his voice echoing throughout the emptiness. Whether from shock or pain, Ben couldn’t tell.
“You OK, Elgin?” another voice was added.
Ben pinpointed the location of that one.
“Yeah. Circle around. We got “em in a box.”
“You think,” Ben muttered. He carefully shifted positions, slipping into the deserted, windowless service station, pulling Rani in behind him.
“The trucks?” she whispered.
“They won’t bother them. They want them running. Take the front. I’ll handle that guy slipping up behind us.”
Slugs began slamming into the building, but Ben sensed they were carefully placed; whoever was firing at them wanted Rani alive and well. ,
Ben spotted movement in the alleyway. He lifted his Thompson, exposing as little of himself as possible. He waited.
He heard the quiet crunch of boots on gravel. Then a man’s leg was exposed, from upper thigh to foot.
Ben stitched the leg, the big beblede-caliber slugs shattering knee, ankle, and foot. The man screamed in pain and fell forward, losing his shotgun, the weapon clattering to the ground.
“Dave? Dave? Did you get him?”
“Yeah,” Ben hollered. “Come on.”
The man named Elgin ran out of a building, zigzagging across the street. He got halfway before Rani cut him down. He flopped in the street, both hands holding his lead-punctured belly.
He screamed in pain.
“Shoot him in the head and shut him up,” Ben told Rani.
Before she could raise her M-16, a woman came running out of the building that faced the old service station.
“Damn you!” she squalled. “You kilt my old man.” She lifted a rifle.
Ben leveled his Thompson and cut the woman down. She landed only a few feet from the wounded man in the street.
Ben slipped out the back way and ran to the man he’d shot in the alley. The man’s face was shiny with shock and pain. He had taken at least six .45-caliber slugs in the leg, and in falling he had broken his right arm, the bone sticking out, stark white in the cold light of December.
“Least tell me your name ‘fore you kill me,” the man panted.
“Ben Raines.”
The man forced a laugh. “We shore can pick ‘em. All the folks travelin” “bout, and we got to pick on Ben Raines. Shit! I’m bleedin” to death, General. Finish me.”
Ben shot him between the eyes.
Back in the service station, Ben squatted down beside Rani. “Stay put. I think there might be one more.”
The minutes ticked by. Ben and Rani waited in silence. Finally, impatience drove the last outlaw of the bunch to yell.
“Lemme go!” he yelled. “You go your way, and I’ll go mine. How “bout it?”
“You got him spotted?” Ben asked.
“Almost directly across the street,” Rani said. “But he’s staying low.”
“Start putting fire into the building,” Ben told her. “I’m going to circle around and drop a grenade in on him. Start now.”
With Rani laying down a slow, steady fire, Ben ran down the alleyway and came out on the far end of the street, crossing over until he was by the open windowless storefront. He motioned to Rani, pulled the pin on a grenade, and dropped it in, ducking back.
The grenade must have landed directly on top of the man, for when the dust had settled, Ben looked in and could see bits and pieces of the man scattered around the store.
He walked to the center of the street and stood looking down at the man and woman, sprawled near death in the street.
“What’s your name?” the woman gasped.
“Ben Raines.”
She laughed, exposing stubs of broken and rotted teeth. “Know’d our luck would run out some day.”
“How many travelers have you and your men ambushed and killed?” Ben asked.
“Fifty. Two hundred. Five hundred. Hell, I don’t know,” she said matter-of-factly. “Had a lot of fun for awhile, though.”
Ben looked at her wounds. She might live another two hours, at best. He just didn’t feel like wasting a bullet on her. He kicked their weapons away from the man and woman and left them in the street.
“Hey!” the woman gasped as Ben walked away. “Ain’t you gonna do nothin” fer us?”’
Ben’s laugh was short and ugly. He did not reply to her question. Just kept walking.
She began cursing him, her mouth spewing out more filth than a sewer contained.
Ben motioned Rani into her truck. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
“Hartline’s gonna get you, Raines!” the woman squalled at them.
Ben turned slowly and looked at the woman. “What did you say?”
Her laughter was taunting. “Sam Hartline. He’s who we work for. We take women to him and that uppity Russian.”
“Where are they?”
“Northern California. They got some kind of real fancy hospital there. Hartline meets us up in Reno. ‘At’s where we deliver the women to him.”
“What kind of women?” Ben asked, a sick feeling in his stomach. He knew. Oh, God, he knew only too well.
“Niggers, spies, Jews, all the inferior breeds, you know?”’
“When are you supposed to meet Hartline again?” Ben asked.
“What’ll you gimme to tell you that?” the woman asked, a sly look in her beady eyes.
“A bullet in the head to put you out of your misery.”
““At’s fair, I reckon. Better’n dyin” slow. Next spring. Don’t know when. We just wait.”
“You have any women you’re now holding prisoner?”
The woman coughed up blood. “Naw. We jist got back from deliverin’ a load of greasers.”
Ben walked over to her, pulled his cocked and locked .45 from leather, and shot her in the head.
“You going to tell me about Sam Hartline, Ben?” Rani asked.
“Later. It’s a long story.”* *Fire in the Ashes
Chapter 31
“You mean they’re experimenting on human beings?” Rani asked, horror in her voice.
“Among other things,” Ben said. He then told her of the Russian general, Striganov, and the battles they had fought, hammering away at each other along a mile-long no-man’s-land.
“Hideous!” she said, looking at her plate of food and electing not to eat.
Ben and Rani had traveled a few miles outside of Colorado City and re-pitched their camp, in extreme southern Utah.
Ben stared moodily into the dancing flames of the small fire.
“And you and this Hartline have been enemies for a long time?” Rani asked.
“It seems like forever. But only for a couple of years, actually.” He sighed. “I may as well make up my mind that until Striganov and Hartline are dead, we can’t even begin to think of a return to civilization. I suppose that had best be our first priority of business next spring. I guess we-the Rebels-have been kidding ourselves; putting the horror back in the dark reaches of our brains; trying to delude ourselves that Striganov and Hartline were out of sight, so therefore they didn’t exist.”
Ben tossed a few more sticks into the circle of rocks containing the campfire.
“Ben?”
“Uh-huh?”
“Hadn’t we better rearrange things so we can carry a load of wood with us?”
He looked
at her in the flickering light. “I beg your pardon?”
“For the campfire and the cooking fires,” she said.
Confusion swept across Ben’s face. “Have I been asleep? I seem to have missed something terribly important here.”
“Nevada,” she said.
“Yes. What about Nevada?”
“Well, damn it, Ben, it’s all desert, isn’t it?”
“Oh! I see what you’re getting at. No, Rani, it isn’t all desert. There are a few trees in the state. We don’t have to carry firewood with us.” He opened his map case. “We’ll be heading out on Highway 59, connecting with the interstate here,” he said, pointing, “then south to 18. That will take us over to 56 and 319. We’ll pick up U.s. 93 here, and follow that all the way up into Idaho. After that, we’re home free.”
“Except for Jake Campo and Texas Red,” she reminded him glumly.
“Piece of cake,” he said with a grin.
Both were conscious of eyes on them as they traveled through southern Utah, eyes that followed and tracked their every movement.
“Don’t make any hostile moves,” Ben cautioned her over the CB. “I think we’ll be met at St. George. The people will be cautious, but not unfriendly. We’ll know in a few minutes.”
The two-vehicle convoy hit a barricade on the outskirts of St. George, with armed men stationed behind the barricade.
The men were neatly dressed, and for the most part, clean shaven. They were not ugly or hostile in their movements with their rifles-just cautiously curious.
Ben got out of his pickup, his hands empty and held away from his body.
“My name is Ben Raines,” he called. “The lady in the other pickup is Rani Jordan. We mean no harm to any law-abiding people. We are traveling up to the old Tri-States.”
“Then pass on through, General Raines,” a man said with a smile, motioning for the barricade to be opened. “With all the godless outlaws roaming the land, you understand our caution.”
“Very well,” Ben said.
Past the barricade, the spokesman said, “Do you need food or other supplies, Mister Raines?”
“No. But thank you. We’re well equipped for our travels. There might be a company of my soldiers pass through this way. They’ll be commanded by a Colonel Dan Gray. They mean you no harm.”
“Then they will not be harmed,” Ben was assured.
When Ben and Rani made camp at the Echo Canyon State Recreation Area, just inside Nevada, Rani said,
“I feel sorry for anybody who tries to ride roughshod over those people back in Utah.”
“They won’t try it but once,” Ben said. “Those folks won’t put up with any crap. And I sure want them on our side if and when any shooting starts.”
“They looked very … competent.”
“Believe me, they are.”
Jake Campo and Texas Red knew to stay out of Utah. Too many stories had drifted back to the warlords about what happened to outlaws who foolishly ventured into that state. They began moving their people out, in small teams of five and six. All the outlaws had cleaned up their vehicles and themselves. They sported fresh haircuts and clean clothes. All carried side-arms, but that would attract no attention; almost everybody with any sense went armed.
The outlaws moved out slowly, first heading straight north, up through the panhandle of Texas, then crossing the panhandle of Oklahoma into Kansas. Once there, they veered northwest, into Colorado. They took their time, for they were in no hurry. They would travel through Colorado, into Wyoming-giving Utah a wide berth-and then the final leg into Idaho, finally fanning out, encircling what had once been the capital of Tri-States.
Both Jake and Texas Red had heard about the man called Sam Hartline; heard that he paid well for men and women of the inferior breeds. Hartline paid in gold and guns.
And they had heard the man Hartline worked for, the Russian General Striganov, was offering sacks of gold for the head of Ben Raines.
So this time they would not go in with bluff and bluster against Raines. This time they would be much more cautious, with carefully thought-out plans.
And they would get Ben Raines.
“We’re not going to Las Vegas and play the slot machines?” Rani asked, her lips curving into a smile.
“Nothing left,” Ben told her. “Oddly enough, the place was among the first to be looted. Whiskey and money. Even though the people didn’t know whether the money was any good or not, they took it. Wrecked the place in doing so. Lots of infighting among the looters. We’ll avoid that place.”
“It must have been grand when it was going, though,” Rani said.
Ben said nothing in response. He had never cared much for the place. Not knowing day from night had never appealed to him.
The one-hundred-mile jump up to Ely took all of the next day. The highway was blocked in a dozen places, causing detours and backtracking and delays. Ben had not expected this highway to be so cluttered with junked vehicles. When they finally arrived in Ely, the place was a mess.
“My God!” Rani said, viewing the destruction. “What happened here?”’
The town looked as though a giant child had slapped it in youthful frustration, tumbling the buildings about like huge playing blocks.
“I don’t know,” Ben admitted. “But I’m getting some strange vibes about this place.”
“Shall we leave?” she asked.
“With all deliberate haste.”
A few miles outside of town, Rani radioed, “We’re being followed, Ben.”
Ben glanced in both his mirrors. He could see nothing. “You sure?”
“Positive. I double-checked. Wait until we’re around this next curve. Maybe the road will straighten out for a time. Uh-oh. Here they come, Ben. Four or five cars and trucks.”
Ben chanced a quick glance at his road map. Pulling a trailer, he had no hope of outrunning those following him. He figured another six or seven miles to the town of McGill. Couldn’t make that, either.
“Hang on and follow me, Rani,” he radioed. “We’re cutting off on this road to the left. Watch my brake lights and be ready for a quick stop. Get out ready to shoot.”
Ben and Rani whipped off onto the dirt and gravel road in a cloud of dust. A quarter-mile down the road, Ben braked, motioning Rani t6 come around him. He backed up until his pickup was blocking the road. He got out on the passenger side, choosing an M-16 for this fight, since the weapon had much more range than his Thompson.
The vehicles, three pickup trucks and two cars, stopped some two to three hundred yards away from them.
Ben laid the M-16 on the seat and got his .30-06, checking to see if the weapon was fully loaded. It was.
Ben jacked a round into the chamber and, using the hood for support, sighted in the lead truck. A man’s face leaped into view through his powerful scope.
Dirty, unshaven, mean-looking, and ugly.
“That son of a bitch could sit behind tombstones and raise ha’nts,” Ben muttered.
“Hey, you!” the man shouted, his voice just carrying to Ben and Rani.
Ben did not want to take him out of sight. “Ask him what he wants,” he said to Rani.
She did and the man shouted, “Whatever you got, missy. Give us your due for passin” on this road and you can head on out.”
“You believe him?” Ben asked,
“Hell, no!”
Ben shot the man in the center of the chest, the slug knocking him backward, sprawling on the dirt road.
“Get me my RPG and a rocket,” Ben said. “I’m not going to jack around with these road scum.”
Amid a ragged hail of gunfire from the outlaws’ vehicles, Ben locked a grenade in place, checked to see if Rani was clear of the back-blast, sighted in the trucks, and fired.
The lead truck must have been carrying several hundred pounds of explosives, and the trucks behind it must have also been loaded with dynamite, for when the rocket struck, the force of the explosion knocked Rani to the ground and flung Ben t
o his knees.
The blast momentarily impaired hearing, and the two of them could only stand and stare in awe and utter silence as bits and pieces of cars and trucks were tossed literally hundreds of feet into the air.
Ben and Rani stared at the destruction that lay in front of them. Burning metal and mangled bodies littered the road in smoking heaps. There were no survivors among the outlaws.
“Can you hear?” Ben asked her, shaking his head.
“In a hollow, echoing sort of way,” she replied. “It’s weird. Ben, what in the world was in those trucks-an atomic bomb?”
“Whatever it was, we sure can’t go back the way we came.” He looked at his maps. “This road makes a half circle and then connects with 93, some miles north of McGill. We’ll take it and chance it. Check your truck; see if any lead hit anything vital.”
Ben’s truck had taken most of the bullets from the outlaws’ rifles, none of them doing any real harm to the truck. They headed out, driving slowly up the bumpy road. It took them almost two hours to make the run on the rutted road. When they once more pulled onto Highway 93, it felt like a superhighway. They made camp and spent the night out in the open, far from dead towns with unblinking empty windows that seemed to remind Ben that life and love and hopes and dreams had once lived behind those silent walls.
Even after all these years, the feeling was disconcerting.
The eastern part of Nevada seemed to be void of human life-at least human fife that longed for a productive, orderly, civilized society.
The empty trend continued as Ben and Rani pulled up to the outskirts of Wells. Silence greeted them. It was also very cold.
“Idaho going to be colder than this?” Rani asked.
“Somewhat,” Ben said, in classic understatement.
“Ben, what happened to all the people?”
“I can’t answer that, Rani. I just don’t know. I’ve never seen it this desolate. Hopefully, the people banded together and moved out, probably to the west, where the climate is more conducive to growing gardens. But that’s just a guess. They might all be dead.”
She shivered in the cold wind. Ben put his arm around her shoulders. “How many people lived in this state before the bombings, Ben?”
Alone in the Ashes ta-5 Page 20