Vengeance in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  “Join the club, Coop,” Jersey said. “But I’ve about made up my mind not to worry about them anymore. I’m sorry for their kids. But we can’t shoulder the troubles of everybody and damned if I’m going to try. If they won’t help themselves, they can just go to hell.”

  “We’ll have to fight them someday,” the usually quiet Beth remarked. “It’s been that way since recorded time. The haves versus the have-nots. Right, General?”

  “You’re right, Beth. It’s sad, but true. We will have to fight them someday. Coop, We’ll cut east on 19 at Pauls Valley,” Ben said, sticking the map back into the case. “I think we can pretty well call this area clean.”

  “But it’s not like we’re wealthy,” Corrie got into it. “I mean, we have a monetary system. But without a Rebel ID card the money is no good. The few Rebel outposts that the outsiders have managed to overrun look like a squatter camp in a few months. When they get nice things, they always screw them up and turn everything into trash.”

  “Look over there, General,” Coop said, pointing to a shack set well back off the interstate. Smoke came from the chimney. “They have no running water, no electricity, outside toilets. The kids are dirty and in ragged clothing. It’s disgusting!”

  Ben let them talk. How to tell them that before the Great War, with billions of dollars being spent yearly on social programs, the same shack had been occupied by people of basically the same caliber as those now in it. Ben knew, of course, that there were exceptions to that, but he also knew that basically he was correct. No matter what you did for certain types of people, no matter how much you gave them, it was never enough; they always wanted more.

  Ben almost ordered the convoy to stop and go back to the shack by the road and call out the occupants and question them. But what would be the point? Ben had been doing that very thing for years and had never been able to get through to any of them to this day. He had talked himself to the point of anger trying to convince people to get off their asses and do something to improve their quality of life. It was the same old story: give me something for nothing.

  Of late, most of the time, he had just been saying to hell with it and letting those types go their own way. But Beth was right: someday the Rebels would have to fight them. And that was a day that Ben was not looking forward to. It had almost happened when the nation was whole. Had not the Great War shattered the nations of the world and brought everyone to their knees for a time, a class struggle had certainly been looming on the horizon.

  “Scouts report trouble up ahead, General,” Corrie said. “Interstate is blocked and armed men behind the barricades.”

  “Bring the convoy down slow,” Ben ordered. “How are the men armed and dressed?”

  “Rifles and light machine guns. All kinds of clothing, General. The scouts say it’s more a mob than an army.”

  “Guess what, gang,” Ben said. “The day we’ve been discussing is here. At least in this part of the country.”

  “Wonderful,” Cooper muttered.

  “Line the spearhead vehicles abreast on the road, Corrie. A .50, Big Thumper, Big Thumper. I don’t want to do harm to these people. But I will not kowtow to them. This nation is not going to be dictated to by rabble.”

  “You want Beth to drive and me on the .50, General?” Coop asked.

  “I want you right where you are, Coop. Take us up to the spearhead vehicles.”

  It was one hell of a barricade, stretching across both sides of the interstate. Old trucks and cars, railroad track and ties, roadside barriers, and piles of junk quite effectively blocked the highway. Only the right shoulders were kept free.

  A scout trotted back to Ben. “They call themselves CROTCH, sir.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Ben said.

  “The Coalition for the Rescue of the Oppressed, Terrorized, Common Homeless. CROTCH.”

  “I think I could have come up with something a little better than that,” Ben said.

  “CROTCH?” Jersey questioned.

  “That’s what the man said. What do they want, as if I didn’t know?”

  “Housing, clothing, food, and safety.”

  “They could easily have it,” Ben replied. “All they have to do is swear alliance to the Rebel philosophy and stick with it.”

  “They say they won’t do that. They don’t have to, and they’re not going to.”

  “Well, they are slap out of luck.”

  “Are we going to fight these people, General?”

  “No. We’ll just turn the column around and take another road east.”

  “Ben Raines is a racist pig!” the voice came over a bullhorn from behind the barricades.

  The scout, who just happened to be black, ducked his head and tried to hide his grin.

  “Are all those folks up there black?” Ben asked.

  “Oh, no,” the scout replied, struggling to keep from laughing. “It’s a real rainbow up there.”

  “Ben Raines is a Republican racist honky pig!” the voice boomed.

  “Is this a side of you that I don’t know?” Tomas asked.

  Ben cut his eyes. The Mexican officer was having a hard time keeping a smile from showing through. Ben shook his head. “Well, he’s right about one thing: I was a Republican.”

  “The members of, ah, CROTCH, are shifting people around, sir,” Corrie said. “They’re flanking us.”

  “I don’t want to fight these people,” Ben said. “Let’s get out of here. Turn the column around and head out.”

  “Barricades are being thrown up south of us, sir,” Corrie said.

  “Billions for defense and nothing for the CROTCH!” boomed the voice.

  “What billions for defense?” Ben bitched. “Hell, we stole nearly everything we have.”

  “The way south is blocked,” Ben was told.

  “You cannot escape us now,” the words were pushed out of the bullhorn. “The time for CROTCH is here.”

  “Somebody tell that silly son of a bitch not to open fire on us,” Ben said.

  “What if they do?” Cooper asked.

  “We return it. I don’t want to hurt any of them. But I won’t stand by and become a willing target. Somebody get me a bullhorn. I know we brought one.”

  Beth scrounged around and found a bullhorn, handing it to Ben. Ben clicked it on. “This is General Raines. Tear down that barricade and we’ll talk about your situation. Do not open fire on us. Repeat: do not open fire.”

  The reply was a barrage of bullets from behind the barricade. “Death to those who would enslave us!” the voice of CROTCH boomed.

  “Mortars are in place,” Corrie told him.

  “Do we scratch CROTCH now?” Cooper said with a grin. All of them were kneeling on the pavement, behind their vehicles.

  Jersey groaned. “I swear, Coop. You get worse with each passing day.”

  “Start walking the mortars in,” Ben said, as gunfire from the barricades increased. “I’ve had this.”

  Victoria and Maria grinned at each other. “The monkey-and-the-skunk syndrome,” they said together.

  NINE

  Mortars, rocket launchers, and Big Thumpers took all the fight out of CROTCH, and it didn’t take long to accomplish that. Members of CROTCH threw down their weapons and stood in the median, their hands in the air.

  “Barricades south of us have been abandoned,” Corrie said.

  The leader of the now-defunct movement was brought to Ben. The man had a knot on his head about the size of a hen’s egg where he’d been conked on the bean by falling debris. He was sullen as he stared at Ben.

  “You still got an itch to scratch?” Ben asked him.

  “No point in discussing anything with a white racist government,” the man said.

  “Look around you,” Ben told him. “You’d be hard-pressed to name a nationality that isn’t represented in this army. If I was a racist, do you honestly think these men and women would be fighting alongside me?”

  “Uncle Toms and Apples,” the man said.
>
  “Apples?”

  “Indians who are red on the outside and white in the middle.” He suddenly shouted, “Arise, brothers and sisters of color! Throw off the yoke of slavery and turn your guns against this man. Kill the honky pig!”

  The rebels of color looked at each other. “That son of a bitch is as nutty as a pecan pie,” a Cheyenne Indian said.

  “We must have housing and food and clothing and medical care,” the CROTCH leader shouted.

  “Well, hell, man,” a black rebel said. “Go find you a house and live in it. There are hundreds of thousands of abandoned homes all over the country. Grow a garden. Get some cows and chickens and hogs and goats. There are millions of them wandering around. They don’t belong to anybody.”

  “You’re missing the point,” Ben told the Rebel.

  “I’m sure missing something, General,” the Rebel admitted. “Can you fill in the blanks?”

  “He wants us to do it for him.”

  “Does he want us to sit him in a highchair and hand-feed him, too?”

  “You’re nothing but a white-man’s nigger,” the leader of CROTCH told the Rebel.

  The black sergeant walked over to him. “You’re gonna be a dead nigger if you don’t watch your mouth, boy.”

  “You have a name?” Ben asked him, before the black sergeant decided to end the conversation by a fist to the mouth.

  “Freedom and liberty and justice for all!”

  “This is pointless. Buddy, where are the rest of this idiot’s followers?”

  “Scattered like the wind,” his son replied. “We’re holding about fifty of them. The medics are working on the wounded.”

  “At least they’re getting medical care,” Freedom and Liberty and Justice For All said.

  “I just don’t know what to do with you,” Ben admitted. “I think you’re around the bend and dangerous. But being crazy isn’t a crime.”

  “Power to the people!”

  Ben shook his head and turned to Buddy. “Make sure all the weapons are gathered up and turn this nut loose as soon as the convoy has passed. We’ve wasted enough time here.”

  “Food not guns!” the man shouted.

  “Oh, shut up,” Ben told him.

  Then the man made the biggest mistake of his life when he said, “When Hoffman gets here we’ll see you dead, Ben Raines.”

  Ben hit him. It was a hard blow and it caught the man flush in the mouth and knocked him sprawling on the cracked concrete. The so-called homeless advocate rolled to his feet, a knife in his hand. A Rebel clubbed him on the back of the head with his helmet. The CROTCH leader crumpled to the road.

  “Hoffman’s troops have been up here and are probably still here,” Ben said. “Get this bastard into a vehicle and we’re gone to the next town. Just make sure it’s off the interstate to the east. Scouts out and check it over carefully. We just might have to fort up there. I have a hunch this homeless crap was a delaying tactic and they’re waiting for us up at Pauls Valley. We’ll interrogate this jerk there.”

  “That would be about fifteen miles east of here on old Highway 29,” Beth said.

  “Let’s go. I got a bad feeling about this.”

  Before the Great War the town had a population of about seven hundred and fifty souls. No one had lived in the town since that momentous event. Scouts checked it out carefully, every house and every store, top floors, ground-level floors, and basements. It was safe.

  “Back your Hummers into those stores so the .50s and Thumpers can be used,” Ben ordered. “Back them all the way in so they can’t be seen from the street. Buddy, spread your teams out on the second floors of those buildings and on the rooftops. I’ll be over there in that old feed store. Extra ammo for everybody. Let’s move.”

  Ben watched as the Hummers were backed into the buildings. The storefront glass had been knocked out years back. “Cover any oil spots with dirt,” he ordered. “Wipe out all sign of tire tracks.”

  “You think this is a large force after us, don’t you?” Tomas asked.

  “Yes. I do. I have a hunch it might be several hundred, or more. We’ll know more after Mr. Crotch is pumped full of injectable Valium.”

  “That is a truth serum?”

  “In large doses. Come on. Let’s get into position to make boom-boom with the bad guys.”

  Tomas laughed. “You have a very dark sense of humor, General.”

  “Gallows humor, Captain. You’ll develop it if you stay around us long enough.”

  They began walking across the street. “After the government smashed the old Tri-States, General, how many people did you have left in your movement?”

  “Just about three hundred. The government came close to wiping us out. But many men, whole units, of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps deserted to join the Rebels. From generals to privates. Many of them are still fighting with me. Some of the senior people grew too old for the field and took over outposts. Others died.” They walked into the store and paused in the door. “Ike and Cecil and Tina and Chase. James Riverson. Jerre.” His voice trailed off.

  Tomas did not pursue that. He had learned the story from Tina and let affairs of the heart remain private and personal.

  “And it grew and grew and grew,” Tomas said, his voice filled with awe. “Then it spread down to my country and Payon was convinced to lead the movement there.”

  “We’re going to take some losses up against Hoffman, Tomas. Be ready for that.”

  “I have already lost my wife, my children, my parents, and many friends. I have but my life to give. And I shall gladly give that toward victory.” He spoke the words softly, but with emotion behind them.

  There was nothing Ben could add to that, so he made no attempt. The men walked into the gloominess of the old store, which still smelled faintly of feed and seed and fertilizer.

  “Mister Nutty is just about ready to be questioned, General,” Ben was told. “That spook from intelligence is with him.”

  Ben smiled. It didn’t take long for the old words to reappear about the men and women who worked in the intelligence section of the Rebel army.

  “I say something funny, General?” the young woman asked.

  “I used to be a spook, Leslie.”

  “You’re not that weird, General.”

  Ben laughed as he and Tomas moved on to a table and chairs that had been righted and sat down. “I can’t offer you coffee, Tomas,” Ben said. “The coffee smell lingers, and that would be a dead giveaway if I’m right and NAL does attack us.”

  Outside, Rebels were carefully seeking out and covering any tire or oil sign that might have been left on the street. When they had finished, the town appeared to be as deserted as when the Rebels had found it.

  If the NAL did walk into town, they would find a very deadly trap waiting for them.

  The spook from intelligence, who had joined Ben’s team back at Wichita Falls, walked into the big main room of the old store. “You were right, General,” he said, sitting down. “Hoffman has a large force up here attempting to recruit the malcontents. That fruitcake in there says about seven hundred and fifty people. And I believe him.”

  “Jesus,” Ben breathed the word. “I thought maybe two companies at most.”

  “They were set up to cream us at Pauls Valley. I figure they’ll pick up our trail and be here sometime around midnight tonight.”

  “Have the people get some rest, Corrie,” Ben ordered. “Stagger the guard details so everybody is ensured some sleep.” He walked into a back room, the spook right behind him, and looked at the leader of CROTCH.

  “He’s alive,” the spook assured Ben. “But he’s going to be out of it for quite a few hours.”

  Ben chuckled with a soldier’s humor. “Be interesting if he slept right through the battle and woke to find himself surrounded by bodies.”

  “It’s likely he’ll do just that.”

  “Won’t he be surprised,” Ben said, and walked away.

  There were four ways into the tin
y town, and Ben had sentries posted on all four roads, about three miles outside of the town. Ben rested for a few hours, and by nine o’clock, he was up and ready to go. He restlessly prowled the store, waiting for the word, his M-16 slung.

  “A large force coming straight at us down Highway 1, General,” Corrie’s voice came out of the darkness. “Approximately five miles out and moving about twenty miles an hour.”

  “Alert all troops,” Ben said softly. “Everybody in position. If we pull this off, it will really jar Hoffman down to his toenails.”

  Ben had shuffled troops around to be in position to bottle up the NAL on both ends of the town. The Rebels were spread very thin, but Ben was counting on complete surprise to make up for their being outnumbered. Springing deadly ambushes was just one of the Rebels’ specialties.

  “Column has stopped,” Corrie said. “Sending out recon.”

  “All troops observe noise discipline,” Ben ordered. “Have a Rebel with a silenced pistol standing over Sleeping Beauty in the back room. If he starts to snore, shoot him in the head.”

  The man from intelligence moved quietly to the back room, a canned Colt Woodsman in his hand. One snort and Mister CROTCH would sleep forever.

  “Starting to sprinkle outside,” Jersey whispered.

  “That’s good and bad,” Ben said. “The rain will deaden any smell of gas or oil. But we don’t need lightning to go with it.”

  “Enemy recon entering northeast edge of town,” Corrie whispered. “Fanning out.”

  Thunder rumbled in the distance. Every Rebel was silently praying that any lightning would hold off for a few minutes. Illumination was one thing they did not need at this time.

  The recon advanced to the middle of the deserted old town, on both sides of the street. It puzzled Ben why they didn’t advance on the sidewalks, hugging the shadows. But he was certainly glad they didn’t.

  One Rebel sneeze, one cough, one dislodged pebble, or one creak of an old board would give them away and possibly spell death for all of them. The Rebels waited.