“I have a lot of letters to write,” Ike murmured.
“It’s never easy,” Ben acknowledged.
“No. It isn’t.”
“You want to stay here and ride back to the airport with your people, Ike?”
Ike shook his head. “No. No, let’s get busy clearing this city, Ben. That’s what we came to do.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. I just want to find some creepies alive so I can have the satisfaction of shooting them.”
“Believe me, Ike, I do know the feeling.”
NINE
It was a dead city—literally.
Drawn by the smell, the Rebels found dozens of underground passages where the creepies had kept their human food sources alive and fattening. It was the most disgusting, horrifying, and mind-numbing two-week period any of the Rebels could ever remember enduring. The sight and smell of rotting human flesh is not something easily pushed aside. Before pulling out, the creepies had killed those captives they could not take with them—machine gunning them—and left the bodies to rot and be fed upon by the city’s thousands and thousands of rats.
The Rebels approached and entered the underground caches cautiously for, more often than not, the piles of human bodies would be completely covered with huge rats in a monstrous, wriggling, brown-and-gray mound of snake-like tails, flea-infested fur, large yellow teeth, and savage eyes.
Once Doctor Chase had flown in, he took one look at the moving mounds of rats and ordered the Rebels out of the tunnels and sewers and basements.
“You know what has to be done, Ben,” Lamar said. “This is a monumental health hazard. As distasteful as it is, you have no choice.”
“Yeah,” Ben said with about as much enthusiasm as a man facing a visit to his proctologist. But he did not hesitate. “Flame throwers,” he ordered. “Burn the bodies down to char and the rats with them. I don’t see any other way.” God have mercy on their souls and ours, he added silently. I just don’t know what else to do.
Fried rats and charred bodies and bones were buried together in mass graves. There was no way the Rebels could separate them or ID the victims of the Night People’s atrocities. It was just another crappy job that had fallen to the American Rebels who made up the World Stabilization Forces.
A few days after the battle at the airport, people trickled back into Vienna, silent watchers as the Rebels cleared the city—and the Rebels could not understand why they did not offer to help. They were examined by Rebel doctors and many were found to be in mild shock. For years they had been living in small groups in the woods, without adequate arms, fearful each day of their lives of being captured and eaten alive by the creeps.
Austrian medical people began surfacing shortly after their dazed countrymen arrived, and they pitched in to help the Rebel doctors.
“When did the Night People begin their campaign of terror?” Ben asked a group of Austrian citizens who seemed to be more or less in control of their facilities.
“Right after the Great War. Those of us who saw what was going on tried to tell those in other countries. But they wouldn’t believe us. They thought we were all insane—a condition that soon gripped many of our people shortly afterward,” he added grimly.
“What lies east of us?” Ben asked a former Austrian government official.
The man shook his head. “With the exception of Hungary and the west part of Romania, the unknown is all I can tell you, General. Hungary is filled with roaming gangs of thugs and hoodlums and cannibals. Romania is . . .” He shrugged his shoulders. “Romania. What can I tell you? A land of beauty and mystery and superstition. We have been living hand to mouth for years, lucky to have some scrap of news of what is happening in the next valley. Now, with your help, perhaps we can pick up the pieces of our lives and start anew.”
Ben stared at the official and the men and women with him. He stared at them for so long, they grew edgy under his hard gaze.
“What is wrong, General?” the official asked.
“I have a lot of questions and damn few answers,” Ben replied. “That’s what is wrong. What happened to the Austrian Army?”
“I would imagine the same thing that happened to most armies of the world. We felt the world was ending. We were told that the world had exploded in nuclear warfare. We were told that America had been destroyed. We were told—”
“Who told you?” Ben interrupted.
The man again shrugged his shoulders. “Why . . . voices on shortwave radios. Knowledgeable officials. Many in the armed forces rushed back to their homes to see about their loved ones. Others just . . . disappeared.”
“So the creeps took over without a fight?” Ben questioned. “Weren’t any of you armed? Why didn’t you stand and fight? Why didn’t you kill the bastards?”
“With what, General? Small-caliber rifles and shotguns filled with bird shot? Against machine guns and mortars and organized forces?”
Same old story, Ben thought, studying the men and women seated around him. Big government promised they’d take care of their people and then disarmed the law-abiding, tax-paying citizens. Big government lied here just as they had lied in America and England and everywhere else.
Ben didn’t dislike politicians: He hated them.
“We’ll help you set up a police force and arm the citizens with the weapons we took from the creeps and punks on our push through Europe,” Ben told the delegation. “The rest is up to you.”
Fall was beginning to brown the leaves and turn the winds cold as the Rebels wrapped up their work in Vienna and prepared to move east. Ben had straightened out his lines, north to south. They now ran from Sopot in the north of Poland, down to Nagykanizsa in the southwest part of Hungary.
Batt coms flew into Vienna for one more meeting before winter shut down the Rebels’ eastward push.
Vienna lay peacefully under the thin rays of late-fall sunshine as the batt coms gathered in a meeting hall. The smell of death that had lingered over the city for so long was gone as the people begin anew.
“We’re going to move eastward about a hundred and fifty miles before we shut everything down for the winter,” Ben told the gathering. “That’s going to put us on a line running north to south from the southern tip of Lithuania down to Warsaw, Krakow, through the eastern tip of Czechoslovakia, over to Budapest, down to Szeged in the south of Hungary. When those lines are established, shut it down for the winter, but make damn sure you’re near a useable airport that will handle our supply planes. If not, we’ll have to resort to airdrops.”
“What do you hear from Colonel Flanders in Italy?” Pat O’Shea from 10 batt asked.
“Well, Flanders and Randazzo have managed to bring the fighting to a halt,” Ben replied. “Actual combat, that is. Right now they’re trying to help the Italians form up some sort of workable government. Flanders says he’d rather be in open combat—he understands that.”
After the laughter had died down, Ben added, “General Randazzo threatened to shoot a half-dozen or more Italian politicians unless they reached an agreement and did it damn quick. As soon as the words left his mouth, the entire parliament walked out en masse, with many of them making obscene gestures in General Randazzo’s direction. Flanders is using his people to keep order and letting Randazzo handle the political end of the operation. Personally, I think they’re all having a good time.”
“What about creepies, Dad?” Tina asked.
“An Italian creepie?” Ben responded. “Not likely. Italy is the only country thus far that has reported absolutely no sign of Night People.”
“They’d have to have a side order of fettuccine with a little glass of grappa,” Lt. Bonelli said with dark humor, and again the meeting hall reverberated with laughter.
“Italy is Italy,” Ben said after order was restored. “And I don’t plan on trying to change it. That would be an impossible task.”
“What are we facing on this eastward push?” Buck Taylor, commander of 15 Batt, asked.
His final announcement was greeted with catcalls and boos and hissing, and Ben let it run its course.
“Any more questions?” he asked.
There were none.
“Let’s do it,” Ben said.
When the room had cleared, Ben joined Mike Richards, who had stood on the sidelines throughout the briefing.
“Billy Smithson’s men—the turncoats who staged the coup,” Mike began.
“What about them?”
“It’s as we suspected. They left Germany with Bottger and his men. They’re in Africa.”
“Setting up their own little Reich.” Ben pressed his lips together in a hard, firm line.
“That’s about it.”
“So, you finally got people in.” It was not phrased as a question.
“Reluctantly, Ben. Very reluctantly.”
Ben did not have to ask how far in they were. He had worked for the Company, and he knew they were in deep . . . or they had damn well better be.
“And?—”
“Bottger is waiting for you to show up, Ben. Just patiently waiting for you.”
“He’s that certain?”
“Well, not really. But it’s going to take two or three years to wrap up things in Europe. By that time, perhaps the good citizens of America and the other predominately white countries in the world will have recovered sufficiently to start worrying about Africa and we’ll be ordered in to stabilize that continent. When that happens, Bruno and his army will be ready.”
“And when, or if, that time comes, you think I should do what, Mike?”
“Refuse to go. Once Europe is stabilized, let’s go back home and live out the remainder of our years in peace in the SUSA.”
“Mike, somebody, someday, will have to deal with Bruno Bottger. The longer the world waits, the stronger he gets.”
Mike shook his head and then said, “Why am I not surprised at your response?”
“Cheer up, Mike. Africa, if it comes, is a couple of years away. Probably longer than that. And who knows, maybe by that time Bruno will self-destruct.”
Mike stared at him for a moment. “Don’t bet on it, ol’ buddy. Don’t bet on it.” Mike turned and walked away. At the door, he paused and looked back. “The Rebels will follow you there if you lead, Ben. They’ll do it without question. But there will be a lot of Rebel lives lost on the dark continent, Ben. And it isn’t worth one Rebel life. It just isn’t worth it.” Then he hurried away without another word.
Ben remained in the big hall, conscious of the eyes of his team on him. He met them, one by one.
“Oh, what the hell, Boss.” Jersey broke the silence. “I always wanted to meet Tarzan.”
The long Rebel line, over four hundred miles long, straightened out north to south and moved on slowly toward the east. Over the long and bloody months since the Rebels had landed on the beaches of France, their reputation had grown, just as it had grown back in the States. Very few of the smaller gangs really wanted to mix it up with the Rebels. . . . The price they would have to pay—in lives and blood—was just too damn high. But they really had no place to go to escape the ever-advancing Rebel army, except east toward Russia, and they did not wish to head in that direction for Russia was an unknown. Very little in the way of news had come from Russia since the Great War, and the news that had filtered out was anything but good.
Ben’s command, his own 1 Batt and Dan’s 3 Batt, were just inside the Hungarian border when the first of the gangs began surrendering. Like nearly every gang the Rebels had ever encountered, both in Europe and Stateside, they were a sorry-looking bunch of crap when compared to the well-fed, well-trained, well-equipped, and highly motivated and disciplined Rebel soldiers.
This gang numbered fifty men and women ranging in age from fifteen to twenty-five. And to a person, they were scared and made no attempt to hide that fear.
They especially showed that fear when the whispering started among them that they had been captured by Ben Raines himself—the Devil, as Ben was called by criminals in this part of Eastern Europe.
Ben slowly walked in front of the line of prisoners, a representative of the Hungarian resistance with him.
“This particular band of hoodlums is one of the milder gangs,” the interpreter told him. “They steal, but we’ve never heard of any of them killing or raping.”
“Well,” Ben said, winking at the resistance fighter. He had been told that most of the line-up understood and spoke some English. “Maybe we won’t have to shoot all of them.”
At that, one gang member promptly fainted dead away and another evacuated his bowels.
“Raines,” Doctor Chase said, disgust in his tone, “your sense of humor is grotesque.”
“Oh, hell, get them out of here and clean them up,” Ben rejoined. “After that, turn them over to the interrogation teams and see what we can get out of them.”
“Are you really going to shoot us, General?” a young girl of perhaps fifteen or sixteen asked.
Ben stared down at her. A pretty girl with blond hair and pale blue eyes . . . and a very scruffy young lady, too, badly in need of a long, hot, soapy bath.
“We’ve really harmed no one,” the girl said. “We steal in order to live. And we are in a war with the cannibals. All of us have been a prisoner of the creepers at one time or another. We all escaped from the cannibals in the city.”
That got everyone’s attention.
“The Night People?”
“Yes, General. Those that creep about at night.”
“What city?” Ben asked her.
“Budapest, General.”
“Get them cleaned up and then bring this girl to my CP,” Ben ordered. He looked at the resistance fighter. “And get me a female translator to stay with us while I talk with her.”
The gang members were separated by sex and herded off. Ben turned to Dan Gray. “If she really did escape from the creeps, she’s got a head filled with valuable information.”
“If she isn’t a creep herself,” Dan said.
“Yes.” Ben sighed. “There is that to consider, isn’t there?”
TEN
“Did she seem repulsed at the thought of taking a bath?” Ben asked Jersey.
“No. Not at all. We practically had to drag her out of the shower. She washed her hair three times. Now she’s on her second plate of food at the mess tent If she’s a creepie, I’m Joan of Arc.”
“Who is with her?”
“Cooper. He says he’s in love with her,” Beth said.
“Cooper is in heat,” Ben said. “Cooper is always in heat. What’s the girl’s name?”
“Anna,” Jersey replied. “I can’t pronounce her last name. What the hell language do these people speak?”
“Magyar. I’m told it’s difficult.”
“They told you right.”
Anna was brought in, along with a female interpreter—which proved to be unnecessary since the girl spoke excellent English.
She stared at Ben through eyes that were much older than her years. “You want to know about the creeps, right, sir?”
“As much as you can tell me.”
“And what do I get if I do tell you?”
Ben started to tell the girl she wouldn’t get spanked, then d
ecided she was a bit too old for that threat to work. “What do you want, girl?”
“Anna.”
“All right, Anna. What do you want?”
“To be safe. I want to be a Rebel.”
Ben smiled. “Anna, being with the Rebel Army is not the safest place to be. We fight wars.”
“What do you think I’ve been doing since I was old enough to remember? Sir.”
Ben figured the girl had, at best, just started school when the Great War had toppled every government in the world. “How did you survive, Anna?” Ben asked softly. “You couldn’t have been more than five-or six-years-old.”
The girl’s face screwed up in a storm of emotions. “I fought dogs for rotten meat in the streets. I ate grubs I found under logs. I made me a slingshot and learned how to knock squirrels out of trees and hit rabbits on the run. I teamed up with other kids my age, and we had us a gang. One of them was the son of someone who worked at the U. S. Embassy in Budapest. We learned English from him. He died two years ago.” She grimaced. “Well, in a way. The creeps ate him when we were captured over in Gyor. That’s a town just down the road. We held the gang together for a long time. Years. The creeps used to live in the old U. S. Embassy in Budapest. They may still be there. That’s the last place they held me.”
“How did you escape?”
“I killed one of them with a knife, put on her robe, and just walked out unnoticed. I made up my mind right then that they would never take me again. I heard they were offering rewards for me. They’ll torture me to death if they get the chance.” Sudden tears sprang into her eyes. “You’ve got to let me be a Rebel. The creeps will catch me if you don’t . . . and . . . I’ve seen what they do to people.”
Ben handed her a clean handkerchief and a cup of coffee and brought sugar and artificial creamer to her, setting it on the table. “You drink that and compose yourself. I’ll be back in a minute.”
He went into another room where an operator was running a state of the art P.S.E. machine. Psychological Stress Evaluator. Anna was being given a lie-detector test without her knowledge—which is the best way to give one; the subject is much more relaxed that way.
Betrayal in the Ashes Page 20