Out of the Ashes ta-1

by William Wallace Johnstone

  No prisoners.

  On either side.

  That woman Reb is still screaming. They’re hurting her. “Fuck her up the ass!” someone shouts, laughing. “Get a little brown on your pole.”

  You walk away from the sight and sounds. You could stop them; you’re a sergeant; but you don’t want to lose face with the men, not this early in your promotion. What the hell? She’s only a Rebel. The enemy.

  Now the enemy is dead as you walk through the near-quiet battleground. But that woman is still screaming way back there, across the meadow. Wish to hell she’d shut up.

  A Rebel is still alive, shot hard in the chest. He’s looking up at you, defiance in his eyes. You shoot him in the head.

  Look… don’t blame me. I’m just following orders.

  Now, all the enemy is dead, and it’s too quiet. Somebody say something. But everybody you look at averts their eyes. Guys are breathing too hard; somebody tosses his breakfast, puking on the ground. Someone else is praying. You think God is listening after all this shit?

  “It’s too goddamned quiet!”

  You spin around. “Who said that?”

  Nobody will answer.

  A Rebel is moaning. You point to him, then look at one of your men. You hear your voice say: “Shoot him.”

  “Right, Sarge.”

  Bam!

  The sound is so goddamned loud.

  There is a guy from your platoon, kneeling, holding a tiny blue-colored bird in his dirty hand. The bird is dead. Everybody gathers around to look at it. There isn’t a mark on the bird. No blood. Seems funny to see something without any blood or dirt on it. Wonder what killed the bird?

  “Hey, Sarge?” someone whispers. “You know what?”

  “What?” Your voice sounds funny. Old.

  That woman is still screaming, faintly, hoarsely.

  “We won.”

  NINE

  By dusk of the thirty-fifth day, the heaviest fighting was behind the government troops. The pincers had closed, and most of the Tri-states was secure. But the price paid for victory had been cruelly high.

  Juno was dead, shot a dozen times, but only after the aging animal had killed a major, tearing out his throat.

  And now the government troops had to be content with mopping up; combat troops can testify that mopping up can be awful. It is a sniper’s bullet; a booby-trap; a mine; a swing-trap with sharpened stakes set chest high; a souvenir that can cost you a hand, or a leg, or a life.

  Major General Como was dead, shot through the head by a thirteen-year-old girl wielding a pistol she had taken from the body of a paratroop captain. The girl was taken alive, raped repeatedly, then shot.

  It has been written that there is nothing in the world more savage than the American fighting man.

  Como’s replacement, Major General Goren, lasted only two weeks. He opened the center drawer of a desk in what was to have been his HQ, a cleared secure building, and five pounds of nitroglycerine and nitrocellulose blew him open and spread him all over the room, along with a colonel and his sergeant major. The charge was timed with a delay fuse: open the drawer ten times and the charge was still dormant; on the eleventh, it would blow.

  Mopping up.

  In a mountainous, heavily wooded area, west and north of Vista, HQ’s company of Tri-states’ Rebels prepared to fight their last fight. Most of them had been together for years: Steven and Linda, James and Belle, Cecil and Lila, Al and Anne, Bridge and Abby, Pal and Valerie, Ike and Megan, Voltan and Nora, Sam and Pam, Jerre and Jimmy Deluce; and Jane Dolbeau, Tatter and June-Bug and their husbands… Ben and Salina. And a hundred others that made up the company. The kids with them should have been gone and safe by now, but they’d been cut off and had to return. It was now back to alpha, and omega was just around the corner, waiting for most of them.

  There was a way out, but it was a long shot.

  Ben sat talking with the twins, Jack and Tina.

  “Jack, you’ve got to look after Salina, now. I’m going to split the company and lead a diversion team. I think it’s our only way out.” He patted Jack’s shoulder. “I’ll be all right, son; don’t worry about me. I’ll make it. I’m still an old curly wolf with some tricks up my sleeve.”

  “Then you’ll join us later?” Tina asked, tears running down her cheeks.

  “Sure. Count on it,” Ben said. He shook Jack’s hand and kissed Tina. “Go on, now, join up with Colonel Elliot. I want to talk with your mother for a moment.”

  Salina came to his side, slipping her hand into his. They were both grimy from gunsmoke and dirt and sweat. Ben thought she had never looked more beautiful than during her pregnancy; she had stood like a dusty Valkyrie by his side, firing an M-16 during the heaviest of fighting.

  She said, “We didn’t have much time together, did we, Ben?”

  “We have a lot of time left us, babe,” he replied gently.

  She smiled; a sad smile. Knowing. “Con the kids, General. Don’t try to bullshit me.”

  “Yeah,” Ben said ruefully. “Yeah, I wish we’d had more time.” He kissed her, very gently, very tenderly, without passion or lust. A man kissing a woman good-by.

  Salina grasped at the moment. “Is there any chance at all?”

  “Not much of one, I’m afraid.” He leveled with her.

  She tried to smile; then suddenly began to weep, softly, almost silently. She put her arms around his neck and kissed him. “I do love you, Ben Raines.” She smiled through the tears. “Even if you are a honky.”

  “And I love you, Salina.” He fought back the tears to return her smile. “Now you step ‘n’ fetch yore ass on outta here, baby.”

  And together they laughed.

  Ben helped her to her feet, gazed at her for a moment, then walked from her to join the group he was taking on diversion. Abruptly, without warning, the silent forest floor erupted into blood and violence. A platoon of paratroopers, quiet and deadly, came at the Rebels; the peaceful wood turned into hand-to-hand combat.

  Ben flipped his old Thompson onto full auto and burned a clip into the paratroopers, bringing down half a dozen. Salina screamed behind him. Ben spun in time to see her impaled on a bayonet. Her mouth opened and closed in silent agony; her hands slowly crawled snakelike down her stomach to clutch at the rifle barrel, to try to pull the hot pain from her stomach. She screamed as she began miscarrying the dead child, for the bayonet had driven through the unborn baby.

  “Jesus Christ!” the trooper yelled, as he saw what he had done. He tried to pull the blade from her belly. But the blade was stuck. He pulled the trigger—reflex from hard training—and blew the blade free, sending a half-dozen slugs into Salina, throwing her backward from the force.

  Ben jerked his .45 from leather and blew half the trooper’s head off, just as Salina collapsed to the ground, her hands working at the bloody mess that was once her stomach.

  Ben was at her side as his Rebels, offering no mercy, took the fight to the troopers. The troopers were outnumbered and fighting against white-hot rage. They died very quickly; the Rebels took no prisoners.

  Ben gathered her into his arms, knowing there was no chance for her to live. She was fading quickly. “I love you, Salina.”

  She looked up at him and smiled for the last time. “Sorry ‘bout the baby, honey. But with our luck it would probably have been a koala bear.”

  She closed her eyes and died.

  Ben tried to rip away the heavy load of grief that saddled his shoulders and clutched at his heart with cold fingers. He shook away dozens of emotions as he knelt beside the only woman he had ever truly loved. He touched her face, closed her eyes, smoothed her hair, kissed her still-warm lips. He fought his way back to reality.

  Dr. Chase pulled him away from Salina’s body and knelt down for a moment, cutting at her maternity slacks with a knife. He covered her with a shelter half and rose to face Ben. “Boy,” he said. “Perfectly normal. All his fingers and toes. Her complexion, your eyes. Bayonet went right through him
.”

  Ben nodded. “Let’s go!” he shouted. “There is no more we can do here. Help the wounded and let’s move it.”

  Ike touched his arm. “Ben…”

  “We don’t have time to grieve, buddy. Later.”

  The Rebels drifted silently into the forest, taking their wounded, leaving their dead; Salina and the boy lay among the still and the quiet and the dead. Ants had already begun their march across her face. She lay in a puddle of thickening blood, one hand on the arm of her dead child.

  The Rebels split up, the first two squads not making it past the edge of the northern border of the strip. A forward observer spotted them and called in artillery. None escaped the deadly hail. Another group walked into an ambush; only a few escaped. The kids lay like pebbles on a beach, their broken and smashed bodies a grim reminder of the vindictiveness and power of government. A half a dozen Cobra gunships spotted another group and came chopping out of the sky, strafing them with rocket and machine-gun fire.

  A few moments before dusk Ben’s group came face-to-face with two companies of government troops.

  Jimmy Deluce was caught in a murderous crossfire and died on his feet, cursing the enemy.

  Jack had regrouped with his father and now left Ben’s side to help a friend. Jack was almost cut apart by M-60 fire. Tina lobbed a grenade into a machine-gun nest and finished it off with a burst from her M-10.

  Sam Pyron watched his wife shot dead, and the West Virginia mountain boy rose to his feet, screaming his outrage. He walked toward the soldiers hip-firing an AK-47 and cursing them. He took more than a few with him into that long good-by.

  Ben took a slug low in his left side, the slug traveling downward, bouncing off his hipbone, the force of it knocking him against a tree, stunning him. A concussion grenade slammed him into darkness.

  Ben was spared the sight of Pal taking a .45 slug through the head. He did not see Valerie torn apart by automatic rifle fire. He would be informed much later that Pal and Valerie’s children had run into the line of fire trying to get to him, and had been cut to bloody ribbons.

  Voltan died. Megan was taken alive and raped, then shot. Al, Abby… many, many more died. Lila walked in front of a Claymore and was blown into tiny bits. James Riverson helped carry Ben out of the forest and across the border, the big man walking and weeping. His Belle was dead, and so were their kids.

  By the time darkness fell on the now nonexistent government of the Tri-states, not many Rebels had escaped. Less than three thousand had made it out. But Badger and dozens more had escaped weeks before, and headed underground.

  The zero squads.

  TEN

  Senators Richards, Goode, Carey, and Williams were having a drink before their usual Thursday-night poker game in Richmond. They would never get around to playing poker, and it would be their last drink before death took them behind her misty curtain of sunless eternity. They all felt safe, knowing that three secret service agents were guarding them. The agents were there, but they were very dead, cut down by silenced .22 automatics.

  Williams jerked up his head, the fresh drink in his hand forgotten. “Did any of you hear anything?”

  Carey laughed. “Relax, Jimmy. You don’t really believe in those so-called zero squads, do you?”

  Sen. Jimmy Williams ran nervous fingers through thinning hair. He did not reply. Outside, a late-summer storm was building; heat lightning danced erratically and thunder rumbled across the sky, almost an ominous warning in cadence.

  Senator Goode leaned forward. “Jimmy, it’s been over three months since the Tri-states’ defeat. Ben Raines is dead. Eyewitnesses have reported it. If anything was going to happen, don’t you believe it would have occurred by now?”

  “No.” Williams spoke. “I don’t. We allowed the women and kids to be killed—slaughtered like animals. Just like we did the Indians. They’re going to get us. We’re dead men and don’t even know it.”

  Senator Richards looked up into the gloom of the darkened hallway. “Oh, no!” he shouted. “Oh, my God!”

  The senators looked first at their colleague, then into the faces of hate and revenge and death. Standing in the hallway stood two men and a woman. They held silenced automatics in their hands.

  Goode fell forward on his knees and began to pray. A self-professed “good Christian man,” Goode had been the first to vote for war against the Tri-states.

  Carey’s face turned shiny from sweat and a trickle of spit oozed from a corner of his mouth. He began to rub his hands together and lick at his lips.

  Richards dropped his drink on the carpeted floor. His eyes were wide and he urinated in his shorts.

  Only Williams remained calm. “I knew you people would come,” he said. “I told them to leave you alone. I was against fighting you.”

  “We know.” The woman spoke. “And because of that, you’ll live. And the Tri-states will live again, too. Remember that.”

  “Yes. Yes, I will.” Williams bobbed his head up and down.

  The automatics began to hum their dirges. Richards, Goode, and Carey jerked onto the floor and died. The assassination team left as quickly and quietly as they had arrived. They had a lot of work ahead of them.

  Williams sat for a long time, looking at the cooling bodies of his friends. His eyes grew wild and he soiled himself. The telephone rang and he ignored it. He began to giggle, childlike. The giggling changed to laughter and he howled his madness as blood vessels burst in his head. He fell to his knees on the floor and cried and prayed. A massive pain grew out of his chest—a huge, heavy, crushing weight. He screamed, his heart stopping its beating. He died.

  General Russell called for more coffee. He was working late in his office. A sergeant brought him a fresh pot, poured a cup, and opened a packet of sugar, stirring it in.

  “Will that be all, sir?”

  “Yes,” Russell said. “You may leave.” He tasted his coffee, added more sugar, and took another sip. He would be found the next morning, dead, his system full of poison.

  Dallas Valentine and the first lady, Fran Logan, lay moaning and thrashing on the bed, both of them reaching for the final pinnacle of climax. Neither of them heard the door swing open. They were enjoying mutual climax as the Rebel with the silenced submachine gun sprayed them with .45-caliber slugs, turning the silk sheets red with blood.

  The Rev. Palmer Falcreek answered his telephone. A voice said, “Let he that is without sin cast the first stone.”

  “What the hell did you say?” Falcreek said.

  “I said”—the voice rang in Falcreek’s ear—“open the drawer in the middle right of your desk, you semi-sanctimonious mother-fucker!”

  “How dare you speak to me like that!” Falcreek raged. He jerked open the desk drawer and half the house blew apart as the heavy charge was detonated.

  Senator Higley worked late in his office. The storm didn’t worry him and neither did the myth of the zero squads. He left his office at nine-thirty. Halfway down the steps of the Senate office building he sat down abruptly, twitched once, then slowly rolled down the steps, the hole between his eyes leaking blood and gray matter.

  Senator Pough stepped out of his porch for a breath of cool night air. He heard a thump and looked down. Between his feet, on the porch, lay a hissing white phosphorus grenade. Pough had only a few seconds to feel panic, attempt to run, and scream just once before the grenade exploded and seared him to the house.

  Rep. Carol Helger answered the donging of her apartment doorbell and took a twelve-inch bayonet through her chest. The young woman who shoved the heavy blade into her spat on the still-writhing body, left the blade in her, and quietly left the building.

  The zero squads were busy that stormy, revengeful night. Very busy. The final tally was thirty-one senators and seventy-four representatives dead. Twelve cabinet heads dead and the entire Joint Chiefs were also wiped out. A few zero squad members made it out of Richmond to rejoin the eastern-based Rebels. Most died in shootouts with the police. Only on
e zero squad member had not worked that night of terror. He slept soundly in a motel room three hundred miles from Richmond. He had only one person to kill.

  Badger Harbin was to kill the president of the United States.

  Richmond went into a panic. No one could possibly guess at the number of assassins roaming the streets, killing at random. Innocent men and women were killed by federal agents and police during raids on suspected Rebel sympathizers. Martial law was declared. The police were federalized. It was the beginning of America’s first true police state.

  President Logan smiled and leaned back in his leather chair. He was very pleased with the way things were going. Seven weeks since the awful assassinations, and the country was settling down. He had rid himself of a cheating wife and accomplished his life’s dream: he had an iron grip on the country. The previous night he had dreamed of being crowned king of America.

  Yes, Logan smiled, things were sailing right along. And, best of all, that damned Ben Raines was dead. That damned troublemaker was finally dead and through.

  Or was he? The president frowned at the thought. His agents swore that Raines was dead; swore they’d shot him and a young blonde woman who was with him. Said they saw them fall out there in Washington, up near the British Columbia border.

  “Damn it!” Logan swore. Why hadn’t they made more effort to retrieve the body and bring it back with them? Put the stinking, bullet-riddled carcass on public display, to show people that when the government says do something, by God this is what happens if you don’t follow orders.