Terror in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  “Lower the lifeboats!” Emil yelled to some of his people. “Abandon this tub. We’re going ashore with Rebet.”

  “May God have mercy on my soul,” Rebet muttered.

  “Get that equipment over the side!” Striganov roared like an angry bear. “The general is under heavy attack.” Striganov jumped over the side, holding onto the rope ladder. His boots missed the rung and he fell into the cold waters of the western edge of the English Channel. Luckily he was wearing a life vest and he popped to the surface, flailing his arms and cussing in Russian.

  One of his men tossed him rope and pulled him in. The young soldier could not get the grin off his face. He tried, but he could not wipe it clean.

  “You think it’s funny?” Georgi roared.

  “Yes, sir,” the Russian Rebel said honestly, and then burst out laughing.

  “Well ...” Georgi said, heaving himself into the boat. He lay on the deck of the lifeboat for a moment, then a grin cut his craggy features. “I guess it is, at that. Come on, son, we have a war to fight. Wet drawers and all,” he laughed.

  “Striganov just fell into the ocean,” Corrie told Ben, during a slight lull in the fighting.

  “Is he all right?”

  “Oh, yes, sir.”

  Ben shook his head. “Anything else I need to know?”

  “Emil’s ship is dead in the water. Rebet is taking his battalion ashore at Lizard Point. Ike’s orders.”

  “Who’s picking up Emil and his bunch?”

  “No one. Emil gave the orders to abandon ship and he’s joining Rebet’s battalion.”

  “God grant him the strength to maintain his sanity. You in contact with the jumpers?”

  “Still north of the airport, traveling as fast as they can. Some of them have commandeered bicycles and are pedaling their way in.”

  Ben ducked his head and laughed. The idea of heavily armed paratroopers riding into combat on a bicycle was funny to him.

  “They’re trying an end-around,” a Rebel called from Ben’s right. “Between warehouses at two o’clock.”

  “They’re in trouble,” Ben said.

  The words had just left his mouth when the Claymores blew and parts of street punks were slammed against the old wet walls of both warehouses.

  “This way!” the voice was barely audible over the screaming and moaning of the wounded. “Watch them mines. The rest of you, follow me.”

  He tripped a wire and one side of a warehouse blew up in a flash of fire and debris. Ben looked at Buddy.

  “I found a bag of fertilizer and several drums of gasoline,” his son explained. “I thought the fertilizer might be too old to work. I was wrong.”

  “How much gas was in those drums, boy?”

  “Fifty-five gallons in each, I suppose. They were full.”

  The old wood of the warehouse was burning brightly now, and the Rebels could clearly see dozens of bodies lying in unnaturally twisted positions.

  A dozen street punks rushed Ben’s position. An M-60 started belching out lead. The punks folded up and went down like dominoes.

  “Fall back!” someone shouted. “It’s the invasion. Jesus Christ, look at all them people in the bay. Back to the city, back to the city.”

  Ben turned around. Rebels from Four and Seven Battalions were storming ashore, climbing over old rusting cars and trucks and machinery.

  “God must be on our side,” Ben muttered. “Either that, or we’re dealing with the dumbest bunch of bastards on the face of the earth.”

  “The first of Rebet’s troops have landed and not a shot has been fired,” Corrie said. “They have encountered no resistance whatsoever. Dan’s teams are now engaged in a firefight with an unknown group.”

  West and Danjou came panting up to Ben’s position. “Where is all the resistance?” West asked, catching his breath.

  “It came and went,” Ben told him. “Corrie, advise our people to disarm all remaining Claymores they set. Danjou, West, have your men stay to this side until that is done, please. Buddy, take your Rat Team and Scouts and see what’s up ahead of us. And somebody clear out a building and make some coffee. We’ve got a toehold in England, people. But it’s a big damn island.”

  Two

  By morning, the entire dock area and several blocks all around it on all sides had been cleared. Not that there had been all that much to clear out. The only shot fired was when a very large rat — about the size of a well-fed housecat — ran across a Rebel’s boot in a dark, cobwebby, and musty warehouse and scared the crap out of him. The rat got shot.

  “I wonder how it got so large?” the Rebel questioned.

  “Probably by eating body parts thrown away by those damn creepies,” his buddy told him.

  “Barf!”

  The paratroopers had reached the edge of town and were setting up positions. And the street punks in Plymouth who had not thrown in with Butch and the others were scared.

  “Corrie,” Ben asked, “have you found the frequencies of the punks in this city?”

  “Yes, sir. Several of them. They’re a real smart bunch.” She said that with the sarcasm dripping. “With the most advanced communications equipment in the world at their fingertips, they’re using CB’s.”

  Ben grunted. He looked at the BRF commander who had joined them during the night, coming into the harbor by motor launch. He and his men were all tough-looking and handled their weapons in the seemingly casual way an expert does. “This is the way we do it, Drake,” Ben told him. “You might not like it, and I don’t particularly care whether you do or not. It works for us. We usually give the enemy one chance to surrender. After that, we don’t take prisoners. There have been exceptions, but not many. How do you want to play this?”

  The Englishman stared at Ben, knowing then that all the rumors about him were true. Ben Raines was a hard man. “It’s your show, General. If you can live with it, so can I.”

  Ben nodded his head. “Corrie, use your, ah, CB and contact whoever is in charge of the gangs.”

  “Standing by, sir,” she said, after only half a minute.

  Ben took the mic. “This is General Ben Raines. To whom am I speaking?”

  “My, my, ain’t you the proper one, now,” the jeering voice came out of the speaker. “To whom is I talkin’, huh? Well, you talkin’ to Ace. What’s on your mind, Mister Big-Shit General?”

  “I’m talking about whether you live or die, punk. And this is your only chance to surrender. Lay your guns on the floor, on the sidewalks, in the street, wherever you may be, and come walking out with your hands in the air. This is the only chance you are getting.”

  There were several moments of silence from the city. Ace finally came back on the air. “You gonna kill us all, General?”

  “Every goddamn one of you,” Ben said, enough ice in his voice to cause Drake to take a step back away from him.

  “Supposin’ we fight you and see that we can’t whip you, General? Can’t we pack it in then? I mean, we soldiers just like you, man.”

  Several Rebels laughed at that.

  “No, you’re not,” Ben told him. “You’re a bunch of no-good murderers, thieves, rapists, and God only knows what else. I have absolutely no use for any of you. I shouldn’t even offer you surrender terms. But I will, one time. And this is that time. Take it or leave it, punk.”

  “I ain’t no punk!” Ace screamed. “But I do run this city. So fuck you, Raines. Just fuck you, man. Fuck you!”

  “Fellow seems to have a rather limited vocabulary,” Buddy remarked.

  “He won’t have it long,” Ben replied. “Corrie, give the orders to take the city.”

  The gangs in the city were well armed, but they had no real knowledge of warfare, guerrilla, urban, or conventional. Ben Raines’ Rebels smashed into the city. Tanks rolled in first, with the Rebels following. The street gangs who controlled Plymouth took one look at what they faced and were horrified.

  “Jesus Christ, Ace!” a gang member yelled. “That’s a real fuc
kin’ army.”

  “So is we,” Ace replied. “We stand and fight.” He looked around him. “But not here. Fall back to the center of town.”

  Ace had just exited the building near the harbor area when an MBT, cannon lowered, blew the old home apart with HE.

  The creepies were the only ones to put up much of a fight. But there were few of them remaining in Plymouth. Most of them had slipped out hours before the invasion began, heading for London and Birmingham and other cities. They left their prisoners behind, after hosing them down with machine-gun fire. The members of the cannibalistic sect were the most vicious and utterly worthless bunch of people the Rebels had ever fought. The Rebels had tried to rehabilitate some of them and had yet to find one who would respond to treatment.

  Ben Raines had then given the orders: any creepie found would be shot on sight.

  The taking of Plymouth was the easiest any Rebel could remember. By nightfall of the first day, most of the gang members had fled the city, using alleys and tunnels dug or enlarged by the Believers, or by using escape routes the smarter ones had mapped out long ago.

  “They left their children behind,” the news was reported to Ben. “Dozens of them. The bastards and bitches just deserted their own kids.”

  Ben had expected that. He’d seen it too many times back in America to be shocked. “As we secure the countryside, we’ll find foster homes for them. Take them to that hospital Chase is cleaning out.” He shook his head. “It’s always the children and the old people that suffer the most in war. Seems like I’d be used to it by now.”

  By noon of the third day of the invasion, Plymouth was declared secure. “Incredible,” Striganov said.

  Ben’s Rebels were reporting from all over the surrounding countryside that thugs and punks and other assorted human crud were surrendering in large numbers; the Rebels were taking so many prisoners it wasn’t uncommon to see one Rebel, wearing an expression of disbelief, walking along behind two dozen prisoners with their hands on their heads.

  Ben ordered all prisoners to be turned over to the British Resistance Forces.

  “You try them,” Ben told the commander of the BRF. “You do what you want to with them. But 1 tell you this much right now: The Rebels are arming the general public. And we’re arming them well. Don’t even entertain the thought that society will return to what it used to be here, or anywhere else the Rebels have been. We’re not expending time and effort in building prisons, and I’ve a hunch the good people of England will follow our lead. I don’t want to have to come back here in any other capacity except as a visitor seeing the sights.”

  “You don’t believe in giving a person a second chance, General?” a woman asked.

  “That depends on the crime, lady.”

  Rebels had secured several smaller coastline towns on the westernmost tip of Wales, and Ben shifted two battalions over to that section of the country, one of them Thermopolis and his Eight Battalion, now that he was no longer needed to captain the big ships.

  If the hardworking and tough people of Wales had had access to firearms, the thugs and punks and creeps would never have taken that section of the country. But England had long had very restrictive guns laws — decades before the Great War — and its citizens never had a chance when the criminals made their move. Politicians never seemed to learn that criminals paid absolutely no attention to gun laws.

  The Rebels in and around Plymouth began the awesome job of clearing out the countryside and pushing out of Cornwall and into Devon County.

  “No stinking damn politician will ever take my guns again, General,” an elderly farmer told Ben, after he had stopped to chat with the man. “By God, they’ll have to kill me to do it.”

  “You can bet that when some order is restored, someone will sure try,” Ben replied.

  “They’ll rot in the ground shortly after they do,” the man said grimly.

  “The next town up is infested with human vermin,” the man’s wife said. “Their behavior is disgusting.”

  “We have just the cure for lice, ma’am,” Ben told her. “We’ve found they respond well to lead.”

  She laughed, gave him a piece of pie, and wished him luck.

  “Says here,” Beth said, reading from a tattered old tourist guide as they rolled up the road, “that the next town on this highway has good food and hospitality.”

  “Sounds delightful,” Cooper said. “You suppose they’ll roll out the red carpet for us, General?”

  “Somehow, I rather doubt it.”

  “Buddy says hold the column and for us to come on up,” Corrie said. “He’s on the outskirts of the town now. The gang holding the town is going to fight.”

  “Why does he want me up there? Tell him to take the damn town.”

  Corrie relayed the order and listened for a moment. “The gang leader has marched the citizens out and is hiding behind them. People of all ages, including young children and babies.”

  Ben muttered a few highly uncomplimentary phrases about thugs in general. “Corrie, ask Buddy if there is a back door to this town.”

  “That’s ten-four, sir. Rebels could work their way into the town through the woods and slip in that way.”

  “How far off this road?”

  “Just off this road. Take a road running straight back west just after crossing a bridge. We’ll see a stone fence running alongside for extra concealment.”

  Ben smiled. “Tell my son to keep these goons busy with conversation. Let’s go, Coop. Corrie, tell my bodyguards to lag behind a good quarter mile. When we stop, they stop. No tanks. That’s a direct order. I want to check out the woods and the stone fence.”

  They parked on the low side of a small hill and got out silently, being careful not to bang any doors. They squatted down behind some thick brush and inspected the scene. They could see no one posted at the rear of the town.

  “Surely they wouldn’t be that stupid,” Ben muttered.

  He carefully inspected the area through binoculars and could see no sign of life.

  “Corrie, tell the platoon to come up on foot, fast and silent. Stay in the ditch, close to the brush.”

  Ballard, the platoon leader, was the first at Ben’s side.

  “Lieutenant, we’re going in the back door,” Ben told him. “Nice and quiet.” He pointed a finger at him. “Your people, follow my people. Let’s go, gang.”

  “I ain’t gonna tell you this but one more time, dude,” the thug in charge of the town told Buddy. “Carry your funky ass on away from here.”

  “You’re not English, are you?” Buddy asked.

  “No, I ain’t. Now move, ‘fore I start killin’ these folks here. They belong to me, I can do what I want to with them.”

  “They’re your slaves?”

  “That’s right. Now carry your ass like I told you, man.”

  Ben and his people had left the woods and were now in the town, working their way toward the pileup of people near the junction. Many of the homes they passed had bullet-holes in them, windows gone and doors missing. This town had been the center of many battles over the years.

  “Across the street,” Ben whispered. “Just to the left of that stone cottage. See the two men?”

  “I see them,” Ballard said. He motioned for two Rebels to go.

  The other Rebels waited while the pair worked their way across the street and got into position for a silent shoot or a throat cutting — whichever seemed more appropriate. The two Rebels Ballard had sent carried silenced pistols for close-in work.

  A few moments passed before Corrie received the word. “It’s all clear over there, General. They say we can cross over now.”

  In teams of three and four, the Rebels crossed the littered street at a run. They passed by the bodies of the thugs, each with a tiny hole in his head from silenced .22 caliber auto-loading pistols.

  “Hey, slick,” the gang leader said to Buddy. “Are you retarded or something? I told you carry your ass on away from here. Are you nuts? You w
anna die?”

  “We all have to die sometime,” Buddy told him. He was inwardly seething with rage at the sight of the ragged and bruised and starving children and old people. He kept his composure only with immense effort.

  Buddy estimated about one hundred male gang members and probably fifty to seventy-five female members, all heavily armed. The women were some of the trashiest- and sluttiest-looking females Buddy had seen so far.

  Buddy picked up movement far behind and on either side of the gang, all spread out on the road and on both sides of the junction. Rebels, silently working their way toward the crossroads, led, of course, by his father.

  Buddy’s Rat Team was spread out left and right of him.

  “Man,” the gang leader said. “I’m gettin’ tired of jackin’ around with you. I’m fixin’ to start shootin’ these slaves if you and them others don’t carry your asses on away from here. You got ten seconds to move.” He lifted his pistol and pointed it at the head of a weeping young girl.

  “All right!” Buddy said. “We’re backing off. Let’s go, team.”

  As he spoke, Ben and his platoon were drawing closer.

  “And I mean get totally out of sight and leave me and mine the hell alone in this town,” the punk shouted.

  “I assure you,” Buddy said, “that in a few minutes, you will never be disturbed again. And that’s a promise.”

  One of the female gang members grabbed at her crotch and hunched her hips at Buddy as she grinned an invitation.

  “You have to be joking,” Buddy muttered, as he and his team began slowly backing up.

  Ben and his people were almost in position. If only one gang member cut his eyes left or right, or looked behind him, the ambush would be compromised and a lot of civilians would be dead. Even if they didn’t, Buddy knew that several of the slaves would surely be cut down by gunfire, some even by friendly fire.

  “You ain’t movin’ very fast,” the gang leader said. “Shove off, prick.”

  “We’re surrounded!” a punk yelled, whirling around and spotting the Rebels on all sides.

  “Hit the ground!” Buddy yelled at the slaves, as a Rebel bullet punched a hole through the head of the gang leader.