Fury in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  It was door-to-door and building-to-building fighting, with small arms and grenades, the Rebels offering no mercy or pity to the punks as they staggered out of hiding places, tears streaming down their faces from the gas. The Rebels took no prisoners as they advanced. Knowing this, many of the punks ran from the relentless advance. Ben Raines’s philosophy of war was simple. We will give you one chance to surrender. If you do not take it at the time it is offered, you will die. There will be no second chances. It was a hard philosophy, enforced by hard men and women, in a hard and harsh time on earth.

  The Rebels brought up flamethrowers, torching as they advanced, the flame-tossers adding a new element of fear among the punks.

  Ben stepped into a doorway and came face to face with a street punk dressed all in white, from his funky tennis shoes to the white headband.

  He screamed obscenities at Ben.

  Ben lifted the muzzle of his M-14 and added a touch of red to the natty outfit.

  Automatic-rifle fire knocked out splinters of wood from the old building, the splinters bloodying Ben’s face. He wiped the blood away and ran into the building. He cut to one side and hit the floor rolling just as a woman dressed in a bright yellow shirt cut loose with an AK-47.

  “Bastard!” she screamed at him, the AK bucking and jumping in her hands.

  Jersey appeared in the doorway and stitched the woman with a burst from her M-16, then jumped and rolled inside just as Ben was getting to his knees, his Thunder Lizard howling, the muzzle pointed at a knot of men and women all jammed up in a doorway leading to the outside.

  Ben slapped in a fresh clip and cleared the logjam, the .308 slugs knocking several of the group outside and the rest of them spinning to the floor, their blood staining the dirty floor and the walls.

  Beth and Cooper ran into the house, followed by Corrie and Linda.

  “Hail, hail, the gang’s all here,” Ben called cheerfully, his voice muffled through the gas mask. He winked at Linda.

  “The man has a sense of humor,” Linda said, just as a burst of lead sent them all belly-down on the floor. She crawled to a window, Corrie right behind her, and between the two of them filled the smoky air with lead and double-ought buckshot and some very unladylike cussing.

  “Tsk, tsk,” Ben said.

  Linda and Corrie turned to look at him and he shut up.

  A grenade came sailing through a shattered window and bounced along the floor, sending everybody jumping for whatever cover they could find.

  In Ben’s case, no cover. He was squatting in the center of the big room.

  Jersey threw herself on the grenade, covering it with her body. “Get down, General!” she screamed.

  FOURTEEN

  Ben froze, watching as Jersey closed her eyes and move her lips in silent prayer.

  Five seconds took ten minutes to tick by. “It’s a dud, Jersey,” Ben called. “Throw yourself away from it as far as you can.”

  “I’m too scared to move, General.”

  “Do it, Jersey. Now!”

  She hurled herself from the grenade, rolling on the floor, and Cooper grabbed her, pulling her away.

  “Leave it alone, General!” Dan’s voice came sharp from the doorway. “Just stay right where you are.” He walked to the grenade, picked it up, and threw it out a window. It bounced off a building, hit the alleyway, and blew. “Sometimes they do that,” the Englishman said. “Unpredictable little buggers.”

  Ben got up and walked over to Jersey, putting his arms around her, holding her close. She was still trembling. “What can I say, Jersey?”

  She pulled back and grinned up at him. “Well, sir, you could give me a raise.”

  And amid the sounds of the battle raging outside, laughter rolled from the ground floor.

  From Ike’s position on the west side of west Los Angeles, to the mercenary’s position on the east side of the combat area, the Rebels no longer felt they were trapped, even though they were, in a manner of speaking.

  The street punks and the creepies had not only been thrown back, they had suffered terrible casualties during the failed assault. The dead were scooped up and placed in buildings, then the buildings set on fire.

  The Rebels resumed their slow, block-by-block taking of the last major bastion of lawlessness and cannibalism and slavery in the lower forty-eight.

  Ike and his people were clearing and burning the west side of West Los Angeles, pushing up to the San Diego Freeway and driving hard and relentlessly toward L.A. proper.

  Therm, Ben, and Cecil began slowly pushing the punks and the creepies who fought with them south, while Georgi and West linked up and began their slow advance toward the sea. The Rebels who had been on Santa Catalina Island were now, at Ben’s orders, linked up with West.

  Four long and bloody days after the failed assault by the street punks, Ben told his people to stand down for twenty-four hours and catch their breaths.

  While to the uninitiated it might seem premature, Ben knew his Rebels now had the upper hand and were going to win this fight. The street punks had thrown everything they had at the Rebels, and the Rebels had held and were now once more advancing. The fight was a long way from being over. Weeks of bloody work still lay ahead of the Rebels. But the street punks were going to lose. Ben suspected that even they knew it.

  Ben had relaxed the rules concerning prisoners, and had allowed his people to take alive those punks who had come staggering and weeping out of the burning and smoking rubble of war. They were transported north, into the forests and canyons north of the city, and were guarded by the Woods Children. As slaves and prisoners were liberated by the Rebels, trials were held. Any punk who was identified as having killed in cold blood, raped, or tortured was put to death.

  Ben had heard horror stories coming out of what was called the zone, and wanted a meeting of his commanders. He had some news for them.

  Ike jumped straight out of his chair, yelling. “You’re gonna do what? Goddamnit, Ben, that’s the dumbest damn thing I ever heard you propose.”

  Ben sat calmly. He had anticipated the uproar and was ready for it.

  “I absolutely forbid it,” Cecil said, shaking his head. “No. No. Under no circumstances, no! Reckless on your part and just too dangerous.”

  The mercenary, West, said, “General, I believe that would be very irresponsible on your part. I’m against it.”

  Therm said nothing because nothing Ben Raines ever did surprised him.

  “Stupid!” Doctor Chase said. “Just plain stupid. But I’m not surprised that you’d come up with something this half-cocked.”

  “I might go along with it only if I could accompany you,” Dan said.

  “You’ll be in command of my section here,” Ben told him. “And Cecil will be in command overall.”

  The yelling started anew.

  Ben poured another cup of coffee, petted Smoot, who was laying on the desk, and waited it out.

  “Ridiculous!” General Georgi Striganov snorted his disapproval. “If anyone at all goes, it should be me.”

  “I’ll take two companies, a complement of armor, and Buddy and his Rat Team. We’ll pull out in twenty-four hours.”

  “You will, by God, take a platoon of my Scouts!” Dan stood up. “And that is something I insist upon, General.”

  Ben knew to argue with the Englishmen, who was as hardheaded as Ben was, would be futile. He nodded his head in agreement. “All right, Dan. Fine.”

  Ben was going out into the foreboding and mysterious area called the zone.

  “I’ll put together a medical team for you,” Chase said, knowing the brief argument was over. Once Ben made up his mind, there was no turning him around.

  “Well, shit!” Ike said, disgust in his voice. “I’ll order flyovers to start immediately.”

  Ben nixed that. “Keep the planes on the ground,” he said, scratching Smoot behind the ears. The husky rolled over on her back and grumbled in contentment. “We don’t know whether or not the warlords out there
have rockets capable of bringing a plane down. Let’s don’t risk it.”

  “Ben,” Georgi said, trying one more time. “I wish you would reconsider. That area called the zone is hundreds and hundreds of square miles of hostile territory. None of us really knows what is out there.”

  “That’s why I’m going,” Ben replied. “To find out. We do know that there are slave and breeding farms out there, and I’m going to put a stop to them. It’s something that will have to be done at some point in this campaign, so let’s get it done now. Dan will take over for me here. Cecil is Forces Commander. That’s it, people.”

  The unit commanders filed out, to a person bitching and grumbling and cussing, but all knowing there was no point in arguing further with Ben.

  Ben smiled at Linda. “Well, how about it? Ready for a little adventure?”

  She returned the smile. “Oh, sure, Ben. I mean, it’s been so damned dull around here.”

  Ben walked the line, inspecting his command just moments before pullout. Five main battle tanks, five Dusters, five M113’s, five LAV-25 Piranhas. A line of tankers and supply trucks. Two full companies of Rebels, a platoon of Dan’s Scouts, and Buddy’s Rat Team.

  It was a lot more personnel and equipment than Ben wanted to take with him, but it was better than having to put up with several days of argument from the others. And Ben also knew that his days of just taking off and lone-wolfing it were gone. Too many people depended on him; he had too many decisions to make. This was about the closest that he was going to come to being a lone wolf in search of action.

  “The first good-sized town we come to,” Ben told Dan, “I’ll secure an airstrip for supply planes. Providing there are no surface-to-air missiles out there. I have a hunch we’re going to be taking a lot of people out of the zone. And they are not going to be in very good shape.”

  “You know that I should be leading this expedition,” Dan said, trying one more time.

  Ben smiled and ignored the statement. “Keep the home fires burning and the feet of the punks in the flames, Dan. I’ll be in radio contact. Good luck.”

  “Good luck to you, sir.”

  “Mount up!” Ben yelled. “Let’s go.”

  The column headed north, driving through all the still-smoking devastation they had earlier wrought. They cut east until they found a winding two-lane highway that ran through the San Gabriel Mountains. The Rebels bivouacked that evening in the mountains, and were all both pleased and somewhat spiritually moved at the serenity of their surroundings, untouched by all the hideousness and suffering that lay only a few miles to the south.

  At dawn, they were rolling eastward, and soon picked up Interstate 40.

  “How far do we take it, General?” Cooper asked.

  “All the way to Needles, Coop. We’ll stop at every town and look it over. Beth, did the vehicles’ water tanker fill up last night at that stream?”

  “Yes, sir. Filled to capacity.”

  “That’s good. Because it’s about to get dry up ahead.”

  Bone dry. “Like in a desert,” was Jersey’s comment about the country they were passing through.

  Barstow had been destroyed. Little remained of it except for burned-out buildings, and the walls of those structures were pockmarked with old bullet scars.

  Barstow had been a thriving community of nearly twenty thousand. Now there were no signs of life.

  “Hell of a battle fought here,” Cooper remarked. “Several years ago, I’d say.”

  The convoy had stopped in the center of the burned-out town. “Scouts out,” Ben ordered. “Look it over.”

  No signs of human habitation, they reported back.

  The convoy rolled on.

  There was nothing left worth salvaging in the tiny towns that had once existed alongside the Interstate. They had all been destroyed and picked over countless times. Carrion birds and rats had picked the human skeletons clean of flesh, leaving the bones to bleach in the sun and be eventually scattered by the desert winds. The Rebels inspected the towns and then rolled on. They made a very dry camp at the southern edge of the Bristol Mountains. Since leaving the northern edge of the sprawling city of L.A., none of them had seen any sign of a living human being. They had seen the fleeting shapes of coyotes darting, seen tracks of wolves once more returning to their rightful place in the scheme of things, and had heard the screams of pumas at night. But no signs of humans.

  “It’s eerie,” Linda said over a second cup of coffee as they all sat around a campfire. “It’s like we were suddenly transported to a new world, void of life.”

  “And technically,” Buddy said, warming his hands over the fire, for the nights were cool, “we’re not even in what is referred to as the zone.”

  “I believe that this is called a no-man’s-land,” Ben said. “And I can certainly see why.”

  “Tomorrow, Father?” Buddy asked.

  “We’ll have us a look at Needles, and then cut south, on Highway 95. We’ll take that down to Blythe, and from there we’ll head on down to Yuma. From Yuma to Calexico. There, we’ll have to figure out a route.”

  “Do we have any intelligence on what we might find there?” a Rebel asked.

  “Only what some prisoners have told us, and how much of that we can believe is up for grabs,” Ben said. “Outlaws, punks, thugs, drifters, slavers, murderers, human crud of the worst sort. If you can hang a name on the dregs of society, you’ll find them where we’re going.”

  “And we are going straight in, right, General?” Beth asked.

  “That’s right.” Ben smiled at her. “We’ll just call ourselves . . . ah, well, missionaries. Going on our way spreading the good word.”

  Buddy returned his father’s smile. “Are you going to give us bibles to pass out, Father?”

  “You already have them, boy. They’re just in a slightly different form than the King James version.”

  Buddy held up his old Thompson.

  “That’s it, son. Yea, verily, and all that. Amen.”

  “Somebody drag them out of the road and burn the bodies,” Ben said, as he looked down at the dead outlaws who had tried to block their entrance into Needles. “Buddy, take a couple of tanks and a company and secure the town, please. We know they have prisoners in there, so try to take them alive. Corrie, get me Ike or Cecil on the horn.”

  After a moment, Corrie said, “Cecil is out of pocket. Ike is on scramble.”

  “Yo, Ben.” Ike’s voice came out of the speaker. The sounds of artillery booming in the background was strong. “What’s your twenty, Eagle?”

  “Needles. The town’s got some crud in it and we believe they’re holding prisoners. We’ll take it and move on. How’s it going on your end?”

  “Moving right along, Eagle. We’re advancing three or four blocks a day, pushing the punks and the creepies south. Ben, you might find yourself in a very bad position if you advance further west than Calexico.”

  “I know. But I haven’t made up my mind what we’re going to do yet. We’ll secure the airstrip at Blythe and bump you from there. Eagle out.”

  Ben handed the mike to Corrie and listened as a short battle raged within the shattered remains of the small town. Buddy returned, escorting a band of prisoners.

  “I knew it!” a woman hollered, as she came within sight of Ben. “I done tol’ you and tol’ you it had to be him. I tol’ you we all ought to run.”

  “Shut up,” a man said.

  “Civilians?” Ben looked at Buddy.

  “They killed all the prisoners before we could get to them, Father,” his son told him. “They just lined them up and shot them.”

  “Why would they do that?” Linda asked.

  “To keep them from talking, telling us all the horrors these crud have put them through.” Ben faced the man who had told the women to shut up. “You — what can we expect in Blythe?”

  The man spat on the ground. “Screw you, asshole!”

  Ben butt-stroked him with the M-14, knocking the outlaw to
the ground. Ben placed the muzzle of the rifle against the man’s forehead. “I am accustomed to having my questions answered in a civil manner, punk. Now do so.”

  The outlaw with the busted and bloody mouth spat out broken teeth and lay on the ground, looking up at Ben. Fear crept into his eyes. He had known for years that Ben Raines and the Rebels would someday come; had known for years that he should change his ways and stop his career of lawlessness. And now he knew it was too late. His guts knotted in fear as he realized that death lay laughing at him just around a dark corner.

  “I’ll be good,” he mumbled. “I promise that I’ll be good. I swear it!”

  The hard eyes of Ben did not change. Contempt for the outlaw touched his face briefly. “You’ll be good only as long as the Rebels stay around. So let’s don’t kid each other. You can live three more minutes, or you can die right now. It’s up to you. What’s in Blythe?”

  The outlaw was shaking in fright. He used to think it funny when his prisoners trembled in fear, crying and begging for their lives. Now he could not find a single amusing thing about it as he pissed his dirty underwear. “You don’t strike a very good deal a-tall, General.”

  “I don’t make deals with punks,” Ben told him. “It’s not a good practice. Speak your piece.”

  “Fuck you!”

  Ben shot him. He walked over to another man. The man dropped to his knees and began praying. He prayed for forgiveness for all the women he’d raped and sodomized. The men he’d tortured and enslaved. The children he’d sexually abused. Jersey listened to him and spat on the ground.

  “What’s in Blythe?” Ben asked, when the punk paused to catch his breath.

  “Texas Jim!” the man screamed, his spittle spraying Ben’s trousers. “Jesus God Almighty! You ain’t got no right to do this. We human bein’s. I’ll admit we done wrong, but give us a break. I got constitutional rights, General. I want to see a judge. I want me a lawyer. I got rights under the Geneva Convention. I got —”