Fury in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  “Well, Jersey, what happens to those people?”

  “Oh, they hang around the fringes of the outposts, for safety. But they’re very careful what they say around our people. I think you’re beginning to see that Rebels don’t take a lot of crap from people.”

  “We don’t claim to be one-hundred-percent right,” Corrie said. “And we do try awfully hard to be as fair as we can toward anybody who will just try — just a little bit — to work with us. But we’re the only game in town that’s working toward restoring this nation. There are a few things that cut across our grain that we will tolerate, and a lot we won’t.” She smiled and patted Linda on the shoulder. “Relax, you’re fitting in like a glove.”

  They walked away to join Ben, and Buddy strolled over to Linda. “Getting force-fed a little Rebel doctrine, Linda?”

  “Oh, yes. And I find some of it appalling.”

  “Dad says that what we’re doing certainly would be declared illegal — if the nation were as it was before the Great War. But from what I can remember and from what I read, America was falling apart back then. Lawlessness, drugs, illiteracy, misplaced values, lack of respect for the rights of law-abiding people, no faith in the elected leaders . . . it all sounds pretty dismal to me.”

  “But . . .” Linda started to argue. She stopped. She found she really had no argument to offer; everything Buddy had said was true.

  The ruggedly handsome and muscular young man, with a bandana around his forehead and holding the old .45-caliber Thompson machine gun, stood smiling at her, waiting.

  “Conditions will never be as they were before the Great War, Linda,” he said. “My father will never permit that to happen. Never.”

  “And if, God forbid, something were to happen to him?”

  “We’ll all die, Linda. Eventually. Even Ben Raines. When that happens, someone will step in and take over.”

  “Who?”

  Buddy shrugged. “Cecil, Ike, Georgi Striganov, West, me, Tina . . . who knows? Thermopolis, maybe.” He smiled at her smile. “Don’t laugh. It’s certainly possible.”

  “But not very probable.”

  “True.”

  She stared at the young man for a moment, then tried another smile. “What now, Buddy?”

  “We’re waiting to see if any punks tried the border, and what happened. Then we’re going in and take San Diego.”

  “But we don’t have any artillery rounds!”

  “That’s right. We do this the old-fashioned way, house to house.”

  Ben left Ike, Cecil, Georgi, and Seven Battalion in the Los Angeles area. He pulled the rest of his command down to San Diego, along with Thermopolis, Dan, and Eight Battalion. They gathered on the northern edge of the city.

  “General Payon’s people stacked up the punks along the border,” Ben told his commanders. “Those who tried to cross over, that is. We let a lot of them slip through, heading east, and a lot of them broke past the northern perimeters. We’ll meet them again some day. They’re gathering somewhere, bet on that. Many of them are still in the city. We may be out of artillery rounds, but we sure as hell have plenty of rounds for our other weapons, including mortars. And Cecil and Ike and Georgi have some nasty surprises in store for them.

  “Now then, let’s get to our jobs down here. West, your battalion is to take I-5 down to I-8, and anything to the west of it. I-8 is the stopping point for us, for the time being. I’ll take I-805 and anything to the west of that. Therm, take 163 and everything west of that to my sector. We’ll link up at the crossroads, here.” He pointed it out on the map. “Eight Battalion will take I-15 and everything west of that over to Therm’s section. Take this airport here, Montgomery Field. We’ll use that to be resupplied. Dan, I want you and your people roaming around out here between Mission Gorge Road and the Alvarado Freeway. Before we do anything, Buddy and his Rat Team are roaming around now, grabbing some prisoners. We’ll see what we’ll be facing in a few hours.”

  “Everything that could make it in from the zone,” Buddy reported. “Ten thousand or so, the dregs of the earth.”

  “Dregs they may be,” Ben said. “But are they hostile?”

  Linda looked at him, dreading what she had to say, but knowing it had to be said. She had personally seen to the blood work of the prisoners Buddy had brought in. “They’re carriers,” she said softly.

  Ben sat down on the edge of a table in a farmhouse that he was using as a CP. “We’ve taken some of those prisoner in the L.A. area,” he reminded her.

  “We don’t have them anymore, Ben,” Dan stated.

  “What do you mean, Dan?”

  “The Woods Children solved that problem.”

  They were all surprised when Ben walked to a small suitcase and took out a bottle of whiskey. He poured two fingers into a glass and drank it neat. He cleared his throat, gently placed the glass on a bureau, and faced the group.

  “Do you mean to tell me that Ike and Cecil allowed the Woods Children to take those prisoners out and kill them?”

  “They were a plague upon the land,” Thermopolis said, his words soft. “A plague that if not checked would have eventually killed us all.”

  “Well now,” Ben said, sitting back down. “Let me digest those words from the world’s oldest hippie.” They waited while Ben rolled a cigarette and fired it off. “I thought life was oh-so-precious to you, Therm?”

  “Goddamnit, Ben!” Therm flared. “Life is precious to me. Rosebud’s life, my life, my friends’ lives, even your life, you hardheaded son of a bitch! There is no vaccine for what they carry. Chase had discovered that a certain virus that some of them are carrying might — might — be airborne. He’s sent that back to Base Camp One for further testing. This goes against everything I believe in, Ben, so just get off my ass about it, will you?”

  Ben smiled. “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.”

  “Yeah! Very goddamn funny.”

  “Corrie,” Ben said. “Contact General Payon. Advise him of this . . . disease. Tell him that he has my permission to cross over the border and sweep the zone. Advise him to be very careful.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Buddy, bring in a prisoner, please.”

  The man was a burly specimen, but his color was bad, and he had a racking cough. The normally white of his eyes was a muddy color. He stared defiantly at Ben.

  “My name is Ben Raines. What’s yours?”

  “I’m known as Eightball.”

  “Do you have a proper name?”

  “Why? You gonna carve it on my headstone?”

  “Probably not, since we usually shoot the prisoners and burn the bodies.”

  That shook Eightball, right down to his shoes. “Ah . . . well, I might be able to help you, General. What is it you want to know?”

  “What are we going to find in San Diego?”

  Eightball chuckled, but it held no humor. “Pimps, whores, dopers, warlords, outlaws, street gangs, cannibals. You name it, and you’ll find it in the city.”

  “You must like that kind of life.”

  Eightball shrugged. “Beats the hell outta joinin’ up with you people and havin’ to work.”

  “That’s all there is in the city?” Ben asked.

  “That’s it. You done run everybody outta the zone and the no-man’s-land. I ’spect them goddamn greasers south of the border will be comin’ up to join you ’fore long.”

  “You’re a very sick man, Eightball. Are you aware of that?”

  “I knew somethin’ was wrong with me. Cain’t find no medicine to help me neither. Lots of sickness in the city. Folks dyin’ ever’ time you turn around.”

  “How do you dispose of the bodies?”

  “Haul ’em out to the dump. Rats eat them. I seen rats out there big as dogs.”

  Ben closed his eyes and silently cursed. He opened his eyes and pointed to the wall map. “Where is this dump?”

  “South of Spring Valley. Just north of the old reservoir.”

  “Do yo
u still get water from that reservoir?”

  “Sure.”

  “Get the planes up,” Ben ordered. “Napalm that entire area. Blanket it with fire. Advise General Payon of this.”

  Ben was silent for a moment. “When you’ve done that, Corrie, advise Doctor Chase of this development.” He turned his attentions to Eightball. “How well are the people armed, Eightball?”

  The man sighed. What the hell, he thought, making up his mind. I ain’t got nothin’ to lose now no ways, and I sure don’t owe nobody nothin’ in the city. “Rifles, pistols, shotguns, grenades. Machine guns. No artillery of any kind. They’s some there, but don’t nobody know how to work the damn things. Got plenty of rounds for them on all the old military bases, though.”

  They all smiled at that news.

  “Slaves?” Ben asked. “Prisoners?”

  “Not many. Most of them was turned loose out in the zone as the folks was comin’ into the city. They just was more trouble than they was worth.”

  “You’re a middle-aged man, Eightball. What did you do before the Great War?”

  Eightball shrugged. “Whatever I wanted to. Spent about half my life in prison.” He lifted his eyes to stare at Ben. “And I don’t need no goddamn sermon. I wouldn’t change much.”

  “What would you change?”

  The man grinned, exposing blackened and yellowing stumps of rotting teeth. “I’d kill them people I robbed so’s they couldn’t testify agin me in court and put me in the bucket.”

  “Get,” him out of here,” Ben ordered.

  The street punks in the rubble of Los Angeles tried to break through just after dark. The Rebels had placed sound-sensors in those areas that seemed the most likely escape routes and when the alarm was triggered, flares went up, catching the punks trying to bust out.

  Heavy machine-gun fire raked the harshly lighted night and mortar crews pounded the smoking ashes with HE rounds. Booby traps ripped the night, the Claymores turning flesh and bone into bloody rags. The punks hit dark trip-wires and had about two seconds to contemplate where they had gone wrong and perhaps say a silent prayer for forgiveness. Then their world went dark. About a third of the punks make it past Rebel-held territory and headed north. About ten percent of those who broke free silently vowed to change their ways and go straight. They did not want to ever again incur the wrath of the Rebels.

  The slithering shapes of the Believers were the easier for the Rebels to spot, and they were the most hated. Rebel snipers, their high-powered rifles equipped with night scopes, relentlessly and savagely picked them off as the cannibals tried to break free of their smoking prison that had once been known as the City of the Angels.

  “He’s a-comin’ right up alongside 405,” a very scared punk told Cecil. “Leroy knows you and him is brothers, so he’s countin’ on you to let him pass.”

  Cecil looked startled. “Brothers!” he said. “That misbegotten, ignorant bag of shit actually thinks that because we are of the same race I would let him go?”

  “Yes, sir. I reckon he made a mistake, din he?”

  “Yes,” Cecil replied. “I reckon he did.” He turned to his XO. “Let him come on. I’ll be down by 405.”

  “Sir,” the XO said. That’s . . .”

  “. . . all,” Cecil finished with a frosty look. “Take command here.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  Cecil picked up his M-16 and walked out of the room and to a waiting vehicle. He could not help but notice as a full company of Rebels, in deuce-and-a-halfs and armor, fell in behind him. Like Ben, he had grown used to it.

  “A convoy of cars and trucks coming up north on La Brea, General,” his radio operator told him. “Headlights on like they know they’re not going to be stopped.”

  “They’re in for a very large surprise,” Cecil said. “Is that them up ahead?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Pull over.” Cecil got out and waved his troops into position in the rubble of the area. Cecil moved over into the shadows. “Give that lead vehicle some .50-caliber juice in the radiator,” he ordered.

  A hastily set up machine gun yammered for a couple of seconds. Both headlights were knocked out of the truck and steam hissed from a shattered radiator. Men piled out of the cab and out of the bed of the truck. Those in the vehicles behind the crippled truck bailed out and sought cover.

  “Hey!” Leroy called out, crouching behind a pile of bricks. “Is y’all troops of the African-American’s command?”

  “African-American?” A young sergeant looked at Cecil. “Is he talking about you, sir?”

  “Yes, Smith. So if we all followed that ancestral nonsense, you would be English-American. Swenson would be, probably, Swedish-American. Mac would be Irish-American, and so on and so forth until it became mind-boggling with its complications. Can you imagine writing a book with a dozen nationalities involved? The writer would spend half his or her time typing words that had nothing at all to do with the plot. Not to mention having to read the dreary mess.”

  “Hey, Bro!” Leroy called. “Brother General! Is you there?”

  “Brother General,” Cecil mused. “Now there is one for the record.” He cleared his throat and yelled, “This is General Jefferys. And I am not your brother, thank God.”

  “Course you is, man. We brothers. We got a lot in common,” Leroy yelled.

  Cecil, total disgust in his voice, lifted the bullhorn a Rebel handed him. “You and I, idiot, have absolutely nothing at all in common.”

  “Huh! Shore we do, man — we brothers. Let me pass on through, brother.”

  “Just the thought of that biological impossibility makes me nauseous, Leroy.”

  “You an uppity motherfucker, ain’t you, General?”

  Cecil smiled. “No, I don’t think so. But I know what you are.”

  “Why don’t you tell me then, Uncle Tom.”

  “I shall. Right before I kill you.”

  Leroy started hollering and cussing. Cecil turned to an aide. “Mortar crews in place and grenade launchers ready?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Cream them.”

  The early evening was shattered by the howling of rockets and the exploding of mortar rounds. Machine guns yammered and snarled. The vehicles of the street punks exploded and the flames lit up the ruined buildings on either side of the battleground. Street punks tried to run, but Rebels with flares were ready for them. The flares were shot into the air, the brilliant harshness illuminating the punks. The Rebels cut them down.

  Cecil called for a cease-fire. The sounds of moaning filled the smoky air.

  “This is the way we’re going to finish it,” Cecil said. “Order all units forward. Search and destroy. All units into the city. Now!”

  Cecil walked out onto the bloody battleground, searching for Leroy. He found him lying on his back, both hands holding his bullet-punctured belly.

  Leroy cursed him. “You a traitor to your kind, Tom!” he spat at Cecil.

  “One of us is, that’s for sure, and I think we both know who that person is.”

  “You jive motherfucker!”

  Cecil was not by nature a mean or cruel person. The son of a psychiatrist and a college professor, he’d spent his formative years listening to Brahms and Mozart at home, and soul music in the streets. He was highly educated, and had never run into much prejudice from educated people of any race. He was an ex-Green Beret officer who’d joined the army to see some action and, as he put it, “got shot in the ass in Laos.”

  He tried very hard to understand people like Leroy, but he was the first to admit that he could not.

  “I never cared much for jive, Leroy. I preferred Beethoven.”

  “That ain’t what I mean, white-ass-licker!”

  “I’ve never kissed the ass of any white, Leroy. But I have sure kicked some white ass in my time.”

  “Huh?”

  “You wouldn’t understand, Leroy. All you know is hate. And maybe you have a right to hate — or think you do, as Thermopol
is says. But it’s all moot, now, isn’t it, Leroy. You’re dying. What’d you do with your slaves?”

  “Killed ’em.”

  Cecil shook his head. “Did you really think that because I am a black person, I would let you go free?”

  “African-American!”

  “No, Leroy, I was born in America. So that makes me an American first, and a black man second. I have no ties with Africa. I’ve never been there. Wouldn’t you much rather be talking about something else in the time you have left before you meet the Devil?”

  Leroy spat at him and cursed him. “You said you knew what I was. What am I?”

  Cecil smiled and told him.

  FOUR

  The Rebel planes began napalming the area around the dump on the outskirts of San Diego just as Cecil committed all his forces into the center of Los Angeles. The move caught the punks and the creepies by surprise and many died with shock written on their dirty faces.

  The Rebels pushed forward a dozen blocks that night, before Cecil called a halt to the drive. He would resume it at first light.

  At first light, Ben ordered his people across the Soledad Freeway and forward into San Diego. Black smoke was still spiraling into the sky from the burning dump as the Rebels charged across the Freeway.

  Those now inhabiting the San Diego area were at first stunned by the ferocity of the attack, then began running in fear as the Rebels charged into the outskirts of the city, burning and destroying everything they came in contact with. Like those punks who had once controlled Los Angeles, these dregs of humanity had no central leader, and no plans for any type of counterattack. They found they had but two choices: stand and die or run.

  For the first day, they ran.

  The Rebels, with armor spearheading, smashed more than two miles into punk territory that first day, from two directions: the north and the east.