Fury in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  “I’m not. It’s a damn nuisance, that’s all. They missed any chance they might have had to overrun us. Now it’s too late. We’re too well dug in and have far superior firepower and armor. They could keep us pinned down here for several days, and probably will, but eventually we’ll drive them back. If worse comes to worst, we’ll use smoke to bust out. But I don’t think it will come to that.”

  She looked at him. “What are you smiling about?”

  “You noticed that Buddy is gone?”

  “Yes. Where is he?”

  “He and his Rat Team are out on the edges of our perimeters, laying out Claymores and other nasty little surprises for the creepies. The next tune they hit us, they’re going to be terribly upset by what they find waiting for them.”

  An hour slipped away. Linda dozed for a time, then awakened, and she and Ben quietly talked.

  “I see now why the Rebels travel with so much ammunition. I couldn’t understand it at first. It just seemed like so much to carry around.”

  “Here they come, General,” Corrie said. “They’re belly-crawling to us this time. Forward people say it looks like the entire ground, all the way around us, is covered with huge worms.”

  “That’s a pretty good way of putting it. Ready flares.”

  “Flares ready.”

  “As soon as they hit the booby traps, light up the night.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Wake everybody up.” Buddy and a few of his Rat Team slipped into the building. Buddy came to his father’s side.

  “The creepies are going to be very unhappy with us in a couple of minutes, Father.”

  “I hate that,” Ben said with a straight face. “We try so hard be loved.”

  Buddy choked back a laugh and slipped to his position.

  Thunderous roars slammed the rainy night as creepies touched off Claymores and pressure mines. Mangled bodies were flung in all directions and wild screaming echoed through the rain. Creepies leaped to their feet, jumped over the bloody chunks of body parts, and charged the Rebels, cursing the name of Ben Raines.

  Hundreds of weapons, all set on full auto, turned the night into a muzzle-blasting and sparking shooting gallery. Flares cast their artificial brilliance on the land, turning the raindrops a metallic silver that was tinged with red from the splattering blood.

  The Rebels stopped the advance cold. This time not one creepie made it into any building. The Rebels suffered one wounded, and no dead. The area around the perimeter was littered with dead and dying creepies.

  The creepies fell back and began their harassing tactics against the Rebels. Their sniper fire inflicted no casualties.

  “You reckon they’ll try again?” Cooper asked.

  “Oh, yes,” Ben said. “The Judges will spend all day whipping the troops up into a murderous frenzy, and tonight they’ll throw everything they’ve got at us. Stand down and get something to eat and some sleep. Tonight is going to be the big one.”

  The day crawled by slowly, the Rebels eating and resting as the hours passed. They cleaned weapons and filled clips and got ready. Tank crews swabbed out their cannon and mortar crews made ready their tubes. The Rebels behind the heavy machine guns checked their guns and belts.

  The rain did not let up. It was not a heavy downpour, more a gentle, consistent falling. Everyone waited for the night.

  “General,” Corrie called softly. “I need to see you.”

  Ben walked over to her. “What is it, Corrie?”

  “The communications van took a hit last night. It’s out until we can get in there and really take the radios down and see what the matter is. Now this one is down.” She patted the small tabletop model. “Panel is out and I don’t have a spare. I think I can reach Cecil with my backpack, but I’m going to have to stretch an antenna. And even then, it’s going to be chancy.”

  Ben motioned his son over to him and quickly explained the situation.

  “How high an antenna, Corrie?” Buddy asked.

  “I don’t know. It’s going to have to be really high, and even then I don’t even know if it will work. We’ll be able to receive from greater distances, but transmitting?” She shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know.”

  Ben nixed the idea. “Anybody who went up any distance would get picked off by creepie snipers. So that’s out. I’m not going to risk sending anyone out to break through to the outside. Pull the communications van in tight and go to work on that radio. Tell them to rebuild it if they have to. I know damn well we carry the spare parts.”

  “We don’t have them anymore,” a communications man said from the doorway. “The van took a lot of hits last night. The radio is out. And the spare parts and extra panels were shot all to hell.”

  Ben grunted. “Cut off. Well, people, let’s kick the creepie asses tonight and get the hell gone from here in the morning.”

  EIGHT

  The long afternoon dragged on, the silence and stillness broken only by occasional long bursts of cursing from those working on the radio in the communications van, which was pulled up close to Ben’s location.

  Ben inspected the huge ragged circle which his people held, darting from building to building, with Dan at his heels bitching about what a ridiculous and totally unsafe idea this was.

  “Hanging in there, Therm?” Ben asked.

  “Oh, yeah. I’m just glad it’s raining. If it was hot and sunny, those bodies out there would be hard to take.”

  “There must be five or six hundred of them,” Emil said. Ben noticed he had put aside his turban for a helmet. “We gonna wrap this up tonight, aren’t we, General?”

  “We’re going to do our best, Emil.”

  “Right on!” the little man said.

  Ben moved over to the bikers’ position. “I have seen and done and been a lot of things in my life,” Frank said. “But I have never seen anything so disgusting as these damn Believers.”

  Ben agreed with him, turned, and almost collided with Doctor Chase. “What the hell are you doing out here, Lamar?”

  “We’ve got to conclude this before the weather breaks, Ben. When the sun hits those bodies, the health hazard for us goes right off the scale.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that, Lamar. You’re right. Corrie, have all cannon and mortars capable of tossing tear gas to make ready. Everybody check their masks. We’ve got to blind them, and we’ve got to punch through and get the hell out of here, tonight. Start lobbing some shells in their direction now and while that’s going on, have the drivers check their engines. Check all rolling equipment and get ready to bug out.”

  “Toward the Interstate?” Buddy asked.

  “No,” Ben said with a smile. “They’ll be expecting us to do that. We’re going to bust out the rear of this base, heading east on this old secondary road that leads to I-15. Start laying out explosives now. When the last vehicle is clear of this area, this place is going to go up like a roman candle.”

  You’re a wicked, wicked man, Ben,” Chase said with a satisfied grin.

  “Yeah.” Ben returned the grin. “Ain’t I, though.”

  Those creepies watching the embattled perimeters of the Rebels through long lenses saw nothing that would indicate a Rebel bust-out. And they were not surprised when Rebel artillery began crashing down on their heads. To their way of thinking, the Rebels were savages, and nothing they did came as any surprise.

  “All rolling equipment checked out and ready to go,” Corrie told Ben.

  “Tell the gunners to cease fire in one minute.”

  A dozen more rounds were lobbed in and the guns fell silent.

  “Gas canisters?” Ben asked.

  “Enough to do the job,” Dan told him. “But we’ve got to do it quickly. We’re going to be cutting it fine.”

  “What Rebel unit was last reported to be the closest to Los Angeles?” Ben turned to Corrie, hoping against hope.

  She shook her head. “None of them,” she told him. “They’re all at least four or five hundred miles a
way.”

  “All right. That’s it. We have no way of knowing whether or not Cecil has put out the call for help, and we can’t transmit. So we’re going to have to operate under the assumption that we are all alone with no help coming. And so far as I know that is our situation. Make sure that every unit knows what to do and where to go before we start our bust-out. Any screwups mean capture and torture for stragglers. Let’s get packed up. We bust out at full dark.”

  Buddy and the Rat Team and Dan and his Scouts were busy booby-trapping the area. When the creepies pursued the Rebels following the bust-out, they were going to hit some nasty reminders of how the Rebels viewed warfare.

  Ben checked his watch. Three o’clock. The rain showed no signs of abating. That was good. The moisture and high humidity would keep the tear gas close to the ground and prevent rapid dissipation. Lord knows the Rebels needed every break they could get.

  At four o’clock, Buddy slipped into the building. “That’s it,” he told his father. “We’ve used as many Claymores as we dare. We’ve got to keep some in reserve. We set some with trip-wires and others to be electronically detonated by us. We’ve laid out the pressure mines around the eastern edge of our perimeters. Any vehicle that leaves this one road” — he pointed out the route on a map — “won’t make it. Tear gas is ready to bang. Big Thumpers have been set up on selected trucks. Heavy machine-gun crews are moving their guns to trucks now. Everyone is packed up. We’ve done all we can do except pray.”

  “And that wouldn’t be a bad idea,” Ben said.

  Ben checked his watch, then checked the sky. “Fifteen minutes to bug-out,” he told Corrie. “Tell the people to start loading up. We’re getting the hell out of here.”

  “How do we know this old road is still serviceable?” Linda asked.

  Ben grinned at her. “We don’t. We might be driving smack into a dead end.”

  “And if that’s the case?”

  “We dismount and fight.”

  She shook her head and walked away, muttering about her peaceful little valley.

  Ben whistled softly at her and she laughed and kept on walking.

  “Creepies on the move,” Corrie called.

  “Tell the forward teams to get back here and load up.” Ben checked his watch. Thirteen minutes.

  “Start engines?”

  “No. I’ll give the signal.”

  “Creepies have stopped forward advance.”

  “They’re puzzled as to why we have not opened fire. Hold all fire. How does it look to the east?”

  “Grim.”

  “I love your succinct reports, Corrie.”

  “Thank you,” she said dryly.

  Twelve minutes to bug-out.

  “Therm and his people?”

  “Loaded up and ready to go, sir. Dan is bitching about you pulling out last.”

  “He’ll get over it. Have the creepies resumed advance?”

  “Negative. Bikers have loaded their motorcycles onto trucks and are on board.”

  “Lamar and his people?”

  “Loading now, sir.” Eleven minutes.

  “All units load up except for us, Corrie.”

  The minutes seemed to tick by at a crawl. “Let’s go, people,” Ben finally ordered. “Time to wave bye-bye to the creepies.”

  Full dark outside. Ben held the door for Jersey. “Ladies first,” he said.

  “Move, General,” she told him.

  Ben stepped out into the rain and staying low, ran to the wagon. He opened the door. “This time, Jersey,” he said with a grin, “you have to go first.”

  Two minutes to bust-out.

  “Masks on and start engines,” Ben ordered.

  Dozens of engines burst into life, filling the air with roaring.

  “Here they come,” Corrie told Ben, listening through her headset. “From all sides.”

  “Fire gas.”

  One minute.

  “They’re in the perimeter!” Corrie said.

  Zero.

  “Go!” Ben said, his voice muffled through the gas mask.

  Dozens of tanks, trucks, vans, Jeeps, Hummers, and APCs rammed their way out of concealment as the gas canisters exploded, filling the rainy air with choking tear gas.

  “Hit the smoke!” Ben gave the orders.

  Smoke canisters were exploded and everybody who could began throwing smoke grenades. The smoke only added to the confusion caused by the swirling tear gas.

  “Just follow the lights of the truck in front of you, Cooper,” Jersey said. “Don’t get too close, but don’t get us lost either.”

  “I hate backseat drivers,” Cooper said. Then he slammed on the brakes to keep from plowing into the rear of the Jeep.

  “Wonderful,” Jersey muttered. “The man is a real whiz behind the wheel.”

  The creepies were shooting wildly, but hitting nothing. Tears were streaming down their eyes and they were staggering around blind.

  “The last vehicle is clear of the compound,” Corrie said.

  “One skooby-doo, two skooby-doo,” Ben started counting, as Linda stared at the commanding general.

  “Skooby-doo?” she said.

  Ben reached ten and said, “Let ’em bang, Beth!”

  She twisted the handle on a small box and the entire compound erupted into sea of flames and explosions as the Claymores were electronically detonated. Barrels of gasoline had been left behind, and the buildings had been soaked with gas just seconds before the bug-out.

  The entire area the Rebels had occupied was turned into a blazing, raging inferno. What the Claymores didn’t kill, the flames engulfed and destroyed.

  Clear of the blinding, choking gas, Ben pulled off his mask and said, “You can relax now. We’re clear.”

  “Relax?” Jersey said. “We’re not a mile away and there must be two or three thousand of those creeps back there.”

  “Yeah,” Ben agreed. “But they don’t have vehicles close by. By the time they get to their cars and trucks — if they have any at all — we’ll be on the Interstate heading north.”

  “We’ll have to deal with them someday,” Cooper said.

  “As soon as we’re hooked up with Cecil, I’ll have Seven and Eight Battalions head south to deal with what’s left of the creepies. It’ll be good experience for them.”

  “The Interstate is clear,” Corrie said, after acknowledging the report from Scouts. “And we apparently have no pursuit.”

  “How soon will you be able to talk to Cecil, Corrie?”

  “I’ll be in range in about an hour.”

  Ben leaned back in the seat and closed his eyes. “Wake me as soon as you’re in contact.”

  He was asleep in two minutes.

  The convoy rolled on through the night.

  “Getting to you is going to be a bitch,” Ben said to Cecil. “I think our best bet is to cut off at the Riverside Freeway and just bust through from the south.”

  “That’s affirmative, Ben. The rest of the routes are pretty well torn up. Seven and Eight Battalions are on the way down. They’ll head straight for your previous location and start cleaning up.”

  “Tell them to stay clear of our old compound area, Cecil. There will be a number of unexploded pressure mines still operative.”

  “That’s ten-four, Ben.”

  “See you when we get there, Cec.” Ben changed frequencies. “Buddy, spearhead us to the Los Angeles International Airport, please. We mustn’t keep the creepies waiting.”

  The column turned west on Riverside and soon began picking its way through the rubble. This part of the Rebels’ TO had been burned, but it had been hastily done. The real devastation would not begin until they were about ten miles into Orange County. There, the destruction would be almost total.

  “This time,” Ben said, “we’re going to search the rubble and be damn sure.”

  “The tunnels and subways, if any?” Beth asked.

  “We’re going to blow them and seal them. I will not send troops down ther
e when there is an easier way. Future generations are going to curse my name, but future generations, I hope, will not have to deal with situations like this one.”

  “I’ll say a prayer to that,” Jersey said.

  The Rebels started hitting roadblocks — of their own past making — when they took a little dogleg that crossed over 57. From that point on they were lucky to make ten miles an hour.

  “General,” Corrie said. “Cecil says to stop breaking our necks getting to him, but to keep a sharp eye out for ambushes. The creepies are falling back from the airport and slipping back into the rubble.”

  “Ten-four that, Corrie. That means there are more creepies alive than we thought. Tell Cecil to bump all units and order them back into the city. Let’s do it right this time.” He lifted another mike. “Buddy, backtrack and find us a fairly decent spot to hole up. I got a hunch we’re going to get hit and hit hard pretty soon.”

  “We’re going to need to be resupplied very soon, General,” Dan interjected.

  “Backtrack to Corona,” Ben ordered. “Tell the planes to get loaded and head for that airport. We’ll have something cleared for them. Beth, how do we stand?”

  “Plenty of small-arms ammo, General. Practically nil on anything else.”

  “Then let’s get up there and secure that airport — what’s left of it — and clear a runway.”

  “The creepies, sir,” Dan said, “are not leaving Los Angeles International because they fear Cecil.”

  “No. This may have been their plan all along.”

  “What do you mean, Ben?” Linda asked.

  “They made us believe they were defeated, they got us separated, and now they’ve got us in a box. They’re coming after us. To kill me.”

  NINE

  “Cecil got in touch with General Payon,” Corrie told him. “The general is moving his people up to the creepie stronghold we just left. He says for us not to worry, his people will be more than happy to rid the land of those scum.”

  “It took a global war for our two countries to start working fully together,” Ben said. “Pray that nothing happens to General Payon.”