Smoke from the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  The Rebel cradling the 7mm Magnum looked at Ben.

  “Nice shooting,” Ben told him.

  The sniper smiled.

  Chase muttered something under his breath.

  “Are they going to live?” Ben asked.

  “You know better,” Chase replied without looking up. “One has a shattered spinal cord and the other’s guts are torn apart. There is nothing I can do for them except try to ease the pain.”

  “Put them in the back of my truck and we’ll take them up to the next town. By the way, doctor — the name of the town is Chase. Do you suppose that’s prophetic?”

  “Why take them there?” Chase asked, ignoring Ben’s question.

  “I want the prisoners to see that the caped-avenger and his sidekick are mortals.”

  “You ordered prisoners taken?” Chase asked. “Getting soft, Raines?”

  “No, Lamar. You seem to think there is hope for people such as these.” Ben pointed to the dying young men. “You can have your chance.”

  “You mean that, Ben?”

  “I said it, didn’t I?”

  Chase looked long at him. Finally, the doctor sighed. “Put them in the truck,” he ordered.

  The Rebels had killed or wounded about a third of the attackers. They had the others sitting in a vacant lot of the tiny deserted town, their hands behind their heads, fingers laced.

  “See to the wounded,” Chase ordered his medics.

  “Personally,” Ben said, “I’d drag Zorro and Lash out of the truck and dump their bodies in the street, doctor. But this is your show; you handle it the way you like.”

  “Thank you so much, Ben.” The sarcasm was rather thick in his voice. “But how do you know the boys are dead?”

  “I just looked.”

  A medic confirmed it.

  “Put them on the sidewalk,” Chase ordered.

  “Charlie Company,” Ben ordered. “First and second platoons. Stack arms here.” He pointed to the sidewalk.

  Chase paid no attention to the orders. Ben looked at Ike.

  “Everything set, Ike?” he whispered.

  “Right. And I hope to hell this doesn’t backfire, Ben.”

  “You and me. Since we’re going to be right in the middle of it.”

  “You people!” Lamar shouted at the prisoners, young men and young women. “Look at your leaders and tell me what they died for?”

  The eyes of the prisoners looked at the bloody pair on the sidewalk. “They died fighting for our right to claim territory,” a young woman said.

  “I’ll give you that much,” Chase conceded. “But what have you been doing with this claimed territory?”

  “We don’t have to do anything with it,” a young man said. “It’s just ours.”

  “I’ve seen no signs of farms or gardens or anything like that,” the doctor said. “Where do you get your food?”

  “People pay us tribute to live here.”

  Ben smiled, and his smile annoyed Chase.

  Doing his best to ignore Ben’s smile, Chase asked, “Suppose you were given the chance to better yourselves, would any of you take it?”

  Ben and Ike picked up very quietly on the furtive glances that passed between the prisoners.

  “How do you mean, ‘better ourselves’?” a young man asked.

  “Have an education. Live in . . . relative peace. Work and build and plan for the future. That’s what I mean.”

  Several of the prisoners exchanged soft whispers. One of them who squatted near a stack of weapons cut his eyes to the weapons, very quickly, and then looked back at Chase. “Can I stand up?” he asked. “I hurt my leg and it’s crampin’.”

  “Of course,” Chase told him.

  Ike very quickly clicked his CAR-15 off safety. James Riverson shifted positions, a seemingly harmless movement. But the muzzle of his M-16 was now pointed toward the large group of prisoners.

  Dan Gray and Ben very briefly locked eyes as the Englishman turned. Now the muzzle of his automatic weapon was pointed directly at the front row of prisoners.

  The young man stood up, rubbed his leg, and took a step toward a stack of weapons. Just one step, but it put him very close.

  “Work?” the young man said. “What kind of work you talkin’ about?”

  “You have to work to live,” Chase said patiently. “It’s wrong to force people to give you tribute if they don’t want to give it.”

  “Who says it’s wrong?” a young woman asked, rising to her feet.

  She scratched her head, and Ben could practically see the fleas hopping about on her head.

  The smell of unwashed bodies was rank in the still, breezeless summer morning.

  “God says it’s wrong,” Chase told her.

  “Not our god,” the young woman said.

  “What God do you worship?”

  “That one,” she said, pointing to the bloody body of Zorro.

  “But he’s dead!” Chase said. “That should tell you something about your choice of whom to worship. Doesn’t it?”

  “Naw.” She shook her head. “We’ll just find another one.”

  “Is it that easy?” Chase asked.

  “Sure. We have a dance-thing. The one who dances the longest is the chosen one.”

  “A . . . dance-thing?” Chase said slowly. “Can you read?” he asked her.

  “What for?”

  “So you can teach your children!” Chase’s voice held a definite note of annoyance.

  “Why do that? Readin’ don’t put food in our bellies. It don’t protect us from the rain and the cold. It don’t do nothin’.”

  Many of the prisoners were now standing, and several had moved much closer to the stacks of weapons.

  The Rebels did not order them to get back on the ground. Many of the Rebels had turned their backs to the prisoners, seemingly uninterested in the proceedings.

  “Suppose we turned you all loose?” Chase asked. “What would you do?”

  “What do you want us to do?” a young man asked.

  “If I didn’t know better,” Ike muttered, “I’d swear he had some experience talking with a social worker.”

  “I want you to make something of yourselves,” Chase told him. “To help us in rebuilding the United States.”

  “You mean, laws and rules and all that shit?” the young woman asked.

  Chase looked at Ben, a helpless and annoyed look in his eyes. Ben shrugged.

  “To have any kind of workable, productive society,” Chase said, “one must have rules and laws. Without them, you have anarchy.”

  Ben had clicked his Thompson off safety.

  Ike and Dan had seen the movements of the prisoners toward their high-topped boots and suspected they had knives tucked in there.

  “Have what?” the young woman asked, taking yet another step toward the stacks of weapons. She was within reaching distance now.

  Ben cut his eyes upward. Several Rebels were on top of a nearby building with M-60 machine guns. Ben carefully eased his finger onto the trigger.

  “Anarchy,” Chase persisted. “Lawlessness.”

  “Oh, yeah,” the young woman said. “We sure don’t want none of that. That’d be terrible.”

  Chase looked at the young woman. “Everything I’ve said. It’s just a big joke to you, isn’t it?”

  She shrugged. She would have been a pretty woman had she cleaned up and got the fleas off of her.

  But now she wasn’t going to have time to do anything. Except die.

  “You got your way of life, we got ours,” she said. “You’re not going to change, and we’re not going to change.”

  “That’s a pity,” Chase said. “But I had to try.”

  “Big Louie is waitin’ for you folks ’bout a hundred miles further,” she said. “Some of you might make it to his turf. I hope so. He likes to burn people alive.”

  “Sounds like a perfectly delightful fellow,” Chase said. “But why would you think that just some of us would make it?”


  Screaming, the young woman leaped toward the stack of weapons. The slugs from Dan’s M-16 stopped her in mid-air, flinging her backward, dead before she hit the concrete.

  The prisoners charged Dr. Chase and Ben and Ike and Dan, knives in their hands.

  It was carnage. And it was over in less than a minute.

  Twenty-odd of the prisoners had not moved from their spots on the vacant lot. When the gunfire started, they simply hit the ground and stayed there.

  When the gunfire had echoed away and the gunsmoke had cleared, Ben looked at those who had elected not to fight, and thus stay alive.

  “If I decide to turn you loose, what are you going to do?” Ben asked.

  “Git away from this spot just as fast as I can,” a young man said. “I might join up with another gang. I might not. I ain’t sure. But one thing I am sure of. I ain’t gonna fuck around with you people no more.”

  “Clear out,” Ben said. “And I don’t ever want to see you again.”

  The last glimpse any one had of the young man, he was loping across the plains. He did not look back.

  “How about the rest of you?” Ben asked the group of young men and women.

  “Just let us get away from here and you,” a young woman said. “I know me a fellow down in New Mexico wants me to come live with him and raise sheep. I figure now is a damn good time to do just that.”

  “Your religion must not be too strong.” Chase couldn’t resist one more shot at it.

  She looked at him. “What religion, you old fart? Stealin’s just easier than workin’, that’s all.”

  Chase shook his head and walked back to his vehicle.

  “Aren’t you going to patch up the wounded, Lemar?” Ben called after him.

  “Fuck ’em!” Chase said.

  FOUR

  The column pulled over early that day and made camp, while recon patrols were sent out to check on Big Louie’s whereabouts.

  “He’s pretty close,” Ike said. “What’s left of Kansas City is gonna be hot for another three/four thousand years.”

  It was late afternoon, and Dr. Chase, Ben, Ike, Dan, and a few other Rebels were sitting in the shade of a tree, drinking a concoction called Rebel Rouser — homemade whiskey, actually.

  And Lamar Chase was hitting the sauce harder than anyone else.

  “What a blind, stupid, idealistic old fool I’ve become,” he said.

  “That’s bullshit, Lamar,” Ben told him. “You just got tired of it all. All the killing . . . the whole nine yards. We all do at one time or the other.”

  “Yeah,” Ike said. “You got the that’s it, I quit, I’m movin’ on’ syndrome.”

  “Sam Cooke,” the doctor said, refilling his cup with booze.

  “What?” Ike said.

  “Who?” Dan asked.

  “Goddamn, Lamar!” Ben said. “You are gettin’ old. Or drunk. Or both. I don’t even remember that one.”

  “Sam Cooke recorded that,” Lamar said. He hummed a few bars.

  Dan grimaced. “I hope it sounded better than that.”

  Lamar, quite uncharacteristically, gave the Englishman the finger.

  After the laughter died down, Ike said, “I wonder what this Big Louie is going to turn out to be?”

  “Oh, another loser, I should imagine. Don’t you agree, general?”

  “Sure. Just like Zorro and Lash and all the others we’ve encountered over the long and bloody years we’ve been together. It really wouldn’t have made any difference. War or peace; prosperity or depression; full working government or anarchy — they’d have been losers of one type or another, no matter what.”

  “Raines, do you really believe that?” Chase challenged.

  “Certainly. How many people did you know back when the world was whole, more or less, who fucked up everything they tried to do? When they lost a job, it wasn’t their fault; it was somebody else’s fault. If they lost at cards, somebody cheated. If they got a ticket, the cops were picking on them. When they got caught cheating on their income tax, they’d lie to the examiner; and they could lie so well, they actually believed it themselves. If they made a hundred thousand dollars a year, they’d live on a hundred and ten thousand. And when they went bankrupt, it was never their fault. Losers. This situation we’re all in now is just perfect for them. It was made to order. They were losers in a land of plenty, and they’ll be losers until the day they finally do the world a favor and die.”

  “You really are a jaundiced bastard, Raines!” Lamar said. “What a perfectly horrible opinion of humankind you have.” He tossed back another belt of Rebel Rouser.

  “You’re a minority of one, Lamar,” Ben told him.

  “Oh, of course I am!” the doctor cheerfully admitted. “I just like to hear you rant and rave, that’s all. I’m sure as hell not going to tell you that you’re right. You’re such an insufferable martyr as it is.”

  Ben laughed. This small group he had around him now — the only one person missing being Cecil Jefferys — could always be counted on to tell him the way it was. Without pulling any punches.

  “I didn’t ask for this job,” Ben said with great indignation.

  “Oh, God!” Lamar said. “Here he goes again.”

  Dan excused himself, leaving to go check on the guards and to see if any intel had been received on Big Louie.

  The column had left Highway 56 just east of Marion, Kansas, angling south on Highway 77 for a few miles, then once more heading east on Highway 50, picking that up at Florence. They were camped along the banks of the Cottonwood River. Chase’s medical people had tested the waters of the little river and found no contamination from radiation. Kansas City was hot, but like so many of the cities around the world, the bombs were of the “clean” variety: killing the people, but leaving the buildings standing.

  The convoy was going east on their present route only as far as the junction with Highway 75, about fifteen miles past Emporia. If they didn’t encounter Big Louie by then, to hell with it. They would cut south down to Highway 54 and continue on east, avoiding Kansas City.

  Dr. Chase poured another cup of Rebel Rouser and said, “What about the next outpost, Ben?”

  “Iola, I’m hoping. Scouts report about two hundred and fifty or so people in and around that area. They seem to have some organization. But they’ve been having some trouble with roving gangs. Probably this Big Louie character. We’ll meet with the people in Iola and see if we can’t punch Big Louie’s ticket. See about setting up an outpost there.”

  A Rebel said, “Seems like whenever we put one gang out of business, three more pop up.”

  “It’s going to be that way for a long time to come, I’m thinking,” Ike said, eyeballing Lamar as he knocked back the booze. “And with the exception of Zorro and his bunch of nitwits, the gangs seem to be getting smarter. You agree, Ben?”

  “Many of them, yes. The really smart warlords know we’re after them; and they’re doing their best to avoid us. We can’t let up, either. We’re going to have to keep the pressure on.”

  Lamar looked at his cup. “It’s never going to end, is it, Ben?”

  “No, Lamar. It isn’t. I thought for awhile it would. I thought for awhile it would take us two, maybe three years to clean up the country. Then we could all settle down and live out our lives in relative peace. I was wrong.”

  “You’re not the only one who was wrong, Ben,” Ike said.

  Ben looked at his friend.

  Ike poured a short two-fingers into his cup. His smile was both knowing and sarcastic. “You remember all the talk shows and books and magazines back in the late ’70s and ’80s — all that crap about how the military sucked and how peace advocates were always blabbering about they would be the ones who would build a better society if any major tragedy ever occurred. And their way was the only way. Just a more articulate extension of the peace and love bullshit of the ’60s.” He knocked back a belt of booze.

  “Well, guess what, folks? Where are they now? Guess who is
out here trying to put this nation back together again? Old soldiers. Surprise, surprise! And where are the peace and love and lay down your weapons advocates? In the grave, I guess. I sure haven’t seen any lately. But more than likely, any who survived are high up in the mountains or in the deep woods, in little-bitty communes, keeping a very low profile. And not doing one goddamn thing toward rebuilding this country. But what galls my balls is this, and you all know I’m speaking the truth: When we get this outpost system complete, coast to coast, and some semblance of law and order, you just wait and see — here they’ll come, whole bunches of the little mouthy bastards and bitches, all of them saying, ‘Oh, we’re so happy to see you big, brave people. Is it safe now? Can we come out and join you folks?’ You wait and see if it doesn’t happen that way.”

  “Wait a minute, Chase,” Ike said. “I’m not done yet. And if we let those assholes in, they won’t be in fifteen minutes before they’ll start sneaking around behind our backs, making all sorts of snide little comments. Like, ‘Well, we have law and order, now, so why don’t we put some controls on those terrible guns? And isn’t the death penalty terribly harsh? Why don’t we do away with it?’ And that sort of bullshit. Fuck ’em. Fuck ’em all!”

  Chase looked at Ike. “Jesus Christ, McGowan! Who pulled your string? What brought on all this crap?”

  “’Cause I can see the light at the end of the tunnel, Lamar. That’s why. And I want to make my views known, up front, and right now. The light’s still a long way off. We’ve got a lot of bloody years ahead of us; but we’re gonna make it. We’ll stretch this outpost system from coast to coast, and then we’ll start workin’ it north to south. Us! Not those other assholes — us! We’re the ones going to make it work, with our blood, and our sweat, and our pain. We got graveyards stretchin’ from Georgia to California, Michigan to Texas. And those Rebels didn’t die so a bunch of goody-two-shoes types can come in and spew their verbal poison.

  “That’s it, I’m done. Me and Dan talked this over the other afternoon. That’s why Dan left a while ago; so I could say it. And . . . I ain’t throwin’ stones at anyone here. Don’t think that at all. I just wanted to clear the air.”

  Ike rose and left.