Survival in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  “What does intelligence consider heavy?”

  “Several thousand, at least. Possibly more, and they are heavily armed and confident. Heavily meaning .50’s and rocket launchers and mortars. Between Mountain Home and Rupert, there appears to be a constant struggle going on among several gangs of outlaws, jockeying for territory and leadership. The gangs are called — and only one of them appears to have more than a modicum of poet in his soul — the Bloody Bandits, the Hellraisers, and, get this, the Starlighters.”

  “The Starlighters!”

  “Yes. Isn’t that lovely.” Dan waggled one eyebrow.

  “They’re not? . . .”

  “Intelligence doesn’t know and won’t make a guess.”

  “Well, if they are gay, don’t sell them short. One of the toughest men I ever knew was of that particular persuasion. That was one of the meanest men I ever knew in combat. He told me once there was only one thing he’d rather do than suck a dick, and that was kill communists.”

  “Good Lord, General!”

  Ben shrugged. “Just telling you what he said. Go on.”

  “The Bloody Bandits control the area around Mountain Home — about a forty-mile stretch. The, ah . . . Starlighters control Twin Falls, about ten miles in either direction. The Hellraisers control the area around Burley and Rupert. Pocatello and Idaho Falls is hard creepie country.”

  “We have our work cut out for us. How about the interior?”

  “Outlaws and a lot of them. Obviously they’ve been pretty much in control for years. This was one of the areas that President Logan left alone after the Tri-States fell and the outlaws simply enslaved or killed off the citizens and have had their way for years.”

  “They’ve got to live on something. I would say they have enslaved many of the people and are forcing them to work on farms. And the creepies probably have human farms of their own. That appears to be how they manage to survive.”

  A look of disgust passed Dan’s face. “Yes. That is their pattern.”

  “Up where Georgi is?”

  “Outlaw country. Warlords have taken over some big ranching operations there and have some fairly substantial armies.”

  “Anything we can’t handle?”

  Dan smiled and then broke out in laughter.

  “Right!” Ben said, joining him in the laughter.

  Ike radioed that he was in position. Ben took note of the fact that Ike sounded very tired. And he should be; his Rebels had been pushing hard to get into position.

  “Stay put for the rest of today and tonight and relax, Ike. You and your people have pushed awfully hard, day and night. Take a break. We’ll shove off at 0700 hours in the morning.” He turned to Buddy. “All right, son. Get your Rat Team and take off. Penetrate for twenty miles and don’t mix it up with anybody unless it’s forced on you. I want intelligence, not body counts.”

  “Yes, sir. On my way.”

  “Corrie, order the Scouts out from all units. The same orders apply to them as I just gave Buddy. I want intelligence, not heroics.”

  The Scouts began their incursion into what had been the state of Idaho . . . and would be again if Ben had his way; although Ben knew that the United States would never be restored to what it had been before the Great War — at least not in his lifetime. And, he often entertained this thought: perhaps it should not be as it was before. Ben felt it should be even better for those who tried to live good, decent lives. And worse for those who chose to break the law. That was his goal.

  The Scouts reported roadblocks fortified with heavy machine guns about ten miles inside the area.

  Ben took the mic. “Fall back. Let’s see if they’ll buy a retreat. All Scouts and rec patrols fall back.”

  Those who now controlled Idaho and the rest of the Northwest were lawless thugs, but for the most part, their leaders were not stupid people. They knew that Malone had fallen to the forces of Ben Raines, and knew that Ben had sworn to rebuild the nation . . . under his rules. And outlaws could not exist under Rebel rules. Ben had thrown the Constitution away and written his own Bill of Rights and what laws would apply to whom.

  The thugs and outlaws and warlords knew they were in a fight for their survival. And their leaders realized they could not fight the Rebels separately. They had to unite and they didn’t have much time left to do it.

  “Raines is knockin’ on the door,” Larry Rafford radioed from the Coeur d’Alene area. “We all knew this time would come, and now it’s here. If we don’t stand together, we’re all gonna fall.”

  “I don’t trust your ass, Larry,” Ted Ashworth spoke from his headquarters in the Lewiston area. “And if you think I’m gonna hold hands with that bunch of fags down south, you’re full of shit!”

  “Screw you, you obscene redneck bitch!” Francis broke into the conversation from his listening post in the headquarters of the Starlighters located in the south of the state.

  Ben listened as a cuss-fight broke out on the shortwave equipment.

  Dan stood by Ben’s side, his face expressionless, his arms folded across his chest.

  “Aw, goddamn!” Red Manlovich cut in from his territory near the great primitive area of the state. “Both of you sound stupid! Larry’s right . . . for once. We all got to get together in this fight if we gonna have any chance at all to whup Raines. Even if it means joinin’ up with them swishes down south.”

  “Up yours, too!” Francis told him. “You ignorant savage!”

  More cursing filled the airwaves.

  A heavy, ominous voice silenced the wild cursing. “All our lives, our way of life, is threatened by Ben Raines and his army.”

  Ben knew that was probably a Judge from the Night People.

  “And I damn shore ain’t gonna tie up with no goddamn cannibal!” Ted screamed.

  “Silence, you fool!” the Judge said. “We have existed side by side for years, have we not?”

  “Except for the time you et my brother!”

  “He violated our space. He knew the rules. And you have killed our people. Can you deny that?”

  “Get to the point,” Larry broke in.

  “If we are to survive, we must cooperate. We must share information and anything else we have. And be advised that he is listening.”

  “How do you know that?” Red radioed.

  “By applying simple logic, you lout,” Francis told him.

  “Go sit on a cucumber,” Red replied.

  “Whore!” Francis said.

  “Turd!” Red shot back.

  “Shut up! Both of you!” the Judge ordered. “We don’t have much time. Hours, if we’re lucky. We’ve got to break up in small bands and force Raines to do the same with his Rebels. That’s the only way we stand a chance of surviving.”

  “I ain’t breakin’ my people up,” Red said. “And I ain’t gettin’ nowheres near them weenie-chewers.”

  “Oh, go sit on your saddle horn, cowboy!” Francis told him. “I agree with the Judge. If we are to survive, we must unite and fight as one.”

  “You ain’t gittin’ your hands or nothin’ else on my booty, Petunia.”

  “I wouldn’t touch you wearing a suit of armor, horsefucker!”

  “That does it,” Red hollered. “I’m done talkin’. And I’m a-gonna kill you, Tulip-mouth!”

  “Sticks and stones! Sticks and stones!”

  “My word!” Dan said. “This is certainly shaping up to be a very interesting campaign.”

  “We are doomed,” the Judge said.

  “Kissy, kissy!” Red said.

  “Go to scramble,” Ben ordered. “You heard all that, Ike?”

  “I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”

  “Georgi?”

  “Every word, Ben.”

  “Cecil?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Scouts and rec teams back in. We shove off in the morning with main battle tanks spearheading.”

  The 52-ton main battle tanks rumbled on the interstate as Ben walked back to the wagon
and got in, cutting his eyes to Corrie.

  “Move them out, Corrie.”

  The siege had begun.

  FIVE

  At Dubois, where Dan was to split from the main column and head down Highway 22, Ben’s command hit their first trouble spot.

  The town itself was a burned-out shell. No more than a tiny village before the Great War, the town had been looted and destroyed over the years. The Night People had mined the area with Claymores, but it was too obvious for Ben’s liking.

  “They’re getting smarter,” Ben said, studying a map. “They want us to swing off the Interstate and take this secondary road that runs parallel to it. Check it out, Buddy.”

  “It’s a death trap,” his son reported back. “About ten miles down the road there is a bridge. It’s wired to blow. It’s you they’re after, Father.”

  “Yeah. They don’t like me very much for sure. Come on back. Our people are clearing the mined area now.” He got out of the wagon and walked over to Dan. “OK, Dan. You and your people take off. We’ll see you in Twin Falls. If you get into anything you can’t handle, get the hell out, understood?”

  “Understood, General.”

  Buddy and his team roared back in and once more took the point, main battle tanks rumbling and snorting right behind them. All the little towns they passed through were deserted and burned-out; relics of a dead society that blamed the war for its destruction, but in reality had legislated itself to death, the final blow coming with the disarming of the American citizens by a liberal President who was backed by an equally liberal House and Senate. The Great War only put the dying nation out of its misery.

  And now, years later, Ben Raines was dragging the nation out of the ashes and dusting it off, propping it up, and telling its people to stand tall.

  “John Wayne would have been proud of you, partner,” Ike was fond of telling Ben. Then, in a more serious tone, he would say, “Tell you the truth, I wish Big John was here. We could use the help.”

  Buddy radioed back. “The creepies have barricaded themselves in the city, Father. They never learn, do they?”

  “They have no other place to go, son,” Ben replied. “For some reason unknown to us, they fear life outside the city. Tell the tank commanders to crank up their one-o-five’s and start dropping them in. I’m splitting my people and I’ll lead a contingent in from Highway Twenty. You take the airport.”

  “That’s ten-four, Father.”

  Cooper meandered around back roads until reaching the new route and cutting southwest. Ben halted about two thousand meters outside the small city and told his gunners to set up and bring the city down. Damned if he was going to lose Rebels slugging it out with crud when he could use artillery and accomplish the objective faster and with practically no loss of life.

  Ben stood with his team in the shade of what was left of a burned-out building on North Yellowstone Avenue when he thought he heard something that was totally out of sync with the bombardment. “Tell the gunners to cease firing, Corrie.”

  As the big guns fell silent, they could all hear it very clearly.

  “What the hell?” Jerre said.

  “They’re on top of us, people!” Ben yelled. “Get down behind cover. The creepies are charging us.”

  The move had not been totally unexpected. Ben was intensely hated by the Judges — the ruling body of the earth’s Night People — and he knew the creepies were so fanatical thousands would willingly die en masse if Ben Raines could be killed in the process.

  Corrie was on the radio, urging Dusters and more troops to get the hell up to their position when the almost solid wall of stinking creepies came into view. The screaming, wild-eyed mob ran right toward and into the guns of the Rebels.

  Corrie, Beth, Jersey, Cooper, and Jerre opened up with M-16s on full rock and roll. There was no need to aim; just point the muzzle in the general direction of the rampaging and screaming mob and hold the trigger back. Ben had bipodded his M-14 and was lying on his belly behind several hastily piled-up concrete blocks. The M-14 was pounding his shoulder as the big .308 slugs tore into flesh and knocked creepies spinning and wailing out their death songs.

  Two Dusters came zipping around the corner and opened up with machine guns and 40mm cannon, the heavy fire tearing a great hole in the mob as the city smoked and burned and exploded behind the now bloody and body-littered street.

  Rebels ran around the corner and stationed themselves behind whatever cover they could find and opened fire on the mob of cannibals. Others climbed up on rooftops and began firing into the still-chanting and screaming mob on the street below them.

  But still they could not kill them all.

  A Duster pulled in front of Ben’s wagon to act as a shield just as creepies came charging from the burned-out building, breaching the Rebel security around Ben.

  A stinking creepie hurled himself onto Ben, tearing the M-14 from his grasp and momentarily knocking the wind from him. Ben rolled from under the smelly cannibal and gave the man the toe of a jump boot to the balls. The creepie screaming and vomited, the puke just missing Ben’s head. Ben kicked the man in the face just as another stinking creep jumped on his back. Ben flipped him off, regained his balance and jerked out his .45, carried cocked and locked, and shot the man in the head as he was getting to his knees. He turned the muzzle to the first creepie and blew a hole in the man’s back.

  Rebels surrounded him and forced Ben back, protecting him with their own bodies. They literally pushed him into the armor-plated and bulletproof-glassed wagon. His team was shoved in after Ben was inside.

  “Get the hell gone from here, Cooper!”

  Cooper spun the wheel and left the firefight area in a squeal of rubber. “What to, General?”

  “Next block over,” Ben said calmly. “Let’s see if we can find some action there. That’s where we left Emil and the bikers.”

  They found action. Emil and the bikers, joined by Thermopolis and his bunch were on one side of the street, a gang of creepies on the other side, both factions banging away at each other. It was a standoff.

  A hard burst of gunfire struck the front of the wagon, the slugs blowing out both front tires. The wagon lurched to a stop in the street. To compound the problem, they were stalled much closer to the creepie side than to the friendly side.

  “Let’s go, people,” Ben said. “We’re ducks in a pond out here.”

  The team piled out of the wagon and ran for the cover of an office building, all of them carrying boxes of ammo as they ducked between abandoned and rusting vehicles littering the street.

  Ben shoved Jerre inside the shattered front of the building and then jerked a grenade from his battle harness and chucked it into the building next to them. The Firefrag blew, clearing the front of the store of any creeps. Ben followed the blast with a clip from his M-14.

  Ben ducked into the gloom of the ground floor. “Corrie! Bump those across the street and see if they’ve taken any casualties.”

  “Two wounded,” she reported, after speaking briefly with the radio-person with Emil. “None of them serious. Emil had the heel shot off one of his cowboy boots. The force of it knocked him down and he got a splinter in his butt.”

  “Savages!” the voice of Emil Hite drifted to them during a momentary lull in the fighting. “Philistines! You’ll pay for this, you . . .”

  Whatever he called them was drowned out in a hard clatter of gunfire from the creepie side of the street.

  “We’re in a piss-poor position here,” Ben said. “Cooper, check out the back and see what’s going on.”

  “The alley’s clear as far as I can see,” Cooper called from the rear of the store.

  “You can bet they’ve got people just above us, though,” Ben said. “Waiting for us to try a run for it.” Ben looked up at the ceiling. “This is an old section of town, with mostly two- and three-story buildings constructed fifty to seventy-five years ago.” He handed his M-14 to Jerre and climbed up on a scarred counter-top. Taking ou
t his knife, he removed several pieces of ceiling tile and grinned down at his crew.

  “What’s so funny, Ben?” Jerre asked.

  “The floor above us is wood.”

  Ben climbed down and retrieved his M-14. “Spread out,” he told his team. “Let’s give those above us a hotfoot before they figure out the floor is wooden and spray us with lead.”

  The team lifted their weapons and put two hundred rounds of .223 and .308 slugs into the room directly above them. Screaming bounced around the dusty room as blood began dripping down from the punctured floor above them, plopping amid the dirt and the torn paper and rat-shit-littered floor.

  “Tanks,” Beth said.

  “Corrie, tell the tank commanders to spray the top floors while we get the hell out of here,” Ben ordered. “As soon as the firing starts, head for the other side.”

  The .50-caliber slugs began knocking brick and mortar from the top floors as Ben and his team ran for the other side of the street.

  Ben plopped down beside Thermopolis. “I thought I told you to stay back with the artillery.”

  “It was far too noisy back there. Besides, I wanted to see what trouble you might be getting into.”

  “Did you satisfy your curiosity?”

  “To the max.”

  “Tell the tanks to start using HE, Corrie. Bring that line of buildings down. And tell one of them to winch the wagon out of the street. Check out the back, Jersey. If it’s clear, let’s get gone from here.”

  “Them was my last pair of Tony Lama boots!” Emil wailed from the next building. “And they ain’t nobody makin’ no more of them. And I got a splinter in my ass. You creepie sons of bitches!” he wailed.

  Those outlaws and terrorists Ben had left back in the park linked up and began their plans for moving on. Villar looked with disgust marking his face at the spot where they had concealed their vehicles.

  “The bastard took them!” he griped. “Raines took every damn truck and Jeep we had. That son of a bitch doesn’t miss a trick.” He glanced over at Kenny Parr. The boy had the look of defeat on his face. They had all noticed the change in him since the ambush that wiped out what had been left of his command.