D-Day in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

Just as Ben was moving toward the blown open door, Lieutenant Bonelli yelled that he was coming in. A half dozen Rebels burst into the room.

  Bonelli quickly surveyed the scene and said, “We’ll take care of this now, General. The Red Cross people want to see you back at your Hummer.”

  Ben hesitated for a few seconds. He was very weary of having nursemaids around him twenty-four hours a day. “I have a better idea, Lieutenant.”

  “What’s that, sir?”

  “Follow me!” Ben yelled, and charged up the grenade-shattered stairs.

  EIGHT

  President Homer Blanton was furious at the suggestion from the UN Security Council. He had regained his composure after leaning out of the window and cussing the demonstrators and had ordered hamburgers to be cooked on the White House lawn every day at noon and fed to the demonstrators.

  Now this . . . insanity from the UN.

  Name Ben Raines and the Rebels as the group to go in and stabilize governments around the world? Ridiculous!

  “No goddamn way will I go along with that,” Homer said bluntly.

  “You’re outvoted,” the secretary-general of the UN said. “And since America is, for the first time, paying only its fair and equal share of the bills, majority rules. Raines and the Rebels will be the stabilizing force of the United Nations.”

  “Over my dead body,” VP Harriet Hooter said.

  The Korean diplomat smiled. His reply sounded very much like a man clearing his throat and getting ready to hawk snot.

  “What’s that?” Homer asked.

  “You have been advised of our decision. Ben Raines will be notified in due time.” He walked out of the Oval Office.

  “Shit!” Homer Blanton screamed.

  Ben was on the second-floor landing, his team right behind him, before Lieutenant Bonelli could react. For a middle-aged man, the general could move damn quick.

  Ben kicked open the first door he came to and sprayed the room with .45-caliber slugs, sending several oddly dressed men to that great punk heaven in the sky . . . or wherever it is. The rest of his team was busy kicking open doors and letting the lead fly. By the time Bonelli and his people had reached the second floor, the hall Ben was in was clear of unfriendlies.

  “Check that one,” Ben said, pointing to a hall that angled off.

  On this run Ben had opted for clips instead of drums, not so much as to lessen the weight but to make the weapon easier to handle. He ejected one clip and slipped another in.

  “Clear!” Bonelli yelled.

  Corrie said, “Counterattack, boss! We’re cut off.”

  “Now it gets interesting,” Ben said. “Bonelli! Take the ground floor. We’ll take this one. Leave one of those M-60’s with us.”

  Without having to be told, Cooper laid aside his M-16 and took up the M-60 and a can of ammo and moved to a window. “Look at them come,” he called, bi-podding the weapon.

  “Give them a squirt, Coop,” Ben said, picking up Cooper’s M-16, for its range was better than his Thompson.

  Cooper braced the stock and held the trigger back. Ben watched a line of charging punks kiss the ground as the 7.62 rounds tore the life from them.

  Ben sat down behind a shattered window and began picking his shots, watching the advancing punks fall with each shot. The line broke under the unexpected barrage and then took to the ground, hiding behind junked and rusted old cars and trucks, and mounds of rubble and debris.

  Ben eyeballed the range for a moment. “Corrie, call in two hundred meters from this building. Somebody else can calculate the distance from this building back.”

  “Negative, boss,” Corrie said a moment later. “They say it’s too close to use.”

  Ben crawled over to her and took the phone. “This is General Raines. Start dropping those eggs down the tubes right now, or I will personally get all up in somebody’s face so long and so hard their hair will look like they stuck their finger in a light bulb socket. Now, goddamnit!”

  Fifteen seconds later the rounds began dropping in.

  “Nick on the blower, boss,” Corrie said.

  “Go, Nick.”

  “You do have such a nice way of giving orders, Ben. I had forgotten how eloquent you can be.”

  “Yeah. Right. What’s your situation?”

  “Bogged down. The punks are really throwing everything at us. I’m waiting for Buck and West to get into position, and then we’ll crash through.”

  “That’s ten-four. Keep me informed. Eagle out.”

  The mortar rounds stopped the line of advancing punks cold as the crews went to work, creating a wall of death between the building the Rebels were trapped in and the street punks. Then they began dropping them in right on the punks’ heads. The line broke, and those punks who were not too badly injured quickly retreated back to the looted and trashed buildings on the far side of the clearing.

  “Nick says 15 and 4 Batts are in position to push in,” Corrie called.

  “Tell them to hold what they’ve got and call for artillery and mortar to soften up the punks’ position up and down the line,” Ben said. “Tell our people to have smoke ready to pop at my signal.”

  From three sides the artillery once more began to boom, with those capable of doing so hurling in incendiary rounds and willie peter. There was no place for the punks to go except back, cursing as they retreated.

  By late that afternoon the Rebels were firmly entrenched, well into the suburbs of the city, and Ben called a halt to the advance.

  Ben was sitting in the den, in an old chair in a reasonably clean home, reading what was left of a yellowed and tattered years-old copy of a Toronto newspaper, when Chase strolled in.

  “Anything interesting in there, Ben?” the doctor asked.

  “We’re bringing our troops home from Somalia and sending them into Bosnia and Haiti.”

  “I seem to recall something about those exercises in futility,” Chase said, pouring a cup of coffee and sitting down in a chair that was leveled with bricks on one side.

  Ben laid the paper aside and Jersey picked it up.

  “What’s up, Lamar?”

  “Boring, Ben. Boring. Not that I am complaining about the lack of wounded, for I certainly am not. But I heard even you bitching on the radio today about no real action. Why not just throw up a cordon around the city and starve these miserable miscreants out? It wouldn’t be long before the creepies and the punks would be at each other’s throats—literally.”

  Ben chuckled. “I’ve just given the orders to throw a cordon around the place and wait them out, Lamar.”

  “Good, good. I see no point in losing good men and women fighting this last bastion of thugs and creeps in the Northern Hemisphere.”

  Corrie walked into the room. “All batt coms have been notified of your decision, boss. They’re standing down to wait them out.”

  Ben nodded and said, “Now it really gets boring.”

  The Rebels circled the city and waited. A few of the more industrious gangs of punks tried to slip out by boat. But Ben had thought of that, too, and they didn’t get far before Ben’s fledgling navy, patrolling Lake Ontario, blew them out of the water.

  At the end of the third week, several warlords walked out under flag into Ike’s sector.

  “Happening sooner than I thought,” Ike radioed to Ben. “I got one street gang leader says his name is Tuba Salami.”

  Ben started laughing so hard he could not speak for half a minute. “What did you say, Ike?”

  “You heard me. Tuba Salami.”

  Ben wiped his eyes and keyed the mic. “How many in this bunch, Ike?”

  “’Bout eight hundred. Still going to turn them over to the Canadians?”

  “It’s their country.”

  Julie Petti, who had been keeping close company with Ben since their first meeting, said, “They’ll hang them, Ben.”

  “The Canadians are a fair people, Julie,” Ben replied. “They’ll give them a fair trial, then they’ll hang them. Some of them
.”

  Julie smiled and shook her head.

  “As soon as the creepies learn of any talk of mass surrender, they’ll start taking prisoners of the punks, for food,” Beth said. “We can count on that.”

  Ms. Catherine Smith-Harrelson-Ingalls paled, but for once she offered up no objections. If the Night People had a friend on the face of the earth—other than fellow creepies—Ben was not aware of them.

  “You’re certainly correct in that, Beth.” Ben looked at Blanton’s representatives. “You want any of these prisoners to take back with you?”

  “This is amusing you, isn’t it, General Raines?” one of the reporters who had not been sodomized or forced to suck a dick that long night of captivity several weeks back asked.

  “I suppose it is,” Ben said. “In a perverse sort of way. Whenever the Rebels have to come in and clean up the goddamn messes you liberals made of a formerly workable society, it pleasures me a great deal.”

  The reporter stared at Ben for a moment but wisely made no rebuttal. Even though Ben, at the moment, was unarmed, and giving the reporter about fifteen years in age, the man was not about to risk mixing it up physically with Raines.

  Liberals hate the military; always have, always will. But they are very afraid of the military. It’s all those guns and discipline and marching and flag-waving and all that other right-wing stuff makes them want to do the hoochie-coochie on their hankies.

  “But don’t worry,” Beth said, always ready to stick the needle into a liberal . . . especially the newly emerging press. “You’ll have plenty to write about—criticizing us, I’m sure.”

  Another reporter turned to the usually soft-spoken Beth. “Whatever in the world do you mean?”

  “The creepies, pal,” Beth said. “They don’t surrender. So that means we’ll have to go in and dig them out. So you people will have lots of opportunities to piss and moan about the harsh treatment given them by the Rebels.”

  “I find that remark both insulting and offensive,” the reporter said.

  “Yeah?” Beth said, standing up. The quiet, very pretty, and very intelligent historian of the group smiled. “Well, try this one: I don’t give a flying fuck what you find offensive or insulting.” She walked back into the house.

  The reporter’s face tightened in anger. “Someone needs to teach that young lady some manners.”

  Cooper laughed. “Anytime you feel lucky, pal, you just jump right in there and grab a handful. Me—I’d rather walk into a roomful of rattlesnakes than mess with Beth.”

  The reporter scoffed. Beth was about five feet four inches and weighed maybe 120 pounds. The reporter was six feet two inches and about 190. Besides, he’d played football before the Great War, and his coach had told him he was bad to the bone. His coach had lied. “You people certainly have a rather high opinion of your prowess, don’t you?”

  Little Jersey stood up and laid her M-16 aside.

  “Oh, shit!” Cooper muttered, quickly getting out of the way.

  The reporter towered over Jersey. He glared down at her. “I don’t want to hurt you. So don’t be foolish, baby.”

  “I’m never foolish,” Jersey told him. “And I’m not your baby.” Then she openhandedly slapped the piss out of him.

  The reporter, whose name was Harold, cursed and took a swing at Jersey. Jersey put a bit of applied judo on him, and Harold found himself flat on his back on the porch. Jersey smiled and stepped back, allowing the man to get to his feet. Harold assumed a boxer’s stance, and Jersey kicked him on the kneecap. Harold screamed in pain, bent down, and grabbed for his knee. Jersey brought up her knee and smashed it into the man’s face. The blood squirted and Harold hit the boards.

  “You rotten little bitch!” Harold hollered, blood streaming down his face.

  “Now, now,” Ben said with a smile. “That’s not politically correct.”

  Julie studied Ben during the brief fracas. He seemed amused by the entire matter. She cut her eyes to Lieutenant Bonelli, who had walked up just seconds before the incident. He yawned. Cooper had gotten out of the way and was petting a stray dog who had wandered up the day before and who the Rebels were feeding. Beth and Corrie hadn’t even bothered to come out of the house.

  Julie was beginning to understand Rebels. She had been told, and had originally rejected as myth, that unarmed combat was taught in Rebel schools—beginning at a very early age. Now she knew that it was not myth but hard fact.

  Harold was getting to his feet. “I’ll tear your goddamn head off, you Indian bitch!” he shouted.

  “Oh, my,” Ben said, rolling a cigarette. “An ethnic slur from the press. Surely I misunderstood.”

  Harold rushed Jersey and she sidestepped, sticking out a boot and tripping the bigger and heavier man. Harold crashed through the old porch railing and went rolling ass over elbows on the ground. Jersey stepped off the porch and hit the man about fifteen times as he was attempting to get up. Hard blows to the kidneys, the back of the neck, the side of the neck, and finally, two hard blows directly over the heart.

  Harold’s face turned chalk white and he began gasping for breath as his heart faltered.

  “Take the stupid son of a bitch down to the hospital,” Ben said, lighting his hand-rolled cigarette.

  “We’ll sue you!” another reporter yelled at Jersey, then looked around in confusion as the Rebels broke up in good-natured laughter.

  “Did I say something amusing?” the reporter asked.

  By the end of the month, only the hard-core gangs and the Night People remained in the city. Hundreds of gang members had surrendered to the Rebels, choosing to face a Canadian judge and jury rather than starve to death or be eaten by the creepies.

  Rebels began gearing up to enter the city and root out those remaining.

  Huge tanker trucks began rolling in, and Julie questioned Ben about that. All around the edges of the central part of the city, Rebels had begun welding manhole covers closed (excuse me, peoplehole covers).

  “That’s one of the ways we flush creepies out of their holes. We pump gasoline into the sewers and underground chambers and burn them out.”

  “Barbaric,” the press said, safely out of earshot of any Rebel.

  Ben had received the communiqué from the UN’s Security Council and was studying the suggestion; discussing it with his people.

  “Once again, we get to do the dirty work,” Ike said. “But what do we get out of it?”

  “That’s what I’m discussing with Son Moon now,” Ben replied. “I want fully recognized sovereign nation status for the SUSA and those aligned with us. Voted on and accepted by the full UN or it’s no go. And that’s got to include the U.S. ambassador. The UN has my demands.”

  “I wonder what Blanton has to say about this?” West asked.

  “That rotten son of a bitch!” Homer Blanton said.

  “The nation is torn apart,” VP Harriet Hooter said. “We have to find some way to bring all the states back into the fold.”

  “Wait until Ben Raines and the Rebels leave, then we invade the SUSA,” Senator Benedict said.

  “Good show!” Senator Arnold shouted.

  “I love it!” Rufus Dumkowski said. “More people to tax the shit out of.”

  “Sock it to those rich honky bastards!” Rita Rivers yelled.

  “Hey, stupid!” Wiley Ferret said. “I’m a honky and I’m rich!”

  “Yeah,” Rita said. “But you got yours by fucking it out of the taxpayers, the same way I’m gettin’ mine.”

  “Oh,” Wiley said. “You’re right. That’s okay then.”

  “Let’s add an amendment to the Constitution,” Zipporah Washington said. “Let’s outlaw the Republican party.”

  “Good show!” Senator Benedict shouted, looking around for his bourbon bottle.

  “I concur,” Representative Immaculate Crapums agreed. “Don’t you think so, Representative Holey?”

  President Blanton tuned them out, wondering, not for the first time, how in the hell
he ever got mixed up with such a pack of nitwits.

  Blanton let the ninnies blither and blather, then cleared his office and sat for a time behind his desk. Slowly he picked up the phone and told his ambassador to the UN to vote in favor of sovereign nation status for Ben Raines and the SUSA.

  NINE

  But Ben had other wrinkles up his sleeve that had to be ironed out before he and President Cecil Jefferys would sign anything binding. And while Cecil Jefferys was the elected president of the Southern United States of America, everyone knew that Cecil would not go against Ben Raines—for more reasons than one. They had been friends for too many years. Ben and Cecil thought exactly alike. And while the Rebel army adored Cecil Jefferys, they revered and idolized Ben Raines.

  Ben ordered his troops to maintain their starving out of the punks and the creepies in the city and flew down to Charleston, West Virginia, where Cecil was waiting.

  The two old friends shook hands warmly and then embraced like brothers. Chase had told Ben that Cecil had recovered very nearly 100 percent from his multiple heart bypass surgery, and while he could never again go back into the field and endure the stress of combat leadership, he was fine right where he was in the SUSA.

  “You sure you want this job, Ben?” Cecil asked.

  “I’m sure. And so are my commanders. We’re all soldiers, Cec. Can you see me spending the rest of my life shuffling papers?”

  Cecil laughed. “Truthfully, Ben, no. You ready to go see President Blanton?”

  “No. But it’s something I have to do.”

  Actually, Ben sort of liked Homer, more so since he sensed Homer was beginning to understand that pure liberalism in government simply would not work; never had, never would. Many countries in the world had either adopted or flirted with socialism and/or communism . . . just before the Great War, nearly all had abandoned those forms of government. But the liberals continued to want to move America toward a time-and-again miserably failed form of government. Ben could never understand the workings of a liberal mind. But while he was beginning to warm to Homer, he doubted they would ever be more than acquaintances. The political breech was just too wide.