D-Day in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  “Right, sir.”

  No fire came from the town as the searchers spread out and worked slowly, carefully checking out every stand of trees and anywhere else the mouth of tunnels might be hidden. It was Cooper who first spotted movement.

  “Up ahead,” he called softly. “Two o’clock.”

  The Rebels immediately dropped belly down to the ground and waited and watched.

  Ben watched as two women and a half dozen young kids sprang out of the ground and raced toward the woods. He silently cursed. Even if they had been in range, he still could not bring himself to shoot kids.

  The squad leader from Bonelli’s company looked at Ben. Ben refused to meet the young woman’s eyes. “Let them go,” Ben finally said. “Get up there and blow that hole closed.”

  It amounted to the same thing, but this way was far less personal.

  Two Rebels leaped from the ground, each carrying heavy rucksacks filled with C-4. “Warn the others what we’re doing,” Ben said.

  A few minutes later, the ground shook as the C-4 blew. “One hole closed,” Ben said. “But they’ll be others. Let’s go.”

  Fifteen slow minutes later Corrie said, “Buck found another hole. He’s blowing it.”

  Inside the town the creepies could accurately guess what was happening, and it filled them with rage.

  “Take a break,” Ben ordered. He sat on the ground and took a sip of water, then rolled a cigarette and leaned back against a tree, his brow furrowed in thought. “There might be one more short hole,” he said. “Probably is. We’ll all work closer to town and see if we can find it.”

  The second hole was blown, and from the sound of it, it was a good mile from Ben’s location. Ben remained where he was after the sound of the explosion had long died away. The Rebels knew why he was not moving. He just didn’t want to have to kill kids . . . up close and personal.

  “Some of the press has just linked up with Buck’s 15 Batt,” Corrie said, sitting down beside him. “That fellow Greg who wears the fancy jacket and Gina Zapp. Couple of more.”

  “I thought Zapp worked for Blanton.”

  “One of the networks that’s just getting back in operation.”

  “Something else for Cecil to worry about back home.”

  Corrie knew what Ben was saying. She’d heard Ben and the others discuss what they would do once the Big Three networks got cranked back up. There was going to be some heavy signal blocking if they ran the crap they used to run back when the nation was whole. Corrie’s headset crackled and she listened, grimaced, muttered several very ugly words, then acknowledged the transmission.

  “What’s wrong?” Ben asked.

  “Buck’s people just captured some creepies. Young men and women and kids.”

  “Shit!” Ben said.

  “That isn’t all. The press is there, with human rights people on the way, and they’re all raising holy hell about kids being tied up like wild animals.”

  Ben stood up. “Tell Bonelli to carry on here. Let’s head for Buck’s location.”

  What Ben did not know was that in the weeks since he and the Rebels had left the States, dozens of newspapers had cranked back into operation and two of the Big Three networks were back in operation. Their coverage areas were still good, since most of the transmission/relay satellites, those between fifteen thousand and eighteen thousand miles up were still operational

  “This ought to be good,” Coop muttered, as they approached the large knot of men and women standing outside the circle of uniformed Rebels.

  Many of the press people had never seen Ben in person, but they had all studied his dossier. And they knew who he was immediately. They all started shouting questions at once.

  Ben emptied half a clip of .45’s from his Thompson into the air and the press hit the deck. During the rather pregnant silence that followed, Ben said, “I will answer your questions, ladies and gentlemen. But they will be asked with some decorum and respect. I in turn will reciprocate that respect. Now get up off the ground. At least you had the good sense to hit it.”

  “Savage!” one reporter muttered.

  Ben heard it and smiled. He didn’t give a damn if the press liked him or not. Just as long as they were afraid of him. Julie was there, and she was not happy with the kids being hog-tied. The expression on her face looked like she was going to cloud up and rain all over Ben at any moment.

  Which wouldn’t faze Ben; he’d been rained on before. He smiled at her, and the look she gave him would have melted ice.

  When the press had gotten to their feet, Ben pointed at one man that he thought he recognized from the old days. He had been an arrogant bastard back then. Ben wondered if the years had mellowed him. “You have a question?”

  “These small children, General Raines. Some of them are no more than seven or eight years old. Don’t you think your people are overreacting by trussing them up like savage beasts?”

  “No, I don’t. You obviously have had little or no experience in dealing with the Night People. How you folks managed that is a mystery to me, but we have had years of contact with them. They are very dangerous. The children as much as the adults. None of them can be rehabilitated. We tried for years with no luck.”

  “Oh, come now, General!” a woman scoffed at him. “These are children. How dangerous can they be?”

  The sarcasm came as no surprise; Ben expected it. The press hadn’t changed much. They still felt they were experts in all fields and knew more than anyone else about anything one might care to name. “It’s nice to know that nothing has changed,” Ben said.

  “What do you mean by that?” another reporter asked, hostility evident in his tone. “I demand you untie those poor little boys and girls.”

  “You demand?” Ben asked. Then he chuckled. He eyeballed the group of reporters and human rights observers and men and women representing various other groups. “You all feel that way?”

  “Yes,” several men and women said.

  “Release those children!” a woman yelled. “Look at them. My God, their bonds are so tight they’re in pain.”

  “Yes,” another reporter said. “If this is the way you treat children and women, God knows how you treat adults.”

  “Those poor, poor babies,” yet another reporter blathered. “My heart just goes out to them.”

  “I’ve seen them eat hearts that were still beating,” Ben said.

  “That’s ridiculous!” the reporter popped back to Ben.

  Ben reached into a jacket pocket and tossed the man a clasp knife. “Cut them loose. Be my guest.” He looked around him. “All Rebels—do not interfere. No matter what happens—do not interfere.”

  “Get pictures of this,” a reporter that Ben knew as Daniel said, just as the knife was opened and the man walked to a young girl.

  “It’s going to be all right,” he said. “We’ll take care of you. My, you are a pretty thing.”

  “Please cut us loose, mister,” the girl said. “I’m in terrible pain.”

  “You heartless bastard!” a woman yelled at Ben.

  Ben smiled at her.

  The reporter cut her bonds and the girl lay still on the ground, her eyes glinting savagely. But only the Rebels recognized that brightness for what it was. The man cut the bonds of several more children to the applause of the group. Ben looked at Julie. She was not applauding. She stood with a strange look on her face. She was very curious about the smile on Ben’s face. She noticed the heavily armed Rebels were backing away from the circle, putting the civilians between them and the children of the Night People.

  Julie backed up until she was standing behind two burly Rebels. She’d seen enough of Rebels to know that when they turned cautious, there was usually damn good reason for it.

  The girl who was first to have her bonds cut rose to her feet. “Oh, thank you, sir,” she said sweetly.

  “You’re quite welcome, child,” the man said, as the other children of the Night People were getting to their feet. The reporter l
ooked at Ben, now standing several dozen yards away. “Dangerous,” he scoffed. “How ridiculous!”

  The girl leaped at the reporter, wrapping her legs around his waist, her arms around his neck, and started eating his face.

  FOURTEEN

  The reporter dropped the knife Ben had tossed him as he was ridden down to the ground by the girl. His screaming was both wild and unbelieving. A young boy leaped at a woman and popped out her left eye, eating it with a grin as she screamed and then passed out, hitting the ground. The reporter who had called Ben a savage was on the ground, blood arching in spurts out of a hole in his neck. The girl who was sitting on his chest was lapping at the blood, grinning hideously, her face slick and crimson. The Rebels were standing back, weapons at the ready, but not interfering.

  “Do something!” Gina Zapp screamed at Ben.

  “You all were warned,” Ben spoke over the screaming and howling. “And you all chose to ignore the warning. You want something done, you do it.”

  “You son of a bitch!” Gina yelled at him.

  Ben shrugged. He’d been called worse.

  A mini-cam operator stepped into the bloody circle and smashed in the head of a boy with his camera.

  “Somebody finally got smart,” Jersey remarked.

  “Shoot them, goddamn you,” a man yelled to Ben.

  Ben tossed him a .45. “You shoot them. The bullet comes out of the little end with the hole in it. Everybody back up!” Ben yelled. “We’ve got a liberal with a gun in his hand.”

  Every Rebel there either hit the dirt or sought cover behind anything that might remotely stop a bullet.

  “How do you work this thing?” the reporter yelled, holding the pistol as if it were a writhing snake.

  “Oh, shit!” Jersey said. “Where do these people come from?”

  Several of the creepie young men and women had managed to free themselves during the melee and were now attacking anything in sight. One of the women leaped toward Cooper and he put a .223 round right between her eyes, snapping her head back and dropping her to the ground.

  Gina Zapp had picked up a club and was swinging it wildly, hitting as many of her cohorts as creepies. Eighty-Pockets Greg stepped into the circle of blood, took the pistol from the reporter, and blew a hole in the girl straddling the chest of the dying man with a hole in his throat. The other reporters and human rights reps picked up anything they could find and started smashing heads.

  The blood-splattered circle fell silent. Those creepies still trussed up on the ground glared hate at the men and women around them. Ben stepped through the crowd and retrieved his .45, holstering it.

  He looked at the stunned and shocked and bloody crowd. “You all should have learned a hard lesson today, but it won’t keep. Many of you will go right back to being your same arrogant and know-it-all selves. But if you retain anything from these bloody moments, retain this: The next time a Rebel tells you to do something, don’t argue. Just do it.”

  Ben pushed his way out of the crowd and walked off. “Corrie,” he called over his shoulder. “Shell the town.”

  Ben caught a lot of bad press stateside because of the creepie incident, with most of it accusing him of allowing the attack to happen. Only a few write-ups told the entire story. Katherine Bonham, David Manor, and Paul Carson were the only ones who actually reported the story exactly as it happened. Since the Rebels monitored every transmission from the Continent, and those were given to Ben daily, Ben now knew which reporters to trust and which would slant their stories. Twelve hours after the creepie attack on the reporters and the various human rights reps, an invisible wall of silence had been erected between Rebel spokepersons and the majority of the press. Those reporters who slanted their stories now found themselves unable to get even so much as a “good morning” from a Rebel. And they also found themselves unable to get to any front.

  The reporters who now found themselves unable to get a story immediately went pissing and moaning to President Blanton’s reps, who immediately after hearing the sad stories went blithering and blathering to Ben.

  “Truth,” Ben said, after listening to the complaints.

  “I beg your pardon?” one of the president’s reps said.

  “Truth,” Ben repeated. “Tell the reporters to report the truth as it is, not as they see it. And they do know the difference.”

  “I . . . am not certain I understand, General.”

  “Since you work for a politician, I have absolutely no difficulty at all believing that. Get out of my office.”

  The Rebel artillery pounded the small town for eighteen hours, and then the troops began the slow, dangerous job of mopping up. David Manor was with one team, Paul Carson with another, and Kathy Bonham went in with Ben and his team. It was from Kathy that Ben learned where a lot of the emerging reporters had been over the years.

  “Putting out underground newspapers,” she told him. “Broadcasting the news on very short-range portable transmitters. It would be picked up and relayed from point to point.”

  Ben was astonished. “Why that way, for heaven’s sake?”

  She stared at him for a moment. “Because of you and your Rebels, General.”

  “Call me Ben. Me and my Rebels,” he repeated softly. Then he became amused at the thought of men and women, who had once been the most listened to and watched newspeople in the world cowering underground, broadcasting the news furtively. “What in the world did you think we were going to do if we heard it, Kathy?”

  “We didn’t know. Blanton’s people had put out so many stories about what the Rebels were doing . . . well,” she paused, “we actually thought we might be shot for treason.”

  Ben smiled. “Treason . . . against who, what?”

  “Treason against the regime you were setting up.”

  “That’s ridiculous!”

  “I see that now. But we were running scared, Ben. Many of these reporters over here are still very wary of you and the Rebels.”

  “Well, truthfully, I’d like to throw them out of this country, but that’s all that I would personally do to them.”

  “They think you would like to shoot them.”

  “What an interesting thought.”

  Kathy smiled at him. “What happens when the networks start up again, Ben? Evening news and all? Will you carry it in the SUSA?”

  “I doubt it, Kathy. Cecil is in the process now of setting up our own TV news and other programming. He found some good people who want to report the news truthfully . . . for a change.”

  “Oh, Ben!” she said, exasperation behind the words. “Most broadcast journalists always told the truth. But the truth oftentimes, or perhaps always, is in the eyes of the beholder. You can’t expect an avowed liberal to see the same thing as an archconservative. Both of them can look at the same event and see it very differently.”

  “Kathy, to a liberal, there is no such thing as an absolute. Everything is gray. Nothing is truly black or white, right or wrong. Conservatives, on the other hand, know the difference between right and wrong.”

  Both of them, along with Ben’s team, left and right of them, were crouched behind the rubble of what had once been a home, waiting for Recon to give the all-clear to advance. Ben had not wanted to destroy the old town, but he was not going to sacrifice the lives of his people for a building.

  Ever the reporter, Kathy asked, “Why do you carry that old submachine gun, Ben?”

  “I started out with it, years back,” Ben replied, easing up to his knees and looking out over what remained of a wall to view the smoking rubble in front of him. “I’m comfortable with it.”

  Recon waved them forward. Ben stood up in a crouch and said, “Stay with us, Kathy, and do exactly as we do.”

  Kathy fell back a few meters to walk with Beth and Cooper. Jersey, as always, was with Ben, Corrie on the other side of him. “How did that cute little lady become the general’s bodyguard?” she asked.

  “It just happened,” Beth said. “A lot of teams form u
p because the people work well with each other. We were all kids when we joined with the Rebels. Back in the old days, it was a family; everybody knew everybody else. There were only a few thousand of us.”

  “A lot of Rebels have retired from the field,” Cooper said, as they slowly advanced through the town, eyes constantly moving for signs of hostiles. “Some because of wounds, some because of age, some because they wanted to raise a family.” He sighed. “Some just couldn’t take it anymore.”

  “And the four of you have been with the general . . . ?”

  “Years,” Beth said. “We’ve been all around the world and going again.”

  A creepie suddenly popped up out of the rubble, and Ben stitched him with a short burst. The team kept walking. Kathy glanced at the dead man, calm and peaceful looking in death. She spoke softly into a small cassette-corder.

  “I hate those bastards,” Beth said, cutting her eyes to the dead creepie. “We can sometimes rehab normal people. A lot of people now in the ranks once fought against us. Not these people. You can’t do anything with them except kill them.”

  “Down!” Ben called, and the team hit the ground. “Movement at two o’clock,” Ben said to Corrie. “The second floor of that building.”

  Kathy looked around her as best she could from her prone position. Not a Rebel was in sight. They had vanished amid the rubble.

  “Bring a tank up,” Ben called, and Corrie radioed in.

  Within seconds, a MBT clanked through the wreckage.

  “Take it down,” Ben said to Corrie.

  The 120-mm smooth-bore cannon elevated slightly and then began roaring, and the old building began crumbling and flying apart under the impacting rounds. A couple of minutes later, the entire top floor was gone. Kathy had seen two bodies come sailing out of the building. One had been missing a leg.