Slaughter in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  “Be sure and look in your sleeping bag before you crawl in there tonight, Coop.” Jersey stuck the needle to him. “There might be a creepie in there just waiting to give you a great big sloppy goodnight kiss.”

  Cooper flipped her the bird and otherwise ignored her. Then he shuddered and said, “Yuck!” at just the thought of the Night People. He walked away.

  Some years back, after the dust had settled from the first collapse of civilization and the Rebels were just getting organized, bands of what the Rebels would eventually refer to as “creepies” began surfacing. They were the most disgusting people the Rebels had ever encountered, and the Rebels hated them with a passion that was unequaled, for the Night People were cannibals. The adults either could not or would not allow themselves to be rehabilitated, and the children simply could not be rehabilitated. Ben’s scientists were still trying to determine why the creeps lived as they did. But so far, no luck.

  The Rebels learned about the offspring of the Night People the hard way. After several Rebels had been killed and more than a dozen maimed by vicious attacks, the Rebels were forced to cease their attempts to rehab the kids they captured. Since none among them wanted to shoot a child, the Rebels, if they could possibly do it, just let the kids escape, knowing full well they would someday have to face them in combat as adults. Ben just didn’t know what else to do with them.

  And now the Rebels knew for sure that within the ruins of Pittsburgh the creepies were waiting for a fight to the finish, for the creeps never surrendered. Retreated yes, surrendered no.

  As dusk began spreading over the land, Ben sat outside the large motor home he had begun using as his CP. His team sat away from him, knowing without being told that he did not wish to be disturbed.

  Just give it up, Ben, a quiet voice spoke inside his head. You and the Rebels don’t owe these people anything. They’re adults, they can fight their own battles. Just stand everybody down and go on back to the SUSA and let everybody else fight their own battles.

  You can’t do that, another voice said. You can’t let one area of the country tear itself apart with anarchy while another section prospers.

  Give me one good reason why not? the first voice demanded.

  Because if you allow the creeps and the punks and the gangs and the human vermin to flourish, it will only be a matter of time before they’ll be strong enough to attack the SUSA and those areas aligned with the Rebel philosophy.

  They might be strong enough to attack, but they won’t be strong enough to defeat the Rebels.

  Perhaps not the first time, or the second time, or even the third time. But how long can the SUSA stand alone and hold out?

  The second voice was silent, having no reply to that. Ben angrily shook his head, momentarily clearing it of the arguing voices only he could hear. He stood up and walked around the motor home several times, taking long strides, his big hands balled into fists.

  His team watched in silence for a time, then Cooper said, “The boss is pissed about something.”

  “I don’t think so,” Beth said. “I think he’s waging some sort of inner conflict.”

  Cooper cut his eyes. “What do you mean by that?”

  “For once, I agree with Coop,” Jersey said. She looked at him. “Don’t let that go to your head, Coop. What do you mean, Beth?”

  “I’d guess the boss is trying to make up his mind whether to go forward or stand us down and head on back home. I think.”

  “Now I am confused,” Cooper said.

  “Your normal state,” Jersey told him. She looked at Beth. “He’s maybe wondering if going on is worth it?”

  “That would be my guess.”

  “Fight the creeps and the punks and the assholes now, or fight them later,” Corrie spoke up. “Either way, we’re going to take losses. But this way it isn’t little Rebel kids who will be dying. If the boss pulls back and we bunker in, sooner or later we’ll be attacked and Rebel kids and elderly will suffer.”

  Those who subscribed to the Tri-States philosophy never thought of themselves as anything other than Rebels.

  “I have never known anything but fighting,” Anna said. “I would think it would be very strange to live in peace.”

  “Tell the truth,” Jersey replied, “I been scrapin’ for survival ever since I was a little girl. I remember very little else. If we weren’t fightin’, what the hell would we do?”

  “You could always come live with me and we could have lots of little Apaches,” Cooper said hopefully. He was ready to leap up and head for parts unknown should Jersey make a move toward him.

  But the diminutive Jersey only smiled. “Coop, what do you figure the odds are of any of us living long enough to settle down and have a family?”

  Coop’s returning smile was sad in the quickly gathering night. “Not too damn high, Jersey.”

  “Then we won’t bring up the subject of family again, Coop,” Jersey spoke softly. “It’s just damn depressing.”

  “Yes,” Beth said. “I never think about that.”

  “Me either,” Corrie said. “Anna?”

  The teenager cut her wise and young-old eyes to Corrie. “I have never thought about anything like that. In my country, it was a day-to-day struggle just to stay alive. Nobody really planned for the future.”

  Ben had paused in the shadows by a corner of the motor home, listening to the exchange.

  “You believe in destiny, Jersey?” Cooper asked.

  “Heavy subject, Coop. But, yeah. I’ve thought about it. I guess I do. Why?”

  “Is this our destiny? I mean, what we’re doing?”

  “Do you think it is, Coop?” Corrie asked.

  “Yeah, I think so,” Cooper replied softly. “We’re still together after all this time, aren’t we? I mean, we could have transferred out, but we didn’t We may fuss and argue and get on each others’ nerves every now and then, but when the shit hits the fan, we hang tough—right?”

  Jersey started to tell him that was what being a team was all about, but she held her tongue. Besides, if Cooper wanted to think that was destiny, fine. Hell, maybe it was.

  The team fell silent and Ben slipped back, deeper into the night, and walked over to the mess tent. There, he pulled a mug of coffee and wandered around until he found the tailgate of a pick-up truck open and sat down.

  Destiny? Well, Ben thought, I’ve often pondered the same question. Maybe it was their destiny to wander about like warrior gypsies from fight to fight, making the land safe for decent people—and it made no difference whether or not those people subscribed to the Rebel philosophy. Ben smiled in the night: Robin and his 25,000 Hoods.

  Maybe someday, when conditions around the nation reached some level of normalcy, somebody would make a movie about the Rebels. Then Ben shook his head. But Hollywood was gone, reduced to rubble. He chuckled softly as another thought popped into his head: Maybe that was just as well, for the left-leaning producers and writers and directors who had controlled the scripts and purse-strings of Hollywood would surely have portrayed Ben and the Rebels as the bad guys, waging war against the poor misunderstood criminals, who surely must have been spanked as children and that, of course, was the cause and therefore the excuse for their violent, anti-social behavior.

  Ben laughed softly and slid off the tailgate and stretched. He really didn’t give a big rat’s ass how history painted him. If he had ever worried about that, he’d stopped years back. He doubted that historians would show that he and the Rebels had brought dignity back to all law-abiding citizens who lived in Rebel-controlled territory, as well as returning a high degree of honor and truth to government and to the business community and their relationship with the consumer. He rather doubted that historians would show that not just violent crime was practically nonexistent in any Rebel-controlled area, but all types of crime, and if they did mention that fact, it would be that it was accomplished at the point of a gun.

  So what? would be Ben’s reaction to that. The point is, it was acc
omplished.

  Ben sipped his coffee and stared into the night. He sighed as he realized the Rebels just couldn’t pull back in their quest to purge America of those who preyed on the weak, the old, the helpless. Even though all mixed in among those who truly needed the Rebels’ help were strong, capable, able-bodied men and women who simply refused to pick up a gun and take care of the problem themselves.

  It was difficult for Ben to hide his contempt for those types of people, and he usually didn’t even make the effort.

  Ben walked back to the motor home and opened the door, then turned and looked at his team, sitting within conversation distance from him. “Get a good night’s sleep, gang. We’ll start clearing the ruins of Pittsburgh tomorrow.”

  Ben stepped inside and closed the door.

  TWO

  Just a few miles after the Rebels moved across the state line, the first thing they noticed as they rolled along the old interstate was no smoke from heating or cooking fires, no evidence of human habitation.

  They all knew what that meant: the creepies had ranged out from the ruins of the city in search of food. They would be holding human snacks in basements and tunnels all over the city, fattening them up for the slaughter.

  Jersey broke the silence of a few miles. “I hate these goddamn people. Sometimes you can rehab a punk and make something decent and useful out of them. But not these . . . cannibals!” She spat out the last word as she shuddered in revulsion.

  Jersey knew, as did every Rebel, that when fighting the Night People, laying back out of harm’s way and letting artillery do most of the work just wouldn’t cut it with the creeps. In the cities, they were nearly always bunkered in, deep underground, and when the big guns ceased their rain of death, the creeps crawled out of their stinking holes and waited to mix it up hand-to-hand. The Night People were a disgusting and despicable bunch, but no one who had ever faced them could short them on courage and fighting ability.

  And they never surrendered. When confronting the creeps, the Rebels knew they could count on a fight to the death.

  “Reports coming in.” Corrie spoke from the second seat of the big wagon. “The creeps are waiting for us. Scouts report what appears to be a heavy concentration in the ruins.”

  Nobody had to ask how the scouts could tell when the creeps were all underground and approximately where and how many of them: the smell.

  Creeps worldwide seemed to share an aversion to bathing, and their body odor was enough to put a polecat to shame.

  “Battalions directly north and south of our position not yet in line with us,” Corrie continued. “They’re both at least half a day behind us due to the roads.”

  Georgi Striganov’s 5 Batt, Rebel’s 6 Batt, and Jackie Malone’s 12 Batt were north of Ben, slogging through the spring rains and traveling on bad roads, hitting the larger towns and clearing them of punks and creeps. They had encountered only a few gangs of punks and they gave it up without much of a fight Ike’s 2 Batt and Greenwalt’s 11 Batt were just south of Ben. The other battalions—with a couple of exceptions—were standing by, waiting for the big push to get underway, or helping small communities get back on their feet. Two other battalions were waiting for Ben’s orders to move. Ben planned very carefully. But first there was a little game to be played between Ben and Corrie.

  “What about this little town just ahead?” Ben asked innocently.

  “That’s where the scouts first reported from,” Corrie said over a smile of her own. “It’s a little bigger than a town, boss. It was a city of just over a quarter of a million before the Great War.”

  “Oh. Very well. We’ll bivouac just west of the outskirts. Maybe we’ll get lucky tonight,” he added with a very thin smile.

  The team grinned and exchanged glances. Ben knew that without Corrie telling him; it was a game they played. They knew what Ben was up to: he would have his people appear to be bivouacking for the night, but in reality the Rebels would be setting up ambush sites, hoping to sucker the enemy in under cover of darkness; night was the creeps’ favorite time to fight. With luck, the Rebels would draw hundreds of creeps from the larger ruins to the east.

  “Scouts report the main body of creeps have moved back into the rubble of the city,” Corrie said.

  “Pull the scouts back and tell them to pick a spot,” Ben ordered. There was no need for him to tell the forward people to stay alert. That would have been a superfluous order. Nor did he have to tell them in code what he had planned for the night. They knew and would be eyeballing the best locations to lay out anti-personnel mines, stringing black wire ankle-high, and rigging other nasty little surprises the Rebels were famous for. Or infamous.

  When it came to warfare, Ben Raines and his Rebels were not nice people.

  “Order Buddy, Dan, and Buck to gear up and move in a bit closer,” Ben ordered.

  Ben’s son, Buddy, who commanded 8 Batt, designated the special operations battalion, and Dan Gray, the former British SAS officer who commanded 3 Batt, and Buck Taylor, who commanded 15 Batt, had moved into position.

  A few miles south, artillery units had moved into place, waiting for Ben’s orders, and the souped-up P-51Es were waiting to go in at Ben’s command.

  As the Rebels were setting up their “bivouac” area, Ben said, “Hot coffee only, Corrie. We eat cold rations tonight Everybody stay heads-up all the time.”

  The Rebels noticed that Ben was carrying his old Thompson SMG and his magazine pouch was filled with spares. He walked the area, stopping to chat innocuously enough for a moment with platoon leaders and COs. “Everybody stay in body armor. As soon as the creeps start rushing us, and they will just after dark . . .” The wind had shifted, coming out of the east, bringing with it a strong odor of unwashed bodies. “. . . The artillery will open up just behind them and keep up the barrage. That will prevent the creeps from retreating. We’ll keep illumination flares up for the duration. Fly-bys have shown the creeps are concentrating on this side of the city . . . facing us in a defensive posture and not paying attention behind them as they should. I don’t think they realize they’ve been put in a box. If we have any kind of luck, we can get a lot of our work done tonight. I want everyone with two full canteens of water, enough ammo for a sustained fight. Plenty of grenades. Once they realize they’re trapped, the creeps will come at us in their usual banzai attack.” Ben smiled thinly. “This night is going to be very interesting.”

  As dusk drew nearer, the Rebels got into position, behaving as if it were the close of a typical day in the field. The mess tents were up, with the cooks moving back and forth as if everything was normal. But their weapons were within easy reach and when the first shot was fired, they knew exactly where to jump.

  “Buddy and Dan in position,” Corrie reported to Ben. “Artillery ready to go.”

  Ben nodded his understanding and looked around him. “Everybody in position?”

  “Yes, sir. The tanks were the last to shift around. Everything is setting on ‘go’.”

  “Full dark in about 15 minutes. Let’s get the team into position.”

  To an observer, the camp looked normal. It was anything but normal. The Rebels were on high alert.

  If Ben’s plan worked, and indications were it was working to perfection, the creeps in the ruins of Pittsburgh had already shifted many of their people out and west, to beef up the creeps in what used to be the small city of Washington, hoping to catch the Rebels by surprise.

  The surprise was going to be on the creeps.

  Corrie was standing very close to Ben, behind what was left of a concrete block wall. “Scouts report a large wave of creeps coming dead at them, boss,” she said in a low voice. “They are approaching what we have designated as the FFZ.” No man’s land, a free fire zone for the Rebels. Soon the slaughter would begin and the night would be sparked with muzzle blasts, the roar of heavy artillery, and the screams of those caught in the open.

  “Tell our forward people to fall back.”

  “Yes, s
ir.”

  “The creeps never learn,” Ben muttered. “Luckily for us.”

  None of his team replied, knowing no reply was expected.

  Ben started to say that this time, on this sweep, they would get rid of the creeps once and for all. But he curbed his tongue, recalling that he’d said the same thing on the previous sweeps and the damn Night People just kept coming back. He frowned and shook his head. Scientists down at Base Camp One were now saying the cannibalism might be caused by an illness due to chemicals in their water.

  “Years of drinking bad water?” Ben had asked, struggling to keep sarcasm out of his tone.

  “Yes,” they replied.

  “The goddamn creepies are all over North America, Mexico, Central America, South America, and Europe. Every place in this world we have gone, we have run into creepies. And you want me to believe it was caused by bad water?”

  “Well . . .” The scientists said in unison.

  “Why didn’t any of us go cannibalistic before we formed Tri-States and got water purification systems up and running, back when we were drinking whatever water we could find?” Ben asked.

  The scientists had no reply to that question.

  “Keep trying,” Ben told them.

  Ben smiled as he remembered that scene. His scientists were the finest in the world (he got them from all over the world) but they sometimes had a tendency to keep their heads in the ozone. Somebody had to bring them down and plant their feet firmly on the ground.

  “Creeps approaching the point of no return,” Corrie whispered. “Sixty seconds.”

  “Ready the IFs,” Ben said softly.

  “IFs ready, boss. Thirty seconds.”

  “Drop them in,” Ben ordered.

  The illumination flares were dropped down the tubes and the night was shattered, a harsh white light ripping the darkness. What appeared to be hundreds of robed men and women were caught in the glare just as 120mm and 155mm rounds began dropping in from miles away. Fifty-caliber machine guns opened up from the Rebel side, and those creeps who weren’t torn apart by the heavy incoming artillery were cut down by machine-gun fire. It was bloody carnage, and that was exactly what Ben had planned.