Slaughter in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  Whether or not the new people knew how to use the weapons was something Ben would learn soon enough, although they all said they did.

  Then he led them to the subway tunnel and told them to stay within the confines of the old station. He wasn’t about to lead them to the cave until he had the OK of the people there. This was their show, not his.

  Judy, Greg, Dr. James, and several more of the survivors walked back up with Ben to meet the new people. Within minutes, the scene resembled old home week. Ben stood off to one side, amused at the sight.

  When the conversation finally took a break, Ben said, “All right, people. Listen up. Red, you take someone and get back to the cave, draw two days’ rations for ten people, and get back here. Judy, you and Greg, Babe, Bud, and Joan. You’re with me. Sue and Jeff, Paul and Sally. That makes ten by my count. We’re going boat hunting. Cliff, you monitor the radio. I’ll try to broadcast twice during the day, at 1000 hours and 1800 hours. That means you’ve got to chance the outside to pick me up. Use the headset to reduce the chances of being heard.”

  Cliff nodded in understanding and looked at his watch, one of many that Ike had included in the emergency drops.

  Ben smiled, thinking, Simple things like a wristwatch that the Rebels have taken for granted for years. This country has a hell of a long way to go on the road back.

  Ben looked at the group for a few seconds, then made up his mind. “We’ve got five days,” he deliberately lied, adding two days to what he and Ike had discussed. “So pack up everything that isn’t absolutely necessary and be ready to move at my signal. And when you start moving, don’t stop. Just come on to our location, wherever it might be. And people, when I give you the word, don’t turn back for anything or anybody, because you won’t have time to recover if you do.”

  Red returned a few minutes later, several men helping him carry the food and water and ammo. When everyone was supplied and their packs filled, Ben preset the radio frequencies and picked up his CAR. He looked at Cliff. “I’ll do a radio check in one hour, Cliff.”

  Cliff nodded. “I’ll be waiting, general.”

  With Ben leading the way, the group marched out of the tunnel and up to ground level. Ben halted them while he checked in all directions, then waved them forward.

  Somewhere along the waterfront there were boats that would take them off the rock. Ben intended to find them. If not that, then he planned to kill a lot of punks.

  On the mainland, Ike was rapidly wrapping up his offensive against the punks. The gang leaders had planned well, Ike gave them that, but anytime one planned war against the Rebels, it was best to plan for the totally unexpected, for the Rebels did not adhere to any set rules of engagement. The Rebels had not taken many prisoners, for as Ben had said, these were the hardcore of the criminal element, and they had nothing to gain by surrendering. They knew what awaited them at the hands of the Rebels.

  Ike met with the batt coms and told them of Ben’s decision. “He gave us three days, folks. Then ordered me to let the hammer down. And in so many words, he asked that no rescue attempt be made on our part. If he’s not off the rock in three days, he’s going to try to radio us his exact location and we’ll keep artillery away from there.” Ike waited until the low murmur of disapproval had died down. Then he spread his big hands. “The boss’s orders, gang. What can I say?”

  The only batt com who had not groused was Ben’s son, Buddy. He stood up. “Dad’s got something up his sleeve, Ike. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t issue those types of orders.”

  “I agree, Buddy,” Ike said. “But what has he got working in that devious mind of his?”

  The handsome and muscular young man shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know and we’re not going to know until the last moment. It’s my belief that Dad doesn’t fully trust someone in the bunch he’s aligned with. He’s playing his cards close.”

  The others in the room nodded in agreement.

  “Ike sat down on the edge of a folding table that groaned under his weight. He ignored the smiles from the others. Ike was in excellent physical shape; he was just . . . well, large. “Ben hasn’t said anything about creeps on the rock. I think perhaps the majority of them have moved on. God alone knows where. But you can bet we’ll meet them again along the way. We’ve killed a lot of punks, but many of them have also moved on. We’ve still got a hell of a fight looking at us somewhere along the way.” He sighed. “Then there is Simon Border to deal with. I’m rambling, people, trying not to think about the fact that Ben is trapped on that goddamn rubbled-up piece of real estate over yonder.”

  Tina, Ben’s daughter, stood up. “Ike, Dad is lone-wolfing it. He’s doing what he loves to do . . . with no restrictions placed on him and no one nursemaiding him and bitching at him and watching him like a hawk looking at a rabbit. He’s enjoying himself. And you all know that. Dad probably has a plan he’s not telling us about He’s usually got an ace up his sleeve. But he’s given us orders, and we’ve got to obey them. Like them, or not.”

  “I guess that is the bottom line,” Ike reluctantly agreed. He expelled air and then stood up. The table sprang back into its normal shape. “Start repositioning the artillery. Let’s get ready to take that rock over there.” He looked at his watch. “We start shelling the objective in 80 hours. That’s all, people.”

  FIFTEEN

  The rain continued to come down in a steady fall as Ben let Greg take the point and lead them toward the waterfront. They skirted the park in silence and then cut due west. The rain was obviously keeping the punks under cover. Greg kept the group in the alleys as much as possible and the going was slow but safer. After an hour had passed, Ben signaled for a halt and called in. Cliff answered immediately and the signal was clear and strong, then the group pushed on through the rain.

  When they reached what a member assured Ben was Tenth Avenue, they cut north and continued for a number of blocks before Greg called for a rest break.

  “This will take us to Pier One,” he told Ben. “When we get there, we’ll start working south. If the boats aren’t hidden somewhere along there, I don’t know where to look.”

  “We’ll give it our best shot. But I’ve got to say we’ve been damn lucky so far this night.”

  “I’ve never seen a creep out in the rain. They don’t like water. I don’t know where the gangs are, or why they aren’t out patrolling. It’s . . . sort of weird.”

  Ben thought he knew the answer to that, but he kept his opinion to himself, and his eyes on one member of the group. He’d been watching him since first arriving in the park.

  The rainstorm began to blow itself out as the front pushed eastward, out into the Atlantic.

  Another block, and Bud said, “I know a shortcut, Greg. It’ll save us time. I’ll take the lead if you don’t mind.”

  Ben smiled in the darkness. “Oh, I don’t think that will be necessary, Bud.”

  “Sir?” Bud asked, turning to face Ben.

  “I’ve been trying to figure out how you tipped off the punks.” Ben lifted his CAR as Joan started to slip to one side. “Stand easy, Joan. Take her weapon, Greg.”

  Confusion on his face, Greg jerked the weapon from Joan’s hands and backed up.

  “Put your rifle on the ground, Bud. Slow and easy. That’s good. Now back away from it.”

  “You’re making a mistake, general,” Bud said. “I haven’t been tipping anyone off.”

  “That’s right, Bud. But only because you couldn’t figure out how to do it. You couldn’t leave the park to warn your buddies; you couldn’t leave a message for fear it would get destroyed in the mortar assault. All you could do was hope we’d send out a patrol and you could be a part of it . . . so you could lead us straight to your punk friends.”

  Joan suddenly whirled around and started to make a run for it. Judy gave her the butt of a rifle to the back of her head. The woman dropped like a brick to the wet alley.

  Bud’s shoulders sagged, his eyes on the still form of his woman. “Yo
u couldn’t have had any proof. You had to be guessing it all,” he said. “You were running a bluff and Joan panicked. Shit!”

  Ben smiled. “I’m a pretty good guesser, Bud. You see, every time I looked up, either you or Joan were standing close to me, listening very intently. I thought the both of you were going to have a heart attack when I suddenly decided to leave the tunnel and go scouting. That’s when I pulled Cliff aside and told him to never let the radio out of his sight. The punks seized radios when they overran our position; didn’t take a genius to figure that out. That’s why I changed frequencies. That’s also why I told a few other little lies. Just in case you’d somehow find a way to leave a note, tipping off your punk friends.”

  “You can’t prove any of this!” Bud flared. “Hell, Joan just panicked a minute ago, that’s all. Doesn’t prove a thing.”

  “But your coming back from every patrol damn sure does,” Greg said. “Everybody else would be suffering everything from gunshot wounds to scrapes. But not you. You never got so much as a scratch. But what was the point, Bud? What did you gain from it all?”

  “Food,” Babe said, open hate in her voice. “While the rest of us were eating rat and anything else we could get our hands on, losing weight, Bud and Joan never lost an ounce. Look at them. They haven’t changed in months. Jesus, I must have been blind not to see it. You two had food cached in the park. Goddamn you both!”

  “I always thought you two were just lovers who wanted to be left alone,” Judy broke her angry silence. “That’s why I never gave it a second thought when you’d go off by yourselves and stay gone for hours. You were meeting the gangs and telling them about upcoming patrols and then chowing down while the rest of us were walking around hungry. Especially the kids, who really needed nourishing food. Damn you to hell!”

  Bud grinned at the group, his smile macabre in the misty night. “Go ahead, general. Kill me. Fire your weapon. And when you do, you’ll have a thousand people around you in five minutes. Come on, pull the trigger, kill me. I’ll at least go out knowing you’re a dead man. None of you will ever get off this rock. You’ll all die here. I can at least take some satisfaction in that. You’ll never find the boats. They’re too well hidden and too well guarded. Fuck you, Ben Raines!”

  “You’re not my type, Bud.” Ben took a step forward and buried the blade of his knife in Bud’s belly, muscling the blade upward. Bud fell backward and hit the concrete of the alley. He twitched several times, then lay still.

  “Take his weapons and food and water. Then do what you want to with Joan,” Ben said. “Just do it quietly.”

  Judy reached down and cut the unconscious woman’s throat with her own knife. She stared down at what she had done for a moment, then took a couple of steps to one side and vomited.

  Ben waited until she had regained her composure. “Drag the bodies into a building. Let’s get moving. We’ve still got a long way to go.”

  As the group neared the waterfront, still about three blocks away, Ben slowed their advance. They moved forward one at a time, darting from cover to cover. The rain had stopped, but the skies were overcast. The gangs had yet to make an appearance.

  “72nd Street,” Greg whispered to Ben, as they crossed the street.

  “I’m glad somebody knows where they are,” Ben muttered.

  Greg smiled at the remark and waved the others behind on across the street.

  A couple more long blocks and they were at the waterfront, the Hudson River looming dark and ever-moving just ahead of them.

  “What now?” Jeff whispered to Ben.

  “We get a few hours sleep and then start looking. We can’t search at night, so we’ll have to risk daylight. We’ll break up into two-person teams at first light. I know it’s risky, but that’s the only way I see to do it.”

  “They sure won’t be expecting us during the day.”

  “That’s my thinking.”

  Ben assigned guards and then stretched out on the concrete of what remained of a warehouse and surprisingly dropped off to sleep within minutes. Babe shook him awake at 0400 hours.

  “Everything quiet, general,” the woman whispered. “Nothing has been moving out there.”

  “That’s the way we like it.”

  The pre-dawn was filled with mist and fog when Ben awakened the others. They wandered off for what privacy they could find for their toilet and then gathered around Ben. Ben broke them up into four teams of two each. He made sure everyone had a map, a walkie-talkie, and knew where they would meet just before noon. They all said that from noon to dark was the most dangerous time, for the punks seemed to sleep late and then prowl all afternoon. Ben sent them out at 15-minute intervals, he and Judy the last ones to pull out.

  “We’re in real trouble if we don’t find these boats, aren’t we, Ben?”

  “Let’s put it this way—I don’t want to be on this rock when the Rebels start their assault.”

  “But we’ve got five days to that, right?”

  Ben smiled. “We’ve got about two and a half days, Judy. I lied.”

  She looked at Ben for a moment, then returned the smile. “Then I guess we’ve better find those boats, Ben.”

  The gangs had left guards along the waterfront, but they were unevenly spaced and not located in every pier. They were also careless and not very attentive. During that morning’s search, there were a least a dozen times when Ben could have silently taken out the guard. He let them live, for to kill them would have given away the survivors’ presence.

  Ben checked in with Cliff at 1000 hours and then called off the so-far fruitless search at 1130 hours that morning, telling the teams to hunt a hole for the day and stay put. The teams had worked their way down to Pier 97 with no luck. Ben sat off to himself in the ruins of a warehouse and studied a map of the waterfront.

  “Too much territory and not enough time,” he muttered. “We’re not going to make it.”

  “You say something, Ben?” Judy asked, walking up.

  “We’ve not going to make it.” Ben folded his map. “Even if we found the boats on the last day, it would take too long to get the people over here. You know where we are; you know how much territory we’ve covered and how much we have to go. I think the best thing for us to do is head on back and get ready to ride it out.”

  “What are our chances, Ben?”

  “Fifty-fifty. My people can pinpoint their targets. It’s not the artillery we have to worry about. The punks may be lowlifes of the worst degree, but they’re not stupid. After a few hours they’re sure to spot what area is being avoided. Then they’ll come after us. They have nothing to lose.”

  “So now we . . . ?”

  “Wait for dark and head on back. Unless you’ve got a better idea?”

  She shook her head and silently mouthed the word, No.

  “Well, let’s see what the others have to say about it.”

  The group took the news in silence. Babe cleared her throat and said, “What are the chances of our riding it out, general?”

  “Just like I told Judy. About fifty-fifty. It’s not the artillery, it’s the punks. Once they figure out our gunners are deliberately avoiding a certain area, they’ll come swarming in there.”

  “We could booby-trap the tunnel,” Jeff suggested.

  “Well, we could,” Ben replied. “But on the other hand, if I were doing the searching, that would be a dead giveaway. But it’s up to you folks.”

  “Let’s head on back at dark,” Paul suggested. “I don’t think we could find where those boats are hidden if we had a month to look.”

  “I’m afraid I have to agree with you,” Ben said. “That agreeable with everyone?”

  It was.

  “Let’s get some rest then. We’ll head back at dark.”

  Ben went outside and bumped Ike, breaking the news to him. Ben had figured out the exact location of the subway where the survivors were hiding, and gave it to him.

  “I hate this, Ben. I’m going to be right up front wit
h you.”

  “We don’t have a choice in the matter, Ike. You try to assault this rock without first softening it up, we’ll lose a lot of Rebel lives. We’ll keep our heads down, you can be assured of that.”

  There was a few seconds pause from across the river. “Timetable still firm?”

  “It’s still ‘go’.”

  “All right, Ben.” There was resignation in Ike’s voice. “You’re callin’ the shots.”

  “Eagle out.”

  Ben joined the others in the old warehouse, made sure everyone knew their guard assignments, and stretched out on the floor to get some rest. There was no point in worrying about whether they could make it through a bombardment. They had no choice in the matter.

  There was not a Rebel who wouldn’t willingly give his or her life in an attempt to rescue Ben. Ben knew that. But there was no way he would ever allow it.

  They would ride out the assault, or they wouldn’t.

  Ben closed his eyes and let sleep take him.

  The others took the news of the deaths of Bud and Joan stoically, a few shaking their heads in disgust. Then Ben told them about the upcoming artillery bombardment. The survivors took that news just as unemotionally.

  “Theoretically, my artillery people can pinpoint targets to within a few yards,” Ben said, then paused and added very, very drily, “Theoretically. But we’ll cut ourselves a bit more slack. I’ve ordered my people to keep the rounds from falling in this general area.” He looked at his watch. “We’ve got about 50 hours to get ready for it. Let’s start boiling the water from that seepage we found and purifying it with chemicals. Start dividing up the rations into small packets that are easily carried by one person. That’s in case we have to leave the tunnels and get separated up top.” Or get lost in these tunnels that honeycomb the area, he thought, but didn’t vocalize it. “I want everyone to have flashlights, extra batteries, candles, matches and a couple of packets of extra rations. Make sure your canteens are full; keep refilling them as you drink. The youngest and strongest of the men will each be assigned a child to look after. All right, people, let’s start getting ready for my people to get us off this rock.” Or make our peace with God before we die here, he silently added.