Death in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  “Now, now, Dan,” Ben kidded him, looking up as Tina once more entered the hotel lobby.

  “All parties notified, Dad,” she told him. “What’s all that screaming about over at number three shower tent?”

  “Some, ah, ladies are being forced to bathe.”

  “Ladies! If those broads are ladies,” Tina declared, “I’m the Jolly Green Giant.”

  Ben laughed and rose from his chair, walking to the ever-present coffee pot and pouring himself a cup. He turned to face his daughter. “Had Thermopolis ever heard of this bunch of bikers?”

  “No. It was news to him. And Base has absolutely no intel on the group.”

  “Well, I guess it’s up to us to provide it.” Ben walked back to his chair. “When the, ah, ladies return from their bath, have Ling let his interrogation people work on them. And I want to see Meg Callahan as soon as the medics are through with her.”

  Dr. Ling entered the hotel lobby and walked up to Ben, taking a seat. “I think,” the doctor said, “Miss Callahan was a very fortunate young lady. The group that kidnapped her was in a hurry to get to us, you specifically, General. She was not raped. That was to come later; after you were killed—sort of a victory celebration, one might say.”

  Ben grunted. He lifted his eyes as Meg was escorted into the hotel lobby. Auburn hair, green eyes, a very lovely Irish lass. Ben guessed her at about five-five. Very shapely.

  He stood up. “Miss Callahan. Won’t you take a seat?”

  Tina rolled her eyes at this unexpected gallantry from her father. That usually meant that he had something up his sleeve or was romantically interested in the woman—or both.

  But in a way she was glad to see it. It meant that her dad had finally decided to put Jerre out of his mind forever. Or at least try. She cut her eyes to Buddy. He was smiling.

  Meg put her green eyes on Ben and stared at him for a long moment. Six feet one or two, she guessed. Dark hair peppered with gray. Strange blue eyes. She guessed him to be around fifty. Maybe one hundred ninety pounds. Looked to be in excellent physical shape. Not a handsome man in the pretty boy vein, but . . . interesting-looking. Very interesting-looking.

  “Thank you, General Raines.”

  “Somebody bring Miss Callahan a cup of what now passes for coffee.” They had found a warehouse full of coffee in New York City, but that was carefully hoarded, and not for everyday use.

  Coffee in hand, Meg sipped and sighed gratefully.

  “Tell me what you can, if anything, about this bunch of bikers who, whether they knew it or not, have named themselves HALFASS.”

  The woman looked startled for a moment, and then burst out laughing. “HALFASS?” she finally managed to ask.

  “Yes. Help Americans Live, Fight, And Stay Strong.”

  “I never put it together,” she admitted. “Well, I probably know more about them than I ever cared to know. Where to start?”

  “From the beginning, Miss Callahan.”

  “Call me Meg.”

  “Very well, Meg. Where was your home?”

  “Originally?”

  “Yes.”

  “Southern California. Los Angeles. My mother was an actress—mostly bit parts, but steady work nonetheless. My father was a writer. Paperbacks.”

  “Matt Callahan?”

  She nodded.

  “Hell, I knew him well. We met at a WWA convention three-four years before the balloon went up. Both of us had books up for Best Western that year.”

  “I know. You won. Dad said you deserved it.”

  “That would be just like him. Go on, please.”

  “I was visiting my mother on location the summer the bombs came. In Arizona. We became separated in all the confusion. I’ve never seen her since. Eventually I drifted up into Wyoming—that was after five or six years of drifting around—and found myself a little cabin, and stayed. Raised a garden in the summer and hunted for meat during the winter . . .”

  Ben thought it odd that she had mentioned nothing about her father.

  “About three years ago, Satan showed up.”

  “Who!”

  “The biker who calls himself Satan.”

  “He’s the head of this HALFASS business?”

  “In a manner of speaking, yes. Anyway, he tried to come on to me. I told him to get the hell off my land. He left, but came back later that night. I shot him. Thought I’d killed him, but later found out he was only slightly wounded. It got really wearisome there for a time. I had to watch my back at all times.”

  “No man in your life?”

  “There have been very few men in my life, General. I generally find I can get along without them very well.”

  Ben smiled. “Oh?”

  “Yes. And no, I don’t like girls—not in the way you were probably thinking.”

  “I wasn’t thinking that at all, Meg.”

  She studied him for a moment. “Yes, you probably weren’t thinking that. From all that I’ve been able to find out about you, you’re an honorable man.”

  “I don’t know about honorable, Meg. I swore off women about a year ago, that’s all.”

  She arched one eyebrow.

  “And no, I don’t like boys, either!”

  They shared a laugh, Meg saying, “Anyway, I pulled out. I hated to because I’d been there for a long time. I loved that little place. Satan found me. I moved again. He found me again. Then suddenly the harassment stopped. For a year I lived alone, and without being bothered. I couldn’t figure it out. Then one day this young man showed up; he was five or six years younger than me. He’d been tortured by Satan and his group. Managed to escape. I hid him for the rest of that year.”

  She paused and Ben took it up. “How many people does Satan have?”

  “Men and women?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thirty-five hundred, I’d guess. Their headquarters is Sheridan. It was a ... brutal takeover. The bikers are not nice people.”

  “The women play the same role as the men in Satan’s army. By that, I mean . . .”

  “I know what you mean.” She frowned. “Not all of them are fighters. Although all can fight, if you know what I mean.”

  Ben nodded.

  “I would guess that the Rattlesnake Kid . . .”

  “The who?” Ben blurted.

  Her smile was a mixture of humor and sadness. “The Rattlesnake Kid. He calls himself Snake. Anyway, I would guess that Snake has probably a thousand men; maybe fifteen hundred. So that means a force of over, oh, three thousand, combined. But that’s just in Wyoming. He has other colonies—as he calls them—in Washington, Idaho, and Montana. He shares power with some survivalist up in Montana. They, well, don’t really get along too well.”

  “Who in the hell is the Rattlesnake Kid, Meg?”

  “The real brains behind Satan and his bikers.”

  “Nobody with any brains wrote this.” Ben held up the plastic-encased paper he’d taken from the dead skinhead.

  Again, Meg laughed. “Oh, no. One of the outlaw bikers wrote that. I’m sure that Snake found it to be hysterically amusing.”

  “Have you ever met this Snake person?”

  “One time, recently, that is,” she said mysteriously, “and then only by chance, and for a very brief moment.”

  “I’m surprised he let you go free.”

  “Oh, Snake wouldn’t hurt me!” Meg’s green eyes widened. “You see, the Rattlesnake Kid is my father.”

  Ben learned that Matt Callahan had apparently gone over the edge after the Great War. Gone so far over he had joined some racist group and rapidly became the head of the fool thing.

  Then he tipped way over, and became, as Ben recalled, one of the characters Matt had created in a Western written years back: the Rattlesnake Kid.

  Meg said that her father now dressed in Western garb, wore two six-shooters, and rode around on a black horse. Ben guessed that he and Matt—or Snake—were about the same age.

  Meg had told him that her father had pulled to
gether all the extreme right-wing groups left and set them up in a three-state area—at least three states, she guessed. Probably more.

  Snake used the bikers as enforcers, and was the brains behind the entire operation. She wasn’t sure where her father lived.

  Meg was heading west to link up with Ben and his Rebels, and to warn him of the powerful force that now controlled much of the northwest.

  The bikers sent to ambush Ben had probably monitored Rebel radio transmissions and waited in Bossier. They had taken Meg and killed the young man with her several days before arriving in Bossier.

  Dr. Ling approached Ben as he stood in the darkness outside the hotel. “We have broken those foul-mouthed female bikers. Their stories seem to corroborate what Miss Callahan told us. She does not know that we were monitoring her conversations and answers to our questions with a PSE machine. We believe she was truthful in all her statements.”

  “The biker women?”

  “One died. The problem is, what do we do with those remaining?”

  Ben sighed. “We can’t turn them loose, that’s for sure.” He motioned for Corrie to join them. “Bump Cecil, Corrie. Tell him to send a detail over here to get these ... ladies. Get them started right now. They should be here by daylight. We’ll pull out as soon as we turn over the prisoners to them.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Get some sleep, Doctor. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Ben walked the perimeter of the hotel, chatting briefly with each sentry. Then he turned in. His last thought before sleep took him was that this journey was certainly not going to be uneventful.

  The column pulled out at midmorning, having transferred the female bikers to the detail Cecil sent out. The biker mamas were less than happy about it, and voiced their dissatisfaction loudly and profanely, heaping dire threats upon Ben’s head.

  “What a lovely bunch of girls,” Corrie said as the detail of Rebels pulled out, heading back to Base Camp One.

  “Just darling,” Beth said. “But at least they’re clean. Probably for the first time in months.”

  “Drive, Cooper,” Ben said.

  Meg had declined Ben’s offer to return to Base Camp One, instead, asking for and receiving permission to accompany the column westward. She was outfitted and assigned to the office staff until she could prove herself in a combat situation.

  The Rebels rolled through Shreveport and then crossed over into Texas. The Interstate system was only slightly better in the Friendship State.

  “Eagle to Scout,” Ben radioed.

  “Go, Eagle.”

  “Tina, check out Marshall and get back to me.”

  “Ten-four. I’m on the outskirts now.”

  Ben halted the convoy just before the exit sign leading off to Marshall and waited for Tina’s report. He had checked his map—an old one—and found the town had once had a population of twenty-five thousand. There would be some survivors, but how many and in what kind of shape was unknown.

  “Got some people here, Dad,” Tina reported. “About five hundred, I’d guess . . .”

  That was just about right. Ben had found during his wanderings that approximately one in fifty had survived the Great War. That computed to a population of about five million now living in what was once the United States. Give or take a couple of hundred thousand.

  But they were a damned elusive bunch, spread out all over slightly more than three and a half million square miles of territory. And there was no way of determining how many had fled the U.S. borders for Canada or Mexico.

  “If I could get them together,” Ben murmured, “we could rebuild this country. And make it work.”

  “Beg pardon, sir?” Jersey asked from the back seat.

  “Talking to myself, Jersey.” He keyed his mike. “Their condition, Scout?”

  “They’re in good shape. But they want no part of us.”

  And had happened before, that made Ben hot. And as usual, he calmed himself quickly. He had no right to impose his own views on someone who did not wish it; not as long as they were living in peace with others and more or less abiding by some rules of law that were acceptable to the majority in the community.

  “Would I be wasting my time coming in and talking with them?” Bed radioed.

  “Probably,” his daughter told him. “I have encountered friendlier folks.”

  “Hell with them,” Ben replied. “Move out and check the next town.” He glanced at Cooper. “Roll, Coop.” He glanced back at Beth. “Make sure Cecil gets the message that this town is to receive no help from us, in any way, shape, or fashion, at any time. They want to stand alone, they can sink alone.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Hard words from a hard man. But Ben had learned throughout the years that progressive, forward-thinking people were almost always eager for the Rebels to move in. To eagerly receive the help that only the Rebels could provide. Those who wished to remain stagnant usually didn’t last too long.

  He had a hunch that the next town down the seemingly never-ending highway would be filled with people—a lot of them from towns nearby—who had banded together to reopen schools and clinics and were looking toward the future, living under laws and rules and regulations.

  The miles rolled by. Tina called in.

  “Go, Tina.”

  “Longview is deserted, Dad. Except for a few people that look as though time forgot them. They’re a pretty sorry bunch. They say that those who reoccupied Tylor ran them out. This bunch is a complaining and whining lot.”

  “Pull out and head for Tyler. That seems like a good spot for an outpost, if the people want it.”

  They did. Ben found a clean town, with a population of about fifteen hundred, all working together toward a better and safer future. They welcomed the Rebels.

  The elected officials of the town readily agreed to a meeting with Ben. They listened to Ben’s ideas and agreed to become part of the network of outposts Ben was setting up around the country.

  One more step toward pulling the land out of the ashes of destruction.

  Ben radioed back to Cecil and informed him of the new outpost. Cecil would dispatch equipment and a small team of Rebels immediately, and yet another rung was climbed on the tall, tall ladder toward rebuilding a shattered nation.

  The Rebels stayed one night in Tyler and pulled out at dawn the following morning.

  The spokesperson at Tyler had told Ben that between Tyler and Dallas, there was nothing. And no, they did not know where the people had gone. Just that they were gone; north or south or west of there. But just gone.

  And Dallas was a haven for thugs and punks and hoodlums and outlaws and the like. Nobody, but nobody ever went into Dallas.

  Ben had smiled.

  The spokesperson asked why he was smiling.

  “Sounds like a lovely place to visit,” Ben told her.

  “Roads are a mess,” Tina radioed back. “And getting worse. Some of the cars abandoned have bullet holes in them.”

  Ben glanced at his watch. One o’clock in the afternoon. “What’s your twenty, Tina?”

  “About thirty-five miles east of Dallas.”

  “Hold what you’ve got.”

  “It must be slow going up where she is,” Cooper said. “We’re just a few miles behind her.”

  Ben glanced out the window at the brush and weeds along the interstate. “Dandy place for an ambush,” he muttered.

  A second later a bullet whanged off the side of the armor-plated Blazer.

  “We’re under attack!” his radio blared Tina’s voice.

  Ben jerked up the mike. “So are we, kid. Just hang on.”

  3

  Either their attackers were awfully stupid, or they just did not realize who they were attacking.

  Every truck had a Big Thumper. The high-firepower 40mm machine gun launched grenades at rapid-fire, with a one hundred percent kill-radius of ten yards per grenade. And could launch four different types of rounds.

  Each platoon had at least o
ne .50 caliber machine gun and at least one 5.56 Minimi machine gun, which was capable of spitting out 750 rounds a minute.

  The attackers which swarmed out of the brush and tall grass died almost instantly after revealing themselves.

  “Two tanks up to Tina’s position,” Ben radioed. “Dan, take a team and go.”

  “On my way, General.”

  Ben stepped out of the truck and a frightened little dog ran up to him, shivering with fear as it sat between Ben’s boots. Ben knelt down and picked up the animal, knowing damn well he was going to have fleas all over him. He held the dog close to his chest and it calmed quickly.

  “What’d you got there, General?” Tony asked. The young captain was the CO of D Company.

  Ben held the dog out while his Rebels were going through the carnage they had just wreaked. The wounded were being looked after . . . in a manner of speaking.

  “Pure mutt,” Ben announced. “With a bad back leg. How about a mascot, gang?”

  Those around him agreed to that and Tony named the mutt Chester. Ben handed Chester to a Rebel and got on the horn to Tina.

  “How’s it looking up there, kid?”

  “Oh, just wonderful, Pops! Thank God I can hear the tanks coming. You?”

  “I just found a little dog. Or rather, he found me. We named him Chester.”

  There was a long pause. “Well, I think that’s just marvelous, Dad. You need a companion. Goddamnit!” she yelled. “Are you sending help up here?”

  Ben chuckled and looked down at his hand. It was covered with fleas. “Somebody bathe that mutt,” he yelled, keying the mike. “Dan’s on the way. Are you being overrun by a pack of punks, daughter?”

  “No! We just beat them back. You all right?”

  “I have fleas.” Ben scratched his chest.

  “Say again.”

  “Never mind. Pull back and join us. It’s too dangerous a run from here on in.”

  “Ten-four, Dad.”

  Ben began walking among the dead attackers, piled up like tornado-tossed debris. He scratched as he strolled amid the torn bodies. Chester was a four-footed walking flea factory. Cute little fellow though. Ben stopped and knelt down beside one man, who appeared to still be breathing. Carefully, Ben tossed the man’s weapons out of reach and then placed the muzzle of his M 14 against the man’s cheek.