Death in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  One of his brother bikers had been running to Leadfoot’s assistance when he rounded the wrong corner. His eyes widened and his mouth opened for just a second as his unbelieving eyes watched as the heavy machete blade impacted against the softness of his throat. The blade very neatly took his head off.

  Leadfoot got to his feet just in time to feel something squishy hit him the center of his back. “Goddamnit!” he yelled, turning around.

  He stood seemingly rooted to the floor, his eyes mirroring his horror as they stared down at Shorty’s head, the wide-open and forever unblinking eyes staring back at him.

  It took only a few seconds for Leadfoot to react. He hit the floor and began crawling around looking for his M16. He found his weapon and his walkie-talkie. He punched the side button and whispered into the cup, “Leadfoot to Beerbelly.”

  “I’s ’fraid you was dead, Leadfoot.”

  “Shorty is. Somebody cut off his head and chunked into the house. Hit me in the back with it. Most Godawfuliest damn thing I ever seen in my life. Where’s the rest of the boys?”

  “Keepin’ they asses down. Injun Sam and his boys has done swung around to your sector. You readin’ this, Injun?”

  “Yeah. But I ain’t swung nowheres. I got Rebs all around me, man. The sneaky bastards has done slipped into town and is all over the place. I just seen Texas Jim; as a matter of fact, I can still see him. He’s on the end of a rope danglin’ from a tree. The bastards hung him! Turrible thing to see.”

  A hard burst of gunfire caused Injun Sam to get a little closer to the floor. The only thing that prevented him from getting any closer were the buttons on his shirt.

  Injun Sam crawled under a table as a grenade exploded right outside his position. He said a lot of very hard and uncomplimentary things about Ben Raines.

  But he said them under his breath, not wanting to give away his location. Damn Reb might be listening right outside the window. Sneaky bastards!

  Wanda, the leader of a bunch of dyke bikers, had taken cover, along with her Sisters of Lesbos, behind the walls of an elementary school.

  “I hate that goddamn Ben Raines,” she hissed at no one in particular.

  “I bet he was a Republican,” Sweet Meat whispered.

  “He’s a goddamn man,” Sugar summed it up. “That’s enough.”

  “I hate Ben Raines,” Wanda repeated.

  “About two hours of daylight left,” Ben said to Corrie. “Advise Dan to hunt a hole until dark. Then really start headhunting.”

  Corrie relayed the orders and Dan’s operator acknowledged them.

  “Received, General. They’re going deep.”

  “I’m hoping that if nothing happens during the next several hours, the bikers will think we’ve pulled out and they’ll try to do something cute.”

  “We’re going to try to save the town?”

  “If at all possible.”

  After two hours of silence, the outlaws began to relax just a bit. Some even began to believe those Rebels who had infiltrated the town had pulled back with the approaching darkness.

  Many of those who believed that would not liveout the night.

  As full night pushed dusk out of the way, and finished spreading her dark wings of concealment over the town, Dan Gray and his Scouts slipped from their hiding places and went about their very silent and very deadly work.

  The first to be very brutally tossed into that long sleep was a careless biker who thought he’d slip over to where the female slaves were held and knock himself off a quick piece.

  He got knocked off and the piece of himself that got the most attention was not the member he originally had in mind.

  The outlaw died with his eyes wide open, the blood staining the front of his dirty shirt, and his head nearly severed from his body just as he was unlocking the door to the slave quarters.

  Buddy cautiously pushed open the door and looked inside the darkness. He smiled and waved several members of his Rat Team inside. Working very swiftly, and whispering to the slaves to be very quiet, the Scouts freed the men and women and children.

  “Are there any more prisoners being held in this town?” Buddy whispered the question.

  “The north end of town,” the woman told him in a soft voice. “About twenty or so girls and a half a dozen boys. They were hand-picked to serve Snake.”

  “Tell me exactly where.”

  “Get the others out of here,” the woman said. “I’ll lead you there.”

  “It’ll be very dangerous,” Buddy warned her.

  The woman’s smile, which Buddy observed in the moonlight coming through a very dirty window, was only slightly less than savage. “I’ve been using a Mini-14 for years and I can probably outshoot you with a pistol. It took these scum three years to finally corner and catch me, and before it was over, I left a dozen of them on the ground that last day.”

  Buddy smiled. “Welcome to the Army of Ben Raines. I’m his son, Buddy.”

  “You’re a handsome devil, for a fact. But you’re a little young for me.” She cut her eyes as Dan Gray slipped like a shadow into the slave house. “Now that one!” She let that remark speak for itself.

  “We don’t have the time for socializing,” Dan softly chided his people. “Let’s go! Get these people back to our lines.”

  Buddy waved him over and pointed to the woman. “This is, ah ...”

  “Sarah,” she said, sticking out her head. “Sarah Bradford. And you’d be . . .”

  “Colonel Dan Gray.” He took the offered hand and looked into her eyes.

  “She’ll be leading us to the other prisoner house,” Buddy told him.

  But Dan and Sarah were busy gazing into each other’s eyes.

  Buddy squatted on the dirty floor and smiled at the man and woman. After a few seconds, he asked, “Are you two going to make a career of this?”

  Dan shifted his eyes. “Don’t be impertinent, young man. Get the lady armed and let’s go.” He moved to the door and slipped out into the darkness.

  “I like a tough man,” Sarah said, belting a dead outlaw’s pistol around her waist and taking the M16 handed her.

  “Well, you have certainly met one. You ready?”

  “Let’s go. You follow me. I was raised on a ranch over on Crazy Woman Creek. I know this town better than you know the back of your hand.”

  “After you, ma’am.”

  Outside, Dan looked on with admiration as Sarah came upon the body of another outlaw with his throat cut and reached down with no qualms and took his sheath knife from the cooling body, slipping it onto her belt, then testing the edge.

  “I wouldn’t want to dress out a steer with it,” Sarah said. “But it’ll do to cut a throat until I can find a stone.”

  They slipped away into the darkness, heading for the second prisoner house.

  “What a magnificent woman!” Dan was heard to whisper.

  The Scouts escorting the freed prisoners swung wide around the town, using the same trails they came in on, and reached Ben’s position.

  Dr. Ling then took command of the survivors while the Scouts briefed Ben.

  “I think he’s in love.”

  “Who?” Ben asked, startled.

  “Colonel Gray.”

  “Who the hell did he fall in love with?”

  “On of the prisoners.”

  Tina smiled. “Isn’t this all rather sudden?”

  Ben held up a hand. “Wait a minute, wait a minute! Let’s back up. Where is Dan now?”

  “Going to free the other prisoners, with his lady love leading the way.”

  Ben walked away, mumbling to himself, heading toward the truck that was temporarily serving as a coffee and ration wagon. “Love!” he muttered. “Love! I’m trying to fight a war, not run a lonely hearts club!” He passed by Dan’s Jeep, where Chester was sitting on the front seat, waiting for Dan to return.

  The little dog wagged its tail at Ben’s approach. “You’re about to have some competition, Chester.” Ben stopped a
nd petted the animal. “But I don’t think you’ll mind at all. Just one more person to spoil you.”

  Chester jumped up into Ben’s arms and Ben carried it toward the mess truck, enduring Chester’s licking his ear as they walked.

  “There’s the house,” Sarah said.

  Dan glanced at his watch. “The diversion team should be in place. Give them two clicks,” he told his radio operator. The signal to open the ball.

  Seconds later, a huge explosion rocked and destroyed half a dozen buildings at the south end of town. Outlaws began shifting about, beefing up that end of town, believing a major attack had once more begun from the south.

  Leadfoot and Beerbelly and Injun Sam and the others braced for attack. Wanda and her followers began once more to curse Ben Raines.

  Carefully placed Scouts began directing heavy machine gun fire into the buildings at the south end of Buffalo. More outlaws were shifted to the south to repel the attack.

  Buddy lifted his crossbow and put a bolt through a guard’s back, the force of the heavy bolt knocking the man down, dead as he hit the ground.

  “What the hell was that?” an outlaw’s voice carried to the Scouts. “Luddy—Luddy? What was that sound?”

  But Luddy was on the ground, a crossbow bolt through his heart.

  The outlaw biker who called for Luddy slipped around the house. He experienced a few seconds of hideous pain as a knife blade slammed into his stomach and the blade, cutting edge up, tore through vital organs, finally ripping the heart.

  Rebels stormed the house, expecting more guards, and were pleasantly surprised to find none.

  That frightened prisoners were quickly freed from the ropes that bound them. “Come on, people,” Sarah said in a hoarse whisper. “Let’s go. Ben Raines and his Rebels are here.”

  And while the outlaws were busy fighting the “Big-ass bunch of Rebels that attacked them from the south side,” as Leadfoot would later report, Dan Gray and his Scouts exited the town from the north end, with all the prisoners.

  “Ol’ Slim conned you,” Matt announced to the defenders of Buffalo by radio the next morning. “I warned you about that sneaky no-good. You got to stay on your toes all the time when he’s around. He’ll stick a knife in your back and twist it. Just like he done to me years back.”

  “I didn’t know Ben Raines ever stabbed Snake,” Beerbelly said.

  Injum Sam blinked. “Me, neither.”

  “He didn’t,” Leadfoot enlightened them. “’At there’s a figger of speech.”

  “Leadfoot’s pretty smart,” Wanda said, adding, “For a man.”

  “You shuck them drawers, Wanda,” Leadfoot replied, “and I’ll show you just how much of a man I really am.”

  Wanda flipped him the finger.

  Matt Callahan, aka the Rattlesnake Kid, then gave a speech that just about bored the boots off those listening, calling on his boys to defend the ranch against invaders.

  Since the outlaws had been up all night, too spooked to go to sleep, many of them dozed off during Matt’s long-winded harangue.

  Three miles away, Ben was climbing into the Blazer. Settled in the seat, he picked up his mike. “We don’t have any prisoners to worry about now, gang. Let’s take the town.”

  18

  “Holy shift!” Beerbelly said, looking through binoculars at the fifty-ton battle tanks slowly advancing up Highway 16, all buttoned up and ready for action. Behind the main battle tanks came the smaller Dusters.

  Beerbelly had been a Grunt in ’Nam—one of the few bikers who’d ever had any actual combat experience—and he knew firsthand what those twin-mounted 40mm cannon on the Dusters could do.

  He also knew that the old World War Two Army surplus mortars Snake had supplied them with wouldn’t dent those big-assed battle tanks.

  The tanks stopped about two thousand meters out and elevated the muzzles of the 105s for range.

  Beerbelly cussed. Since most of his mortars were the old M19 models, without mount, the maximum range was about five hundred yards. Add to that the bubbles were all screwed up on them and none of the crews assigned to handle them knew what a klick was . . . so the sum total of all that was a disaster waiting to happen.

  Beerbelly lowered the binoculars. “Let’s get the hell out of here! We’ll set up about fifteen miles north of the town on the Interstate. Move, goddamnit, move!”

  “Snake ain’t gonna like this,” Blackie told him.

  “Snake can kiss ass, too. We ain’t no good to him dead. Move, man.”

  “Bugging out,” Ben said, standing on top of the Blazer and watching the exodus through binoculars.

  “As soon as they’re clear, Dan, take your Scouts in and inspect for booby traps.”

  “Right, sir.”

  “Buddy, take your Rat Team in and find the airstrip. Get it cleaned up for our birds. We’re in no hurry. I intend to make Buffalo an outpost. We’ll probably need to widen and lengthen the strip for PUFFs.”

  “Yes, Father. You’ll need a CP. I’ll find one suitable for you.”

  Ben and the main force of Rebels stayed clear of the town for more than an hour, until Buddy and his people announced the all-clear. Then the Rebel Army of Ben Raines rolled into Buffalo, Wyoming, and began the job of cleaning it up for use as an outpost.

  Ben and Dan inspected the small airport and Dan said he felt the birds from Base Camp One could use it as is, as soon as it was cleaned up.

  Meg and Sarah walked up with a group of Rebels.

  “How do you feel about staying here, Sarah?” Ben asked. “Becoming part of the settlers?”

  She shook her head. “No, thanks, General. Satan and that bunch of trash with him burned her old ranch out on the Crazy Woman. They chased me all over the north half of Wyoming for a couple of years. I think I’ll dedicate the rest of my life to helping clear the nation of crud like that . . . if that’s all right with you.”

  “Fine with me, Sarah. You’re certainly welcome. You hid out in this part of the country for a long time. How many people are out there?” He waved his hand.

  “Hundreds, General. I roamed from the South Dakota line to the Middle Fork of the Powder. I’d guess about half of the people were too scared to help me. You can forget about them; they’re losers any way you cut it. I’d guess many of them have already pulled out for what they think are safer areas—if there is such a thing—or have been killed by outlaws. The rest of the people, the tough breed, well, they’re making it. But they’re not doing it by being real gentle. They will shoot you.” She wrinkled her nose. “What is that smell?”

  “An outlaw by the name of Texas Jim,” Buddy told her. “Some of my team hanged him the other afternoon. I’ll cut him down and get him in the ground.”

  “Thank you,” Ben said drily. He cut his eyes to Sarah. “You said you hadn’t been a prisoner long?”

  “About three weeks, I think. You tend to lose track of time after the first week.”

  “What are we facing, Sarah?”

  “A pretty tough bunch of people, General. I’ll give them that much. They’ve had a long time to get their act together. These outlaw bikers were pulled in from all over the west by Matt Callahan. Snake. It’d be safe to say that Snake controls most of the Northwest. This part of the country is the easternmost section of his territory. His headquarters is just north of Sheridan. A ranchhouse that’s built like a fort. I’d say he keeps about fifty or seventy-five men on the grounds all the time. And those guys are really tough. Snake handpicked them. They’re tough, but they’re filth. The worst of the lot. And that’s really scraping the bottom of the barrel.”

  “How easy is the access to the house?”

  “Almost impossible. For a year, I tried to figure out a way to get in there and kill Callahan. I never could get close enough to get a shot at him. When he does leave the house to go riding, he’s got dozens of men with him. And they can sit a saddle, make no mistake about that. They cover him like a blanket. With you this close, though, I don’t imagine h
e’ll chance leaving the house. And if you’re thinking about cutting the head off the snake, namely Matt Callahan forget it. You couldn’t get your tanks with the big guns within ten miles of that place without being spotted. There’s one road in and one road out. Callahan destroyed the rest of the roads. He’s crazy, but smart.”

  “You say there is a group of women bikers riding for Matt?”

  “I’d call them anything but women,” Sarah said with a grimace. “Bunch of damn dykes. And they are pure crud. Cruel. Don’t cut them any slack because they’re of the female gender. They’re just as bad, or worse, as the men. And they’ll fight just as hard.”

  “Can you give me some numbers, Sarah?”

  “If Callahan pulls all his people in—something I don’t think he’ll do; he’ll keep some in reserve—we’ll be looking at several thousand people. And I heard talk about more coming up from the south and some sort of army moving this way from the east.”

  “That’s the story of our life, Sarah,” Dan told her. “We’re almost always outnumbered. But seldom outgunned. What we have that Callahan doesn’t is organization. We can resupply in ten hours by air.”

  “That’s good, because you’re going to need to do that, probably more than once.” She looked at Ben. “Matt Callahan hates you, General. You’re an obsession with him.”

  “I am fully aware of that, Sarah. Do you have any idea how he plans to conduct his . . . campaign against us?”

  She shook her head. “No. Satan might. But he would be the only one . . . that’s providing Callahan even knows himself.”

  “He’s that far gone mentally?”

  “I met him when he first came into this area, several years ago. He’s fascinated by the area around the Little Bighorn River—Custer’s Last Stand. He used to go there quite often. I’d say he knows as much about that part of the country as any man living.” She studied Ben’s face. “Does that have some significance, General?”