Fire in the Ashes ta-2

by William Wallace Johnstone

  Mitchell excused himself from the Oval Office. Ben acknowledged that with a smile of thanks and a nod of his head.

  “Are you hungry, Ben?” Dawn asked.

  He shook his head. “I haven’t eaten since…” He couldn’t remember. “But, no, I’m not hungry.”

  “You need something,” she said, standing. “I’ll get some sandwiches sent up.”

  Ben nodded absently. From all reports—and the slips of paper filled his desk to overflowing—the nation was going to hell in a bucket, the citizens working themselves into a raging panic. New reports of the plague were popping up hourly, and the cities were especially hard hit.

  An aide stuck his head inside the office. “Mr. President? The people in the cities are rioting. We have many reports of looting and burning—to mention just a few of the events occurring. Many are trying to rush the troop barricades; the troops are repelling them with tear gas. But they don’t know how long they can continue doing that. And Doctor Lane says the people must be contained; not allowed to leave and wander the countryside.”

  “Exactly what are you trying to say, Sam?” Ben looked at the young man.

  The young man paused, gulped, took a deep breath, and plunged onward. “The Joint Chiefs say the decision to use live ammunition must come from you, sir. And Doctor Lane says if we can keep the people contained, we have a chance of at least some of the population surviving.”

  “The buck stops here,” Ben muttered.

  “Beg pardon, sir?”

  Ben glanced at the aide, thinking: The kid’s about thirty years old—what the hell would he know about Harry?

  Ben suddenly felt his age hit him. He shook the feeling off and stood up.

  “Tell the troops to maintain their use of gas to contain the civilians. I’ll… have a decision by morning as to the use of deadly force.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Dawn placed a tray of sandwiches on Ben’s desk. He picked one up and nibbled on it. Then began taking huge bites as his hunger surfaced. He ate three sandwiches and drank two large glasses of milk before his hunger was appeased.

  Another aide entered the office and quietly placed several notes on Ben’s desk. He left without saying a word.

  Ben scanned the notes. More cases of Black Death reported. The civilians had overpowered one troop perimeter and several thousand had fled the city of Wichita, moving into the countryside. The same thing had happened in Sarasota.

  He leaned back in his chair, knowing in his guts the battle was lost. It had been a puny, futile gesture from the outset: not enough troops to cover all the cities.

  Hell, he couldn’t blame the people. They wanted to survive.

  His phone buzzed. Doctor Lane.

  “Chicago’s gone berserk,” the doctor said. “Civilians overpowering the troop lines. We didn’t get five percent of the city inoculated. The inner city has gone wild with looting and burning and God only knows what else.”

  “Tell your people to stay with it,” Ben ordered. “Pop anyone who has the sense to come in. We…”

  “I don’t have any people left in Chicago,” the doctor said, his voice husky from strain and exhaustion and frustration. “The stations we set up have been destroyed, the medics and nurses and doctors manning them killed. Same thing is happening in a dozen other cities.”

  The end, Ben thought. After all this nation has endured, that pale creature with the hooded face and the scythe is going to do us in with the help of a fucking flea.

  “Have all your people withdraw from their stations,” Ben ordered. “Take all their equipment with them. Withdraw to the countryside and set up there. Have them get sidearms and automatic weapons from the military. I’ll pass that order down the line. I don’t want any heroics out of this. Protect themselves; shoot to kill. Is that understood, Harrison?”

  “Yes, sir. But I don’t know if my people can or will do that.”

  “They’ll do it or die. That’s how simple it is, Doctor Lane. In the end, it all comes down to survival.”

  “Yes, sir,” the doctor said, bitterness evident in his voice. He hung up.

  Ben got the Joint Chiefs on the line. “Order your troops away from the cities,” he told the chairman. “Have them withdraw to the nearest bases and set up security around those bases. No one enters unless they have proof of inoculation. Shoot to kill.”

  “It’s come to that?”

  “Yes, Admiral, it has.”

  “The end?”

  “We are rapidly approaching the final chapter, Admiral. Whether there will be a sequel remains to be seen.”

  “I used to enjoy the hell out of your books, Mr. President. I still have all of them; reread them from time to time.”

  “I wish I was still writing them, Admiral.”

  “Yes, sir. Good luck, sir.”

  “The same to you men.”

  Ben broke the connection.

  Sam stuck his head into the office. “Sir. We have reports of a small atomic device just detonated in Central Iowa. General Rimel is dead. He went up with the device.”

  Ben looked at Dawn and Rosita. “Death. Pestilence. Plague. I wonder when the locusts are coming?”

  TWO

  LIVE COALS IN THE ASHES…

  Richmond was burning.

  Ben stood in the bedroom of his private quarters and watched the first flames lick at the white-dotted air. He was dressed in field clothes, his feet in jump boots. He wore a .45 belted at his side. His old Thompson lay on a nearby table, the canvas clip-pouch full of thirty-round clips.

  He turned as James Riverson stepped into the room. Steve Mailer was with him; several other Rebels. All were dressed in battle clothes, armed with M-16s.

  Ben had slept for several hours, his aides taking the ever-grimmer messages from the field. The situation had been worsening hourly: the nation was in a panic, people fleeing in a blind stampede of crushing humanity, rolling over anyone who stood in their way. Young, old, male, female—it made no difference.

  And none of them realized they were racing straight into hell, away from the vaccines and medicines that could possibly save them. It was a grim replay of the events of 1988, just hours preceding the first wave of missiles.

  “Fools,” Ben muttered. “Blind panicky fools.”

  He turned to the men and women he had known and trusted for years.

  “Anyone get hold of Hector?”

  “He’s on his way to the Tri-States,” Rosita said. “We’re pulling all our people in, muy pronto. They will leave their vehicles at the border and walk across the sprayed zone into Tri-States.”

  “How many of our people have we lost—that anyone knows of?”

  “Bobby Hamilton and Jimmy Brady bought it,” Cecil said, stepping into Ben’s quarters. “Carla Allen made it out; she’s with the first contingent to leave our base camp. They’re rolling. Ike and Dan and all their people made it across the borders. Lynne Hoffman, Tina, and Judy Fowler left with the second convoy. The third convoy should be pulling out within the hour.”

  Bob Mitchell stepped into the room. The first tint of ashen light was appearing in the east. “We’d better get out of here, Mr. President,” he said. “The rioters and looters are getting closer.”

  “Got your wife and family, Bob?” Ben asked.

  “Yes, sir. But I feel like a traitor pulling out while so many are stuck.”

  “Don’t feel that way, Bob. I’ll tell you like I told Doctor Lane: it all comes down to survival. How about the other fellows?”

  “A few are going with us. Most said they’d take their chances in the timber. I wished them good luck.”

  “They’ll need it,” Ben said tersely. He looked at the small group. “Everybody been needle-popped and got their pockets stuffed with oral medication?”

  All had.

  Sam came running into the quarters. He paused for a moment to catch his breath. “Sir! Mobs just hit the airfield. Most of the planes have been destroyed or damaged. We won’t be flying out.”


  If the news affected Ben, he did not show it. He picked up his Thompson and jacked a round into the chamber, putting the weapon on safety.

  “No reason why we should expect our luck to change at this date,” he said. “I think our best bet will be trucks and buses. We’ll fill some tankers with gasoline and diesel; won’t have to risk pulling off the road. There is a truck-and-bus terminal just on the outskirts of the city.” He looked at Riverson. “James, you take some people and get out there. Pick the best ones of the lot. Make sure the floors and sides are in good shape. We’ll reinforce them with sheet metal if necessary.”

  The big ex-truck driver from Missouri nodded his understanding and left.

  Ben looked at Cecil. “How many of our people were staying, flying out with us?”

  “One company, Ben. They’re downstairs.”

  “Let’s roll it.”

  * * *

  On the morning the United States of America began to die, one hundred of the richest men and women in America were being bussed to various airports around the nation, all heading for one central location: a long-abandoned Air Force base in West Texas. There, four 747s were being made ready for flight.

  Only the best of food and drink were carefully being loaded aboard the huge jets. Copies of the best movies spanning fifty years. Books of the best and most famous authors (although the latter does not necessarily symbolize the former), were lovingly and carefully packed away and stored in compartments.

  Behind the big 747s, two dozen transports were being loaded with almost anything anyone could imagine for luxury living: portable generators, air conditioners, mink and sable coats, crates of bottled water (Perrier, of course), wines and liqueurs and whiskey. The sweating men loaded grand pianos, fine china and crystal, crates of gold and silver and cases of precious gems and boxes of paintings.

  Then came the children of the rich; the special friends of the rich; the servants of the rich; the bodyguards of the rich; and finally, the rich.

  They were jubilant. They had made it. These rich men and women (many of whom had not paid a dime’s worth of personal income tax in years, due to what is commonly known as the world’s most inequitable tax system ever devised, thank Congress for that) were going to live!

  They were going to sparsely populated and untouched by germ or nuclear warfare areas of the world. There, with their wealth intact, they would live out their days.

  And the manicured, pedicured, coiffured, diamond-hung ladies brought their poodles with them.

  And the poodles brought fleas.

  And had they been very quick of eye, the rich might have noticed the scurrying of creatures darting under the planes, leaping into open cargo doors. But they didn’t see them.

  The doors were slammed shut and the planes roared off into the cold blue, leaving the workmen on the ground. Who needs ‘em?

  So, amid the clinking of champagne glasses and the tinkling of lounge pianos (every court needs a jester), the rich roared away.

  Carrying into areas, which might have been spared the plague, fifty-eight huge mutant rats and about ten thousand fleas.

  And the plague, known in its pure form as the Black Death, spread.

  Worldwide.

  * * *

  As thick, greasy smoke lifted up into the snowy skies over Richmond, Ben and his party stood in the deserted terminal and picked their vehicles. Fronting the column would be a pickup with a covered bed, twin-M-60s sticking out the front of the rear. The same type of vehicle would be at the rear of the column. In the center of the column, two new Greyhound buses the company had ordered and never picked up. Ben would be in a pickup truck directly behind the lead vehicle with Cecil in a vehicle at the rear of the column, the distance deliberately wide to prevent both of them from being killed in the same attack. If any.

  Two tankers were spaced front and rear. Trucks with bottled water and food also widely separated. Communications people worked feverishly installing radios in all the vehicles.

  A hard burst of gunfire spun the Rebels around, weapons at the ready. A mob was trying to break in and climb over the high chain-link fence surrounding the terminal. The first dozen to try now lay in bloody piles on the snowy blacktop.

  Ben looked at the two women who had volunteered to look after the twins: the wife of Bob Mitchell and the wife of another agent. He smiled at them, silently calming the ladies.

  “Get in the buses,” he told them. “All of you not needed out here, in the buses and trucks. Get ready to pull out.”

  A bullet whined off the brick of the building, another one a half second behind the first.

  “You coward!” a woman shrieked at Ben. “You’re deserting us when we need you. Filthy cowardly bastard.”

  Ben had neither the time nor the inclination to tell the hysterical woman he was not deserting them; he would attempt to run things from within the borders of the Tri-States. If they could get there. And if there was a country to run if they did make it safely.

  When Ben spoke, his words were delivered as coldly as the air whistling around the terminal. “Captain Seymour? The next person who fires a weapon at this terminal, open fire on that mob and don’t stop shooting until they are all down. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir.” He barked an order and his personnel dropped down into a kneeling firing position, M-16s on full auto, pointed at the crowd of looters, many of whom were armed.

  The mob wanted no part of these Rebels. They had all heard what type of fighters they were, and to a person knew they would not hesitate to shoot.

  The mob slowly broke up, drifting into the early morning air, now murky from the burning city.

  Ben looked at Cecil. “Where’s Doctor Lane? I told him to meet us here.”

  “He went out in the field,” Cecil replied. “Said if he got lucky, he’d meet us in Tri-States.”

  “Damn fool,” Ben replied his breath smoky in the coldness. “I don’t think he’s ever even fired a weapon. Okay. If that’s how he wants it. Let’s roll, Cec.”

  He turned as a car crunched to a halt in the snow. A woman stepped out. She wore jeans and boots and a hiplength leather jacket. She carried a small leather suitcase.

  Roanna Hickman.

  “Got room for an unemployed reporter, Mr. President?” she called.

  “Come on,” Ben returned the shout. When she drew closer, he asked, “Why are you unemployed?”

  “The central offices in Chicago were firebombed last night,” she replied. “Brighton and all the others are dead. I don’t know where my staff got off to. Probably trying to survive. I figure if anybody is going to make it out of this in one piece, it’ll be you and your people.”

  Ben nodded. “Have you been inoculated, Roanna?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your card, please.”

  Her eyes were flint-hard as she handed him the slip of paper signed by a Navy corpsman, indicating she had received the proper dosage of medicines. Ben handed the paper back to her.

  “What if I hadn’t been inoculated, Ben Raines?” she asked.

  “You wouldn’t be allowed to accompany us.”

  “Suppose I tried to force my way on one of the buses or trucks?”

  “We’d shoot you,” he said without hesitation.

  She handed her bag to a Rebel and he stowed it in the luggage compartment of a bus.

  “Like I said,” Roanna spoke with a smile on her lips. “If anybody’s going to make it, it’s you people. You’re a real hard-ass, General-President Raines.”

  “I’m a survivor, Ms. Hickman. Get on board.”

  * * *

  By noon of the first full day of looting, rioting, and general panic on the part of American citizens, there was not one city that had not been touched in some way by the swelling tide of panic-driven men and women. Fires, mainly unattended by skeleton crews of firemen, licked at the skies over the nation. A smoky haze hung over much of the land surrounding the cities.

  Acts of appalling atrocities committed by huma
ns against humans became commonplace as the only thought in the minds of millions was survival at all costs. And the opinion soon became widespread and firm that there is no God; He would not have permitted this. Not something this horrible. Not twice in little more than ten years. That was inconceivable. For wasn’t God supposed to be a compassionate God? That’s what everyone had been taught.

  And as social anthropologists had predicted, their writings leaped from the pages of books and became reality. Many had written that if a nation suffered major catastrophes so horrible as to permanently scar the minds of the survivors, searing the minds numb, civilization would fall in a collapsing heap of myths and demagogic cults.

  Back to the caves, in other words.

  By dusk of the first day, robed pseudo-religious men and women were gathering frightened people around them, preaching that their way was the only way to be saved: follow me and I will light your way. Reject God, for just look at what His myth has wrought.

  Panicked people were grasping at straws floating on dark waters; ready to believe anything or anyone with a ring of authority in their voices told them.

  And many were speaking; many more were listening. Little cults were forming; most gone in two or three days, the leaders and followers dead of the plague.

  A few survived.

  By noon of the second day, the medicines ran out and time began running out for the nation, then the continent, finally the world as the death spread its pus-filled arms to encompass the granite planet called Earth.

  THREE

  BRUSHFIRES…

  Ben had elected to take the northern route toward the Tri-States. The day found the small convoy in southern Ohio. They had avoided the major highways and Interstates, staying with the secondary roads as much as possible.

  “We’ve got to avoid the cities,” Ben told the driver of the lead truck. He pointed. “Look at that haze in the sky.”

  Although they were sixty miles south of Dayton and about sixty miles east of Cincinnati, the sky was dark with smoke from the raging fires the looters and burners had set.