Alone in the Ashes (18 page)

Ben managed to calm Rani down and get them once more pointed west, heading toward Flagstaff. They could see the smoke from the burning pyre in their mirrors for miles.

And Rani didn't let him forget it, yapping at him over the CB.

Ben took it good-naturedly, with a lot of “Yes, Dear's,” and “No, Dear's,” as they drove along. He also agitated a lot.

“I bet you thought Hilton Logan was cute,” Ben needled her.
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“Stop changing the subject! And no, I didn't think President Logan to be
cute
. And by the way, what part did you have in the death of that man?”

“I ordered his death by our Zero Squads. A very brave young man gave his own life to kill that bastard.”

The CB was silent for a few miles. When Rani again transmitted, she had wisely changed the subject.

“How far is it to the Tri-States, Ben?”

“Well, we're going to see some country first, Rani. We'll be there in a week or ten days. I'm going to lead those following us on a goose chase for a time.”

“Those following us?”

“Sure. Campo and Texas Red. I read those two like a good book. They pulled their people out of Texas and let us rush around like crazy, looking for them. All the time they were probably holed up three or four hundred miles away, getting information on us from scouts. All the time waiting for you and I to pull out. They're behind us.”

“And they would know you were heading for the Tri-States?”

“I'm sure.”

“Ben?”

“Yes, Rani.”

“Is the story true? Did you really kill a mutant with your bare hands?”

“No,” Ben said flatly. “I shot the damned thing seven times with a .45 and then split its skull with a Bowie knife.”

“I see.”

I wonder.

“Ben?”

“Yes, Rani.”

“You don't seem the least bit worried about the outlaws following us.”

“I'm not in the least worried. Let me put your mind at ease, dear. I know the old Tri-States like the back of my own hand. We left enough bombs, guns, ammo, and materials cached out there to outfit a small army. And I know where it all is. Relax, Rani. They'll probably find us, but they'll wish they hadn't.”

“I do wish I could share your confidence, Ben,” she said, the dryness coming through the speaker.

Ben just chuckled and kept on driving.

 

 

It took them the rest of the day to travel between Gallup and Flagstaff. Ben had never seen an interstate so cluttered with junked vehicles.

“The first thing we have to do,” he said aloud, “is to clear the highways. That will give the people something to do; take their minds off their troubles. Or are you just kidding yourself, Raines?”

Probably, he concluded.

He knew people only too well. Ten out of ten would volunteer at first. Two out of ten would end up doing most of the actual work. The others would find some excuse not to work. They would bitch and moan and eventually walk away.

Not even the most destructive war known to humankind had changed that undesirable aspect of human nature.

A few miles outside of Flagstaff, Ben began monitoring his CB closely. There was some air traffic coming out of the city, but unlike Gallup, this chatter wasn't, or at least did not appear to be, hostile.

Ben slowed and pulled off onto the shoulder, Rani right behind him.

He got out and walked to her truck. “You been listening to the chatter on your CB?”

“Yes. It sounds friendly.”

“Yeah. A Tasmanian Devil is cute, too. But have you ever tried to pet one?”

“I've never even
seen
one, Ben.”

Ben nodded absently and reached across her for the mike. “Hello, Flagstaff. Anybody copying this transmission?”

After a brief quiet pause, a voice replied. “You 'bout blew my doors off with that transmission, friend. You wanna cut it down some? You're distorting real bad.”

Ben adjusted his output, flipping the switch, putting his CB on normal power. “That better, Flagstaff?”

“Much better. Which direction you comin' from?”

“East.”

“How'd you get through Gallup?”

“Quickly and shooting at anything that looked like a punk,” Ben told the voice.

The voice laughed. “Well, I hope you got a bunch of them, friend. Come on in, we're friendly. We'll meet you on the outskirts of town.”

 

 

“Ben Raines,” Ben said, holding out his hand to the man.

“The
Ben Raines?” the man asked, pumping Ben's hand.

Ben could never get used to that reaction from people. “I guess so.”

“Thank God!” a woman said. “Where is your army?”

“Most of them are back in Georgia,” Ben told her. “I've got one company still in Texas, helping the law-abiding folks in that state hunt down outlaws and warlords.”

The woman looked horrified. “You mean you and this lady are out traveling
alone?”

Ben smiled at her. “Yes. But doing so carefully.”

“I heard that,” a man said. “You're lucky you got through, Mr. Raines. Outlaws working all over the damn place. Good folks up in Utah cleaned up that state, but it seems the scum they didn't get just moved south. They've been giving us fits around here.”

“Get organized and hunt them down,” Ben said.

“Easier said than done, Mr. Raines. You ever tried to ... ?” He grinned sheepishly. “Yeah. I guess you have at that. Good Lord, folks! Where did we misplace our manners? Come on, Mr. Raines, ma'am. Please.” He motioned Ben and Rani toward the town. “Spend some time with us. You'll find Flagstaff a lot different from Gallup.”

Like between daylight and dark, Ben mentally noted as they followed the local vehicles into the small city. The streets had been cleared and cleaned. Most of the stores had no show windows, but there was no broken glass sparkling on the sidewalks and streets. Ben could not see any rusting, junked cars, which were not only an eyesore, but a hazard.

As the small caravan wound out of the city proper and into the suburbs, Ben could see what remained of many large gardens. The homes they passed had been properly maintained, the lawns kept up and clean.

Ben guessed about five to six hundred people were living in the city. The adults were all armed—and well armed, at that.

At the home of the man and woman who appeared to be the spokespersons for the group, over coffee—real coffee—Ben complimented the gathering.

“It wasn't easy, and it wasn't pleasant,” Jim Blanning told Ben. “I guess there was probably over a thousand of us starting out. About four hundred left when we really started getting tough with the punks and street gangs and criminal element.”

All those gathered in the large home shook their heads in agreement with that statement.

Carolyn Blanning said, “We did try the old way, Mr. Raines ...”

“Ben, please.”

“Ben. Good. You know what I mean by the old way. We began making excuses for the gangs, not coming down hard on them; mouthing all the old B.S. from before the Great War. Well,” she said with a shrug, “it didn't work back then, and it wasn't working for us now. Finally, and this only happened about ... oh, fifteen months ago, we banded together and formed our own police force.” She smiled. “We put your ideas in play. The ones you used up in the Tri-States. We weren't going to tolerate lazy, sorry, good-for-nothing people; especially the gangs and the thugs and the punks.” She paused, shook her head, and looked at a tall, rangy man sitting across the huge den from her.

“Evan Reynolds,” the man said. “I guess I'm in charge of the militia here, General Raines. I was the first one to shoot to kill. We had spent months cleaning up the town. Hard, back-breaking work. All the while certain ... types, stood around and jeered at us, refusing to work. After we'd cleared and swept one particularly filthy block—where the crud lived, by the way—we came back the next day and they had trashed it. They ...” He struggled with his emotions for a few seconds. “They dared us to do something about it. There was this one ...
person
. A big, swaggering, dirty-looking type. You know the type.”

Ben nodded his head. “Only too well.”

Evan said, “He was called Stud. A gang leader. He told me we couldn't make him or his people do a goddamn thing. Spat at my feet.” Evan paused and rolled a cigarette. He lit it and smoked in silence for a few seconds. “I looked at him, walked back to my truck, got a shotgun, and blew his goddamn worthless head off.”

Ben and Rani waited, each of them knowing it was a terrible memory for the man to dredge up.

“It turned bloody after that,” Evan continued. He looked at another man.

“What was so ridiculous about it,” the Mexican-American said, “was them accusing us of being bigots and anti this, that, and the other thing.” He laughed bitterly. “As you can see by looking around the room, General Raines, we are a real mixing bowl of people here. Dan,” he said, pointing, “is Apache. Mrs. Yee is Chinese. You have eyes, you can see. We just took all we were going to take of it. Following the initial shooting, it was a bloody week. But we made this community a nice place to live.” He inspected his fingernails for a moment, silently reflecting. “I won't say that innocents did not die needlessly. That would be a lie. But there comes a time when one must choose a side, a cause, if you will, and stand by it. While it is not safe once one ventures ten miles outside the city, it is quite safe in the city.”

“And if you were stronger, better armed?” Ben asked.

“Let us say,” the man who would be later introduced as Mr. Reyes continued, “we would not be adverse to carrying the message outside the city.”

The group all smiled.

Ben got the message. He returned the smile. “Well, then,” he said. “I believe we can work something out that would be mutually advantageous.” He told the gathering of his idea of an outpost system.

“It could be the start of a return to civilization,” Mrs. Yee said. “And just in time, too. We're having a difficult time getting schools started for our children.”

“It isn't easy,” Ben said, and for a flashing moment, his thoughts were full of Jordy.

“To use a cliché, General,” Evan said. “Nothing worthwhile is ever easy, right?”

“You're going to take losses,” Ben brought them back to reality. “I've lost many good friends along the way.”

“As we all have, sir,” a woman said. “My husband died fighting the street punks.”

Ben stood up. “I'll contact my base camp, get the ball rolling.”

Ben and Rani once more set out, once more alone in the ashes.

Ben and Rani headed north out of Flagstaff, on Highway 89. They swung west at Cameron and camped in the Kaibab National Forest. The following morning, Ben gave Rani her first glimpse of the Grand Canyon. As it does with anybody who does not possess the soul of a grubworm and the imagination of a corpse, her first sighting took her breath away.

“It's ... it's ...” she stammered.

“Magnificent. Awesome. Indescribable,” Ben finished it.

“Yes,” she said, taking his hand and holding on tightly. “You've seen it before?”

“Probably a dozen times. It evokes something quite new and different within me with each sighting.”

“I can see why.” She was thoughtful for a moment, gazing down into what had once been described as the greatest example of erosion and the most sublime spectacle in the world. “Wasn't there a song or something written about this place?”

Ben got a good laugh out of that, then spent the next few minutes calming Rani, assuring her he wasn't laughing at her, just at what she said.

“Ferde Grofe wrote the Grand Canyon Suite; just one of his many works. By golly, I just might have that cassette in my truck. I think I do. You'll love it.”

Back at the campsite, which had not been used as such for many years, Ben found the old cassette and played it for her. She sat enthralled as the loveliness rolled and soared from the speakers.

“It's so lovely,” she whispered. “I remember it now, from listening to it in high school. I didn't like it then.”

Ben elected to keep his mouth shut at that. Beginning about 1970, Ben had refused to listen to commercial radio, except for news and weather when traveling. As far as he was concerned, what passed for music—except for classical—from that period up until the Great War, had gone from bad to worse to the pits.

Rani looked at him and smiled. As if having the power to read his mind, she said, “I gather you didn't think much of the music I grew up with, right, Ben?”

“That is certainly one way of putting it, dear.”

She laughed. “Looking back, I don't think much of it, myself.”

“That's a relief. There is hope for music lovers yet.”

A roar came from the deep and tangled forest to the south of the camp site. Rani jumped about half a foot off the ground.

“A new rock-and-roll singer,” Ben said drily. “Give him a mike and a dress and you'd have a rising new star. For sure.”

“Ben, Jesus! Don't joke. What in the name of God was that?”

“Mutant, probably. That one, and the others like it in the woods around here, have probably never seen a human. We'd best move into one of the Ranger cabins for the night. Unless you'd like to wake up in the middle of the night with one of them looking at you.”

A minute and a half later, Ben was complimenting Rani on the swiftness with which she could pack.

 

 

No mutants had made an appearance during the night, but they let Ben and Rani know they were around, and not liking the human intrusion into their territory. At first light, Ben and Rani left the park area, connecting once more with Highway 89, following that up to alternate 89, turning west across the Colorado River, traveling through the northern area of the Kaibab National Park, and skirting the now deserted Kaibab Indian Reservation.

“I wonder what happened to them?” Rani asked over the CB.

“Slaughtered,” Ben told her. “They were one of the tribes that joined us. In the hopes of achieving a better life standard. And I got them killed.”

“I wish you would stop blaming yourself, Ben. I doubt that you forced them to join you at gunpoint.”

Ben was grim as he said, “I'm pulling over and backtracking. We'll take 389 through the reservation. I want to see if the government troops left anything standing.”

It was even worse than Ben had imagined. The stories of the Old West he had read as a child came into his mind. Big government's vindictiveness had been awesome. There was not a building left standing that Ben or Rani could see as they drove slowly through the reservation.

“It's terrible,” she said in a whisper.

“Yes. I think you'll say the same thing when you see what they did to the Tri-States. And while I'm thinking about it, Rani,” Ben radioed, “when we get to the Tri-States, don't leave my side. We booby-trapped almost everything we left behind: houses, barns, vehicles, buildings. You name it, and we wired it to explode. So when we get there, stay close to me.”

“Thank you for remembering,” she replied.

They made camp that evening in what remained of the small town of Colorado City. The town had been stripped clean, right down to the doors, windows, screens, and anything else that wasn't nailed down or welded in place.

But, as in so many other places, using his pump, Ben managed to fill their gas tanks from underground reservoirs.

“How long will this gas remain good?” Rani asked.

“Years, if water doesn't get into it. Even then, we have the capacity to separate water from gas—so my engineers tell me. We're going to build a small refinery come next spring. We—”

A bullet smashed into the side of the building, just missing Ben's head. Bits of broken brick struck Rani in the side of the face, drawing blood. They both hit the ground, weapons at the ready.

“Take the broad alive!” a hoarse voice shouted. “We can use her and then swap her ass for something.”

Rani burned half a clip in the direction of the voice. A man yelled, his voice echoing throughout the emptiness. Whether from shock or pain, Ben couldn't tell.

“You OK, Elgin?” another voice was added.

Ben pinpointed the location of that one.

“Yeah. Circle around. We got 'em in a box.”

“You think,” Ben muttered. He carefully shifted positions, slipping into the deserted, windowless service station, pulling Rani in behind him.

“The trucks?” she whispered.

“They won't bother them. They want them running. Take the front. I'll handle that guy slipping up behind us.”

Slugs began slamming into the building, but Ben sensed they were carefully placed; whoever was firing at them wanted Rani alive and well.

Ben spotted movement in the alleyway. He lifted his Thompson, exposing as little of himself as possible. He waited.

He heard the quiet crunch of boots on gravel. Then a man's leg was exposed, from upper thigh to foot.

Ben stitched the leg, the big .45-caliber slugs shattering knee, ankle, and foot. The man screamed in pain and fell forward, losing his shotgun, the weapon clattering to the ground.

“Dave? Dave? Did you get him?”

“Yeah,” Ben hollered. “Come on.”

The man named Elgin ran out of a building, zigzagging across the street. He got halfway before Rani cut him down. He flopped in the street, both hands holding his lead-punctured belly.

He screamed in pain.

“Shoot him in the head and shut him up,” Ben told Rani.

Before she could raise her M-16, a woman came running out of the building that faced the old service station.

“Damn you!” she squalled. “You kilt my old man.” She lifted a rifle.

Ben leveled his Thompson and cut the woman down. She landed only a few feet from the wounded man in the street.

Ben slipped out the back way and ran to the man he'd shot in the alley. The man's face was shiny with shock and pain. He had taken at least six .45-caliber slugs in the leg, and in falling he had broken his right arm, the bone sticking out, stark white in the cold light of December.

“Least tell me your name 'fore you kill me,” the man panted.

“Ben Raines.”

The man forced a laugh. “We shore can pick ‘em. All the folks travelin' ‘bout, and we got to pick on Ben Raines. Shit! I'm bleedin' to death, General. Finish me.”

Ben shot him between the eyes.

Back in the service station, Ben squatted down beside Rani. “Stay put. I think there might be one more.”

The minutes ticked by. Ben and Rani waited in silence. Finally, impatience drove the last outlaw of the bunch to yell.

“Lemme go!” he yelled. “You go your way, and I'll go mine. How 'bout it?”

“You got him spotted?” Ben asked.

“Almost directly across the street,” Rani said. “But he's staying low.”

“Start putting fire into the building,” Ben told her. “I'm going to circle around and drop a grenade in on him. Start now.”

With Rani laying down a slow, steady fire, Ben ran down the alleyway and came out on the far end of the street, crossing over until he was by the open windowless storefront. He motioned to Rani, pulled the pin on a grenade, and dropped it in, ducking back.

The grenade must have landed directly on top of the man, for when the dust had settled, Ben looked in and could see bits and pieces of the man scattered around the store.

He walked to the center of the street and stood looking down at the man and woman, sprawled near death in the street.

“What's your name?” the woman gasped.

“Ben Raines.”

She laughed, exposing stubs of broken and rotted teeth. “Know'd our luck would run out some day.”

“How many travelers have you and your men ambushed and killed?” Ben asked.

“Fifty. Two hundred. Five hundred. Hell, I don't know,” she said matter-of-factly. “Had a lot of fun for awhile, though.”

Ben looked at her wounds. She might live another two hours, at best. He just didn't feel like wasting a bullet on her. He kicked their weapons away from the man and woman and left them in the street.

“Hey!” the woman gasped as Ben walked away. “Ain't you gonna do nothin' fer us?”

Ben's laugh was short and ugly. He did not reply to her question. Just kept walking.

She began cursing him, her mouth spewing out more filth than a sewer contained.

Ben motioned Rani into her truck. “Let's get the hell out of here.”

“Hartline's gonna get you, Raines!” the woman squalled at them.

Ben turned slowly and looked at the woman. “What did you say?”

Her laughter was taunting. “Sam Hartline. He's who we work for. We take women to him and that uppity Russian.”

“Where are they?”

“Northern California. They got some kind of real fancy hospital there. Hartline meets us up in Reno. 'At's where we deliver the women to him.”

“What kind of women?” Ben asked, a sick feeling in his stomach. He knew. Oh, God, he knew only too well.

“Niggers, spics, Jews, all the inferior breeds, you know?”

“When are you supposed to meet Hartline again?” Ben asked.

“What'll you gimmie to tell you that?” the woman asked, a sly look in her beady eyes.

“A bullet in the head to put you out of your misery.”

“‘At's fair, I reckon. Better'n dyin' slow. Next spring. Don't know when. We just wait.”

“You have any women you're now holding prisoner?”

The woman coughed up blood. “Naw. We jist got back from deliverin' a load of greasers.”

Ben walked over to her, pulled his cocked and locked. 45 from leather, and shot her in the head.

“You going to tell me about Sam Hartline, Ben?” Rani asked.

“Later. It's a long story.”
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