Alone in the Ashes (4 page)

Only a few hands went up.

Ben's eyes settled on a man who looked to be in his late forties. “Where'd you serve?”

“Eighteen years in the Army, sir. I got shot during the assault on Tri-States and was court-martialed because I ordered my platoon to pull back and take no further action against you or your people. Name is Charles Leighton.”

Ben handed him one of the M-16's taken from Campo's men. “Well, Charles, you have just been promoted to the rank of Colonel and placed in charge of security on this outpost. What's your name?” Ben asked another man who had raised his hand.

“Jim Canby, General. Three years in the Marine Corps.”

Jim got the other M-16, and the two pistols were given to a Chuck Morris and a Dot Fontana.

“All right, people,” Ben said. “Now you level with me. How many contraband guns have you managed to stash away?”

The spokeswoman, Dot, smiled. “Twelve rifles and six shotguns. Four pistols. But we don't have much ammunition for them.”

“You will,” Ben said. “Soon.”

Leaving Judy talking with the others, Ben took those he had just armed off to one side.

“West has to have informers among you,” Ben said. “Who are they?”

Dot named four people she was sure of and two more she suspected. The others agreed.

“Place them under guard,” Ben told them. “If they're innocent, we'll apologize later. When that is done, I want whoever it is among you who usually contacts this West person, to do so. Tell him you have to see him first thing in the morning. Tell him ... tell him half a dozen women just wandered into town and you don't have enough food for yourselves, much less a half-dozen more people. The mention of women should bring him on the run. Does he usually come in by the same route? Good. We'll ambush the son of a bitch—or whoever he sends—take their guns and vehicles. Then we'll raid his base camp and steal some more.”

Broad grins greeted Ben. Dot said, “Oh, I like the way you think, General.”

“So do I, lady,” Judy said, joining the group. Her eyes were mean. “And I got first dibs.”

“You married to him?” Dot asked.

Judy balled her fists.

Ben stepped between them.

“Get outta the goddamned way!” Judy said.

Ben got.

There was no trouble between Judy and Dot. Doctor Barnes intervened and the woman stepped back.

Dot said, “I apologize to you both. But men, as you shall see, are scarce around here. I had to test the waters.”

“What do you mean, men are scarce?” Ben asked.

“West takes most of the men to work his camps,” Doctor Barnes said. “Those he leaves are usually under fourteen or over sixty. The few men you see here are all that are left in town. The rest are too young or too old. The women remaining here are also very young, or over fifty.”

“And the other men and women?” Ben asked.

“They're held at the work camps.”

“Then we've got our work cut out for us, haven't we?” Ben said.

“Yes, sir.”

 

 

West, Charles told Ben, always came in from the north. His work camps were located in a half circle, ranging from Union City in the north, extending eastward to Martin, down to Milan, taking in Jackson, down to Bolivar, then in a straight line west to Memphis.

“How many men?” Ben asked.

“It fluctuates,” Barnes said. “But I'd say four hundred at any given time. Don't misunderstand, General. The people in the area he controls aren't cowards. Not by any means. He just built his little army and then took one town at a time. Some of the towns might have had fifteen people left when he came, others might have had fifty. He just overpowered them, set up informers, took the guns and vehicles, and left after torturing and killing and raping to prove who was boss.”

“Yes,” Ben said. “And he also caught the people at just the right time. I've seen it many times before. Beaten down, scared, hungry, and most important, leaderless.”

“Leaders, General Raines,” Dot said, “are very hard to find.”

“Leaders, Miss Fontana,” Ben countered, “are very easy to find. Finding the right one is what is so difficult.”

 

 

Ben spent the rest of that day making more bombs. West had stripped the area of all functioning vehicles, but had left behind those that would not run. Ben ordered the batteries to be pulled from those vehicles and emptied of their acid—if any remained. Many of the batteries were dry.

He showed the people how to properly make and handle Molotov cocktails, and how to construct tin-can land mines, filling them up with gunpowder and nails; how to make wine-bottle cone charges, capable of penetrating two or three inches of armor.

“Special Forces or Ranger, General?” Leighton asked.

“Both,” Ben told him. “Then into the old Hell-Hounds. You remember them?”

“Jesus!” Leighton whispered. “I figured all you guys were long dead.”

Ben showed the people how to take sodium chlorate and sugar, and by adding one other easy to find ingredient, make a highly volatile pipe bomb.

By late afternoon of the first day in town, Ben had more than a hundred of the people gathering materials for him, and by dusk, he had quite an impressive display of homemade bombs.

“Let's call it a day,” Ben said, straightening up. “Tomorrow morning,
early
, we'll go over the plans once more, then take out the column this Mister West sends in.”

 

 

They assembled an hour before dawn, at staggered positions along both sides of the old county road. Ben had ordered extra precautions taken with the suspected informers under guard, and his suspicions paid off—one man had tried to escape. Under questioning, he admitted he was an informer for West. He had received extra food for that. Ben ordered him hanged.

“He has a wife and family, General,” a man told Ben.

“He doesn't anymore.”

In the chilly predawn, Ben finally told his plan to those men and women he had armed, before positioning.

“We wondered when you were going to let us in on it, General,” Leighton said.

“It's very doubtful we locked up all the informers,” Ben said. “I couldn't take the chance of one getting away and blowing it all. All right, here it is. First rule of battle: Keep it simple. The more complicated the plan, the more chance you have of it failing. We have to have the vehicles. That's essential. A roadblock would warn them of danger. So that's out. Notice how I'm dressed? None of you have. Learn to be more observant. Your life is going to depend on it. My clothing is old and dirty. I didn't shave this morning. My hat is different. I found it in an old department store, all rat-chewed. I look like I've been on the road for a time. I'm holding a ragged-looking coat over my arm. The coat conceals the tear-gas grenade in my left hand. When we hear the sounds of West's vehicles approaching this position, I'm going to step out into the road with the pin pulled on this grenade, holding the spoon down. With any kind of luck, the driver of the lead truck will roll down his window and call me over. When that happens, I'll toss the tear-gas grenade into the vehicle and dive for the ditch. That's your cue to open fire on the others. You don't have much ammo, so don't waste it. Never mind broken windshields. They can be replaced; broken skulls can't. You know your positions, now get to them.”

The thin line of Ben's newest contingent of Rebels waited in the weed-grown ditches. For many of them, this would be the first taste of actual combat. For despite the collapse of the government of the United States of America a decade after the world had been torn by nuclear and germ warfare, many of the survivors just rolled with the flow, so to speak, obeying blindly the often-times idiotic dictates of a central government that, even in the best of times, had never worked to the satisfaction of a very large and varied minority.

The newly formed Rebels waited. Despite the coolness of the fall morning, many wiped sweaty palms, then regripped their weapons.

The faint sounds of engines sprang out of the morning's mist. Ben stepped onto the rutted blacktop road. He had slipped another tear-gas grenade into the hip pocket of his old field pants at the last minute. His. 45 pistol, a round in the chamber, was tucked in his belt at the small of his back.

He stood alone in the road, waiting.

The vehicles approached slowly, taking their time on the old road. Ben started walking slowly, not wanting to walk past those that lay crouched in the ditches.

The lead truck, a three-quarter ton, stopped, as Ben had hoped it would, only a few yards from him.

“That son of a bitch looks familiar to me,” the man on the passenger side said, his words reaching Ben.

“Raggedy lookin' thing don't look like nothing to me,” the driver said. He stuck his head out the window. “Hey, skinny!” he shouted, although the distance between them was short. “Get your funky ass over here, boy.”

“Yes, sir, boss,” Ben said. “I don't mean no harm to nobody. I was just—”

“Shut your goddamn mouth, boy! And don't speak until you're spoken to.”

“Yes, sir, boss.”

Ben stepped closer to the truck. He could smell the rancid odor of unwashed bodies.

“You new around here, ain't you, boy?” the driver asked.

“Yes, sir, boss.”

“You quick with them bosses, ain't you, boy? You ever done prison time?”

“Yes, sir, boss. Down in Texas. Huntsville.”

“Well, now,” the driver grinned. Surprisingly, his teeth were in good shape.
“The
boss might like to talk to you.”

“The hell with that!” his partner yelled. “That's Ben Raines!”

Ben released the spoon on the tear-gas grenade, dropped his overcoat, and flipped the hissing grenade into the pickup. With his right hand, he jerked out his. 45 and shot the driver of the next vehicle in the face, the slug spiderwebbing the old, cracked windshield and blowing away part of the man's jaw.

Ben leaped for the ditch barely in time to avoid being shot by one of the new people. Ben leveled his .45 and shot the man in the stomach, just as Judy shot the traitor in the head with her .30-30 rifle. The slug exited out the right side, blowing out brains and blood and bone and fluid.

Judy tossed Ben his Thompson and he spun to join the fight.

It was over before he could get into action with his submachine gun.

The new Rebels were filled with hate for West's people, and they gave no quarter to his men. Ben did not try to stop them as they jerked those few left alive out of the vans and trucks and escorted them to the nearest tree for hanging. Ben and Judy stood silently by and watched as the townspeople strung West's men up with rope and wire and belts and let them swing.

Dot came to face Ben. “That was Ned that tried to shoot you, General. He's been one of our most faithful people. I never would have suspected him.” She looked at his body. “I wonder why he did it?”

“We'll probably never know. It doesn't matter now. Come on, let's dump the bodies in the ditch and gather up the weapons and ammo. Get these vehicles back to town and look them over. We've got to get ready for West's counterattack.”

 

 

Back in town, those who waited were jubilant when their friends drove back into town, cheering and shouting. They now had two dozen more guns and four vehicles.

Ben sat in his pickup truck and watched it all, an amused expression on his face.

“I think it's sad, and you think it's funny,” Judy said. “I don't understand you, Ben.”

“I'm just thinking how my people are going to have to go from coast to coast, border to border, propping up the survivors. It isn't that I really want to do it, but for our survival, we
have
to do it.”

“Isn't that kind of ... of ... what's the word I'm looking for?” Judy asked.

“Conceited, smug, arrogant—take your choice. You're correct to a degree.”

“You make me mad sometimes, Ben Raines.”

“Dogs go mad, dear,” Ben automatically corrected. “People become angry.”

She got out of the truck and slammed the door. She stalked up the street, her back stiff.

Doctor Barnes had been leaning up against a light pole, only a couple of feet from the cab of the truck. He smiled at Ben.

“I wasn't eavesdropping,” the doctor said. “I was standing here when you drove up.”

“I know,” Ben said. He got out of the truck and walked to the curb, leaning against the fender, looking at the doctor.

“People confound you, don't they, President-General Raines?”

“Ben. Just Ben. Yes, they do, Ralph. I would have died fighting before I would have allowed myself to become what West made of you people.”

“I won't become angry at that, Ben. Some people might, but I won't. I was quite a fan of yours, Ben. Not during your short tenure as President, mind you; but when you were writing books for a living.”

“I did my best to warn the people what was coming dead at them.”

“Yes, you did. You and a dozen other writers. But we just wouldn't listen, would we?”

“Sure as hell wouldn't,” Ben muttered.

“And now the great, indomitable, long-suffering Ben Raines, with a long sigh of resignation, will gather up all his hundreds of survival experts, and travel the battered nation, setting up little outposts of civilization, kicking the civilians in the butt, jerking them out of their doldrums, saving them from themselves. Right?”

“You're the one talking, Doctor. But you're in a pretty sorry state for a man who has all the answers.”

“Oh, you're right. But you enjoy it, General.”

“What?”

“Stop running from the truth, General. You wouldn't have conditions any other way. You see, it's always easy for men like you. I envy you: you and those that follow you.”

“Barnes, I don't know what in the hell you're talking about.”

The doctor studied the man for a long moment. “Maybe you really don't, General. I have all your books, Ben. I really do. Still. You could have been a great writer, but you chose to write pulp. Oh, it was
good
pulp—contradictory statement, yes.”

“Doctor, get to the point of this, will you, please?”

“You're an idealist, General. You refuse to take into account the many weaknesses of human beings. You took what you considered to be the cream of the crop and built your Tri-States—”

“It worked, Doctor,” Ben cut him off. “You can't deny that.”

“I won't try to deny it. Yes, it worked. How could it fail when you gathered the best around you?”

Ben smiled. “Here it comes. After all that's happened, you're still a liberal at heart.”

“To some degree,” Barnes admitted. “There is no middle ground with you, Ben. Everything is either black or white. No gray in-between.”

“Doctor,” Ben said patiently. “One can train a
dog
to obey basic rules. Now if a dog can be taught the difference between right and wrong, it should be very simple to teach a human being.”

Barnes shook his head. “You're a hard man, Ben Raines. But,” he sighed, “perhaps it's time for hard men. One philosophy, right, Ben? No taking into account different cultures, backgrounds, early upbringing—anything like that, right?”

“You stick to healing, Barnes,” Ben told him. “Leave the rest for people who have the stomach for it.”

“General Raines, you want what never was and never will be: a perfect society. But you cannot build a perfect society when the architects are imperfect human beings.”

Ben smiled again. “The man said, quoting Ben Raines.”

The doctor's smile matched Ben's. “That's right, you did write that, didn't you? I'll live in your society, General. But I'll do so because of the safety it affords me, not because I agree with its basic philosophy.”