Danger in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  Frank spat tobacco juice on the ground. “Five or six thousand strong.”

  Hiram gripped the arms of his rocking chair so hard his knuckles whitened. “You a liar!”

  Frank backed up and looked at Hiram. “We elected you leader here, Hiram. But that don’t give you no right to call me no liar.”

  Hiram took several deep breaths. “You rat, Frank. You rat. I ’pologize. You seen this army with yore own eyes?”

  “I seen ’um. Just got back from up there. Looked like a bunch of beavers workin’ live. Stringin’ wire for phones. Cleanin’ out houses and sich. They’s wimmin soldiers, too. Some of them givin’ orders. They tough, Hiram. They lean and they mean and they tough. You know the very first thang they done yesterday morning?”

  Hiram waited.

  “Started school for they kids. Whole passel of kids come in yesterday, right after the Rebels hit the parish.”

  There were no schools in Hiram’s little kingdom. Hiram never saw much use for them. But he knew, with a sinking feeling in his guts, he knew, that once Ben came into this area, and Ben would, there would be schools built. Right then and there.

  The goddamned pushy son of a bitch!

  “Git the people together, Frank. We’ll have us a preachin’ and a singin’ and a prayin’ and a eatin’ on the grounds this night. Then we’ll have us a meetin’ of the men.”

  “Hiram,” Frank said softly, carefully choosing his words, for he knew how much Hiram hated Ben Raines, “you thinkin’ about fightin’ Ben Raines and his Rebels?”

  Hiram stood up. “This is our land, Frank. Our community. My great-grandfather come in here and cleared this land with mules and muscles and sweat. After the Great War, Frank, you and me, and all the others, we formed up and fought the outlaws and the trash. We ain’t botherin’ nobody down here, Frank. . . .”

  That was not exactly true. Travelers had been shot dead for simply walking along the roads. If for no other reason than the parents of those who pulled the trigger had imparted to their offspring that they were “better than others.”

  “. . . we got our own law here, and by God no fancy-soldier-suited blue-nose is gonna tell me and mine what we can or cain’t do. I ain’t a-gonna have it!”

  “I’ll pass the word, Hiram.”

  “You do that. And git hold of Reed. Tell him to build us a cross. We’ll burn it after the meetin’.”

  Ben connected with the old US highway and drove back into town. The scene that greeted him was one he had expected.

  A large crowd of civilians had gathered around the Rebel’s main CP; a mixture of black and white.

  General Ike McGowan walked over to Ben’s Jeep. Ike cradled his CAR-15.

  “This it?” Ben asked.

  “Most of the adults that live in town. ’Bout a hundred more live around the outskirts. They tell me the real trouble is south of here.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  Ike smiled slowly. “I can hear the wheels turnin’ in your head, boy.”

  Ike was Mississippi born and reared, and at times loved to talk as if he didn’t have a thought in his head. But he was highly educated and a former Navy SEAL. One of the original members of Raines’s Rebels.

  “Oh?” Ben smiled at his old friend. “And what do you make out of all the turning and grinding, Ike?”

  “That you are going to step out of character, and when you do, you’re going to do it up right.”

  “You’ve been talking to some of the townspeople?”

  “Oh, yeah!”

  “Which one?”

  “Several. Black guy name of John Simmons. White feller name of Rich. Several of the townspeople who knew you from ’way back when. They told me some interestin’ stories about you and a ’neck name of Hiram Rockingham.”

  “John Simmons. Got to be in his sixties now. He was a young man out in L.A. when Watts exploded. He and several other blacks guarded their businesses with rifles until the trouble was over.”

  “Yeah? He kill anybody?”

  Ben grinned. “John told me that an L.A. cop got all upset when he saw them guarding their places of business with guns. Asked them what was going on. John told him that if any nigger tried to burn his place, he was gonna get shot. Cop told him, ‘Yeah. Well, just don’t wound anyone.’”

  Ike laughed. “Cecil’s been talkin’ with John ever since you pulled out this mornin’. I imagine he’s told Cec the story.”

  General Cecil Jefferys was yet another Rebel who had been with Ben for years. A former Green Beret. The black man was one of the most honorable men that Ben had ever known.

  Ben walked over to the knot of people and shook hands with those that he remembered. John Simmons smiled at him.

  “Been a while, Ben.”

  “Fifteen years, John. Might have known you’d still be kicking. You’re too damn ornery to die.”

  “Been close a couple of times, though. I made the mistake of driving down into the Stanford Community one day.” He met Ben’s eyes and let Ben figure out the rest.

  “They put lead in you, John?”

  “Sure did.”

  “Why, John?”

  The man shrugged still muscular shoulders. “Because I’m not the right color, Ben. They asked me what the hell was I doing down there? I told them it wasn’t any of their fucking business.”

  Ben laughed aloud at that. “John, had you been drinking?”

  “No. I was just driving around. Hell, I wasn’t bothering a soul, Ben. But rednecks and white trash and niggers irritate the hell out of me.”

  Ben clasped him on the arm. “You won’t do, John. You just won’t do. Let’s talk about something more pleasant than Hiram Rockingham. Who’s the leader of Morriston now?”

  “No one. And that’s the shame of it all. The town is still divided . . . just like it was twenty years ago. Hell, a hundred years ago!”

  “That’s going to change, John.” Ben’s words had steel behind them.

  “I knew that when we got word your columns were heading this way. But I warn you, Ben. It’s going to be one bloody son of a bitch.”

  “I expect so, John.” He looked at Richmond Harris, who had been standing quietly, listening. “Rich. You and John are now the administrators of this area. Appointed by me. Start drawing up plans for this community.”

  “How much area, general?”

  “What used to be the entire parish.”

  Rich arched an eyebrow. “I can tell you a bunch of people who won’t like that at all.”

  Ben smiled. But it was not a nice smile. “I’m counting on that, Rich.”

  Ike looked at his friend. He knew that Ben Raines was not a man you wanted to get crossed-up with . . . for Ben had said that if this nation was ever to be rebuilt, ignorance and prejudice were two things that would have to be eradicated. Either educated out, or killed out.

  TWO

  Ben had called a meeting of his top personnel. He thumped a part of a parish map. “Stanford Community. We’ll have a little resistance from a few people in and around Morriston; but not very much. They’re starved for progress. They were starved for progress twenty years ago,” he added drily. Again he thumped the map. “But here is where we’ll have the fighting. And don’t, don’t, sell these ol’ boys short. They may be trash and ’necks and people you might not want your sister or brother to marry, but they’re woodsmen . . . every one of them. Keep that in mind at all times.”

  He looked at his daughter, Tina, who commanded a unit of her own. “Excuse me. Woodspeople.”

  “Thank you, general.” She smiled at him.

  “These people living in that area, general,” Colonel Dan Gray said. “How would you best describe them? Cretinous, backward, savage, superstitious? . . .”

  “All of that you just named.”

  “My word!” The Englishman frowned. “What a dreadful grouping.”

  “Now, then,” Ben said, “to lighten up some. Further on westward, along the old interstate, we have our old friend, Emil Hite.
He’s back in business.”

  Everyone laughed at that.

  “Emil is running his scams again. He is of no danger to us. Leave him alone. As long as he stays out of our immediate area. OK. Ike, order a fly-by of this area. If the pilots are fired on, return the fire and return it hard!” He looked at Cecil. “Are all the planes in?”

  “Yes, Ben. They’re out at the regional airport.”

  “I want a Puff along with them. First light tomorrow.”

  “Right.”

  A Puff was a truly awesome piece of flying machine. A twin-engine prop job that was filled with weapons of war: .60 caliber machine guns, .50 caliber machine guns, electrically fired, along with numerous rocket launchers. One Puff could effectively neutralize an area roughly the size of three football fields. Neutralize: meaning its firepower would kill any living thing within a given area.

  When all the armament on a Puff was being fired simultaneously, the plane would rattle and shake and look like it might fall out of the sky. But nothing lived under its flight path. Nothing at all.

  “I want the guards at the Mississippi River bridge to stay alert,” Ben ordered. “Vicksburg proper, so I’m told, has been taken over by the Night People.” He shook his head. “What puzzles me is where these people are coming from; why we haven’t seen more of them over the months.”

  “We haven’t been in the cities much in years, Dad,” Tina said.

  “That’s true,” Ben acknowledged. “But why are they suddenly popping out of the woodwork?”

  “I have a theory, Father,” Buddy spoke up. All heads turned to look at the handsome, heavily muscled young man. Ben’s son; his flesh and blood.

  Buddy had joined the Rebels a few months back, meeting his father for the very first time and immediately fitting in. The young man was very much aware that Ben would someday be forced to kill his mother, a nut who called herself Sister Voleta. The young man was not looking forward to that day.

  Like his father, Buddy carried a Thompson SMG, .45 caliber. But unlike the other Rebels, Buddy did not wear a beret on his head. He wore a bandana tied around his forehead.

  “Handsome, rakish-looking rogue, isn’t he?” Colonel Gray had once remarked.

  “And your theory, son?”

  “Father, everything from the place once known as Washington, D.C. north is supposed to be destroyed, right?”

  “That is my understanding, yes.”

  “Have you personally witnessed this?” the son asked.

  “Well . . . no,” Ben admitted. “But I have spoken with pilots who said it was.”

  “How reliable was their testimony?”

  Ben thought on that. He had heard radio broadcasts just after the bombings, a decade back. The broadcasts said the eastern corridor of the United States had taken hot hits. Any number of people Ben had spoken with had confirmed that. And that Air Force General he’d killed down at Shaw AFB . . . hadn’t he said that?

  No, Ben thought, turning away from the group and walking a bit, pacing the room. No, he had intimated that. That’s all.

  Ben turned to face his son. “Neutron bombs,” he said. “They kill the people, but leave the buildings intact.”

  “That is my theory, sir.” Buddy confirmed Ben’s statement.

  “Go on, son. No! Wait! I personally got very close to the eastern corridor. I had instruments with me; they showed hot. Deadly, dangerous levels.”

  “Yes, but how long after the bombings did you approach these areas?” Colonel Gray inquired.

  Ben thought back over the years. “Just a few months.”

  “Well, they probably would have still been hot then. But not now,” Ike mused aloud.

  The room was silent.

  “Every message we’ve ever received over the years said that New York City was destroyed. Gone. Nothing left. If that isn’t the truth, then who? . . .”

  He stopped, then smiled knowingly. “Sure,” Ben said, his voice no more than a whisper. “Who else but the Night People. They’ve kept that area for their own for years, simply by sending out false messages.”

  “That is my theory, Father,” Buddy said.

  “Think of the treasures,” Ben whispered. “The museums, the libraries, the recordings, the art galleries.” He looked at Ike. “Two-hundred-man team, Ike. Rations for an extended journey. I want you and your people outfitted for hot areas. When can you pull out?”

  “Two days, Ben.”

  “Go!”

  Ike left the room as Ben’s eyes touched the gaze of his daughter. Tina said, “There will have to be scouts, general.”

  “You think you can handle it, Tina?”

  “If I didn’t think so, I wouldn’t have brought it up.”

  “Get your team together and get cracking. Pull out as quickly as possible.”

  Grinning, she tossed him a salute and ran from the room, yelling for her Scouts to group up.

  Ben looked at Buddy. “You understand why I want you here with me, son?”

  “Yes, sir. Besides, I think the people you’re sending are better qualified to handle it than I.”

  Ben smiled. “Always the diplomat, aren’t you, boy?”

  “Full of shit, is the word,” Cecil said drily. “Of course, he is your son, Ben.”

  “Oh, Lord!” Hiram Rockingham proclaimed, raising his hands heavenward. “Why have you sent us this human plague called Ben Raines? We have all been Your good and faithful servants, Lord. And we do not understand this.”

  Hiram, sixth-grade educated, and with about as much working knowledge of the Bible as a platypus duckbill, had, many years back, announced that he was taking over as God’s Main Man in the Stanford Community. There had been a preacher in the area, but he’d been defrocked after he was caught screwing the church piano player.

  The piano player, one Mrs. Rosie May Helen Jean Seager, and the preacher had left the area shortly after that. Hiram Rockingham took over the duties behind the pulpit, and with that, religion reverted back to the dark ages.

  Hiram’s church, originally Baptist, had become the First Church of the Holiness, Praise Be. And Hiram differed somewhat from the teaching in the Bible. Since many of the residents of the Stanford Community could read but little, and none born during the past two decades could read at all, the folks accepted whatever Hiram said as straight out of the Gospel, not realizing it was Gospel according to Hiram.

  And the Praise Be church of Hiram, after Hiram said it was OK, had taken to polygamy like a fish to water. Hiram had four wives, and fourteen children, the oldest in his thirties. Even Hiram had a hard time keeping up with what kid belonged to which wife.

  But they were, to Hiram’s way of thinking, all good kids. Bubba Willie was a tad on the crazy side, but that was to be expected, since his mother was Hiram’s first cousin — or was it double-first cousin? Hiram couldn’t remember — but that didn’t make no difference. Not really. Hiram loved them all. Wives and kids. ’Course, ever now and then he had to take up a piece of stovewood and beat the hell out of the kids . . . and occasionally the wives. But that was something they all expected and accepted as normal.

  Then, too, Bubba Willie’s retardation just might have been caused when he was a little boy and Hiram popped him up side the head with a poker when Bubba Willie wouldn’t mind. But even if a team of world-renowned doctors had said that was the cause, Hiram wouldn’t have believed them. To say that Hiram was set in his ways would be like saying a mule is stubborn.

  But a mule did have a few attributes that Hiram didn’t have. You could teach a mule a few things.

  “Oh, Lord!” Hiram squalled, just before the huge cross, wrapped in rags and soaked in kerosene, was ignited. “Give us a sign.”

  The Lord just might have been listening that night. For as soon as the cross was flaming, it began to rain, coming down in torrents.

  “Piss on it,” Hiram muttered.

  “That was an unusual storm last night,” Cecil said. He and Ben were having breakfast in one of the many mess tent
s around the area. “Blew in and blew out like none I’d ever seen before.”

  It was just breaking dawn. The sounds of planes low overhead rumbled through the early morning. “I hope those assholes in the Stanford area have enough sense to know not to fire on those planes,” Ike said, sitting down at the table.

  “They don’t,” Ben told him, taking a sip of coffee.

  Colonel Gray joined the group. “If they fire on Puff, there will be some funerals soon.”

  Ben sipped his chicory-laced coffee. He was actually getting used to the stuff. “They’ll fire on the planes. Bet on it.”

  “Then they’re awfully stupid people, general.” Dan sipped his tea. The Englishman would only rarely drink coffee.

  “That they are.”

  “Ben,” Ike chewed on a biscuit, “I hate to dump cold water on your plans, but have you considered this: OK, we’ll be successful in setting up the twenty-five or so outposts between here and the coast. That’s only a little sweat. But there must be hundreds, maybe thousands of communities like this Stanford.”

  “I have considered that, yes.”

  “So we’re going to have little communities of learning dotting the land. What’s goin’ to pull the thousands of ignorant assholes in?”

  “Nothing.” Ben lifted his eyes, meeting Ike’s gaze. “Nothing at all.”

  Cecil waited in silence. He knew Ben’s plans. And while in a civilized world they would be considered outrageous . . . the world was no longer civilized.

  “Then? . . .” Ike lifted one eyebrow.

  “I plan on giving the people a choice. Do I have to spell out to you what that choice is?”

  “Ben, you can’t! . . .” Ike choked it back in anger.

  “Oh, hell, Ike! Give me credit for more compassion than that! I’m not going to send Rebels in to engage in wholesale slaughter. Good God, Ike.”

  “But you’re sending a gunship down there right now! Damn, I can still hear them.”

  “Ike,” Ben spoke softly. “Have you forgotten so soon the only thing a redneck understands?”