Danger in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  “All right, Ike. Tighten up your hold at Dix tomorrow and then get on the runways.”

  “That’s ten-four, Ben. You want a suggestion?”

  “Have at it.”

  “We’re gonna need a lot of equipment, Ben. And I mean a lot of equipment.”

  “I see what you’re getting at, Ike. All right. I’ll start the trucks rolling ASAP. My people report lots of vehicles in pretty good shape around here. So we’ll start getting them in good order and drive over to the Big Apple. I think this operation up here is nothing more than a fart in the wind.”

  “Maybe your reputation scared them off, Ben.”

  “Sure, Ike, sure.”

  “And everything is settled with Hiram and his rednecks?”

  “Hiram is dead.”

  “I figured it was coming to that. You should have done it twenty years ago.”

  “It wouldn’t have been legal then. Moral, probably, but not legal. Hang on, here’s a runner.”

  When Ben came back on, his voice was filled with disgust. “It’s over up here, Ike. Dan and the Canadian troops report the area is clear. Monte’s people bugged out.”

  “Which direction, Ben?”

  “They slipped across at Sault Ste. Marie and were reported heading east, staying in Canada.”

  “You know where they’re heading.”

  “Sure. New York. Hang tough, Ike. We’re on the way.”

  “Shark out.”

  Ben turned to Holly. “Get some sleep. We’ve got a long haul, starting in the morning.”

  “Where to and how?”

  “We’re driving. I’m going to see if we can pull anything out of the ashes of New York City.”

  SEVENTEEN

  There was no containing Ben when he had the itch to travel, as Holly found out several hours before dawn the next morning.

  He rudely shook her awake.

  She looked at him. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing. We’ll be pulling out in half an hour. Move it.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Three.”

  “In the morning!”

  “Yes. Quit your bitching. You wanted to come along, remember?”

  “It’s cold, Ben!”

  “So get up and move around and you won’t be so cold. Shake a leg, lady — time’s a-wasting!”

  Outside, Ben started hollering for his team. A group of mechanics — who, fortunately for them, were not going with Ben’s team east — had worked all night long getting Jeeps and trucks ready to roll. They were still fine-tuning engines when Ben started hollering, rousing the camp.

  “Get them up and moving, James! We pull out in half an hour. Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!”

  “The person is a madman!” Holly bitched, lacing up her boots.

  Cecil came running out of his tent, his M-16 at the ready. He relaxed when he saw Ben. “Good God, Ben!” he called. “When is the last time you voluntarily slept past dawn?”

  “I can’t remember, Cec. I’m taking my team and half of Dan’s group, including Dan. You and Colonel West wrap things up here and come on behind us.”

  Dan came staggering up, rubbing his eyes. “My word. What a perfectly ghastly hour for a human to arise from sleep.”

  Ben grinned at him. “We pull out in half an hour. So get your tea in your belly and the lead out of your ass, Dan.”

  “I shall be functioning as smoothly as a well-oiled machine in ten minutes, general!”

  “I knew I could count on you, Dan.” He stepped back and eyeballed the Englishman. “My, but you do cut a dashing figure in your long handles.”

  Dan drew himself up and with as much dignity as he could muster, did an about-face and marched off toward his tent.

  “Your backflap’s open, Dan!” Cecil called.

  Dan reached around, jerked up the flap, and quick-stepped to his tent.

  Riding in a Jeep, crossing the Straits of Mackinac, with Lake Huron to the east and Lake Michigan to the west, Holly really started bitching about the cold.

  “I’m cold! I’m hungry! I want some coffee! And why in the hell can’t you drive a pickup truck like a normal human being, Ben Raines?”

  “Are you uncomfortable, Ms. Allardt? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

  She kicked something that was rattling around on the floorboards. “What is that?”

  “That’s a thermos of coffee, Holly. I thought you might like some. And pour me a cup, too, will you?”

  A hundred and fifty miles after pulling out from the old airport, Ben ordered the convoy pulled over at an old National Guard base, outside of Grayling.

  “Breakfast time, boys and girls!” he called. “Those wonderful MREs. James, first bunch to finish eating, send them into that old Guard camp; see if they can find anything worth salvaging.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He sat down beside Holly and grinned at her. “All comfy now?”

  “Raines, you are possessed, you know that? Can you ever just sit still and relax?”

  “Too much to do, Holly. And not nearly enough time to get it all done.”

  “And when it’s all done, Ben? . . .”

  “It never will be finished. Not in my lifetime. In case you haven’t noticed, dear, while I am not yet in the twilight of my years, I ain’t no spring chicken.”

  “You’re still a few years away from a wheelchair, Raines,” she said drily, stirring some glop in a cup and eating it. “And I hesitate to ask exactly what this is I’m eating.”

  Ben picked up the empty wrapper. “Well, it was packaged in 1985.”

  “This stuff is seventeen years old, Ben!”

  “Relax. They’ll keep practically forever. I’ve eaten rations that were packed back during the Korean War. They were OK, except for those green eggs.”

  She put down her cup and stared at him. “Green eggs!”

  “They weren’t bad as long as you kept your eyes closed.”

  Tina walked up to Ike, her hands in her pockets. “If you come out with another ham sandwich,” Ike warned, “I swear I’m gonna belt you!”

  She laughed at him and pulled her hands out, empty. “Our teams have gone in all directions, Ike. No sign of any Night People. They’re ten miles outside the post now, in all directions. How far do you want them to range out?”

  “That’s far enough. I think they’ve pulled back into the suburbs and the city. By the way, your dad pulled out of upper Michigan at oh-three-thirty today.”

  “How far is it from there to here, Ike?”

  “’Bout a thousand miles, give or take a hundred. Knowin’ Ben, he’ll be pushin’ it hard.”

  “Dr. Chase and his people?”

  “They’ll be up in about a week, Lamar said. Your brother is doing fine, by the way.”

  She nodded and jerked her thumb. “Those bodies are beginning to stink, Ike.”

  “Burn ’em. Let’s shift positions to the airfield.”

  “Desolate,” Holly murmured. “Ben, where are the people?”

  They were heading south on Interstate 75, just north of Bay City. “I don’t know, Holly. It’s bothering me, too. There should have been survivors in this area. I’m guessing this Monte person — and probably the Night People — picked this area clean.”

  She shuddered.

  “For food.”

  “I get the picture, Ben!”

  “Probably hold them prisoner and fatten them up like hogs.”

  “All right, awready!”

  “Point to Eagle,” Ben’s radio crackled.

  “Eagle. Go ahead.”

  “Smoke from fires in Bay City, Eagle. You want us to check it out?”

  “Ten-fifty. Wait for us, Point.”

  The people ran when they spotted Ben and his Rebels, and no amount of hollering and calling out that they were friendly would slow them down.

  “Scared,” Ben said. “Spooky of any strangers. I suppose it’s understandable.”

  “You suppose?” Holly asked.r />
  “Holly, in every other home you can see, stretching either way from here to both coasts, there is at least one gun of some sort. The military bases are littered with weapons. They’re rusting, many of them. These people could have become organized and armed. Why they didn’t, or wouldn’t, remains one of the great mysteries to me.”

  “Well . . . we have to help them, Ben.”

  Ben picked up his mic and ordered the Scouts out. He put the Jeep into gear and rolled on, heading back to Interstate 75.

  “Where are you going, Ben?”

  “I help those who help themselves, Holly. If they’ll just help themselves a little bit, I’ll help them a lot. But these people are just standing around, waiting for somebody to do it all for them; waiting to die at the hands of warlords or outlaws, or what-have-you. If you tried to give one of them an order that you felt might save their lives, they’d stiff their necks and proclaim, ‘I ain’t takin’ no orders from nobody.’ To hell with them, Holly. There are too many fine, decent people out there in the ashes who want help for me to screw around with a bunch of losers.”

  She didn’t say another word to him until they were on the outskirts of Saginaw.

  “Are we stopping here, Ben?”

  “You have to go to the bathroom?”

  She did her best to wither him with a glance. It had no effect on Ben. “You know what I mean, Ben.”

  “No, Holly. We are not stopping.”

  She muttered something that sounded extremely vulgar.

  The smell emanating from Flint told them all that to enter the city would be useless. The smell told them the place was crawling with Night People.

  An hour passed in silence, the rush of the wind flapping the canvas top and sides of the Jeep the only noise. As they drew closer to Detroit, the land became more desolate; one could practically feel the human void; the emptiness of human life.

  “We’re going to have two choices.” Ben broke the silence. “We’re either going to have to go into the cities and kill them during the day, while they sleep, or we’re going to have to napalm the cities and drive them out and shoot them.” Without waiting for Holly to reply, Ben picked up the mic. “Stay on the Interstate heading dead south. No one leaves the convoy. Let’s just get the hell out of this state.”

  About an hour before dark, Ben ordered the convoy to pull over and make camp. They were about twenty miles from the Ohio line. Dan walked up to Ben and Holly.

  “General, they have to have left the cities and set up in the country. I simply refuse to believe that all the survivors are dead.”

  “It is my fervent hope that you are correct Dan. If you’re not, we’re facing total annihilation. There is no way a force as small as ours could ever hope to cope with what appears to be hundreds of thousands of these people. It’s mind-boggling.”

  “Ben,” Holly said, looking first at Dan and then at Ben. “As a doctor I’ve got to say that I find it impossible to believe that chemicals or radiation — what little there was of it — could have killed thousand of these people. I just do not accept it.”

  “Nor do I, Holly.”

  “Then? . . .”

  “There is no doubt they have good communications. As good as ours. That means the ability to communicate around the world, right, Dan?”

  “It would seem that way.”

  “So why didn’t our communications people pick up any of their traffic?”

  “Hard directional?”

  “Maybe. But in what direction?”

  Dan was thoughtful for a moment. “East, to the European countries.”

  “Exactly. We know for a fact that there is a small radiation belt circling high above us that tears up radio communications, right?”

  “That is correct.”

  “And it doesn’t always stay in the same place, right?”

  “Atmospheric conditions affect it. I think the belt remains pretty much stationary. Yes. I see what you’re getting at. But, general, that would suggest a very high level of intelligence on the part of these . . . cannibals.”

  “Yes. But why shouldn’t some of them have been engineers, scientists, whatever, before the war?”

  “Yes.” The Englishman spoke softly. “Indeed. Why not?”

  “And what part of the world took the hardest hits of radiation?”

  “Europe, of course.” Dan stroked his pencil-thin moustache. “General, are you suggesting that there might have been some sort of flotilla from Europe?”

  “It’s one answer.”

  Dan leaned against a fender of a truck, sipping at his late afternoon tea. “It’s certainly something to think about. And we must not overlook the possibility of recruits, too.”

  “Yes.”

  Holly was horrified. “You mean . . . you’re suggesting that normal people would voluntarily join something this . . . this hideous?”

  “We weren’t that far removed from barbarism, Holly,” Ben told her. “Besides, total despair and no hope for the future will drive many into doing things that in a civilized, ordered world would be unthinkable to them.”

  “That’s monstrous!”

  “Yes. But I’m afraid it’s also reality. Dan, double the guards. Keep fires burning all night. Tell the sentries to call out only once for recognition, then open fire.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “It’s going to be a long night,” Holly said, looking around her at the gathering pockets of darkness dotting the land.

  “You’re safe. Are you beginning to understand why I preach organization and unity and strength?”

  “Of course. I always have, Ben. But there are many people who don’t like that type of society. And that is their right. Or do you disagree with that, too?”

  “Certainly not. But do you know where many of those types are?”

  “I’m sure you’ll tell me; not that I really want to know.”

  “Being eaten alive because of their stubbornness.” He held out a can. “Care for some beef stew, Holly?”

  EIGHTEEN

  The Night People made their presence known during the gloom, but they were cautious not to get too close to the Rebel encampment; not after a group of them stepped in front of a Claymore and were spread all over the area, in dripping chunks and pieces of raw meat. After that, the Night People pulled back and stayed far from the camp. Later, sentries would report that several hours before the first fingers of dawn began spreading silver over the land, the Night People began withdrawing, slipping away, back to their dens of darkness to sleep away the dreaded light.

  The Rebels ate a quick breakfast and mounted up. All wanted to be away from that place.

  They skirted Toledo and Ben pulled the convoy over at a junction, waving Dan up to him.

  “We’re going to avoid the cities, Dan. We’ve got to find out where the people have gone; besides into the stomachs of the Night People.”

  “You do turn an eloquent phrase, general.”

  “Thank you. It’s going to be a meandering route. But we’re going to check out the small towns. We’ll take Highway Twenty over to Norwalk, there we’ll pick up Eighteen; take it to the Interstate. Pick up the Turnpike; follow that to Youngstown. From there, if all goes right, we’ll pick up Eighty and take it all the way across. Advise your Scouts and have them move out. Stay ten miles ahead of the main columns and keep in radio contact.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  They checked the towns out as they came to them. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. It became a game to the Rebels: who would spot the first living being.

  But none were found.

  Outside of Norwalk, Ben pulled the convoy over and walked back to Dan.

  “Let’s add it up, Dan; see what we can come up with. What have you noticed?”

  “Brass. Lots of empty brass. The citizens aren’t taking it quietly. They’re fighting back and doing a pretty good job of it.”

  “That’s what I think. I think they’ve moved south; away from the lake, away from the cities. Down in the
central part of the state. Communications reports some radio traffic, in code, coming from that area.”

  “Have they broken the code?”

  “Oh, yes. They’re wondering who we are; whether we’re part of Monte’s bunch. We’ll noon here and try to make contact with them. Tell the people to stand down and relax. Guards out.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  But the people refused to respond to the Rebels’ calls. Finally, exasperated, Ben took the mic.

  “This is General Ben Raines. I’m with a contingent of Rebels near Norwalk. I am not asking you to give away your position; just advising you who we are and if you are in need of anything. Will you please respond to this?”

  Ben waited; tried again. This time he got a reply.

  “Ben Raines is dead.”

  “Ben Raines is not dead. I assure you I am alive and well. Will you give me some travel instructions?”

  “What do you want?”

  “Is the Interstate between Cleveland and Akron safe for travel?”

  “Negative. Skirt south of Akron. And take the loop around Massillon and Canton. Are you really Ben Raines?”

  “Yes. Do you people need anything?”

  There was a long pause. “Yes. Some help.”

  “In what form?”

  “We’ve got to have someone help us with security; we’re farmers and businessmen, not soldiers.”

  “Give me your twenty and I’ll send a team down to assist you.”

  “Negative. We’ll meet you in Ashland. That’s southeast of your position.”

  Ben looked at Dan. “We’re going to have to change routes anyway. Mount them up, Dan.”

  They were a haggard-looking group of people, but they were well armed and the weapons were well cared for.

  The leader of the group stared hard at Ben. “By God! You’re really Ben Raines!”

  “Alive and well.” Ben shook his hand. “Now bring me up to date on what’s been happening around here.”

  Using the scrapers, Ike’s Rebels soon had a runway cleared at the old military base. Then the Rebels set about crushing stone to fill in the potholes that had developed over the long years of disuse.

  Ike had been sending teams out, five to a team, to start cleaning out the immediate area around the old reservation . . . cleaning it out of whatever creepies might be holed up during the day waiting to prowl at night.