Out of the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  The bloody climax came when the government troops could not even remotely think of taking prisoners; they could not risk a Rebel, of any age or sex getting close to them. Then the directive came down the chain of command: total extermination.

  For many, this was the first time for actual combat. The first time to taste the highs and lows of war. And there are highs in combat. The first time to take a human life; and all the training in the world will not prepare a person for that moment.

  Sometimes in combat, the mind will click off, and a soldier will do the necessary things to survive without realizing he is doing them, or remembering afterward. Rote training takes over.

  Fire until you hear the ping or plop of the firing pin striking nothing. Make an easy, practiced roll to one side; quickly slam home a fresh clip; resume firing position, always aiming for the thickest part of the enemy’s body, between neck and waist.

  Your weapon is jammed. Clear it. Cuss it. Grab one from a dead buddy. Fire through the tears and the sweat and the dirt.

  Sometimes a soldier will fire his weapon until it’s empty and will never reload, so caught up in the heat and the horror of combat is he. Pull the trigger over and over; feel the imaginary slam of the butt against the shoulder; kill the enemy with nonbullets.

  The yammering, banging, metal against metal makes it difficult to think. So you don’t. The screaming, the awful howling of the wounded and the yelling of the combatants blend into a solid roaring cacophony in your head. An hour becomes a minute; a minute is eternity. God! will it never end? No! don’t let it end; the high is terrific, kind of like a woman moaning beneath you, reaching the climax.

  One soon learns the truth: you didn’t climax, you shit your pants.

  When did it start raining red? Thick red.

  Suddenly, you become indestructible. They can’t kill you. Laugh in the face of death. Howl at the reaper. A man running for cover is decapitated by a fluttering mortar round that sounds like a bunch of quail taking off as it comes in. The headless, nonhuman-appearing thing runs on for twenty more feet, flapping its arms in hideous silence. How fascinating. Look at it run. Fall down. Lie still.

  A man is crawling on his hands and knees, gathering up his guts, trying to stuff them back into the gaping hole in his belly. He falls on his face, shivers, then screams and dies. Good. At least that shut the son of a bitch up. His guts are steaming in the cool air.

  There is the enemy. Shoot him. Bring the rifle to your shoulder, sight him in—God! it’s a her! Too late, you’ve pulled the trigger. Good hit. You know it’s a good hit, ’cause the cunt falls funny, kind of limp and boneless.

  The thought comes to you: how long has it been since you had any pussy?

  Shit, man! What a time to be thinking of that!

  Turn to say something to your best buddy, just a yard from you in a ditch. Discover that what you thought was red rain is really blood. A lot of blood. He’s still alive, but the blood is really gushing out ... in long spurts. You want to be sick, but here is no place to be sick; not enough time to be sick. Besides, you’d have to lie in it. You smell the stink of shit. Realize it’s your shit—in your pants.

  Your eyes smart from the smoke of battle and the sting of sweat. Wipe your face and dig at your eyes with shaky hands. You’d better get your shit together, ’cause here comes the enemy, almost on top of you.

  There is that dude from Bravo Company, the one you never really liked ’cause he used to brag about all the pussy he got. He won’t get any more. Took a slug right between the eyes; all that yuk leaking out.

  Abruptly, too quickly, the enemy is all around you and you’re mixing it hand-to-hand. This is stupid! The enemy looks just like you. His mouth is open, his eyes are wide with a combination of fear and excitement, and he is dirty and smells bad. Just for the smallest of a split second your eyes meet. Each brain sends the same message: This guy is going to kill me!

  You’re off your knees (How did I get on my knees? What the fuck was I, praying?) and out of the ditch. Your legs support you. Shaky, but you’re going to be all right. You’re going to make it. You’re going to live!

  Squeeze the trigger. Goddamn it! the weapon’s empty. Slam the butt of your rifle into his balls and he screams and doubles over, puking. Bring the butt down hard on his neck, hear the neck pop. He’s through. A fresh clip in the weapon. Shoot him to be sure he’s dead.

  You turn in a crouch, trying to suck air into your lungs; can’t get enough air. There is another Rebel.... He’s just killed . . . what’s his name? Guy from third platoon. You notice the strangest things: the Rebel needs a shave. Rush over to him while his back is turned. But it’s almost like slow-motion. Force your bayonet into his back, feeling the hard resistance as the blade pushes through muscle and passes bone. It’s not as easy as in the movies. It’s always so clean and glorious in the movies. Don’t remember fixing the bayonet on the lug. What difference does it make? The Rebel is screaming and jerking and twisting in pain. Oh, shit! The blade is stuck in his back. Christ! Pull the trigger and blast the blade free.

  How in the hell did you get on the ground, flat on your back? Am I O.K.? Feel yourself with your hands—timid hands. Jesus, don’t let my balls be gone.

  “Get up, you yellow son of a bitch!” a sergeant is yelling. Is he yelling at me? Damn, Sarge, I didn’t get down here deliberately. The sergeant takes a slug in the back. Musta gone right through the spine; he falls funny. You can’t remember his name.

  Get to your feet to face the enemy. What is this, a replay? You just did this.

  Some guys have captured a woman Rebel; pulling the pants off her. Aw, come on, guys! She’s screaming something while they rape her. That’s not right. We’re not animals, guys.

  “Want some pussy, Jake?”

  They’re talkin’ to you, stupid. “No.”

  Someone is screaming. A Rebel.

  “Beg, you mother-fucker!” someone tells him.

  “Go to hell!” The Rebel shouts his reply.

  The old man has said no prisoners. So the Reb is shot. But he didn’t have to be shot there. He’s screaming.

  Look around you. Is it over? Yeah—almost. Holy- MotherofGodJesusFuckingChristAlmighty: look at the bodies. All the blood and shit. Oh, God—the sergeant is walking around the area, shooting the wounded Rebs in the head. Someone tells you your squad leader is dead. You were a corporal; now you’re a sergeant. Battlefield promotion. Somehow it doesn’t seem like much of a big deal. You want to say: “But I don’t want it!” Then suddenly there is a .45 in your hand and you’re stepping through the gore and the pain and the moaning and the. 45 is jumping in your hand, ending the screaming.

  No prisoners.

  On either side.

  That woman Reb is still screaming. They’re hurting her. “Fuck her up the ass!” someone shouts, laughing. “Get a little brown on your pole.”

  You walk away from the sight and sounds. You could stop them; you’re a sergeant; but you don’t want to lose face with the men, not this early in your promotion. What the hell? She’s only a Rebel. The enemy.

  Now the enemy is dead as you walk through the near-quiet battleground. But that woman is still screaming way back there, across the meadow. Wish to hell she’d shut up.

  A Rebel is still alive, shot hard in the chest. He’s looking up at you, defiance in his eyes. You shoot him in the head.

  Look . . . don’t blame me. I’m just following orders.

  Now, all the enemy is dead, and it’s too quiet. Somebody say something. But everybody you look at averts their eyes. Guys are breathing too hard; somebody tosses his breakfast, puking on the ground. Someone else is praying. You think God is listening after all this shit?

  “It’s too goddamned quiet!”

  You spin around. “Who said that?”

  Nobody will answer.

  A Rebel is moaning. You point to him, then look at one of your men. You hear your voice say: “Shoot him.”

  “Right, Sarge.”

 
Bam!

  The sound is so goddamned loud.

  There is a guy from your platoon, kneeling, holding a tiny blue-colored bird in his dirty hand. The bird is dead. Everybody gathers around to look at it. There isn’t a mark on the bird. No blood. Seems funny to see something without any blood or dirt on it. Wonder what killed the bird?

  “Hey, Sarge?” someone whispers. “You know what?”

  “What?” Your voice sounds funny. Old.

  That woman is still screaming, faintly, hoarsely.

  “We won.”

  NINE

  By dusk of the thirty-fifth day, the heaviest fighting was behind the government troops. The pincers had closed, and most of the Tri-states was secure. But the price paid for victory had been cruelly high.

  Juno was dead, shot a dozen times, but only after the aging animal had killed a major, tearing out his throat.

  And now the government troops had to be content with mopping up; combat troops can testify that mopping up can be awful. It is a sniper’s bullet; a booby-trap; a mine; a swing-trap with sharpened stakes set chest high; a souvenir that can cost you a hand, or a leg, or a life.

  Major General Como was dead, shot through the head by a thirteen-year-old girl wielding a pistol she had taken from the body of a paratroop captain. The girl was taken alive, raped repeatedly, then shot.

  It has been written that there is nothing in the world more savage than the American fighting man.

  Como’s replacement, Major General Goren lasted only two weeks. He opened the center drawer of a desk in what was to have been his HQ, a cleared secure building, and five pounds of nitroglycerine and nitrocellulose blew him open and spread him all over the room, along with a colonel and his sergeant major. The charge was timed with a delay fuse: open the drawer ten times and the charge was still dormant; on the eleventh, it would blow.

  Mopping up.

  In a mountainous, heavily wooded area, west and north of Vista, HQ’s company of Tri-states’ Rebels prepared to fight their last fight. Most of them had been together for years: Steven and Linda, James and Belle, Cecil and Lila, Al and Anne, Bridge and Abby, Pal and Valerie, Ike and Megan, Voltan and Nora, Sam and Pam, Jerre and Jimmy Deluce; and Jane Dolbeau, Tatter and June-Bug and their husbands . . . Ben and Salina. And a hundred others that made up the company. The kids with them should have been gone and safe by now, but they’d been cut off and had to return. It was now back to alpha, and omega was just around the corner, waiting for most of them.

  There was a way out, but it was a long shot.

  Ben sat talking with the twins, Jack and Tina.

  “Jack, you’ve got to look after Salina, now. I’m going to split the company and lead a diversion team. I think it’s our only way out.” He patted Jack’s shoulder. “I’ll be all right, son; don’t worry about me. I’ll make it. I’m still an old curly wolf with some tricks up my sleeve.”

  “Then you’ll join us later?” Tina asked, tears running down her cheeks.

  “Sure. Count on it,” Ben said. He shook Jack’s hand and kissed Tina. “Go on, now, join up with Colonel Elliot. I want to talk with your mother for a moment.”

  Salina came to his side, slipping her hand into his. They were both grimy from gunsmoke and dirt and sweat. Ben thought she had never looked more beautiful than during her pregnancy; she had stood like a dusty Valkyrie by his side, firing an M-16 during the heaviest of fighting.

  She said, “We didn’t have much time together, did we, Ben?”

  “We have a lot of time left us, babe,” he replied gently.

  She smiled; a sad smile. Knowing. “Con the kids, General. Don’t try to bullshit me.”

  “Yeah,” Ben said ruefully. “Yeah, I wish we’d had more time.” He kissed her, very gently, very tenderly, without passion or lust. A man kissing a woman good-by.

  Salina grasped at the moment. “Is there any chance at all?”

  “Not much of one, I’m afraid.” He leveled with her.

  She tried to smile; then suddenly began to weep, softly, almost silently. She put her arms around his neck and kissed him. “I do love you, Ben Raines.” She smiled through the tears. “Even if you are a honky.”

  “And I love you, Salina.” He fought back the tears to return her smile. “Now you step ‘n’ fetch yore ass on outta here, baby.”

  And together they laughed.

  Ben helped her to her feet, gazed at her for a moment, then walked from her to join the group he was taking on diversion. Abruptly, without warning, the silent forest floor erupted into blood and violence. A platoon of paratroopers, quiet and deadly, came at the Rebels; the peaceful wood turned into hand-to-hand combat.

  Ben flipped his old Thompson onto full auto and burned a clip into the paratroopers, bringing down half a dozen. Salina screamed behind him. Ben spun in time to see her impaled on a bayonet. Her mouth opened and closed in silent agony; her hands slowly crawled snakelike down her stomach to clutch at the rifle barrel, to try to pull the hot pain from her stomach. She screamed as she began miscarrying the dead child, for the bayonet had driven through the unborn baby.

  “Jesus Christ!” the trooper yelled, as he saw what he had done. He tried to pull the blade from her belly. But the blade was stuck. He pulled the trigger—reflex from hard training—and blew the blade free, sending a half-dozen slugs into Salina, throwing her backward from the force.

  Ben jerked his .45 from leather and blew half the trooper’s head off, just as Salina collapsed to the ground, her hands working at the bloody mess that was once her stomach.

  Ben was at her side as his Rebels, offering no mercy, took the fight to the troopers. The troopers were outnumbered and fighting against white-hot rage. They died very quickly; the Rebels took no prisoners.

  Ben gathered her into his arms, knowing there was no chance for her to live. She was fading quickly. “I love you, Salina.”

  She looked up at him and smiled for the last time. “Sorry ’bout the baby, honey. But with our luck it would probably have been a koala bear.”

  She closed her eyes and died.

  Ben tried to rip away the heavy load of grief that saddled his shoulders and clutched at his heart with cold fingers. He shook away dozens of emotions as he knelt beside the only woman he had ever truly loved. He touched her face, closed her eyes, smoothed her hair, kissed her still-warm lips. He fought his way back to reality.

  Dr. Chase pulled him away from Salina’s body and knelt down for a moment, cutting at her maternity slacks with a knife. He covered her with a shelter half and rose to face Ben. “Boy,” he said. “Perfectly normal. All his fingers and toes. Her complexion, your eyes. Bayonet went right through him.”

  Ben nodded. “Let’s go!” he shouted. “There is no more we can do here. Help the wounded and let’s move it.”

  Ike touched his arm. “Ben . . .”

  “We don’t have time to grieve, buddy. Later.”

  The Rebels drifted silently into the forest, taking their wounded, leaving their dead; Salina and the boy lay among the still and the quiet and the dead. Ants had already begun their march across her face. She lay in a puddle of thickening blood, one hand on the arm of her dead child.

  The Rebels split up, the first two squads not making it past the edge of the northern border of the strip. A forward observer spotted them and called in artillery. None escaped the deadly hail. Another group walked into an ambush; only a few escaped. The kids lay like pebbles on a beach, their broken and smashed bodies a grim reminder of the vindictiveness and power of government. A half a dozen Cobra gunships spotted another group and came chopping out of the sky, strafing them with rocket and machine-gun fire.

  A few moments before dusk Ben’s group came face-to-face with two companies of government troops.

  Jimmy Deluce was caught in a murderous crossfire and died on his feet, cursing the enemy.

  Jack had regrouped with his father and now left Ben’s side to help a friend. Jack was almost cut apart by M-60 fire. Tina lobbed a grenade in
to a machine-gun nest and finished it off with a burst from her M-10.

  Sam Pyron watched his wife shot dead, and the West Virginia mountain boy rose to his feet, screaming his outrage. He walked toward the soldiers hip-firing an AK-47 and cursing them. He took more than a few with him into that long good-by.

  Ben took a slug low in his left side, the slug traveling downward, bouncing off his hipbone, the force of it knocking him against a tree, stunning him. A concussion grenade slammed him into darkness.

  Ben was spared the sight of Pal taking a .45 slug through the head. He did not see Valerie torn apart by automatic rifle fire. He would be informed much later that Pal and Valerie’s children had run into the line of fire trying to get to him, and had been cut to bloody ribbons.

  Voltan died. Megan was taken alive and raped, then shot. Al, Abby . . . many, many more died. Lila walked in front of a Claymore and was blown into tiny bits. James Riverson helped carry Ben out of the forest and across the border, the big man walking and weeping. His Belle was dead, and so were their kids.

  By the time darkness fell on the now nonexistent government of the Tri-states, not many Rebels had escaped. Less than three thousand had made it out. But Badger and dozens more had escaped weeks before, and headed underground.

  The zero squads.

  TEN

  Senators Richards, Goode, Carey, and Williams were having a drink before their usual Thursday-night poker game in Richmond. They would never get around to playing poker, and it would be their last drink before death took them behind her misty curtain of sunless eternity. They all felt safe, knowing that three secret service agents were guarding them. The agents were there, but they were very dead, cut down by silenced .22 automatics.

  Williams jerked up his head, the fresh drink in his hand forgotten. “Did any of you hear anything?”

  Carey laughed. “Relax, Jimmy. You don’t really believe in those so-called zero squads, do you?”

  Sen. Jimmy Williams ran nervous fingers through thinning hair. He did not reply. Outside, a late-summer storm was building; heat lightning danced erratically and thunder rumbled across the sky, almost an ominous warning in cadence.