Trapped in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  “Are you here to help us?” a man asked Ben. A group of people had been waiting at the airport for the arrival of the Rebels.

  “Why in the hell didn’t you help yourselves?” Ben asked him.

  The question seemed to confuse the man. He blinked a couple of times. “We have defended our city, General.”

  “Your city? The goddamn city is dead, man! How in the hell are you going to grow crops on concrete? Have you restored any type of power? Running water? Sewage? I can answer the last question. No. The place stinks like a cesspool. What do you do with your waste, just dump it in the gutters? I believe you do. I’ve seen this a hundred times. When you’ve fouled one neighborhood beyond belief, you simply move to another. Have you set up schools for the young? Do you have a system of government? I doubt it.”

  Ben pushed the man away with a gloved hand. “Get out of our way. We’ve got work to do.”

  The man was astonished. “But we need help! We need food and clothing.”

  Ben withered him silent with a look. Something was all wrong here; but Ben couldn’t pinpoint it. “Then grow your food and sew your clothing. And stop bothering me.” He turned his back on the small crowd and walked away. The crowd started to follow. They stopped when a squad of hard-eyed and heavily armed Rebels blocked their way.

  Ben walked up to Dan. “Get your teams out, Dan. Round up the kids and take them to the old state hospital building we passed coming in. That’s where Chase is setting up. As soon as our birds come in and unload, we’ll start flying the kids out.”

  “Hard man,” Rosebud whispered to her husband.

  “Hard times,” Thermopolis replied, and was astonished to hear those words coming out of his mouth.

  Rosebud stared at him.

  “I gotta get out of this army,” he said. “It’s beginning to cloud my ability to reason.”

  Cecil walked up to Ben. “Some of the . . . citizens say you’re being unreasonable, and that they want to become part of the Rebel army.”

  Ben leaned against a vehicle and rolled a smoke, licking the tube tight and lighting up. “And you told them . . .?” He couldn’t shake the feeling that something was terribly wrong.

  “I told them we would take their request under advisement and would give them our reply sometime in the near future.”

  “Cec, you certainly have a way with words. You’re going to love running things when we get back to Base Camp One.”

  “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t looking forward to it, Ben.”

  “You and Patrice going to tie the knot?”

  “It’s a distinct possibility.”

  “I’m glad, and you know I mean that, Cec.”

  “I know. You’re really going to stay in the field, Ben?”

  “Yes, I am, Cec. I figure it’ll take four or five weeks back at the base to reorganize and get reequipped for the field. I’m handing all the administrative duties over to you the instant we get back.”

  “And you’ll be gone . . . ?”

  “I don’t know, Cec. When I do get back, it won’t be for any lengthy stay.” He smiled at his friend. “So I expect many great and monumental tasks to be accomplished while I’m gone.”

  Cecil grunted. “Well, if your mind is made up, I won’t try to talk you out of it.”

  “And I appreciate that. Now then, what do you think about exploring Philadelphia?”

  “Well, as my daddy used to say, it sure beats the hell out of a lick upside the head!”

  “Bullshit!” Ben said with a laugh. “Your father was a psychiatrist and your mother was a college professor, and I happen to know that you hold a Ph.D. from what was once a very prestigious Eastern university. So don’t pull your cotton-patch coon business on me!”

  “Cotton-patch coon? Good God!” Cecil roared with laughter, and Ben joined him, while other Rebels stood and stared at the men, thinking that one of them must have told a hell of a funny joke.

  FIFTEEN

  “Care to come along with us?” Ben asked Thermopolis. “It’ll get you away from Emil for a few hours.”

  That did it. “I’ll ride with General Jefferys,” Thermopolis said. “Let me tell Rosebud where I’ll be.”

  “Bring her along if she wants to come.”

  She did. Sitting in the backseat of Cecil’s Blazer with her husband, she said, “If someone had told me years back that someday I would be a part of a Rebel army, armed to the teeth and fighting all over the United States—or what’s left of it—I would have laughed at them.”

  Cecil smiled. “Both my wife and I were college professors back before the Great War, Rosebud. Believe me, I know what you mean,”

  “Your wife was killed during the fighting of the Tri-States, was she not?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’ve been with Ben Raines . . .?”

  “Since the beginning. And I can tell you that no man ever fought harder to avoid being placed in charge of the Rebels than Ben.”

  “And Ben’s wife . . . ?”

  “Salina. She was about ready to give birth to their son when she was killed during the fighting. The baby was born as she lay dying.”

  “Did Ben love her?”

  “No. He told her he did. But she always knew that he was in love with Jerre; had been for years and would always be in love with her. But he was never unfaithful to Salina. Ben has a very rigid moral code about marriage. Ike’s wife was also killed during the fighting. Ben was very badly wounded. We got creamed and Ben rebuilt the Rebels, practically from the ground up. The rest is, as they say—whoever they might be—history.”

  “Pulling over just up ahead, “Ben’s voice came through the speaker.

  They all got out and stood staring at the littered and filthy streets.

  “Christ, what a mess!” Ben was the first to speak. “And those sorry bastards want to join us? To do what, do you suppose?” That feeling of something being very wrong continued to nag at his mind.

  “To get a free ride,” Jersey answered him. “Look at this place. New York City was a paradise compared to this hog pen.”

  “Let’s go see the rest of it,” Ben said. “But I think it’s going to be a short tour. This is making me sick.”

  He was to be a lot sicker at heart before the morning was over.

  They toured the downtown area, inspecting a few of the once fine hotels for a few floors up. The citizens had fouled every room. It appeared that when one room became too filthy—and that took some doing—they would just move to another and start all over.

  Most of the historical old homes had been ravaged by looters and vandals. The Betsy Ross House had filth and profanity spray-painted all over it and on the inside walls. The Christ Church Burial Ground had been desecrated with shovels and sledgehammers. St. George’s Methodist Church had been burned.

  “I’ve seen enough,” Ben said.

  “For once, I agree with you,” Thermopolis told him, pointing. “Look over there.”

  Ben’s eyes narrowed and his face hardened as he read what was spray-painted on the side of a building. Someone, or a group of people, had tried to remove it, but the letters were still readable. And that nagging feeling opened wide to the light.

  THE JUDGES RULE

  “Just like Gene Savie and his bunch.” Cecil put it together for them all. “Only these people fit right in with them—with the possible exception of being cannibals, and I’m not so sure I’d rule that out.”

  “Chuck, tell our people to go on middle alert. Warn them that the city might be filled with creepies.” Ben stood for a moment, mentally sorting out some facts. “Cecil, didn’t you tell me that the group of people you talked with seemed upset when they learned that we were going to tour the city?”

  “Seemed that way to me, Ben.”

  “What was that spokesman’s name?”

  “Allen.”

  “Let’s go see this Allen person.”

  Ben walked up to Allen and pointed his .45 at the man’s head. Allen paled under the
dirt on his face and his hands began to tremble.

  “The Night People, Allen, where are they?”

  “General Raines . . . I don’t have no idea what you’re talking about. I ain’t never seen no Night People.”

  Ben eared the hammer back, the metallic cocking sound loud in the silence.

  “If you think I won’t blow your goddamned head off, Allen, then you don’t know much about me,” Ben warned the man.

  “They all pulled out!” Allen screamed. “They done left.”

  “That’s better. Why did they leave and when?”

  “Nearabouts a week ago. They got some sort of message from New York City. I don’t know where they went.”

  “How long have they been in the city?”

  “Forever, I reckon! Don’t kill me, I don’t want to die.”

  “You and your scummy-assed bunch worked with them, right? And don’t lie to me, you bastard!”

  Allen bobbed his head up and down.

  “You filth! You and your bunch procured people for them to eat, right?”

  “Yes, sir! But we was forced to do it.”

  “You’re a liar. You could have left anytime you wanted to leave. There are no blockades around this city. You weren’t chained or imprisoned. Everything you and your scumbags did you all did willingly. Now, isn’t that the truth?”

  “We had to live!” the man shouted.

  “I hope you enjoyed it, because you haven’t got much longer.”

  Allen looked around him, searching for any sign of compassion in the eyes of the Rebels.

  He found none.

  “They’ll get you, Raines,” Allen hissed. “They’re everywhere. In every city still left standing in the world. They been here for a couple of centuries, growin’, and growin’, and growin’. They’s a couple hundred thousand of them in the States alone. Maybe as many as half a million. You’ll never defeat them, Raines. They’ll cut your heart out and eat it!” He screamed the last.

  “How many left in the city?”

  Allen just grinned at him, and to Ben’s thinking, the grin of a Nazi SS man must have looked the same way.

  Ben pulled the trigger. The force of the big .45-caliber slug, fired at almost point-blank range, knocked Allen off his feet. The man was dead before he bounced on the dirty street.

  Ben walked up to a woman and placed the muzzle of the .45 between her eyes, the muzzle touching the dirty flesh of her forehead.

  “You want to die?”

  “No, sir! I’ll tell you anything you want to know. I promise I will.”

  Not one of the filth-encrusted citizens made a move. They were all looking down the muzzles of Rebel weapons.

  “How many Night People left in the city?”

  “I don’t know, sir! Maybe a couple of thousand. When it was learned that you and your troops were winning in New York City, the message come that they was to scatter; to split up and fan out, seek new places to live. I swear to God that’s the truth!”

  “God!” Ben’s voice was harsh. “You profane His name by speaking it from that cesspool you call a mouth!”

  “We had nothin’,” the woman said, her words shaky with fear. “Not ’til they surfaced and we struck a deal with them . . .”

  “I get it. Now I know. You were instructed, or you volunteered to join us to infiltrate our ranks. Where do you live?”

  She said nothing.

  “Speak, goddamn you!” Ben shouted.

  “When did you put it together?” she finally spoke.

  “About fifteen minutes ago. Dan? Are the kids all clear?”

  “Ten-four, sir. They’re at the hospital.”

  “Order security at the hospital to go to full alert, Chuck.”

  “What’s up, Ben Raines?” Thermopolis asked.

  “They’re all Night People, Therm. Every one of them.”

  The woman tried to grab for Ben’s pistol. The .45 roared, the slug striking her on the jaw and angling up to exit out the top of her head.

  The crowd of men and women grabbed for weapons concealed under their ragged-appearing clothing.

  It was no contest.

  The Rebels opened fire, most firing from a distance of no more than thirty meters.

  “Death before defeat!” a man shouted.

  Ben shot him in the head.

  “The Judges rule!” a woman screamed, leveling an Uzi at Thermopolis.

  Rosebud stitched her with her Mini-14. Rosebud loved most living things. She loved her man more.

  The battle was very intense, and very short. Within seconds the street was littered with bodies, the gutters running with blood.

  Silence crept over the battleground, broken only by an occasional moan from a dying creepie. A shot from a Rebel hastened the process.

  “Jesus God!” West shouted, driving up in a Hummer and viewing the carnage. “What the hell happened, Ben?”

  Ben very quickly briefed the mercenary.

  West’s driver, Curly, arched one eyebrow. “Looks like we got a long war ahead of us, Colonel.”

  “To be sure, Curly. But that is our chosen destiny, is it not?”

  “From Africa to Central America to the States,” another of his men said. “I never would have thought it.”

  “What now, Ben?” West asked.

  “We’ve got to be here for at least several more days, getting resupplied for the run back home. West, you and your men take everything north of Market Street. Cecil and his battalion will take everything south of it. That’s up to the Schuylkill River. I’ll take everything west of the river. Hunt them down and kill them!”

  Ben set up his CP just across the river, in an old Post Office building—after first clearing the building of creepies. Then the gruesome task the Rebels thought they’d left behind them in the ruined rubble of New York City began anew. Although not on such a huge scale.

  There were no defined battle lines; this was deadly house-to-house search and destroy, with no one knowing what lay behind a closed door or at the darkened end of basement steps.

  Sister Voleta, Monte, Ashley, and their forces had seemingly dropped out of sight; however, Ben knew he had not seen the last of them, and when they did resurface, he felt they would be much stronger and more difficult to deal with. But for now, another deadly hunt was on.

  Ben’s teams spread out all over the city, looking for any elderly people. There were none. Only bones.

  “Ghastly business, what?” Dan commented, over a cup of tea during a break in the S&D.

  “Looks like the creepies disposed of the elderly first,” Ben said. “I guess they were fattening up the kids, not of their persuasion, for later dining.” Ben spat his disgust on the sidewalk.

  “Speaking of the kids . . .”

  “The doctors say the younger ones will be all right. But the ones thirteen and over, for the most part, are hardcore crawlers, so thoroughly brainwashed they will never come around.”

  And you plan to do what with them?” Thermopolis inquired.

  “Leave them here when we pull out. What’d you think I was going to do, shoot them?”

  “I hoped not. But let me play devil’s advocate for a moment.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “When you turn them loose, they’ll just return to their cannibalistic ways.”

  “That is true, sadly.”

  “And they and their kids and all their kind will grow up despising you, Ben Raines.”

  “That is also true. But I still can’t kill a thirteen- or fourteen-year-old, Therm. Not unless he or she is pointing some type of weapon at me.”

  “They’ll be a threat to me and to others as well as to you and yours, Ben.”

  “That is certainly true. Do you want to be the one to kill them, Therm?”

  He shook his head. “No. No. I could not do that, and there is no one in my group who could.” He was silent for a few seconds. “And I wouldn’t have anyone around me who could. I think,” he added.

  “It’s like I keep telling you
, Therm. You and me, we’re not all that different. We both want a cool shade tree in the summer and a fire to keep the chill away during the winter. We want to be able to sit on our front porch and watch the squirrels play and the hummingbirds feed. We like to have friends around us for companionship and conversation. We both want peace, Thermopolis. The only real difference between us is how we were going about attaining it.”

  “How we were going about attaining it?

  Ben smiled. “You’re here, aren’t you? That’s a weapon in your hand, and another one belted around your waist. There isn’t fifteen cents’ worth of difference between us. Really, there never was. See you, Therm.” Ben walked away.

  Thermopolis stood with a frown on his face. Rosebud walked to him. “What’s the matter with you?” she asked.

  He pointed toward Ben. “I just hate it when he’s right!’

  SIXTEEN

  With two runways cleared for landings and takeoffs, birds from Base Camp One began bringing in badly needed artillery rounds for the tanks and mortars. They also brought in hundreds of cases of home-canned vegetables and meats just slaughtered and boxed in dry ice. The cargo planes brought in fresh BDUs to replace the torn and frayed battle dress the Rebels now wore. The planes brought in soap and socks, boots and berets and bras and underwear, bombs and bullets and belts. Planes were landing every hour around the clock, the runways lighted by flares at night. They offloaded their cargo, grabbed a bite to eat and cup of coffee—sometimes a few hours’ rest—and were back in the air.

  During the daylight hours, the Rebels continued their deadly search-and-destroy missions throughout the city. And destroy they did, sometimes burning entire blocks of the old city to flush out the night crawlers, shooting them as the flesh-eaters ran from the burning buildings.

  It was New York City all over again, and while on a much smaller scale, just as deadly, just as dangerous, and just as nerve-racking.

  The Rebels’ eyes smarted from the smoke of the torched buildings; their clothes stank of sweat and soot and blood and death. They worked slowly but relentlessly, clearing block by block. Finally, after working a five-block area, from Market all the way over to the Spring Garden Street Bridge, without finding a single creepie, Ben called a halt to it.