Fire in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  The girl's face was bloody, her eyes burning with an intensity that Dawn recognized as near-fanaticism. She jerked Dawn to her feet. “That's the same cop who raped me last week,” she said, pointing to the unconscious officer in the street. “I was one of ‘em who broke out of the tank."

  “Raped you!” Dawn said, not believing what the girl was saying.

  The young woman's eyes flicked to the PRESS badge on Dawn's jacket. “You people don't know where it's at, do you? Yeah, raped. Come on, I'll tell you about it. We gotta get out of here."

  They ran toward an alley and jumped into the back of a van. The driver roared off the instant the women were inside.

  “Where are we going?” Dawn asked, a sick sensation in the pit of her stomach. She had killed a man. Worse, she had killed a federal cop. And she was known. Dawn's face was very well known. As were other parts of her anatomy.

  She had posed semi-nude for the new Penthouse twice.

  The young woman wiped blood from her face. “Tennessee.” She looked at Dawn. “Hey, that was fine shooting. Where'd you learn to shoot like that?"

  “I was aiming at his right leg,” Dawn said. Then her world began spinning and she passed out.

  * * * *

  The woman wore a worried expression on her usually cheerful face. She entered Professor Mailer's office without knocking, something she rarely did. Steve Mailer noticed her grim expression and smiled at his secretary.

  She ignored the usually infectious grin from the boyish-looking professor of English Literature. “There are two men in the outer office,” she said. “They're from the FBI. Or whatever that pack of rabble is currently called."

  “I am not a fan of the late Mr. Hoover,” Steve said. “Only from what I've read about him, I think perhaps the man is spinning in his grave at what his brainchild has become. I have been expecting the ... gentlemen, Mrs. Rommey.” He stood up, a slender man, several inches under six feet. He could not get his weight above a hundred and thirty-five pounds. But he was wiry and tough and in excellent physical condition. He quickly wrote a number on a piece of paper and handed it to his secretary.

  “I may be leaving in a few minutes,” he said. “Without them,” he cut his eyes to the closed door. “If that is the case, I want you to call the number on that piece of paper and tell whomever answers that class has been dismissed."

  She watched as he took a pistol from a desk drawer and held it by his right leg. “All right,” she said. “Steve, I remember you as a freshman; you were against any type of violence."

  Steve shrugged. “Times change. People grow up and hopefully become wiser. I think I have. Don't ask me if I'm part of the Rebels, Mrs. Rommey—the men working for Al Cody are known for their expertise in torture."

  “Open this fuckin’ door!” a harsh voice rang from the outer office.

  “Use the rear entrance,” Steve told her. “Now!"

  She left, tears in her eyes.

  “As Shakespeare said,” Steve muttered. “Though this be madness, yet there is method in it.” The professor smiled. “Come on in, motherfuckers!” he yelled. He cocked the pistol.

  * * * *

  Just off the campus of the University of South Carolina, in a private home, Lynne Hoffman spoke before a small group of men and women. Their ages ranged from fifteen to sixty. Lynne was the head of her particular cell of nonviolent Rebels. Although they believed quite strongly in what the Rebels were attempting to do, their jobs were in gathering supplies and caching them. None of her people carried firearms.

  All that was to change this night.

  “We don't have much time,” Lynne told the group. “One of those captured in the Virginia raid has broken, telling Cody's men about us. We've got to run and we've got to fight. We..."

  The front door slammed open and the small foyer filled with federal police and Hartline's mercenaries. “You're under arrest!” a man yelled. “Get your hands over your head and get up against the wall. Move, goddammit, move!"

  Lynne jumped for the back door just as someone plunged the room into darkness. Gunfire rocked the night and someone began screaming in pain. Lynne and two others made it out of the house, running into the night.

  “Burn the goddamn house down around them,” a man yelled.

  * * * *

  Out in the desert, the night animals began their search for food. The hawk for a rabbit; the snake for a mouse; the mouse for a hole. But on this night, another type of hunt was underway. Mike Medlow, a federal police officer from Modesto searched for Judy Fowler.

  Ever since he'd handled her lush little body during a campus demonstration, Medlow had tried every way he could think of to get the pants off her. Tonight, he'd followed her old VW into the desert and forced her off the road. The rest would soon be history.

  “Come on, baby,” he called. “I know you're part of the local cell of Raines's Rebels. I've known for months. But I haven't said anything about it, have I? That ought to be worth some pussy, huh? If I turn you in, Hartline's boys will gang-bang you day and night. It'll be our secret, Judy. Just you and me. Come on, baby?"

  A dozen yards away, trembling in the rough shelter of a barranca, Judy tried to still her ragged breathing. She had been so frightened when Medlow ran her off the road she had failed to grab the only weapon she had, a tire iron.

  Medlow came closer. Judy panicked and felt her feet slipping in the loose gravel. She slid down into the dry creek bed and landed on her back. Medlow was on her in an instant, tearing at her clothes. The cool desert air fanned her bare hips and belly.

  His fingers found her and entered her, spreading her. Then she screamed as his hardness replaced his fingers and drove deep. Medlow began hunching, panting in her face, his breath stinking. She screamed as his hands found her breasts and squeezed brutally.

  Judy's hands clutched at the dry gravel bed until she found a baseball-sized rock. She slammed the rock against Medlow's head, just above his right ear. He slumped on her, unconscious, blood dripping on her bare skin from his torn flesh.

  She wriggled from under him and covered herself with her torn clothing. She started to run, then remembered what a Rebel sergeant had told a group of them at a secret training. She pictured the sergeant and brought back his voice.

  “Strip the body of all weapons, ammunition, and money. We're preparing to fight a guerrilla war and we have no time for niceties. Take his ID, badge, everything we might be able to use. Then make damn sure he's dead."

  Judy stripped the body and Medlow's car. There, she found a shotgun and several boxes of shells for his pistol and shotgun. She walked back to the federal police officer and stood over him. She cocked his service revolver, a .44 magnum, and blew half his head into a bloody mass.

  * * * *

  All across the nation similar events were unfolding as the federal police and Hartline's men became more savage and brutal in their handling of any suspected Rebel sympathizers.

  * * * *

  It had been raining off and on for a week, ever since VP Lowry had met with the military; ever since that damned demonstration that had turned into a riot. Two cops were dead, a dozen civilians dead. A hundred or more civilians hospitalized, several hundred arrested. And the press was really outraged. One of their own was on the run after killing a federal cop and many press-people were blatantly ignoring the government's censorship order.

  President Aston Addison was behaving as if nothing had happened. He had called a press conference; VP Lowry had cancelled it, refusing to allow any network to carry the president's message. But Addison had not lost his cool; had acquiesced in style, without losing his temper.

  Goddamn the man! What did it take for him to show some temper.

  And now this.

  Lowry turned in his chair and looked at the dozen men and women from the House and Senate seated around his desk.

  Ben Raines had moved east and was in command of the Rebels in the Great Smoky Mountains Park.

  The son of a bitch was really alive!
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  The bastard!

  The VP looked like a man who had just bumped into death and couldn't quite forget the encounter and ensuing chill. When he spoke, his words were slow, carefully enunciated.

  “After the states of Tennessee and North Carolina lost so many police officers, I asked Colonel Cody to handpick a battalion of men from his own people and from those units of the regular military who remain loyal to us. Every man picked was an experienced combat man. Almost 900 officers and men. Late yesterday, 83 of them came staggering out of the park area ... shot to pieces, frightened out of their wits, babbling about facing thousands of Rebels..."

  “They may have exaggerated the number somewhat,” Senator Stout said.

  VP Lowry looked at the man. “Shut up."

  “Aston Addison is behaving as though nothing has happened. As though he is still running the country. You people put him in office, you people may now remove him."

  Representative Alice Tyler shifted uncomfortably in her chair.

  “Something, Mrs. Tyler?"

  “The ... ah ... military,” she said, “especially the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Calland, told us,” she indicated the other members of Congress, “President Addison is to remain in office."

  “Did he now?"

  “That is correct, Mr. Vice President,” Senator Douglas said, his voice low and rumbling, almost matching in timbre the grumbling of the thunder outside the VP's official residence. “I personally believe the military is waiting to see which way the action moves, so to speak."

  “I think you're wrong,” Al Cody said. “I think the military is solidly behind Raines and his people."

  “The military is neutral,” Representative Altamont spoke. “At least in their actions toward this uprising. I can't speak, of course, for their thoughts. But the military will stay out of any fighting—for the time being."

  “You're sure of that?” VP Lowry asked. He knew Altamont had a brother who was a general in the Air Force. “You got that from family?"

  “Yes, to the first; no comment to the latter."

  “All right,” Lowry smiled, rubbing his hands together. “The military told me the same thing, but I didn't believe them.” He turned to Cody. “You know most of the Rebels, right?"

  “A good many of them."

  “Know where their families are?"

  “Certainly."

  “Start putting the pressure on the families,” Lowry ordered.

  “That could backfire,” Tyler said. “That could really set all the people against us. My God, Weston, we're not some barbaric third-world country. There has to be a better way."

  “Name it,” Lowry prompted. “We'll talk about it."

  She could not.

  Lowry looked at the others: Senators Stout, Slate, Douglas, Woodland, Carlise, Reggio; Representatives Tyler, Lee, Altamont, Terry, Clifton.

  One by one their eyes dropped away from his steady gaze.

  Lowry glanced at Cody. “Do it,” he said.

  * * * *

  Jerre did not accompany Ben to the Great Smokies National Park. She had stayed behind in their base camp in Wyoming. He did not know she was pregnant, and she had warned Doctor Chase if he opened his mouth about it she would personally tell everybody in camp the old doctor was secretly seeing a woman forty years his junior.

  “That's blackmail!” Chase had responded.

  “Actually,” Jerre had smiled, “it's a compliment. That a man your age can still get it up should be written about in the annals of history."

  “Don't be crude,” he'd blustered. “Perhaps our relationship is more of the platonic type."

  “Horseshit, Doctor."

  Chase could but grin. “Jerre ... I won't let on to Ben, but I don't understand your motives in asking me to remain silent."

  “Lamar,” she touched his arm. “I love Ben Raines more than life, and I want to bear his children; but Ben does not now and never has loved me."

  “But..."

  “Oh, he likes me,” she smiled. “Perhaps a bit more than like. He loved Salina, but not completely. I don't believe Ben had ever really, totally, loved a woman."

  “Well, he'd damn well better get hopping, then. He isn't a spring chicken."

  She shrugged that off. “Ben has a dream, Lamar, and I'm not sure a woman has a place in that dream. So I'm bowing out. But ... something else, Doctor; I think maybe you've noticed it, too. Some of the men and women ... they seem to, well..."

  “View Ben as somehow larger than life. Yes. I've noticed it. I hate to use the word, but there are a few, so far, at least, that appear to think of Ben as being just under a god."

  “That worries me, Lamar."

  “It should worry us all. Is Ben aware of it?"

  “No,” she was quick with her reply. “I think at first he would not believe it; if he did accept it as truth, he would be appalled."

  Doctor Chase put his hand on her shoulder. “Are you going to the eastern base at all, Jerre?"

  “No,” the word was quietly spoken. Quietly and quickly. “I think it best that Ben not have me to worry with and about, especially now that I'm pregnant."

  “Plans?"

  “Northern California. Our base up near the Oregon line."

  “That's Doctor Canale's territory. Good man. I'll talk with him before you leave. I hate to see you leave, kiddo."

  “Don't get maudlin,” she grinned at him.

  “Heaven forbid!"

  She looked around her. “I wonder if Ben's dream will ever come true?"

  Five

  By August of 1989, everyone who was coming into Ben's dream society ... was in. The three-state area looked like the world's largest supply dump—and probably was. Ben had ordered his roaming units of Rebels to take everything that wasn't nailed down—bring it with them to the three-state area. Entire towns had been stripped bare. Every ounce of gold and silver and precious gem had been carefully searched for and taken. Billions of dollars of gold, silver, and precious stones were now under guard in Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana. These would be used to back the new currency.

  The few survivors in the three states were in almost total confusion due to lack of organization; something nearly all governments discourage. For local militia, except those under strict government control, cannot be established in the United States, not for more than a hundred years. Most governments are based on fear: fear of the IRS, fear of the FBI, fear of the Treasury Department, fear of the state police, fear of the tax collector—fear of everything. That is the only way a massive bureaucracy can function. For if the people are armed and organized, and of one mind, the people might decide that federal judges and the Supreme Court don't have the right to dictate how taxpayers should run their lives; and those taxpayers just might decide to start hanging murderers and rapists and child molesters—those they didn't shoot from the outset, that is.

  And the people (who, so the myth goes, comprise the government and are supposed to tell government what they want, and the government is then supposed to do what the people tell them to do) ... well, that would mean the people would truly be in control. Big Brother doesn't like to think about that ever happening. Scary.

  * * * *

  When everyone who was coming in ... was in, Ike's wife, Megan, had asked Ben, “What are you going to call your new state, Ben?"

  Ben looked at her, surprised. “Mine? This is not mine. Call it Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming. What else?"

  “Who is the governor?” Ben was asked. “The leader—the man in charge?"

  “There isn't any,” Ben said.

  “Well, then, Ben Raines ... I guess we'll just have to have us an election."

  “Just don't nominate me,” he said. “I'm a writer, got a lot to do. I'm not a politician."

  And Ben could not understand why everyone had smiled at that.

  * * * *

  Ben watched the bodies of the dead government agents and mercenaries being buried in a mass grave. After being stripped of all weapons and cl
othing, they were dumped into a huge, bulldozed-out pit, covered, and forgotten. No records were kept as to who was buried in the pit.

  “I don't think we're going to have that year you wanted,” Ike said.

  “Maybe not, but we still are not going on the offensive. The new people need more time in training; several more months. Besides, I want to see what the press does with this,” he waved a hand toward the mass grave.

  * * * *

  Even in a police state with censorship of the press, hundreds of men and women can't come together in a shooting war without the press playing it up. When the military failed to follow up on the battle in the Smokies, the press put it all together and the headlines screamed.

  CIVIL WAR BETWEEN FEDERAL POLICE

  AND RAINES'S REBELS

  MILITARY WILL TAKE NO PART

  Now it was settled. The breach had widened to the point of open war. Lowry had Congress ask for the help of the National Guard and Reserve troops.

  Many commanders refused.

  Ben and his Rebels waited and trained.

  * * * *

  August 1, 1999

  The Great Smoky Mountains

  Ben Raines stood looking at the tired group of new people. All that was left of the bunch from new people from a half dozen states. They had been ambushed in transit, only a hundred and fifty had made it out alive.

  Ben stood on a manmade podium in a natural outdoor amphitheater about a mile from Base Camp One.

  “All right, people,” his voice jerked them to mental attention, eyes forward. Three hundred eyes studied the human legend standing before them. A shade over six feet, one hundred and eighty pounds, hair streaked with gray, blue eyes. Hard looking. “Welcome to Base Camp One. You have now reached the point of no return. From here on, there are but two ways to leave the Rebels: we win the fight, or you die. Those are your only choices.

  “To my left is Colonel Ike McGowen, to my right is Colonel Cecil Jefferys. Colonel McGowen is your training officer, so get ready for the roughest time of your life. Colonel Jefferys is my XO. Now let's get to it.