Alone in the Ashes ta-5

by William W. Johnstone

  “Now comes the hardest part,” he said.

  Rani looked at him.

  “Waiting.”

  Ben looked around him and had to smile. He had commanded some ragtag troops in his lifetime, but this bunch would have to take the cake. Robert and Kathy, twelve years old. Jane, eleven years old. Jordy and

  Paul, ten years old. All armed. All grim-faced. All ready for a fight.

  Two adults and five kids against five or six hundred outlaws.

  On Ben’s sixth day in the old ghost town, the first band of outlaws hit them.

  Chapter 20

  “We’re breaking out of this box, Sergeant,” Captain Nolan said. He looked at his watch. 0630. It would be full light in twenty to thirty minutes. “Are the troops ready?”’

  “Yes, sir. Chompin” at the bit to go.”

  Nolan lowered his binoculars. “Very little movement from the other side. Most of them are probably still sleeping. Tell the mortar teams to start laying down fire.”

  “Yes, sir!” the sergeant said with a grin.

  The mortar barrage caught the outlaws by surprise. For several days the only reply from the trapped Rebels had been some small-arms fire. The HE and WP rounds from the Rebels caught the outlaws with their pants down-in many cases, literally.

  The white phosphorus hit just after the high explosive rounds, searing through leather and steel and flesh and bone. The outlaws did not have time to recover from their initial shock before looking up into the hard faces of the Rebels as the tiger-striped men and women charged the outlaws’ positions. In most cases, that one look was their last look at anything pertaining to this life.

  Captain Nolan’s people took no prisoners.

  The Rebels suffered two dead and five wounded. Of the wounded, only one was serious, but she was on her booted feet, refusing to be left behind.

  Raines’ Rebels broke out of the small town, barreling south. They still had several miles to go before reaching the General.

  “A lot of dust coming from the west, Ben!” Jordy shouted from his post on the second floor of the old house.

  “How many vehicles, Jordy?” Ben called, then realized the boy still could not count past ten.

  “Bunches, Ben.” The boy looked through the binoculars Ben had given him. He laboriously counted to ten, made a mark in the dust of the floor, and started again. “Ten and seven, Ben!” he called.

  “Good boy!” Ben shouted. “Now stay down.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Turning to Rani, Ben said, “Figuring four to a vehicle, we’re up against sixty-five to seventy outlaws.” He grinned. “That’s good.”

  “That’s good?” she asked.

  “Yeah. We have them outnumbered.”

  She looked at him as if he had gone mad.

  Ben called his “troops” around him. “Now listen, kids. Don’t fire until I tell you to fire. All the young people into the room we fixed up for you. Stay down and stay quiet. It’s going to be very noisy, kids. But we’re going to make it. OK? Take off.” He looked at the remaining kids and at Rani. “You all know your positions; get to them.”

  “How come you so damn sure Raines is hidin’ out down here?” an outlaw asked West.

  “I feel it in my guts, that’s why,” the stump-legged West replied. “All them people we talked to said he was headin’ south. All signs point south. That there Rani cunt was headin’ south. Remember that piece of map Texas Red found? It had Terlingua circled in pencil. They here. I know it.”

  The outlaw column halted about a half-mile from the ghost town.

  “Why we stoppin’?” West was asked by his driver.

  “To rec … recon … look the situation over, you idiot. We ain’t gonna make no rash moves this time around.”

  ““At makes sense.”

  “Course it do. Gimme them field glasses.”

  While West was viewing the town through binoculars, he was unaware that Ben was looking at him.

  “West,” Ben said to Rani. “He’s trash, just like the others. Maybe even worse than some. I should have killed him when I had the chance.”

  “Why didn’t you?” she asked.

  “I gave my word. And that is something I won’t break.”

  “Not even to an outlaw?”

  “Not even then.”

  “Ben!” Jordy called in a hoarse whisper.

  “Right here, son.”

  “More cars and trucks comin” at us from the east.”

  “OK. Stay alert.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Ben moved to the other end of the house and lifted his binoculars. That short column, ten cars and trucks, halted their movement about a mile from town. Through the long lenses, Ben caught a flash of bright red hair.

  “Has to be Texas Red,” he muttered.

  “Let me see,” Rani asked, holding out her hand for the binoculars. She lifted them to her eyes, focused them in, and said, “Yes. That’s him. He’s filth.”

  “Then that makes our job easier, doesn’t it?”

  “What do you mean, Ben?”

  “I don’t take prisoners,” he reminded her.

  “Ben, we’re outnumbered, or soon will be, a hundred to one. And you’re talking about taking prisoners!”

  Ben grinned. “Always think positive, darling.”

  She walked back to her position, shaking her head.

  “Texas Red and his boys is on the other side of town, West,” one of the outlaw’s henchmen informed him.

  “That was all that dust we seen comin’ down.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Skirt the town to the south. Make contact with Red. We gotta plan this out. We don’t wanna be shootin’ each other tryin’ to get Raines.”

  From the second floor, Ben watched the lone man leave West’s column and begin his skirting of the town. He picked up his .30-06 and adjusted the scope for range. The man was a good thousand yards away. Too far. Ben let him work a little closer. The ammo Ben was using was, of course, hand-loaded, but this was beefed up to the max by his ordinance people. If the situation had been life and death, Ben would have chanced the thousand-yard shot. But he was in no hurry. He let the man get within seven hundred yards. Ben sighted him in, took a breath, released part of it, and gently squeezed the trigger, allowing the rifle to fire itself.

  The man stood straight up in his boots, grabbed at his chest, then fell forward on his face.

  “Shot high,” Ben muttered. “I was shooting at his stomach.”

  “The son of a bitch!” West yelled.

  “Bastard can shoot,” Texas Red said. He turned to a man standing by the truck. “Is them boys part of West’s bunch?”

  The man lowered his binoculars. “Yeah. I can see that stump-legged bastard sitting in his van.”

  Ben grinned. He called, “Everybody pick up your spare weapon. Stick both of them out the window and pull the trigger. Half of you east, the other half west. Do it!”

  The old dusty littered streets of the ghost town reverberated to the drum of AR-15’S, M-16’s, 30-cj’s, and AK-47’S.

  “Holy shit!” West shouted as the windshield of his van exploded under the impact of a very lucky shot from Ben’s rifle. West stared in horror at his driver. The man was slowly slumping down in the seat, a bloody hole in his forehead. Fluid and gray matter oozed out.

  Texas Red did not move from his position by his truck. “Relax,” he called. “Not even Raines is good enough to make a shot at this distance. He’s just showing us he’s got enough firepower behind him to make a stand of it.”

  “Red!” a man called. Red turned at the sound of the voice. “I can’t even raise West’s people at this distance. Radio has really gone to shit.”

  Red nodded. “Hull? You head out to West’s position. Keep them slag piles in front of you. Or whatever them things are. When you reach the end of that last heap, zigzag into the ruins of them buildings. Stay down and you’ll make it. Take off.”

  Hull wasn’t exactly thrilled with his a
ssignment, but he obeyed. He zigzagged and crawled and ran, expecting any moment to feel the hot impact of a slug. When he reached the high-piled waste dumps, he began to breathe a little easier. He stopped to catch his breath and looked around him.

  He grinned, his mouth a mass of rotting teeth. He slipped into a littered alleyway, looked around him, and stepped forward.

  His screams seemed to linger in the air of the ghost town, adding to the ghosts of miners who had fallen to their deaths in the long, seemingly endless pits.

  Hull bounced from side to side in the old shaft, breaking nearly all the bones in his arms, hands, and legs long before he reached the dark bottom of the shaft. Had he been able to see, he would have seen he landed among the bones of others who had taken that one long step into nothingness.

  “Shit!” Texas Red said, as Hull’s screams finally faded away. “Raines has got people scattered around in the town, too. This ain’t gonna be as easy as I first thought.” The rattlesnakes that lived deep in the old mine shafts began crawling over Hull’s broken and bleeding body

  …

  “I think we better wait for more men, Red,” an outlaw suggested.

  …

  the snakes opened their fanged mouths and struck at the still-warm body, sensing food in their presence. The old mine shafts contained thousands of snakes; they slithered and rattled in the darkness …

  “Who the fuck axed you?” Red snarled at the man.

  …

  Hull’s body was rapidly turning black from the massive amounts of venom being injected into his dead flesh

  …

  “Jesus!” West whispered. He had banged his still-sore stump getting away from the dead driver. “What was all that hollerin’?”

  …

  The rattlers, some of them eight and ten feet long, wound and coiled around Hull’s body. One stuck its head into Hull’s open mouth and sank its fangs into the dead man’s tongue …

  “Let’s back off “bout another half-mile, West,” a man suggested. “We’ll cut ‘cross country and link up with Texas Red that away.”

  “Damn good idea,” West said.

  …

  Hull’s body was now completely covered by the rattlesnakes. The swelling carcass seemed to expand with new life. And the snakes waited for yet more food to fall their way.

  “One group is pullin” back, Ben!” Jordy called.

  “Good boy. Keep a sharp lookout, kids,” Ben called. He turned to Rani. “We won the first round.”

  “The fight isn’t over yet,” she reminded him.

  “Think positive, dear. Think positive.”

  Chapter 21

  Ben watched the column headed by West pull back. Shortly afterward, he noticed dust from the north, tracking east, heading toward Texas Red’s location.

  “That screaming a few moments ago?” Rani asked.

  “Someone stepped into one of the old shafts,” Ben told her. “We shortened the odds some the first go-around.”

  “We’re going to need more than that,” Rani said glumly.

  Ben laughed. “Go tell the kids to stand easy but not to leave their posts. We’re going to have a few hours respite.”

  “And then?” she asked.

  “Then all hell breaks loose.” He looked toward the east. “Be interesting to know what those crap-heads are talking about,” he muttered.

  “Jake’s gonna be plenty pissed about this,” West said.

  “Fuck Campo!” Texas Red said. “He don’t spell Jack-shit to me.”

  But West thought, and thought correctly, most of that was pure macho bravado. West had yet to meet anyone who wasn’t, at best, leery of Jake Campo-at worst, terrified of the big outlaw.

  “We gonna have to approach this usin’ some sense,” Texas Red said. “I guess them Rebs of Raines must have fireballed down here to join him. He’s got them scattered around the ruins of the town. Problem is, I don’t know how many of them they is.”

  “I can’t see how that’s possible,” West countered. “Our guys was supposed to find them and box them in, wasn’t they?”

  “Findin’ Raines’ Rebs is one thing,” Texas Red said. “Boxin’ them in is something else.”

  “So what do we do?”’

  “We wait and think this thing out.”

  Jake knew what had happened when Red and West were not at the prearranged meeting place. No honor among thieves, he thought.

  He looked up at the sound of engines. Cowboy Vic’s column roared into view.

  “Where’s the rest of the boys?” Vic asked.

  “I would imagine they’ve gone on into that old ghost town just west of the Big Bend,” Campo said. “That’s what you had in mind, too, wasn’t it?”’

  “Yep,” Vic said honestly. “I was thinkin’ that whoever got Raines first, could write his own ticket. Wasn’t you thinkin’ the same, Jake?”’

  Jake laughed. “Sure was.”

  “Thought so. That’s why we all got down here a little early, wasn’t it?”’

  “That’s it. Well, maybe this isn’t such a bad thing after all,” Jake mused aloud.

  “How you figure that?”

  “We’ll just lay back and let West and Texas Red soften up Raines and his bunch. Let them take the heaviest losses. Then we’ll move in and pick up the pieces.”

  “And the glory,” Cowboy Vic said, a trickle of slobber leaking out of one corner of his mouth. “Right?”

  “You got it.” And then I’ll kill you, Campo thought.

  “Good plan,” Cowboy Vic said. And when that’s done, then I’ll kill you, he thought.

  The men looked at each other. Vic said, “You got anything to fuck with you? We picked up a few cunts but they give us so much trouble we kilt them.”

  “Yeah,” Campo said absently. “We picked up a shit-pot full of women. Help yourself.”

  “Here they come, Ben!” Jordy shouted from the second floor. “A whole big bunch of them.”

  “Hold your fire!” Ben called. “We have to let them get into town.”

  “There ain’t nobody in this damn old place!” Ben heard the voice drift faintly to him. “The goddamned place is deserted.”

  “Hull fell in a hole in the ground!” another man shouted. “Hell, there ain’t no Rebs here.”

  “Charge the house!” Texas Red’s voice ripped the air. “There ain’t nobody up there “cept Raines and the woman and kids. Go, boys, go!”

  A dozen or more outlaws, thinking they had victory in the palm of their hands, came charging from the southeast. Ben waited until the panting, out-of-shape men were just beyond the stone fence before yelling the orders to fire.

  The dozen went down under a hail of lead.

  “Finish them!” Ben yelled.

  The yelling of the wounded was silenced by single shots to the head.

  West looked at Texas Red. “Thought you said this was gonna be easy?”

  “Shut up, West. If you had any sense, you’d have been counting the rifles that was firing. I did. I figure no more than seven or eight people in there firing. Nine at the most. Shit, man! They’s two hundred and fifty of us.” He waved his hand, signaling the others to gather around him.

  “Harrison, you take your bunch to the back of the house. Lee, you and your boys take the near side. Jess, take the far side. Rest of you follow me, we’re takin” the front. We can’t burn them out, so we’re gonna have to shoot them out of there. Just keep up a steady fire. We get enough lead in there bouncin’ around, we’ll drive them out. Move out.”

  Ben picked up on their plans before the outlaws had a chance to put it into full operation.

  “Don’t let them surround us!” he called. “Stop them now!”

  Texas Red’s plan was only half accomplished. Both ends of the house were covered, but the intense fire from the house kept the front and back open, the gunfire driving the outlaws back time after time.

  Roaming from top to bottom, one end of the house to the other, Ben counted thirty-five dead
lying around the old house on the hill.

  He told Rani, “If we can hold on through the night, this bunch will have a lot of quitters in it. These men won’t put up with losses like we’ve given them. They’re not soldiers; they’re trash, undisciplined gutter-slime. We’ve got to hang on.”

  Rani stuck out her chin. “My kids will do their best.”

  “I’m damn proud of them. Every last one of them,” Ben told her. Then he surprised her by leaning down and kissing her mouth. “And I’m proud of you, Rani. I’ll soldier with you anytime, anyplace.”

  She touched her lips with her fingertips. Kneeling there, in the dust of the floor, her face blackened by gunsmoke and dirt, she smiled at him. “We’ll have to continue this later on, Ben.”

  “Looking forward to it, Rani.”

  “Here they come, Miss Rani!” Robert called.

  The lines of men that ran at them were not nearly so full of bravado this time around. Ben could sense that many of the outlaws had already had a gutful of this fighting.

  “Adjust your fire!” Ben yelled. “Shoot them in the guts. Aim for the center of the belly!”

  The house rocked with gunfire; the air became smoky and hard to breathe; involuntary tears sprang into the eyes of the defenders, young and older alike.

  The lines of men wavered, then broke completely and ran back to safety.

  “Reload!” Ben called. “Reload all empty clips and stand ready.”

  Rani came to him. “Why did you tell us to shoot the men in the stomach, Ben?”

  His smile was not pretty. “Listen closely, Rani.”

  The soul-wrenching screams of the gut-shot men on the outside were hideous to hear. They lay in pools of their own blood and howled in agony. Some were calling for mother to help them; others called for God to put an end to their suffering; others lay dying and cursed God.

  Still others cursed Ben Raines.

  “Can you imagine how demoralizing that is to their buddies?” Ben said, grim satisfaction in his voice.

  “I never want you for an enemy, Ben,” Rani told him.

  “Why, darling,” Ben replied. “I’m just doing what Uncle Sammy taught me to do-years ago.”

  Dusk began draping purple curtains over the land. As the first fingers of darkness touched the old ghost town, Ben carefully checked each child’s position. He checked each weapon, making sure every available clip was full. He talked with each young warrior for a few moments, patting them on the shoulder, reassuring them. With several, he stood their post while they went to the bathroom.