“I raised my kids!” Therm called over his shoulder, hastening to 3 Batt’s mess area. “You’re on your own.”
“Chicken!” Ben called.
“You’d better believe it,” Therm returned and kept on walking.
“Therm is funny,” Anna said.
“Yeah, he’s a real riot,” Ben muttered. “Have you met Rosebud?”
“Oh, yes. She’s nice. Emil Hite?” She waggled one hand from side to side.
“We agree on that. I’ll see you around.”
“That’s cool.”
Ben walked over to Corrie, Beth, and Jersey. Cooper was with the mechanics, working on the van. Ben paused at their table. “You three teach her to be a proper young lady,” he said, and beat a fast retreat.
One of the women smiled and the other two frowned as they exchanged glances. Jersey held out one hand and Beth and Corrie each dug in their BDU’s and dropped a five spot into the out-stretched palm. “Told you,” Jersey said.
Gyor lay quiet under the fall sun as the Rebels began tightening the noose around the town. The small city looked peaceful enough; but the captured creepies had, before they died, confirmed there were several thousand of their kind in the city.
The locals had begun coming out at first light, their hands held in the air. To a person, their eyes narrowed and their faces paled at the sight of Anna, standing beside Ben, a faint smile on her lips.
“Believe nothing that she-devil says!” a man cried out, pointing at Anna. “She lies. We were forced to serve the Night People.”
Anna spat on the ground in contempt and fired off a verbal round in Hungarian; loathing dripped from her words and the man trembled.
The Hungarian Freedom Fighters gave Anna a wide berth whenever possible. The leader of one HFF group had told Ben that Anna lived to kill creepers . . . and for several years had done a bang-up job of it.
Anna pointed to a man. “That one gave his own daughter to the creepers. They used her horribly until she went insane, and then they ate her. And that is the truth.”
The man leaped at Anna, screaming curses at her, a knife flashing in one hand. Anna raised her CAR and stitched him. The collaborator died in a heap on the cracked concrete of the old highway.
“Pig!” Anna spat the words at his bloody body.
The group of locals began talking at once, pleading for their lives. Ben ordered them taken away for interrogation.
“Why waste the time?” Anna questioned as the men and women were led away. “Put them all up against that stone wall over there—” She pointed. “—and shoot them.”
“We had to comply!” a man screamed at her. “We had to!”
“No, you didn’t,” Anna said. “I didn’t. I fought. So did Jaroslav and Herbert, Stephen and Sigismund, Bobby and Elizabeth, Jagiello and Tadeusz . . . and dozens of others who fought and died. We were still fighting when the Rebels came, and some of us surrendered and joined them so we could continue to fight.” She spat in the man’s face, and the spittle ran down his cheek. “Some of you pointed your finger at Bobby and Jan. And some of you were witness to Jan’s torture. I know that for the truth. And I will find out which ones were there. And when I do, I will kill you! I swear it.”
“You damn dirty gypsy!” a woman screamed at Anna. “You thieving whore-slut!”
“Get them out of here,” Ben ordered. “Who was Jan, Anna?”
Anna had tears in her eyes. “A friend of mine. We’d been together since I was about eight-years-old. Bobby and Jan and I were all that was left of our original gang of fighters. Some of those people turned us in to the creepers.”
“They’ll be dealt with. I promise you that. Corrie, get the tanks moving. Let’s take this city.”
The suburbs appeared deserted, but the eerie silence fooled no one. The creeps they’d captured had told them that much of the city was honeycombed with tunnels and the Rebels could expect a savage fight in Gyor.
Ben laid it out bluntly to Anna. “You do exactly what you are told to do, Anna. If I say stay put, you stay put. If I say move, you move—without hesitation or questions. Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
“We work as a team. The only person who lone-wolfs it is me. And that isn’t often.” Not nearly as often as I would like, Ben added silently. “Do you understand that?”
“I understand.”
Anna had been dressed out in body armor, right up to the newest helmet—made of laminated kevlar, even stronger than the ones used by the U. S. Army before the Great War.
“This throat-collar is uncomfortable,” Anna bitched, tugging at the collar.
“You’ll get used to it,” Ben told her. “Now leave it alone.”
“Tanks in position,” Corrie said.
“Let’s go.”
“What are we doing?” Anna asked, moving awkwardly in the unaccustomed body armor.
“We go in behind the tanks. It’s comforting to have nearly sixty-five tons of steel in front of you.”
“I would think it would be more comforting to be inside one,” she countered.
Ben muttered under his breath. Smart ass!
Anna looked at him and grinned. “Why is the commanding general of such a great army going into combat like a common soldier, General Ben?”
“Because I like it.”
“I can dig it!”
They continued on for two blocks and saw nothing. “Where the hell are they?” Ben muttered.
“They’re here,” Anna said. “Believe that if you believe nothing at all.”
At the end of the third block, silent warning bells began ringing in Ben’s head. “Hold it! Corrie, have everyone halt where they are and set up battle lines.”
“What’s wrong?” Anna asked.
Ben squatted down and looked around him. “Every other tank swivel their turret,” he said softly. “The creeps are going to be popping up all around us any second now.”
“How do you know that?” Anna whispered.
“Because they’ve tried everything else, that’s why.” Ben looked around him at the silent houses on both sides of the street. “I wish I had not brought you along, Anna.”
“You couldn’t have stopped me from coming, General Ben,” she reminded him.
Ben grunted. “Yeah. I know that, too.”
“Listen up, everybody. What the hell is that sound?” Jersey asked, squatting beside Ben on the old street. “It’s gone. No! There it is. Hear it?”
Ben listened. “Sounds like . . . yelling. Sort of. But where in the hell is it coming from?”
“It’s muffled,” Beth said.
“The sound is coming from under us!” Lt. Bonelli called. “They’re under us. They’ll be coming up out of the tunnels.”
The roaring increased in volume.
“They must have spent years honeycombing this city with tunnels,” Ben said. “But to pop up out of manholes would be suicide. Not enough of them could get through to be effective. So they have to have tunnels leading to the homes and businesses.”
“Dan reporting creepies pouring out of houses and businesses,” Corrie called.
“Here we go,” Ben said.
Then the Rebels were surrounded by hundreds of robed figures running at them at nearly point-blank range.
“Fire! “Ben yelled.
TWELVE
Those first creepies who charged Ben and his team died in a storm of bullets, their closeness actually building a protective wall of bodies around the Rebels. The creeps were forced to slow their assault in order to climb over their dead kind.
The main guns of the tanks began howling; at this range, the impacting artillery rounds literally blew houses apart, the stones and bricks raining down on the charging Night People. Fifty-caliber rounds at a range of a hundred feet or less were awesome, tearing human bodies apart and literally stopping the charging creeps in mid-stride and flinging their torn bodies backward in a bloody macabre dance.
But on the dark side of the coin,
Ben and the Rebels were trapped within the circle of torn and bloody and stinking dead, unable to break free.
A huge creepie leaped over the ever-growing pile of bodies and hurled himself straight at Ben, screaming curses as he sailed through the air, his bare hands outstretched in anticipation of closing around Ben’s throat and choking the hated life from him. Ben lifted the muzzle of his Thompson and blew the man’s hooded face into a thousand pieces of blood, bone, and tissue. Ben sidestepped, and the nearly headless body flopped, lifeless, on the stones of the street.
One creep leaped onto the tank where Ben and his team crouched and tried to wrest the fifty-caliber gun from a Rebel. Corrie shot the sub-human being in the head.
“Start tossing gas!” Ben yelled. “Tear gas and pepper. Everyone into masks.”
“Button up,” Corrie radioed to the tanks crews. “We’re using gas.”
The tank crews quickly screwed it down tight and switched to their chemical protection systems as the Rebels started throwing tear gas and pepper gas grenades over the wall of dead and badly wounded creepies, with the occasional Fire-Frag tossed in just for kicks.
Ben’s mask was equipped with mike and receiver so he could both hear and communicate with Corrie, squad and platoon leaders, and company commanders. “We’re getting out of here,” he radioed. “Tanks, clear us a hole through the bodies.”
The sixty-three- and fifty-seven-ton MBT’s rolled right over the mounds of dead and dying creeps, the treads squashing the bodies and making a great big sloppy mess in the road.
The Rebels ran through the gore and out of the swirling clouds of tear and pepper gas. The tanks swiveled their turrets and fired grenade-filled rounds into the mass of choking and near-blinded creepies, many of whom had hit the street and grounds on their hands and knees and were scurrying like big bugs back to what was left of the buildings they had exited only moments before.
A block and a half away, Ben halted the retreat and threw up defensive lines. Anna had not gotten her mask seated properly and was nearly blinded, as well as coughing and choking. At Ben’s wave, a medic took her off to treat her eyes.
Like Ben, Dan had been caught off guard by the creepie’s attack and was furious.
“Calm down, Dan,” Ben said after the Englishman had exhausted his repertoire of cuss words. “We made a mistake by underestimating the creeps. We’ve done it before and we probably will again. Considering that this could have been a real disaster, our casualties are very low. We’ll just flush them out with chemicals.”
“Bobby Day is going to love that,” Jersey said after Ben had told her what they planned to do.
“Who is Bobby Day?” Anna said. Her eyes were bloodshot and red-rimmed from the gas and her voice husky from coughing.
“He’s a reporter who hates me. And he is also a person I don’t want you talking to,” Ben told her.
“Why not?”
“Because he’ll twist everything you say before he reports it. He’ll try to get you to say things that can be used to hurt me.”
Anna nodded slowly. “So your enemies are not just the people we meet on the battlefield, hey, General Ben?”
“You’re catching on, Anna. Very quickly. I just don’t want the lessons to be learned the hard way.”
Anna’s eyes turned cold behind the redness caused by the gas. “If he is a threat to you, why not get rid of this Bobby Day person?”
“Because it isn’t done that way if one is to have any kind of a democracy, Anna. The first amendment of our Constitution protects the freedom of speech.”
Anna thought about that for a moment. “Even if it’s used wrongly?”
“Even then, Anna.”
“Why?”
“Because what is wrong to you might be right to somebody else.”
“Right is right and wrong is wrong,” the girl replied stubbornly. “Everybody knows the difference between right and wrong.”
“It’s all a matter of interpretation, Anna,” Ben explained. “Now, go sit over there with the medics until your eyes are totally clear. And that’s an order, young lady.”
She grinned. “O.K., General Ben. Whatever you say.”
She headed off toward the medic’s tent. “Tell the medics to watch her,” Ben told Corrie. “She gave in entirely too easily.”
“I got the transports,” Corrie said. “They’ll be bringing in canisters of chemicals. First planes should be touching down late this afternoon.”
“We should be ready to start pouring in the gas by midmorning tomorrow. It’s skin-irritation gas. Not fatal.”
“Good, maybe that will appease Bobby Day.”
“I wouldn’t count on it.”
Ben smiled. “Oh, I’m not. Not at all. We just won’t say anything about it until we start pumping the gas in.”
* * *
Bobby Day watched the next morning as the huge pumps that were flown in were set up at various points in the city. “You are obviously going to use gas to drive these poor unfortunate wretches out of their tunnels, General,” he finally said to Ben. “What type of gas?”
“Laughing gas, Bobby,” Ben told him. “When they come out, they’ll be happy, jolly good fellows all.”
“Is that supposed to be funny, General?”
“I wouldn’t even attempt to joke with you, Bobby. You have no sense of humor—none at all.”
Bobby ignored the barb. “And when they come out, you’ll take them prisoner, right, General?”
“Not likely, Bobby. Not likely. We’ll try to round up the kids and turn them over to local people. But we’ll shoot the adult creepies as they come out.”
“That is monstrous!”
“That is reality, sonny-boy. No one, anywhere, at any time, has ever been able to rehabilitate a creepie—man, woman, or child. And some of the most skilled doctors in the world have tried for years. It just can’t be done. But if you would like to adopt a real live creepie for your very own, to love and cherish forever and ever—which would be about fifteen minutes, if that long—you certainly have my permission to do so.
“I don’t need your permission to do a damn thing!” Bobby popped right back. “And your humor is really sick, General. Really, really sick.”
“I’m really, really sorry about that, Bobby. You certainly know how to hurt a guy. Oh, well. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some creepies to attend to.” He turned to Corrie. “Everyone in protective gear. When that is done, start pumping the gas in.”
“I don’t have any protective gear!” Bobby hollered.
“Then you’re going to have a real problem in about a minute or so, Bobby. It won’t be fatal, but you’ll damn sure wish you were dead.”
“What kind of gas are you pumping in there, General?” Bobby hollered.
“It’s a mixture of tear gas and blister gas, Bobby.” Ben was getting into his protective gear. You see all those Rebels who are backing away and getting the hell gone from this area? You’d better join them and do it damn quick.”
Bobby wanted to stay, but his better judgment took over and he retreated, managing to jump into the bed of a truck that was pulling out. He gave Ben the finger, but Ben ignored the gesture.
All the suits were equipped with helmet radios. “Where is Anna?” Ben asked.
“She’s safe. I just checked,” Corrie told him.
“Check again. That kid’s got more moves than a mongoose.”
Corrie’s laugh was muffled as she double-checked.
“All people in protective gear?”
“Everyone is set,” Corrie replied.
“Snipers in place?”
“Ready for the shoot.”
“This isn’t going to be pleasant,” Ben said. “So let’s get it over with. Start the pumps.”
That was the signal for a long and bloody afternoon.
* * *
The Rebels knew they didn’t get all the creeps, but they were convinced they had broken the backs of the creepie population in the small city of Gyor. Thos
e citizens who returned to pick up the pieces would have to deal with what was left . . . when and if the surviving creeps finally surfaced.
Bobby Day certainly could hear the shooting that went on for hours that afternoon; but he was not witness to what the shooting was about and knew that if he were not careful with what he wrote and reported, Ben would boot him out of the country and probably clear off the continent.
Bobby reported that the city of Gyor was cleared in a brutal and ruthless way by the Rebels.
“I certainly can’t disagree with that,” Ben said, and shrugged it off.
The Rebels pulled out and headed south toward the town of Papa, about twenty-five miles away. But their reputation had preceded them and they found the town deserted: no citizens, no creepies, and no punks. It was a dead town.
From Papa, the Rebels went to Sarvar and found virtually the same thing. At the city of Szombathely, population about a hundred thousand before the Great War, the Rebels found many of the citizens of the small city returning.
Winter was not far off, and Ben decided to shut the operation down and winter in Szombathely. The airport, which had been remodeled just before the Great War, was adequate, and the Rebels set about cleaning it up and getting the runways ready to receive aircraft.
“Shut it all down for the winter,” Ben ordered his battalions.
“What are we going to do during the cold months?” Anna questioned Ben.
“You’re going to school, my dear,” Ben told her.
“Shit!” Anna muttered.
THIRTEEN
One of the first things Ben did was open up the schools and get some sort of city government going. As soon as the people who had been hiding out in the country saw what was happening, they began returning to help out.
Hungary was supposed to have relatively mild winters, but somebody forgot to remind Mother Nature of that. Late fall blew in some perfectly awful weather.
Betrayal in the Ashes Page 22
