Blood in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  Both heard the whistles and calls as the dogs were yelled back to their handlers.

  Nina flipped sweat from her face with her fingertips. She breathed a sigh of relief. “I have a suggestion, Ike.”

  “Oh?”

  “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  “I think that’s a damn good idea, honey.”

  Ben motioned for James Riverson to come to his side. “Our back trail covered, old friend?”

  “Yes, sir,” James assured him. “If they’re any good at all, they’ll be able to see we camped at Clark Hill, on the Georgia side. But after that, it’s clean and cold all the way into South Carolina.”

  “Very well. Good work, James.” He waved to Captain Rayle. “Captain, send a team into McCormick and check it out. Less than two thousand people there before the bombings. It’s probably a ghost town, but let’s be sure.”

  “Right away, sir.”

  Ben looked to James. “Send teams to check out all these other small towns in the forest. So far, we’ve seen no signs of life, but let’s be certain. I don’t like surprises. We’ll camp here at Bakers Creek for this night. No fires. Cold camp all the way around. Leave no sign of our being here. Guards out and stay alert.”

  Ben looked to the northwest. Other Rebels followed his gaze.

  “I wish I knew what the hell was going on up there,” Susie said.

  THREE

  “From this point on,” Willette said, “we must proceed very cautiously. As soon as General Raines is pinpointed, we’ll have our people take him. And I don’t want him to fall into Sister Voleta’s hands, either. That must not happen.”

  “But Sister Voleta said . . .” a woman spoke, her face alarmed.

  “Hell with Sister Voleta!” Willette snapped. “My plan is better, much more realistic. I want Ben Raines taken alive and kept alive. I have in my possession drugs that will destroy his mind. Drugs that will turn him into a babbling idiot.” He smiled. “And we can blame it all on McGowen and Jefferys and the others. We can rig evidence that will point directly to them.” Again, he smiled. “And to show our ‘love’ for General Raines, we’ll store Raines in a big fine house with some of the older Rebels to look after him. We’ll lavish the simple-minded fool with gifts and all kinds of things. Our love and concern for him will be evident. And we’ll have evidence that will show McGowen and Jefferys and Gray and even Raines’ own daughter, Tina, plotted to destroy him. The people will be so outraged, they’ll call for the death penalty for those responsible.” He laughed loudly, then looked around him conspiratorially. “The plan is beautiful and perfect, people. You see, with Raines out of the way, we can then knock off Sister Voleta. Most of her followers will move right into line and join up with us.”

  His people agreed with him, smiling and nodding their heads.

  “Sounds good, Tom. But what about this guy Tony Silver?”

  Willette shrugged, then spat on the ground contemptuously. “Hell, what about him? We’ve got him outgunned even now. Shit! Let the hoodlum have south Georgia. We’ll take everything to the north and still be sitting in the high catbird seat, and Tony and his soldiers will be a friendly buffer zone to the south. I can’t find any flaws in the plan, people.”

  “How come Sister Voleta hates General Raines so much?”

  Willette snarled his reply. “For much the same reason I do. And the son of a bitch doesn’t even remember us. Either of us. But he’ll remember me just before I destroy him. God, how I hate that bastard.”

  FOUR

  “Oh, you’ll pay, Ben Raines,” Voleta hissed the words like a snake’s warning before striking prey. “You will pay and pay and pay dearly this time, I can promise you that.” She laughed, an evil barking of non-humor. “And you don’t even know why you’re paying.”

  The woman’s hate-filled brain spun its memory banks, flinging her back in time. Back years, backward in time until she stood in a bookstore in Nashville, approaching Ben Raines at an autograph party for his latest book. Back when she was just barely twenty and trying to launch a career as a country singer, back before she learned her cunt was more valuable than her mouth—in some respects. She had flirted with Ben Raines, and he had responded while signing several of his books. They later had dinner together, and bed had followed. Ben had promised to call her before he left town, for another date. But he had never called. Writers being somewhat like wandering musicians in that respect.

  Nine months later, a son was born to her. Rather than put the boy up for adoption, which she had considered then rejected, she raised the child. Mother and son had become separated right after the bombings, during the massive confusion of evacuation. She did not know what happened to the boy, Ben Blackman.

  She had tried several times writing to Ben—through his publishing company—but all her letters drew only one response from Ben Raines, and that had come through Ben’s attorney in Louisiana.

  “If you can prove the boy is mine, I will accept full responsibility for the boy’s care.”

  Her own attorney, whom she was paying with pussy, knowing Betty was sleeping with several other men, told her to forget it.

  “But the boy belongs to Ben Raines!” she protested.

  “How sure are you, Betty?” her lawyer had asked the woman.

  Her hesitation told him the story. “Forget it,” he again urged. “Hell, it might even be mine!”

  Outraged, Betty added a middle name to her son. Ben Raines Blackman.

  She hated Ben Raines.

  She loathed Ben Raines.

  And she never forgot him, the years only fueling the hate.

  She wanted to torture Ben Raines to death.

  FIVE

  “Ben Raines killed my daddy,” Willette said. “Killed him in cold blood. Back in ’89, best I can recall. It was down in Georgia. My daddy was with Luther Pitrie’s Georgia Militia at the time.”6

  “I ‘member that bunch,” an older man said. “They’s tryin’ to rid the area of niggers, as I recall.”

  “That’s right,” Willette said. “And they was doin’ a damn good job of it, too. I recall my daddy come home once sayin’ they’d hanged more than fifty coons that very day. I slipped out to the hangin’ ground that night. That was a sight to see. Them swole-up niggers hangin’ like sides of rotten beef from trees. I was . . . oh, ‘bout thirteen, fourteen at the time Ben Raines killed my daddy from ambush. Momma was already long dead. That left me alone. Just a tad of a boy. But I swore me an oath I’d someday kill that nigger-lovin’ son of a bitch.” He grinned. “But this way is gonna be better. I’m gonna fuck that Jew-bitch right in front of Raines’ eyes, ’fore I mess up his mind, so’s he’ll know what’s happenin’.“

  “By God, that’ll be a sight to see, Tom.” One of his men laughed.

  “Yeah,” Willette said dreamily. “You all can have a whack at her.”

  SIX

  Ben sat up straight and said, “Betty Blackman!” He flung the words from his mouth as recall brought clarity to his mind.

  Gale looked at him. They were sitting alone under the shade of a huge tree near Bakers Creek. “I beg your pardon, Ben? What was that you just said?”

  He met her dark eyes. “I said, Sister Voleta. That’s who she is. My God! I can’t believe it. But I’m right.”

  “No, Ben. You didn’t say Voleta. You said something else.”

  “Betty Blackman and Sister Voleta are one and the same.”

  “You know that fruitcake?”

  “I knew her very briefly when she was trying to get started as a country music singer in Nashville, Tennessee. Her name, then, was Betty Blackman. That was about . . . oh, 1981 or ’82, I guess. Somewhere around then.”

  “I see,” Gale said. “Tell me, how well did you know her, Ben?”

  Ben grinned. “Oh, it was a one-night stand, as best as I can recall.”

  “Wonderful,” Gale’s reply was dryly given. “By all means, Raines, do tell me more. I’m on pins and needles.”

  “The
re isn’t that much more to tell, really. About a year after that, I got a letter in the mail from her. It had been sent to my publishing company. She claimed she had a child and it was mine. I gave the letter to my attorney and told him to follow it up. I said if the child was mine, then I had a legal and moral obligation to help raise it. I never heard another word from her. Good God, I hadn’t thought of her in years.”

  “Marvelous. Raines, just how many damn kids do you have scattered around the world?”

  Ben ignored that. “Betty Blackman. She must really hate me.”

  “Well, Ben, look at it like this: You did try to do what was right. I mean, you offered to help financially. Obviously, she didn’t know whether the child was yours or not. And it probably wasn’t. Did you receive many of those types of letters as a writer?”

  Ben shook his head. “Two or three in a dozen years. I suppose every writer does. Did,” he amended that.

  She picked up on his tone of voice. “You miss it, don’t you, Ben?”

  “Writing? You bet, I do. But what I miss more is the stabilizing effects of a working—if not totally acceptable to all people—government. But, yeah, I miss the writing game.”

  “I want you to go on the road, Ben,” she said. “I want you to take as much time as needed to finish your journal. And don’t argue with me, Ben. You know as well as I you’re never going to be completely satisfied until that work is finished. I’m right, aren’t I?”

  “Maybe,” Ben admitted. “But you’re forgetting about this little matter presently confronting us, aren’t you, dear? I mean, we are in the middle of a coup attempt back at Base Camp.”

  “No, I’m not forgetting anything. But all that will be settled shortly.”

  “Are you psychic?” Ben asked, smiling. “Among your many other talents, that is.”

  She fixed him with a serious stare. “No, I’m not psychic, Ben. I just happen to be very close to a fellow named Ben Raines, that’s all.”

  “And Ben Raines can do anything, right?” he questioned, a sour note to the query. “Is that it, Gale?”

  “I guess that’s about the size of it,” she said, rising to her feet. She winked at him and walked away.

  “Wonderful,” Ben muttered. “Now even she believes me to be something I am not. Crap!”

  He sat alone with his old Thompson SMG and his many thoughts until the scouting parties began drifting back into camp.

  “If there are any human beings in the forest, General,” the team leader of the first returning scouting party said, “they’ve become invisible.”

  Another team leader reported: “The towns are dead, General. We could find no signs of life. Looks to me like there ain’t been nobody in these towns for years.”

  “All right,” Ben said. “At first light, we move out.” He traced the route on an old, worn map. “We’ll cut due east here and head for this point, there are ridges along here. We find the highest one and dig in and sit still for a time, until that first team I sent out reports back with answers to questions. We’ve got to know where we’re going before we can start.”

  “Very profound, Raines,” Gale later told him, a smile on her lips. “Those words will probably go down in the annals of weighty sayings.”

  “Kinda like, ‘The longest journey begins with a single step,’ Miss Roth?”

  “Oh, at least that.”

  “I’m going to miss you, Ms. Roth.”

  “For maybe fifteen minutes, Mr. Raines. When the hell do we eat? I’m hungry!”

  SEVEN

  “Any of you boys believe the crap this Captain Willette fellow is handin’ out?” Abe Lancer asked the gathering of mountain men.

  “‘Bout as much as I believe in kissin’ a rattlesnake,” Rance replied. He punctuated that by spitting a long, brown stream of tobacco juice, hitting a hard shell bug dead center, stopping the beetle in its tracks.

  “There are some folk in the mountains take offense to that remark,” Clement reminded the man. He winked at his buddies.

  “Them snake-handlers wanna kiss a rattler,” Rance replied, “that’s they business. Long as they don’t shove that ugly bastard up to me for a smooch. Feel the same way ‘bout this Willette person. ’Cept he’s worser than a damn rattler.”

  “I believe that,” Willard spoke. “Rattler will give a body some warnin’ if he’s got time.”

  “We all agree on that,” Abe said, bringing the bantering to a close. “Any of you men, or any of your kin, been approached by Willette or any of his people?”

  “Near’bouts all of us,” a long, lean man spoke. “And I think we all told ’em the same thing. And that was to get the hell off our property and don’t never come back.”

  All the mountain men shook their heads in agreement.

  “They know where General Raines is at?”

  “They found out where they think he is,” Claude said. “I got that from a Reb. And they’s ‘posed to be an army comin’ up from the south part of Georgia to join them troops Willette sent out. They plan is to keep the general away from this area long enough to really convince any holdouts among the Rebs that Willette is really a fine fellow, really doin’ all this in the general’s behalf.” He spat his opinion of that on the ground. “Anybody dumb enough to believe all that bull-dooky would eat shit, run rabbits and howl at the moon.”

  All the men laughed politely at the old adage.

  “What’s the chances of us gettin’ them held prisoner a-loose?” The question was tossed from the gathering around the porch.

  “Slim to none,” Andy spoke for the first time. More than five words in a stretch from Andy was considered to be a lengthy speech. “But I’m of a mind that we all oughta give ’er a try. I think, even though ain’t none of us ever seen this here General Raines, he come in here not just to help hisself, but to help us too. I think us folk in the mountains, if we try, we could maybe pull this country back together again—or at least give ’er one hell of a run for the money. They’s quite a few of us ol’ boys left in these parts, and I think we’ve been sittin’ on our backsides long ’nough. Time for us to git our guns and lend a hand in this matter. And that, by God, is all I got to say on the subject.”

  He stuffed his mouth full of twist chewing tobacco and began chomping.

  To a man, the gathering looked in silent shock at Andy. No one among them had ever heard him put so many words together in all their life. Finally Abe spoke.

  “Right pretty speech, Andy. You got anything else to add?”

  Andy spat. “Nope.”

  Abe stood up, signaling the meeting was over. “All right, boys. Let’s get our guns. Looks like we got us some fightin’ to do.”

  EIGHT

  Dan paced the floor of his cell in the Base Camp jail. He had gone over and rejected a dozen escape plans in an hour. He just couldn’t see any way out of the jail. The leaders of their respective units had been widely separated. Purposely, Dan thought. And the jail was completely ringed by heavy machine gun emplacements.

  Dan sat down on the edge of his narrow cot and quietly fumed.

  Cecil stood gazing out the window. He looked directly at a .50-caliber machine gun, the muzzle of the weapon pointing straight at him, not more than seventy feet away. The detention barracks was actually an old jail, unused and unoccupied for many years. It had been condemned by the department of HHS back in ’87, a new jail ordered built. The world war had erupted before the new jail even got off the blueprints.

  Cecil looked around him and grimaced in disgust. “Pretty goddamn good jail, if you ask me,” he muttered.

  Juan Solis wondered if his brother had gotten away in time. He thought so, since he had not seen Alvaro being jailed at any time since Juan had been incarcerated.

  He wondered how many Rebels got away, and how many had been duped by Willette’s line of bullshit? And like the others in the long cell block, Juan wondered what would be his ultimate fate?

  Mark Terry wondered what was happening to Peggy. He had asked,
politely, if they could be housed together.

  No.

  “Anybody seen Peggy?” Mark called softly.

  “Down at the far end, Mark,” Cecil’s voice reached him. “She’s all right. So far, no physical harm has come to any of us. How long that will continue is up for grabs.”

  “Knock off that goddamn chatter!” a commanding voice shouted. “Talking is not permitted among you traitors.”

  “That’s Jerry Bradford,” Cecil said, ignoring the command. “He is one I never would have thought would turn against us.”

  “Did you hear what I said, Jefferys?” the voice yelled, anger in the tone. “What the hell’s the matter with you—are you deaf?”

  Joining in the game, Col. Dan Gray called out from the other end of the cell block. “How many got away?”

  “Quite a number of our combat troops,” Cecil answered the question in a loud voice. “Much more than enough to return and kick the treacherous asses of these malcontents and dirty traitors.” He was hoping to get some response from Jerry Bradford.

  Bradford ran down the corridor to stand in front of Cecil’s cell. He was red-faced and so angry he was trembling from rage. “You’re calling me a traitor? You? You’re nothing but a filthy coward, Jefferys. You took General Raines’ friendship and puked it back in his face. I hope you all get put against a wall and shot!”

  Cecil stood calmly, listening to the Rebel vent his rage. He met the man’s gaze with calm and steady eyes. “Jerry, do you really believe, deep in your heart, that I would do anything to hurt General Raines?”

  Jerry didn’t back off. “The facts don’t lie, Jefferys.”

  “There are no facts, Jerry,” Cecil replied softly. “Listen to me.” He wanted to keep the man talking as long as possible. “All that you people have seen and heard was invented.” He paused, wanting to choose the next direction very carefully. “I don’t know by whom, Jerry. And that is the truth. But I wish you had come to me with the rumors and their source when you first heard them.”