Survivor (The Ashes Book 36)

by William W. Johnstone

  An officer should know his men so well that he recognizes the first sign of nervous strain or sickness and take action as needed.

  Officers must check, in particular, his men’s feet to make sure that their shoes and socks are in good condition. The officer must anticipate changes in weather so footgear can be changed.

  Medical facilities must be kept as close to the front as possible. The shorter the distance the greater the chance of survival.

  Medical facilities must be in the open and clearly marked as such so that the enemy will not attack them.

  Finally, remember: there are no bad troops—only bad leaders!

  Jim finished reading the document. He found it very useful, and he agreed with 99 percent of it, realizing at the same time that he had no basis, no experience with which to make such an observation. Still, he did. For a moment, he pictured Ben Raines and then Duke Kindhand. These guys had been out in the field a long, long time. They had seen men live, and they had seen men die, and they had seen great warriors and not so great ones. And they picked him. If nothing else, it was a hell of a compliment.

  TWENTY-THREE

  There was an unspoken truth that Jim, Bev, and the Rebels shared as they stopped in early afternoon. Namely, that the threat of them encountering the Rejects had diminished, if not faded completely. The reason was simple. They had gone quite a few miles and so far had not seen any hostile forces. In fact they had only seen relatively few people, but fortunately all the people were alive. And they had not seen a single body claimed by the plague, an all-too-frequent occurrence farther south.

  There was also an unspoken truth existing between Jim and Bev, something that showed itself quite clearly the last time they had stopped and Jim had made a joke about an old goat coming to live with him. She had tossed a towel at him, and everyone had had a good laugh, but the truth was plain to see: Jim had assumed that she would come to live with him, and indeed she would. The truth was very clear: they had fallen in love and wanted to be with each other always.

  Despite being sure that Bev loved him, there was something he had to ask her, and something he needed to do. Because he had been doing some thinking about them—and their lives together. On the ride to the rest stop, Jim had thought about the best time to broach these things; it was easy to decide that bouncing along in a HumVee while you were alert to possibly being ambushed by the Rejects was not exactly the best time.

  He knew he got his chance when the Rebels stopped, and he knew that it was a good time. And he also found that he was very nervous, something that assuredly was not helped when he looked into her gorgeous, stomach-squeezing eyes and said: “You want to take a walk? I need to talk to you about a couple of things.”

  “Sure,” she said. “What do you have in mind?”

  “We’ll talk about it.”

  “I hope we’re also going to do something that doesn’t require talking.”

  Jim laughed. But he had to be careful. She was capable of getting him very excited very, very quickly. She was spectacularly sexy.

  “I saw a lake a ways back,” he said. “Why don’t we walk down there?”

  “You got it.”

  They exited the HumVee, and then Jim went over to Kindhand, who with the other Rebel soldiers had also exited his vehicle.

  “Hey, Duke,” he said, “I’m going to take a stroll down to that lake we saw coming in. When do you expect to mount up again?”

  “At least an hour.”

  Kindhand’s eyes had dropped down to Jim’s waistband.

  “I see you’re taking your Glock with you.”

  “Well, “Jim said with a straight face, “you know how it is. She doesn’t seem dangerous, but one never knows.”

  Kindhand laughed, and then Jim went back to Bev. And they started walking in the direction of the lake, which was through a stand of pine.

  As they walked, Jim took her hand in his, and again the electricity started to flow into him.

  “Wow,” he said, “every time I touch you it’s like plugging myself into a wall socket.”

  Bev looked up at him and smiled.

  “There are better things than a wall socket,” she said, and they both laughed.

  They continued to walk through the forest and gradually the lake appeared. After ten or fifteen yards, they stopped and just looked toward the lake, which was as shiny and flat a mirror, and was rimmed by low, rolling brown hills.

  “You know,” she said, “it looks false. Like you could step out onto it and walk across.”

  Jim laughed.

  “Only one person I ever heard of could do that.”

  Bev laughed, turned, and kissed him again.

  “Please don’t do that for a while,” Jim said. “You’re distracting me.”

  Bev kept looking at him, a little smile playing around her luscious lips.

  “Okay.”

  For a moment, transfixed by her beauty, Jim forgot why he had come with her, but now as he did the ideas returned, and with it anxiety. He loved this woman so much. But he had to ask her.

  “I wanted to ask you a question.”

  “Sure,” Bev answered.

  “Have you ever lived in the wild?”

  “No, I haven’t. Why?”

  “I was thinking that maybe I wouldn’t head east. Maybe I’d just go into the mountains, the mountains of Montana, at least for a while, and I was thinking that maybe you’d want to come along, and if you did whether or not it would be a problem for you.”

  He had gotten all of it out in one breath.

  “Not really. I’m with you. I think people create the environment they’re in, whether it be in the middle of the Mojave Desert or the mountains of Montana.”

  “Well,” Jim said, “let me tell you there is nothing happening in those mountains in the conventional sense. You might get bored. And it gets bitterly cold in the winter. There’s no TV, we use a generator for lights at night, and also in the winter the snow gets as high as a mountain itself.

  “There’s also no such thing as medical care, unless you want to go into the nearest town, which will be some miles from where I have a general idea I might want to live.”

  “No problem yet,” Bev said. “Keep going.”

  “Well, getting back to medical care. I’ll have to teach you some things.”

  “Oh, goody. Going to medical school in the mountains of Montana.”

  “Well, some things are essential. I was taught CPR, the Heimlich maneuver, a bunch of other things. My father saved my grandfather one night from choking to death.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, my grandfather was at the dinner table one night and he held up his hand to his throat, which is the way you’re supposed to indicate that you’re choking. My father had been trained in the Heimlich maneuver and he tried to clear he blockage—later we found out that he had gotten a piece of steak lodged in his windpipe, but Dad tried and tried and couldn’t do it, so he had to go into a backup procedure, which was to actually do a tracheotomy on my grandfather with a sharp kitchen knife. And he did.”

  “Wow,” Bev said, “I’m impressed.”

  “Yeah, but that’s the kind of thing you have to contend with.”

  Bev reached down and petted Reb.

  “Well, there are some good things too, right? I mean other than you and I making love and being together all the time?”

  “Sure,” Jim said. “I love it for many reasons. But one surely is that you get so close to nature that you see the miracle of it all. You haven’t really experienced life until you see an animal give birth. I’ve been seeing horses and countless other animals give birth since I was a little boy and it’s terrific.”

  “There’s a question I have for you,” Bev said. “How are we going to get by?”

  Jim paused. He was not naturally a humorous man, but whenever he was with Bev it seemed to bring the humor out in him as never before.

  “Do you like marmot?” he asked with a straight face.

&n
bsp; “What’s that?”

  “A small rodent-like creature very common in the Northwest. They can be prepared ten different ways. And it’s good for breakfast, lunch, and supper.”

  Bev laughed out loud.

  “Hey,” she said, “I also like grizzly bear. We can have a couple of sides of that every now and then.” She laughed hard, Jim joining her.

  “I’ll find a way to support us,” he said.

  “You have great confidence in yourself, don’t you?”

  “I really do think it’s a trait everyone develops who grows up in the mountains.”

  Abruptly, Bev became silent. “I have two other questions.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Hey, don’t say that around here.”

  They both laughed, and when the laughter subsided Bev asked: “Do you love me?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Okay. But,” Bev said, “before we live together, I need for us to get married. Do you have a problem with that?”

  “Absolutely not. That’s the way I want it too. That’s what you do when you’re in love, right?”

  She leaned over and kissed him softly on the neck.

  “Yes,” she said, “that’s what you do when you’re in love.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “The other thing is that I’d like to continue my missionary work, at least to some degree.”

  “I don’t know how many people you’d find where we might be living.”

  “There’s always some,” Bev said.

  “I’m pretty sure of that,” Jim said.

  Jim started to lead her away from the lake. He stopped.

  “Oh,” he said, “I almost forgot. There’s something I want to give you.”

  “Okay,” Bev said, “give away.”

  “No,” Jim said, “if you don’t mind I’d like to go down to the edge of the lake for this.”

  Bev looked at him with a deadpan face.

  “I know what it is. Swimming lessons.” Jim laughed, but then he said, “How did you know?”

  Bev laughed hard. And she was nervous too. In fact, she knew that if Jim had told her that he was going to enroll them both in a course on advanced calculus she would have responded buoyantly and brightly. She knew why. That’s what love did to you. Love, she had always known, would turn life into something more wonderful than it had ever been before. Now that had been confirmed.

  “So,” she said, her face serious, “what is it that you want to give me?”

  “Well,” he said, “it’s a ring. An engagement ring.”

  Bev was silent as Jim reached into a breast pocket of the denim jacket he was wearing. With two fingers he took out a solid gold ring.

  “This is the only one I have available,” he said, “and I think you’re going to have to wear it on your thumb for it to stay on.”

  Jim showed her the ring, turned it a little so she could see it better. Then he handed it to her and she looked longingly, and lovingly, at it.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said. “Where’d you get it?”

  “My grandfather gave it to me, but my brother had it before me. It has a history.”

  “Please tell me.”

  “The ring is about a hundred years old. As I mentioned, I’m Irish and Cajun extraction, and my great-great-grandfather was the first owner of it. He was from county Cork, Ireland, and came to America around 1850. He got it from his mother the night before he left for America. Things were terrible in Ireland in the 1850s. They had the potato famine, of course, this at a time when, believe it or not, the diet of the average Irish peasant—and they were all peasants—was fourteen pounds of potatoes a day and a little buttermilk—women ate ten pounds a day—but it was also because they were horribly treated by the English, who ruled things in those days.”

  “I read about some of it,” Bev said.

  “Yeah,” Jim said, his eyes narrowing, glinting, getting that feral look that his eyes sometimes got, “but I think it’s one thing to read it in a history book and quite another to hear the stories from someone who experienced it, or heard them from someone who experienced it. In fact, the Irish in Ireland were treated worse than the blacks were treated by plantation owners before the Civil War. They had no rights and lived like animals in hovels and, literally, caves. That’s why they came in droves in the middle of the nineteenth century to America.”

  “Oh.”

  “But once they left Ireland, very, very few would return.”

  “Why?”

  “Ship passage for one thing. It was an arduous, two-or-three-month journey by sailing ship. Greedy ship owners crowded them together in packed and unsanitary conditions, a perfect breeding ground for disease. Plus, quite simply, it often took people’s life savings to afford the passage.”

  Jim paused. Sadness crossed his face.

  “I get the feeling that you were almost there,” Bev said.

  “Sometimes I think I was, because I can imagine what it was like for my great-great-grandfather. He was only in his late teens at the time, and the night before he was to leave they all had a party, almost like an Irish wake. And there was drinking and reveling and Irish dancing, but beneath it all was sadness. Because the next morning his mother knew that Michael would be leaving for America, and she would never see him again. When she kissed him good-bye, that was it. In a way, it was like he was dying.”

  Bev wiped her eyes.

  “God,” she said, “that’s sad.”

  “Yes,” Jim said, “it is. But it’s also about love. A love for a mother and father for their child. They wanted Michael to have a better life, and they endured that—this ultimate pain of his loss—to make sure that he did.”

  “Wow,” Bev said.

  “And the ring that she gave him—the ring you’re holding—was to be a reminder of her everlasting love.”

  “God,” Bev said, tears streaming down her face, “you’re killing me.”

  He kissed her wet cheek and then took the ring and slipped it over her left thumb. It was a snug fit.

  Bev’s eyes brimmed with tears.

  “Oh, Jim,” she said, “I love you so, so much.”

  “You took the words right out of my mouth. You know,” he said, “when I started on this trip I was filled with loneliness and emptiness. Everyone in my family was gone, and I left the only home I’ve ever known. And then I traveled down through all this death and destruction and it only got worse, and I was starting to think that it would never get better and then you came along in all your glory—”

  “Needing a bath.”

  “. . . And my life has changed. All—all—that emptiness inside me has been filled, and I’m looking forward to a long and beautiful life together. And we will have it.”

  “So am I, so am I.”

  They kissed softly and passionately.

  “Okay,” Jim said, when they pulled apart slightly and he looked down into their eyes. “I want to take you someplace now.”

  “Where?” she asked coyly. She had felt him becoming very aroused.

  “On our prehoneymoon.”

  Bev smiled.

  “Where?”

  “C’mon, I’ll show you.”

  They walked arm in arm along the edge of the lake, and then Jim finally stopped and led her by the hand into a secluded section of the forest, a small clearing surrounded by dense trees, walled off like a room. There was a pine needle mat at least four inches thick.

  “Welcome to the Hotel Wyoming,” he said.

  Bev laughed.

  She looked up at him, her eyes smoldering with desire and love.

  “Make love to me, Jim. Make love to me.”

  “Oh,” he said, his voice husky, “twist my arm.”

  They returned to the camp site just as the Rebels were starting to get ready to mount up.

  “Hey, Duke,” Bev called out. “Look at this.”

  She held out her hand, displaying her ring.

  “We just got engaged.”

  “Con
gratulations,” Kindhand said. “You deserve each other.” And with that the other Rebels clustered around Jim and Bev and also offered their congratulations.

  Finally, just before he mounted his own HumVee, Kindhand looked at Jim and Bev and said: “It’s nice to be reminded that despite all this chaos, life goes on, that good things happen too. Godspeed to both of you.”

  Two minutes later, the Rebel convoy was on its way.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Just ten miles up the road the Rebels and Jim and Bev got a surprise—this one pleasant. Parked outside an unlikely diner was an unusual scene: six camouflage-painted HumVees, three of them gun trucks.

  Kindhand was excited. They belonged to Rebels . . . probably.

  As Kindhand and his Rebels approached a little guardedly, the door to the diner opened and Rebels virtually poured out as if the diner were on fire, laughing, happy, and waving. There were, Jim estimated, about thirty Rebel soldiers—in dark green fatigues, the regular Rebel field uniform—and when they saw Kindhand they really whooped it up. Kindhand’s Rebels jumped out of their trucks and embraced their comrades, and started animated conversations. Reb, who had gotten out of the HumVee with Bev and Jim, was happy too, wagging his tail furiously.

  Jim and Bev watched the happy melee, for a short while. Then Jim said “This has been one heck of a day.”

  “A wonderful day,” Bev said. “I think we’re all going to make it.”

  “I think you’re right,” Jim said.

  All the Rebels and Jim and Bev and Reb went into the diner. The Rebels from the diner went back to their food, but at the same time conversed with their buddies.

  When the group settled down somewhat, Kindhand brought Jim and Bev over to meet a short man, perhaps forty, with a square jaw and hard eyes. Kindhand had been talking with him and a couple of times he had pointed to Jim.

  “This is Major Matt Garrett,” Kindhand said. “Jim LaDoux and . . . his fiancée, Beverly Harper.”

  Bev and Jim smiled broadly.

  “Matt is going to join us heading north to meet up with the main Rebel force.”