Terror in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  Ben flipped the man from him and Carrington blew the back of the punk’s head off with a round.

  “By God!” the Englishman said. “I haven’t had this much fun since Mum got her dress tail caught in a revolving door and took her right down to her bloomers.”

  Ben got to his boots as he realized the room was empty of live creeps and crap. “Load up,” he ordered.

  Corrie found her radio under the body of a dead punk and looked at it. “Busted,” she said. “Took a round straight through.”

  “We’re cut off, General,” a Duster commander yelled through a hole in the wall. “The street gangs did an end-around and we’re going to be all alone for a time.”

  “Get on your radio and order constant patrol of this area by gunships,” Ben told him. “How’s your 40mm ammo?”

  “We’re in good shape, General.”

  “All right. Button down as tight as you can.”

  Ben looked around him. The floor was two and three deep in places with dead punks and creeps.

  “We’ve got two dead and five wounded,” Corrie told him. “One of the wounded is serious and needs surgery right now.”

  “Not anymore,” one of the medics called.

  “Three dead,” Corrie said.

  “Let’s get these stinking dead crud out of here,” Ben said. “Careful in handling them, now. Strip ammo and weapons from them and stack them in the next room.”

  “It’s clouding up real fast,” Lieutenant Ballard said. “Starting to sprinkle.”

  “If it comes a downpour, that’ll work to the advantage of the crud,” Buddy pointed out. “And severely limit visibility for the chopper pilots.” He smiled through the grime on his face. “Of course, I’m pointing out the obvious.”

  Carrington had taken a dead Rebel’s M-16 and another Rebel was showing him how to operate it. “Complicated piece of weaponry,” he remarked.

  “How are Dan and Georgi faring?” Ben asked Corrie.

  “Heavy fighting, sir. But in small pockets all up and down the line. Everytime they shift, the crud shifts with them. A lot of small units are cut off, just like us.”

  “Pretty good,” Ben said. “Someone on the other side is starting to think.”

  “Here comes the rain,” a Rebel called.

  “And with it will come the crud,” Ben said, clicking his CAR off safety and moving to a empty window. “Get set, people. It’s going to get real busy here in a moment.”

  “Drat,” Carrington said, looking at his watch. “And they’ll be interrupting our elevenses, too.”

  “Do what?” Jersey asked.

  “Morning teatime,” Ben said with a smile.

  “Precisely,” Carrington said. “Terribly boorish of them, what?”

  “Oh, yes,” Ben agreed. “They have no appreciation of the finer things in life.”

  “Quite right,” Carrington said. “For an American, General Raines . . . you’ll do. You’ll do.”

  Four

  “If they’d played their cards right,” Ben said after the attack, “they could have done some damage to us. They had years to learn tactics, but they blew the time away.”

  The creeps and street crud had charged out of the rain screaming and cursing the Rebels in small pockets all over the city. They ran right into the guns of the Rebels. The Rebels stood their ground and gave the enemy everything they had at their disposal, and that was plenty. It broke the backs of the creeps and thugs in Bristol.

  The remainder of Ben’s battalion punched through to his position just after noon and took the pressure off. Ben set up a CP on the second floor of what had once been a department store and the Rebels began mopping up.

  Mr. Carrington took a Tommy-burner out of his kit and began heating water for his tea.

  Rebels began collecting the bodies of the dead crud and creeps and tossing them into the beds of trucks. They would be taken out into the countryside and buried in a deep mass grave.

  “Three thousand enemy dead in this city, General,” Beth informed Ben. “So far.”

  “Tell the other batt coms to attack their targets commencing at dawn tomorrow. We’ll catch our breath here for a couple of days and then move on.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Gloucester had a population of about seventy thousand or so before the Great War. So there’s sure to be some nasties waiting for us. Send Buddy and his Rats on down to check it out. No heroics on his part, Corrie. Those are my orders. Just check it out and report.”

  “Right, sir.”

  Mr. Carrington strolled in. “I’ve just met two of the most astonishing people I have ever encountered,” he said. “A man named Emil and his keeper, a beatnik, I believe, called Thermopolis. This Emil fellow, is he mentally sound?”

  Everyone in the room laughed. Ben said, “There are some who would argue the point. But yes, he’s stable . . . most of the time, that is.”

  “Tell me about this Thermopolis.”

  “He’s a hippie. And he’ll go back to being a fulltime hippie when the wars are won.”

  “I see. I think. I would have stayed to chat longer with him but that horrible music that was playing in the background rather jangled my nerves. What is that incomprehensible throbbing called? It sounded like fourteen cats fighting over a ball of yarn.”

  “It’s rock and roll, sort of. But not the rock and roll that I grew up with.”

  “If one could somehow contain that wailing and blithering and caterwauling and ship it to the enemy, the war could be won without firing another shot.”

  Thermopolis and Emil came in and Carrington skirted them carefully and went outside.

  “That’s a strange man,” Emil said, jerking a thumb toward Carrington. “Talks funny, too.”

  Carrington beat it back inside the CP. “We’re being invaded by a band of leather-jacketed hooligans on motorbikes,” he announced.

  Ben chuckled. “No. They’re part of this outfit. That’s Axehandle and his boys and girls.”

  Carrington shook his head. “You have a very strange army, General. Very odd indeed.”

  Ben enjoyed a laugh at that. “You’ll get no argument from me on that, Mr. Carrington. But you’ll have to admit, we get the job done.”

  The old man smiled. “That you do, General. That you do.”

  Ben toured the devastated city. It was evident that his artillery had destroyed a lot of buildings, but what was even more evident was that the creeps and crud had done a lot more damage over the years. It was vandalism for the sake of vandalism, without reason.

  All the churches were gone. Every last one of them, from once magnificent cathedrals to small chapels . . . the street punks and creeps had destroyed them all. In museums and art galleries and curio shops, it was the same. Paintings and valuable books had been ripped and slashed and burned. Statuary had been toppled and smashed.

  Now only occasional gunshots could be heard; the Rebels had just about concluded the mopping up of Bristol. No prisoners taken.

  “He’s saving us for last,” Butch told a gathering of warlords and self-styled mercenaries and street punks. “Just like I figured he would.”

  “All them people that was in Bristol,” one warlord said, “and no more’un a couple of hundred got out alive. Scares me. It really does.”

  “It ought to, mate,” Butch said. “And you stay scared, too. It might help keep you alive. You keep this in your mind: the Rebels ain’t taking no prisoners. None. The deadline is past. Those are hard people out there, being commanded by a hard man. And don’t think you can surrender to no English man or woman, neither. ‘Cause most of them, more’un likely, will kill you just as fast as a Rebel. They ain’t likely to forget what-all we done over the years. Everywhere the Rebels go, they’re arming the people. They’re settin’ up what they done in America. Them outpost things.”

  “Butch, I got me an idea,” Morelund said. “Let’s let Raines and his Rebels have the island. Hell, man, we’ve ruint it anyways. We’ll go to Hawaii.”


  The roomful of punks all began talking at once. Finally Butch shouted them into silence. “That’s a great idea, Morelund. Now maybe you’ll tell me how we’re gonna get there.”

  “By ship!” Morelund said, exasperation in his voice.

  “Do you know how to run one?” Butch challenged.

  “Well . . . no. But, hell, they can’t be that hard.”

  “Does anybody here know how to run one of those great ships?” Butch asked.

  No one did.

  “Well, folks,” Butch said, eyeballing the motley-looking group. “I guess that means we fight right here on English soil.”

  “I guess that means a lot of us will die right here on English soil,” another said in a quiet voice.

  “That’s right,” Butch said. “When civilization broke down, we all had a choice. Didn’t nobody force us into doing what we did.”

  “But we had to eat,” a street punk said. “There wasn’t no jobs or nothin’. There wasn’t no law to make us behave. They wasn’t nothin’.”

  Butch leaned his elbows on the lectern and chuckled. “Eakes, that is the biggest pile of horseshit I’ve heard in a long time. There ain’t no excuse for what we done. There ain’t any. We’re criminals because that’s what we want to be. We’ve had a long run. More’un ten years. Now it’s time to pay the price for that decision.”

  “Killin’ us is a goddam high price to pay,” Eakes said sullenly.

  “And how many people have you killed over the years?” Butch asked, a smile on his cruel mouth. “Fifty, a hundred, a thousand? More than that? Probably. How do you excuse that?”

  “We ain’t axin’ for no prizes for what we done,” a burly warlord called Santo said, standing up. “But now that we’s about to be caught or killed, why can’t the law treat us like they used to? I mean, give us some jail time and rehabilitate us and turn us loose?”

  Butch laughed. “They really did a splendid job of rehabbing us, didn’t they? Aren’t we a bunch of model citizens? We’ve really worked to restore law and order to England, haven’t we?” He slammed a fist onto the lectern. “God damn it, people!” Butch shouted. “We’re criminals. We’re rapists. We’re kidnappers. We’re slavers. We’re murderers and street punks and thieves and everything that’s mean and rotten and no good in this world. And we became that because we wanted it. Stop lying to yourselves. Make up your minds that we’ve got to contain Raines and the Rebels, giving us time to get across the Channel, or we’re going to die. All of us.”

  “We’re gonna die anyway you cut it up,” a street punk said. “We can’t beat the Rebs. I’d as soon you just shot me now and got it over with.”

  “All right,” Butch said. He jerked out a .44 magnum and blew half the punk’s head off. The street punk’s feet flew out from under him as his brains splattered those closest to him. He hit the floor, dead cooling meat.

  “Anybody else?” Butch challenged.

  The roomful of crap was silent for a moment. “Jesus, Butch!” Eakes finally said.

  “Don’t Jesus me.” Butch’s voice was as hard as the lead that had punched through the punk’s head. “I ain’t your lord. But I just might turn out to be your savior. You’ve all got to listen to me and do what I fucking tell you to do! A long time ago there was some Yank that said we either hang together or hang separately. Well, that fits us nicely. If we don’t hang together, we shall certainly hang one by one.”

  “All right. All right!” Duane said, getting to his feet. “I vote we make Butch the supreme commander of this army. We all follow his orders and do it without question.”

  “I second that,” Mack said.

  The vote was taken and it was unanimous.

  “All I can say is, I’ll do my best,” Butch said solemnly. “Now somebody drag Jakes out of here before he starts to stink. We got a lot of planning to do.”

  Ben and his battalions headed for Birmingham, which was not going to be nearly as easily taken as Bristol.

  Birmingham was the second largest city in England before the Great War, with a population of over a million. While many of the gangs that had occupied the city had fled to London, several thousand hard-core gang members still remained.

  The Rebels rolled through quiet little English villages on their way to the city, many of the villages ravaged and empty, homes and shops looted dozens of times and then burned or vandalized. The Rebels had extra food trucks with each battalion, and stopped often, handing out food to people who had been beaten and enslaved, and were gaunt and starving.

  Ben recalled that piece of pie the elderly woman had given him days back and wondered if she’d used the last bit of food in the cottage to make it. Ben got more and more depressed as the miles rolled by.

  “All right,” Ben finally said, still many miles away from Birmingham. “Hold up here.” He gathered Dan and Georgi around him and then got all the batt coms on the horn. “We’ve got to assist the British people in putting their lives back in order. It isn’t enough that we roll through victorious and hand out food and clothing and then we’re off again. We’re going to have to stop and linger; study what each village and town needs, and then do it. We’ve chased the creeps and the punks into the cities. Fine. Let them stay there. We’ll get to them in due time. First, let’s help the good citizens of this country.”

  “General,” Corrie said, “Buddy reporting a town just up ahead where the warlord didn’t leave. He and about fifty of his thugs are still in the town.”

  “Well, tell Buddy to take the town.”

  “By force?”

  “Corrie, that’s usually the way we do it.”

  “Buddy says you’d better come up there, General.”

  “Give me that headset, Corrie. Eagle to Rat. What’s your problem?” Ben listened for a moment. “Ten? Ten what, boy?” He listened for a few seconds. “Are you saying that the warlord is ten or twelve years old? Are you putting me on? Fine. The same to you, too. Good. I’ll just do that.” He handed the set back to Corrie. “Mount up.”

  The long columns of Rebels and their mighty machines of war rumbled forward, stopping at the edge of the town. Ben got out and walked to his son’s side. Buddy handed him binoculars and Ben focused them, then refocused them. He sighed and returned the binoculars.

  “Those are children down there, boy.”

  “That’s what I told you, Father. Eight, nine, ten years old.”

  “Well-armed children.”

  “I believe I said that, too.”

  “That’s a goddamn fifty-caliber machine gun they’ve got set up on the edge of town.”

  “I know, Father. It took four of them to carry it over there and set it up.”

  “Well, how do you plan on taking the town, boy?”

  “Me? I’m not running this show. You are. You take the town.”

  “Corrie,” Ben said, stalling for time, “do we have communications with the, uh, enemy down there?”

  “Yes, sir,” she said with a smile.

  “You think this is funny, Corrie?”

  “Yes, sir.” Then she doubled over laughing.

  Dan strolled up and assessed the situation. He took a bullhorn and walked to the head of the column. “You children down there!” he called, his voice booming over the quiet landscape. “This is Colonel Dan Gray. Formerly of the Queen’s Special Air Service. Now you’ve all had your fun playing at war. It’s time to settle down and get back to school and games and things like that. War is serious business. Very serious business. You children could easily be hurt playing with those dangerous weapons. Come on out now and we’ll have some tea and cakes and assist in finding proper homes for you. I . . .”

  The big fifty started yowling, the slugs clanking off tanks and coming dangerously close to Dan. “Son of a bitch!” the usually unflappable Englishman yelled, and dived head-first into a water-filled ditch.

  The Rebels close in hit the ground and hugged tanks for cover. Dan lifted his head out of the water and yelled, “I’ll whale the tar out of you
children! They’ll be some sore butts this evening, I promise you that.”

  The fifty hammered again, the slugs knocking chunks out of the stone wall above Dan’s head.

  “Blow it out your arse!” a child’s voice came over the speaker. “This is General Bennie Mays. This town is ours. Move on with you.”

  Buddy, lying on the road, turned his head to stare at his father, who was also on his belly, on the road. “Suggestions, Father?”

  “At the moment, son, no.”

  Five

  The column backed up and Dan sent a few of his Scouts in to grab a kid. “And try not to hurt any of them,” Dan added. “I want that pleasure when I lay a belt across their butts.”

  The Scouts brought back two, a girl, ten years old, and a boy, nine. The Scouts were bleeding from being bitten and kicked, numerous times.

  “Get those bite wounds tended to promptly,” Dan told his people.

  The kids were brought before Ben. They were defiant, but scared as well. Ben looked at the weapons the Scouts had taken from them, then stared down at the raggedy and obviously malnourished boy and girl. “All right, now, children. What’s your story?”

  The boy and girl exchanged glances and remained silent. Ben pointed to a camp table and chairs that had been set up. “Sit,” he told them.

  While the Scouts had been gone, Ben had ordered hot food prepared. Two heaping plates of food were set before the kids and two tall glasses of cold milk.

  “Damn me eyes,” the girl said. “Wouldya just look at them vittles.”

  “Help yourselves,” Ben told them. “There’s plenty more where that came from.”

  “This real milk?” the boy asked.

  “Honest-to-God, from a cow.”

  Ben watched them dig in. They had never been taught table manners — or had forgotten them, ignoring the fork and grasping the spoon like a shovel. Their clothing was nothing more than rags, their faces and hands grimy with dirt, and both of them had fleas. Ben resisted an urge to scratch.