“Must have been nice,” Beth lamented softly. “I can just remember when there wasn’t war. I remember sitting in front of the TV set on Saturday mornings, watching the cartoons.” She shook her head and said, “A long time ago and never to return.”
The team drove on.
At the Hollywood Wax Museum, little was left of the hundreds of mannequins that had once stood still and silent, watching the viewers as they passed by.
Jersey picked up a head and looked at it. “A movie star,” Ben said. “I can’t even remember her name.”
The team inspected the fossil pits and walked through what was left of Dodger Stadium. Little Tokyo lay in ruins, still smoking from the fires that had ravaged it.
At Union Station, they hit trouble.
“I smell them,” Ben said softly. “Hit the deck.”
The rattle of gunfire echoed around the huge terminal, the lead whistling and whining in ricochet. The battle was brief, bloody, and deadly.
Ben stood over a dying creepie, his belly bullet-shattered, glaring up at him through eyes that shone with hate. “You’ve killed me!” he gasped.
“That’s the general idea,” Ben told him.
Ben took his people and prowled carefully through what was left of the University of Southern California. Huge piles were all that was left after the punks and the creepies had burned all the books.
“Disgusting,” Ben said. “Ignorant assholes.”
“The buildings?” Buddy asked.
“Bring them down.”
The top floors were gone from what was once the twenty-eight-story City Hall. The Rebels inspected what floors remained and were considered to be structurally safe. Here, a mass suicide had taken place, with more than a hundred bodies of creepies stinking in self-imposed death.
With a bandanna covering his mouth and nose, Ben said, “Bring it down.”
Back on the street, Jersey said, “I don’t like cities. They’re too cold, too impersonal.”
“This one won’t be much longer,” Coop declared.
On the fourth day, the commanders began calling in. “There are no signs of life in my sector,” was each one’s report.
“Corrie,” Ben said. “Order all Rebels out of the city. When that is done, I want planes equipped with heat-seekers to make flybys. Do it systematically and do it right.”
The Rebels pulled back to the edges of the city, north and east, and waited.
Ben studied the reports as they came in. The heat-seekers showed very small concentrations of warm, breathing bodies in a few locations. He handed the reports to West.
“Flush them out and destroy them.”
On Thanksgiving Day, the mercenary reported back. “Done,” he said.
“Corrie, order the pilots up again and sweep it.”
When those reports came in, Ben read the graphs, folded them, and put them in a briefcase. “It’s a dead city.”
ELEVEN
To a person, the Rebels experienced a let-down feeling. A depression that was hard to explain and even harder to shake. Many stood on the high ground, miles from the ruined city, and stared at the smoke that still rose in narrow plumes. And many thought the same thought: When future generations read about this, how will they view us?
“Many will condemn us for it,” Ben said. “But they will know only that we did it. They won’t be able to understand why we did it, because they were not of this time. Some will view us as heroes, some will write that we were thugs and villains. Others will say that we were tyrants and twenty-first-century pirates. And a few will defend what we did. But I want you all to remember this: We did what we had to do, with what we had to do it with. And if future historians don’t understand that, then they can all kiss my ass.”
“Right on!” Emil shouted from out of the crowd which had gathered around. “Those who will write about us in the years to come aren’t here to bury the dead or smell the stink of battle. So what the hell do they know about it?”
Ben smiled at the small man. “That’s right, Emil. You’re absolutely right. Everybody ready to get the hell gone from this place?”
A chorus of cheers went up at that.
“Pack it up, then. Let’s go see some country!”
It took the Rebels several days to get everything road-ready. It was the first week in December when they were all ready to go. Ben stood on a rise and looked toward the long columns of Rebel freedom fighters. All faiths, all nationalities, all coming together to fight for the most precious thing on earth. Freedom.
The column stretched out on the Interstate for miles. And Ben could easily see why the sight of the Rebels struck fear in some hearts and hope in others. The Rebels not only looked awesome, they were awesome.
He lifted his eyes toward the ruins of Los Angeles. A low haze of smoke hung over the rubble of the city. What had once been the two largest cities in America, New York City and Los Angeles, were now destroyed, and with their passing had come the end of the cannibalistic cult called the Believers. Ben knew there were a few Believers left, hiding in holes in the ground and in dank, evil-smelling basements. But the backs and the spirits of those remaining had been broken. They would never again rise to such prominence as they had once enjoyed.
“Scouts out?” Ben asked Corrie.
“Ranging five miles in front, sir.”
The Rebels were planning on wintering in central California. Ben felt there was no point in heading to a warmer clime when they were probably going to spend at least a year in Alaska. Might as well get used to it, although winters in central California — out of the mountains — in no way matched the winters in the interior of Alaska.
“We’ll find us a town somewhere between Sacramento and Redding to winter.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Or we may split up and occupy several towns.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Advise the Scouts of that, Corrie.”
“Yes, sir.” Advise the Scouts of what? That the general couldn’t make up his mind? The general was stalling for some reason, and his personal team knew it. Why was what they did not know.
“Tell the main column to go on,” Ben ordered. “We’ll catch up along the way.”
Corrie relayed the orders and Ben squatted down on the rise and watched the tanks and trucks and other rolling equipment pass by. He received a lot of salutes from the Rebels, and he returned them all.
Then Little Jersey knew why Ben was stalling. They were heading back north, each day bringing them closer and closer to where Jerre was buried.
“She ain’t there, General,” Jersey said, her voice low so only Ben could hear. “She’s gone. She won’t be back. Never. You’ve got to bury the dead and go on living. It’s stupid to let a dead woman screw up your life.”
Ben looked up at her.
Jersey continued, “We got a lot of things to do. We’ve got places to go and battles to fight. Years and years of battles. There’s gonna be a lot more dead before it’s over. That’s all I got to say.”
Ben stood up, smiled, and then hugged her. “You’re right, Jersey. Let’s go kick some ass!”
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1991 by William W. Johnstone
Cover design by Open Road Integrated Media
ISBN 978-1-4976-3020-8
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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Fury in the Ashes Page 27
