Smoke from the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  Ben sighed. “Well, it’s a start. We might be able to pull it off. God knows, we’ve got to try.”

  “It’s never gonna be the way it was, is it, general?”

  “Not in our lifetime,” Ben said, thinking, probably never again.

  Ben was awakened by the guard commander just after midnight. “We got company, general.”

  Ben pulled on his boots and slipped into his ammo harness. He picked up his Thompson and said, “Who are they and how many of them?”

  “Identity unknown, sir. At least a couple of hundred of them out there.”

  “Have they made their intentions known?”

  “They’re either awfully arrogant or extremely stupid, Ben.” Ike’s voice came through the darkness. “They think they’re slipping up on us. Our forward posts reported them moving into our area about forty-five minutes ago. I decided to let you sleep until we were sure what they were up to.”

  Ike had moved closer, and Ben could see the smile on the man’s lips. “And exactly what are they up to?”

  “We captured one of them. Dude looks like something out of one of those old punk-rock movies. Of all the things I have to remember from back in the ’80s, it would have to be that shit.”

  “They are rather unforgettable,” Ben said drily. “Warlords type?”

  “Right. Are you ready for this, Ben?”

  “Give it to me.”

  “They follow some guy calls himself Zorro.”

  “Does he wear a mask and a cape?” Ben asked with a smile.

  The young guard did not have the foggiest idea what General Raines and General McGown were talking about. Zorro was a new one on him.

  Ike laughed. “Let’s hope not. I’d be laughing too hard to shoot him.”

  “You’re in our territory,” the young man told Ben. “And for that, you all will die.”

  Ben sat and stared at the odd-looking young man. His head was shaved, all except for a strip of hair down the center of his head. And that was colored orange and green. He wore high-topped boots, leather britches, and a sleeveless T-shirt.

  “You’re the goddamnedest thing I’ve ever seen since the days of Alice Cooper, boy,” Ben told him. “Do you know who we are?”

  “I am not a female!”

  “Neither was he. Answer my question.”

  “You are invaders in our territory. You will all die.”

  The young man’s body odor was getting a bit much. Ben wondered if the young man had ever been introduced to soap and water. “My name is Ben Raines.”

  “You lie!” the young man shouted. “Ben Raines does not exist. He is a myth. No man can do what he is said to have done. You’re an imposter!”

  “Sorry to disappoint you, boy,” Ike said. “But you’re lookin’ at the real article.”

  Obviously, the stories about Ben being a god either had not reached Zorro and his group, or else they simply chose not to believe them.

  The young man spat in Ben’s face.

  Ben backhanded the strange-looking young man clear out of his chair.

  With the young man staring up at him, blood leaking from a cut lip, Ben said, “You’ve been treated pretty good in this camp, boy. If you’d been wounded, we’d have patched you up; if you’re hungry, we’ll feed you. But if you ever spit in my face again, I’ll kill you!”

  The sounds of gunfire split the still night air. The yammering of M-60s and .50 caliber machine guns hammered and chugged.

  The young man had jerked on the floor as the guns erupted. Ben had neither blinked nor moved, but just continued staring at him.

  “Cease fire.” Dan’s voice roared over the noise. “Cease fire. Someone’s out there with a white flag.”

  Ben turned to the young Rebel who had captured the — whatever the hell he was, and Ben wasn’t all sure. “If he moves, shoot him, son.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  Ben stepped out of the building with Ike just as a runner came panting up. “One of those funny-lookin’ people has come up with a white flag, general. Says he wants to talk with our leader.”

  “Well . . .” Ben had to fight back a chuckle. “Take me to him.”

  “Ben,” Ike said. “This is getting ridiculous! What’s with these people? Have they been freaking out on old movies?”

  “I don’t know, Ike. But their guns are sure real.”

  “For a fact.”

  Both men came to a sudden halt at the sighting of the truce-flag bearer. Ike had to choke back a laugh. But his stifled humor was infectious: Ben had to cover his mouth with a hand to keep from laughing.

  Old Doc Chase appeared in the night and stood with his hands on his hips, glaring at Ben and Ike. “It’s not funny! It’s tragic. And you both ought to be ashamed of yourselves!”

  The young man with the white flag was dressed almost identical to the young man guarded by the Rebel. With a couple of exceptions:

  He wore a black mask over his eyes and had on a long black cape.

  Perhaps it was because of the long and brutal fight that Ben and his Rebels had just endured, defeating the Russian, Striganov, and Ben finally killing his old adversary, Sam Hartline. Pent-up emotions and wire-tight nerves, perhaps. Whatever the reasons, Ben and Ike sat down on the curb by the littered street and laughed until tears were rolling down their cheeks. The two men were so weak from laughing at the sight they had to lean on each other for strength as their laughter wound down.

  Other Rebels had gathered around, most of them young, too young to know anything about Zorro. They thought the flag-bearing person was dressed a bit oddly; but from the way General Ike and General Ben were laughing, you’d have thought they’d just heard the funniest joke in the world.

  “You’re laughing at me!” the orange-haired, caped young man screamed.

  Ben waved at him. “No, son. Not you. I would explain, but I think it would take too long.” Chuckling, Ben got to his feet, helping Ike up. “Anybody hurt in all that gunfire?” he called.

  “None of our lads and lassies!” Dan Gray called. “But we dropped a dozen or so of . . . whatever in the world these misbegotten folks might be.”

  “Zorroettes!” Ike burst out, and both he and Ben started laughing again.

  Now Dan started chuckling. Soon his chuckling had grown into full-throated laughter.

  The younger Rebels stood smiling at the antics of their senior officers, but they didn’t really know what was going on.

  CSM James Riverson walked onto the scene and stood for a moment, smiling and shaking his head. He looked at the caped young man, anger on his unshaven face. “You foolish young man,” James told him. “Do you know who your people attacked this night?”

  “No. And I don’t give a shit, neither.”

  “Gen. Ben Raines and the Rebels.”

  That shook the young man down to his high-topped boots. His face paled in the dim moonlight. “General Raines does not exist,” he said, his voice very shaky.

  James pointed toward Ben. “General Raines, meet . . . Zorro.” Then James started laughing.

  “Stop laughing at me!” the young man screamed. “I command you to stop it!”

  Ben walked to the young man, stopping a few feet from him. “What is it you want . . . Zorro?” He managed to keep a straight face.

  “I want my brother’s body. You have it.”

  “No, I don’t have your brother’s body. But I do have your brother. He’s very much alive. But what do we get out of this exchange?”

  “I’ll . . . allow you to live.”

  “That’s big of you, son. Now I’ll tell you something. You can have your brother, and welcome to him. I hope to God you both go somewhere and take a bath. Preferably with soap. A group of Rebels will be resettling this town, this area. And I am giving the orders that if they see anyone with hostile intentions, they are to shoot them on the spot. Do you understand that?”

  “You have no right to come in here giving orders to me!”

  “Now you listen to me, you . . . Hollywo
od reject.” Ben felt certain the young man had absolutely no idea what Hollywood meant. He pointed a finger at the caped and masked young man. “Do you have farms, gardens, windmills to pull water up?”

  Zorro shook his head.

  “Do you have schools, hospitals, newspapers, libraries?”

  He shook his head again.

  “I figure you for about twenty/twenty-two years old. That means you had time for some schooling before the bombs came. And you had ten years after that for education. Right?”

  Zorro glared at him.

  “Can you read, you bastard!” Ben lost his temper, as he so often did with people who seemed hell-bent on wasting their lives, and more importantly, the lives of others; who seemed content to just exist. In Ben’s mind, and in the minds of all who followed him, in this age of no-free-ride, no one had the right to just exist. If there ever was to be another America, everyone had to work toward that goal.

  “I can read,” the young man replied sullenly.

  “How many of your followers can read?”

  “Some.”

  “Are you making any effort to teach them?”

  The silence answered Ben’s question.

  “You stupid young fool!” Ben’s voice lashed out at him. “Even the Underground People are teaching their young to read and write and figure. Without education, you’re doomed. And you’re damning those who follow you.”

  “We get by.”

  It’s worse than trying to teach social codes and manners to a redneck, Ben thought. “Bring Zorro’s brother out here,” Ben said.

  The young man was led out.

  “What’s his name?” Ben asked Zorro.

  “Lash.”

  Ike started laughing. Ben struggled to keep a straight face. “I don’t even want to know how he got his name. Now listen to me. If you and your followers want to live in peace with us, that’s fine. If you want war, that’s fine. But if it is the latter, I’ll wipe you and all that follow you from the face of the earth, then I will stack your stinking, ignorant bodies out in the prairie for the buzzards to eat. Is that understood?”

  “Understood, Ben Raines.”

  “Get out!”

  When the two young men were gone, escorted by Rebels, Dr. Chase walked to Ben’s side. “You’re getting harder, Ben.”

  “Yes, I am, Lamar. And I’ll tell you why. If we — you, me, Ike, Cecil, all the Rebels — we don’t get a grip on the handle of this thing and start twisting it around, we will have nothing to leave our children. Nothing except savagery, barbarism, and years of ignorance. Education is the only way we’re going to pull out of this mess. And don’t you think for an instant that Zorro what’s-his-name doesn’t know that. He knows it. But he’s smart enough to know that with education, his followers would leave him.

  “Lamar, I have hated ignorance all my life. In every one of the books I wrote, under whatever name, somewhere in those books, I made my comment about education being important. Now, more than ever, we’ve got to stress education.”

  Chase waved him silent. “Don’t lecture me, Raines. Hell, I agree with you. But what leadership have people like this . . . Zorro had to follow? None! And you know that.”

  “That’s their problem, Lamar. All that shows me is that they’re ignorant to the core, and worse, proud of it.”

  The doctor, another Rebel who had been with Ben from the outset, having met him outside the ruins of Denver a few months after the Great War, stared and glared at Ben in the dim natural light of night. “What would you do with people like that, Ben?” he asked softly.

  Ben returned the stare, letting his eyes speak silent, cold words.

  “I see,” Chase said.

  “I’m glad you do,” Ben replied. He turned around and walked up the silent, littered street, to his billet for the night.

  Dan Gray stepped out of the night to stand by Dr. Chase. “If Ben’s dream could come true, Lamar, we could all lay down our guns and live in peace.”

  “Laying them down on the ground that covers the bodies of those who chose not to read Themistocles, Aeschylus, and Pindar, Dan?”

  “You’ve read them, yet you’re here,” the Englishman said softly.

  “Yes,” the doctor said quietly. “I suppose you’re right. But I am so weary of war.”

  “And you think Ben Raines is not?”

  “Dan, I’m sure he is. But I’m wondering if he knows that on this night, he made a mortal enemy of that Zorro-type?”

  “He knows.”

  “I have this uneasy feeling that he did so with careful deliberation.”

  “Your feeling would be correct, I should imagine.”

  “For God’s sake, Dan!”

  “It isn’t so awful, Lamar. So one or ten or twenty dies in order to salvage two or three hundred. You’ve seen Ben do it before. Why should his actions on this night offend you so?”

  “In other words, Dan — you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs?”

  “Something like that, doctor.”

  “Perhaps it’s time for me to stay behind, Dan. To run my hospital and care for the sick at Base Camp One.” The words were not phrased in question form.

  “That is a question only you can answer, doctor.”

  “You think it’s going to get worse before it gets better, don’t you, Dan?”

  “Most assuredly, doctor.”

  “Well, to hell with it!” Lamar Chase said. “Someone has to tag along to look after that damned long lean drink of water. Might as well be me.”

  “I thought that would be your answer.”

  “You’re all going to die!” The angry words sprang out of the night. “If you stay here, you’re all going to die. Die! Die! I am Zorro, supreme leader of this area.”

  “Hold your fire!” Dan called. “Pass the word,” he ordered. “Let the fool sign his own death warrant.”

  “What price peace, Dan?” Lamar asked.

  “One look at the graveyards of the world should answer that, Lamar.”

  The doctor and the warrior parted. The night once more grew silent.

  Not quite as silent as a graveyard — but close.

  THREE

  The outline of Great Bend gradually faded in the rearview mirror of the last vehicle in the long column. Everyone in the Rebel column felt a small sense of loss; they had all left friends behind in the prairie outpost, and all wondered if they would ever see them again.

  The Scouts were ranging miles in front of the column, and as was his custom, Ben drove at the head of the column, in his pickup truck, alone.

  “We have company, general,” a Scout radioed back. “On both sides of the column. Motorcycles and dune buggies. I think it’s the caped-terror and his bunch.” Ben pulled over, halting the column.

  Ben’s smile contained no humor as he looked at the battered, rusted, and bent road sign: Chase 6 miles. He lifted his mike to his lips. “Is there anything in Chase?”

  “Nothing, sir. It’s a ghost town. That’s where we’ve pulled over.”

  “How many people you need to pull this off?”

  “One platoon, sir.”

  “You listening to this transmission, Ike?”

  “Ten-four, Ben. I’ve got a platoon leader moving out now.”

  “Keep me informed.”

  “Ten-four, Ben.”

  Ben sat in his pickup, listening to the silence build around him. Most of the vehicles in the long column had shut down their engines. Ben was not particularly proud of what he was doing. But he’d done it too many times in the past to expect to lose much sleep over it.

  To kill the snake, one had to cut off the head.

  In his side mirror, Ben could see Ike walking slowly up to him. Ben got out of his truck and waited on the cracked highway for his friend.

  “You and Dr. Chase have a few words last night, Ben?”

  “Nothing serious. Chase has always been a good balance point for me, Ike. I really expect this run to be his last. I’d like to see him slow d
own. Maybe stay back at Base Camp One and run his hospital. As a matter of fact, I think I’ll suggest it — in a very tactful way. He’d be much more valuable to us as a teacher.”

  Nodding his head, Ike said, “Oughta pop anytime now.”

  “Yeah. Chase thinks I enjoy this, Ike.”

  “No, he doesn’t, Ben. He’s just tired of this endless war. I think he’d like to try another way of settling things — like with this bunch of kids — but he knows, down deep, that what you’re — we’re — doing, is the only way.”

  “I wish somebody would show me another way, Ike. If it had just a chance of succeeding, I’d damn sure try it.”

  Two quick rifle shots split the late summer air. They came from the rear of the convoy. Ike lifted his walkie-talkie to his lips. “Ike. What’s that shooting about?”

  While Ike was listening, Ben’s ears could just pick up the very faint sounds of heavy gunfire; his eyes seeing black plumes of smoke rising from out on the seemingly endless prairie.

  Ike lowered the walkie-talkie and looked at Ben. “Zorro and his brother, Ben. Rear guard caught them trying to plant charges under one of the fuel trucks. They’re both hard hit.”

  “Come on.”

  Ike got in the passenger side, and Ben pulled off the road and onto the once wheat and corn-filled land, now long grown over with weeds and wild runners. As they drove, Ben’s radio crackled. Ben lifted the mike to his lips and said, “Go.”

  “We broke the back of Zorro’s boys and girls,” one of Dan Gray’s Scouts reported. “We followed your orders and took a lot of prisoners, general.”

  Ben had broken one of his rules this day and allowed the taking of prisoners. Solely for the sake of Dr. Chase. Ben wanted to prove a point, but he hoped to hell his point was never made. He also feared it would be made — the hard way — in this deadly crap shoot.

  “Hold them there,” Ben radioed.

  The two young men lay in the center of the old highway, Dr. Chase and his medics working on them. Chase looked up as Ben walked over to the blood-splattered spot on the highway.

  “Both these boys are gut-shot,” Chase said. It was not spoken reproachfully; just stating a fact.