“But you endorsed the slavery that went on here.”
West shrugged. “I took no part in that. Although I certainly knew it was going on.”
Ben smiled. “Just following orders, Colonel West?”
“That’s one way of putting it, General Raines.”
“Go on.”
“I didn’t like everything that Ashley did; and I sure as hell didn’t like anything that fag Louie did. But for me and my men, it was the best game in town. So to speak. General, I’ll come right up front and say that I don’t believe that I could ever live under your rules; the way you and your Rebels believe. But for this operation, I’ll take orders and carry them through to the best of my ability.”
“Thank you, colonel. That is certainly clearing the air, all right. But let’s get it all said. Anything else?”
“Yes, sir. I am a professional soldier. I’ve been a soldier since I was seventeen. Thirty years, sir. I think we’re about the same age. Give or take a few years. Ashley might well be a borderline nut case, but he’s a good organizer. He needed an army, I needed a job. That’s all there is to that.”
“I appreciate your candor, colonel. I didn’t believe Louie or Ashley were calling all the shots.”
West smiled. “Louie was a poor, pitiful fool, general. Ashley is a piss-poor soldier. But like I said, he’s a good organizer; a good manager. I let Ashley think he was calling the shots — and to his credit, he did call a few — but First Battalion is all mine. They are the top soldiers. Solid professionals. Second and Third Battalions are, well . . .” He moved his right hand, palm down, from side to side.
Iffy.
“I get the picture, colonel. All right. Of the Second and Third, which is the best?”
“Second,” he answered quickly. “The Third is a bunch of losers.”
Ashley had been honest, Ben thought. “Go on, colonel.”
“The only reason Second and Third fought as well as they did was out of pure fear, general. They didn’t want to get pushed back into Kansas City.” He smiled. “Neither did I.”
“The Hot Zone?”
“It’s called that, general. But that’s a misnomer. The area is not hot. And my compliments on a damned fine field plan, general. Eventually, you would have broken through my lines and the Second and Third would have folded up.”
Ben nodded his head. “That’s all behind us, colonel. You say Kansas City is not hot?”
“Not as far as radiation goes, general. I guess those so-called ‘clean bombs’ the Russkies came up with really worked.” He smiled a smile that only another soldier would have understood. “Real shame that none of them got to see it.”
Ben returned the rough smile. Despite what the man represented, he found himself liking this Colonel West. He made no excuses for what he was.
“The reason I might be staring, colonel, is this: You don’t speak or conduct yourself like a man who could condone the burning alive of another human being. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong in that assessment, Colonel West.”
West grimaced and shook his head. “Barbaric, general. Good God, don’t put me in that category. Neither I nor my men had anything to do with that. Oh, we knew about it; we can’t be excused for that. Or forgiven, if there is a God. I am a soldier, general. A mercenary, if you wish, but still a soldier. Certainly the universal soldier. I’m not ashamed of it. Ashley and Louie offered good food and gear, comfortable surroundings for me and my men. And since the collapse of the government, money is useless. So it’s the small amenities that now count.” West grinned. “And, General Raines, speaking of that, I believe you did a bit of merc work yourself, did you not, before becoming a writer?”
Ben threw back his head and laughed aloud at that. “I sure did, colonel. I sure did. Come on, Colonel West. I want to meet your men. As philosophies go, we might be far apart. But as soldiers, we think alike. You’d better watch me, colonel. I’m awfully persuasive. I just might have you coming over to my way of thinking, voluntarily, if you’re not careful.”
Colonel West grinned. “Don’t count on it, general. Personally, I find myself liking you as a man, as a leader of troops. But I do not believe in the mixing of races.”
“Oh, we’re going to have a good time, colonel!” Ben said. “I can just see it. I do love a spirited debate.”
NINE
The Misfits had been issued Rebel uniforms, brought in from the North. And much to Cecil’s and Lieutenant Mackey’s delight and surprise, the Misfits were beginning to look and act like a military unit. They had a long way to go, of course, but they were getting there.
“It’s a miracle,” Lieutenant Mackey said.
“They just needed some direction in their lives,” Cecil said. Maybe that deputy sheriff was only half right, Cecil thought, clinging to part of his dream.
He said as much aloud.
Mackey looked at him. “You’re forgetting about Big Jake, aren’t you, sir?”
“Thanks for bringing me back to reality, lieutenant. No, I haven’t forgotten about that cretin. But we salvaged this much, didn’t we?” He pointed at the Misfits.
“They weren’t human filth to start with, sir.”
Cecil sighed. “I suppose not.”
Since no one in the Rebel Army, from command to private, gave a flying flip for any type of close-order drill, that was not stressed. What was being taught, in the hot, exhausting days, stretching fourteen to sixteen hours at a time, was teamwork, the care of weapons, stealth, guerrilla tactics — as much as could be taught in five days — and pride.
And Billy Bob and Lieutenant Mackey drove themselves just as hard as they drove the Misfits.
And they found themselves getting a bit closer than sergeant and lieutenant should. But since that was not against the rules in the Rebel army, they just let nature take its course.
And May, Lieutenant Mackey’s nickname — she refused to tell anyone her real name — as Cecil said to her once, “Had a real nice shine to her, now.”
Since Lieutenant Mackey never really knew how to take General Jefferys, she kept her mouth shut. The general had sort of a weird sense of humor.
But he cleared that up on the fourth day of training. “Hadn’t you better tell Billy Bob that your mother was half black, May?”
Now May knew what Cecil had meant when he chose the word “shine.”
“He knows,” she said.
Cecil smiled and needled her. “And you mean to tell me that Georgia Cracker doesn’t care?”
“Said he didn’t. He said there wasn’t a Georgia anymore. No Mason-Dixon line. No American flag. No nothing, except for people. He said it was way past time to bury the hate, and anyone who still carried it.”
“Well,” Cecil said. “That Cracker is quite a philosopher, isn’t he?” Putting the needle to her.
“General,” May said, standing up straight and looking Cecil smack in the eyes.
“Yes, lieutenant?”
“Don’t you ever call Billy a Cracker again!”
Cecil smiled. “All right, May. I surely won’t.”
Cecil walked off, whistling “Love Is A Many Splendored Thing.”
Billy Bob had slipped easily back into his former role as a Marine Corps sergeant. And the man was proving to be invaluable. And not just with May. The Misfits, to a person, all liked him and, so far, at least, he had experienced no discipline problems.
Jake, so it seemed, had taken his pack of losers and dropped out of sight. But Cecil had a gut feeling that Jake had not gone far and they would meet again.
Khamsin’s men were being kept busy running up and down the South Carolina side of the river, reinforcing units here, pulling people out of position there, all due to the seemingly never-ending talk of Cecil’s upcoming “invasion.”
The Rebels had intercepted several radio messages between Khamsin and his field commanders, and Khamsin, to put it mildly, was highly pissed-off. “Son of a bitch!” Khamsin shouted, although the use of profanity was forbidden in th
e teachings of his religion. Terrorism was all right, but profanity was not. “I’m beginning to believe, Hamid,” he said, calming himself, “that there never was any invasion planned.”
“What do you mean, sir?”
“It’s a trick on the Rebels’ part. They’re buying time and that’s all they’re doing. There is no impending invasion.” He spun around to face the window of his office. He could scarcely conceal his rage. “The black general has made fools of us, Hamid. And I won’t soon forget or forgive that.” He turned slowly to look at Hamid. “But why did he want a little more time?”
“Waiting for reinforcements, perhaps?”
“Perhaps. But if that is the case, why is he shifting the location of his base camp? And we know from recent fly-bys, what was called Base Camp One is now nearly deserted; everything is being moved west.”
“Then he has something else in mind,” Hamid said. Hamid’s speculations posed no threat to Mohammed the Prophet.
“What?” Khamsin asked.
“I don’t know, sir.”
Khamsin cursed again, silently.
“But our recon teams reported that he is training a group of people in the city of Athens.”
“They saw this with their own eyes?”
“No, sir. They captured a civilian woman and tortured the information out of her, then killed her.” Torture was all right, too. Sort of like bombing abortion clinics for God and fucking for virginity. “A warlord named Jake something-or-the-other had lived there for a year or so. This General Jefferys came in, whipped the warlord . . .”
Khamsin waved the man silent. He was thoughtful for a moment. “Wait, wait!” he said. “I don’t understand something here. What do you mean, Hamid . . . he whipped the warlord? Whipped him how?”
“With his fists, sir.”
“A general fought a person with his fists!”
“Yes, sir.”
“How crude. Go on, Hamid.”
“The woman told our recon team that Jake challenged General Jefferys to a fight, some sort of winner-take-all affair. One would have to assume that type of thing is quite common in this primitive land, even before the Great War. Then, with several hundred people watching, the general beat this Jake person unconscious with his fists. Then General Jefferys threw out about half of the inhabitants; they left with this Jake. These people have such strange names. The others were formed into a new unit of the Rebel army.”
“To be used as what?”
Hamid lifted his shoulders. “That, I do not know, sir.”
Khamsin smiled. “Conditions are becoming desperate for General Jefferys, Hamid. That is surely the reason for his taking on of green troops.” He walked to a large wall map and stared at it for a long moment. “What do our teams report about Atlanta?”
“A place to avoid at all costs, sir. It is inhabited by what are called the Night People.”
Khamsin nodded his head. He knew about those people. “The survivors and the offspring of the bombings. The same in Europe and South America as here. Then it’s true; they’re moving into the cities across the land?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Very well. Advise our field patrols to stay away from the larger cities. Those people are surely unclean. We’ll have to deal with them, of course, but not now. One step at a time for us. Hamid, start moving our people into Georgia, using the southern route. Bring them up and form them along Interstate Twenty, east to west.”
“How many troops, sir?”
Khamsin stared at the map for so long Hamid thought he had forgotten his being there. Khamsin turned and announced dramatically, “All of them, Hamid. We are going to take Georgia!”
“Found it!” Emil yelled, holding up a small box.
“What is it, Brother Emil?” Brother Carl cried happily. Whatever pleased Emil surely pleased the Great God Blomm. So everything was just hunky-dory.
“A miracle, Brother Carl.” They were standing in the rubble and litter of what had once been a fine hospital in Monroe, Louisiana. In what used to be the nut wing.
Brother Carl looked at the box. “That’s a miracle, Brother Emil. You could have fooled me. It looks like a box!”
Emil looked at Brother Carl. The guy was as loyal as a cocker spaniel and a damn good bodyguard, but a little bit short when it came to brains. “Our great and magnificent Blomm instructed me to come to this place. I am acting on Blomm’s orders, Carl. And this package and its contents are to be our secret. When it’s time for me to inform the others, Brother Matthew and Brother Roger, Blomm will let me know. Is that understood?”
“Oh, yes, sir, Brother Emil. I gotcha.”
Emil glanced out a broken window. Still about an hour before full dark. He didn’t want to get caught inside the city limits at night. For even in the small cities, that group of misshapen and deformed and totally weird bunch known as the Night People had gathered. Why they chose the cities was still a mystery to Emil; but he knew firsthand, having almost been captured by them, that you damn sure didn’t want to get trapped inside the cities after dark.
For that’s when the Night People came out to prowl.
Emil bounced the package from hand to hand and smiled. Stanley Ledbetter aka Francis Freneau, was about to discover that when it came to running scams, he was up against a master of the trade.
Emil chuckled softly.
“What’s in the box, Brother Emil?” Brother Carl said, hopping up and down. “Huh? Huh? Come on, tell me, please! You know I get the hives when I get nervous.”
“It’s a drug, Carl. The Great God Blomm told me where to find it.”
“A miracle drug, huh?”
“Sort of, Carl.”
“Does it make you feel good?”
“It ain’t gonna make Francis Freneau feel worth a shit.”
“I don’t understand, Brother Emil. Does it cure the hives?”
“No, Carl. It’s a drug that doctors used to give . . . certain people. It reduces the sex drive.”
“Huh?”
“It means,” Emil said with a sigh, “that if you was to take some of this stuff, you wouldn’t be able to get a hard-on.”
“Ohh!” Brother Carl said, grabbing at his crotch. “Why would anybody want to take something like that?”
“I don’t think anybody ever took any of this stuff voluntarily,” Emil patiently explained. He looked at the expiration date on the box. Out of date, naturally, but that was no big deal. He’d just triple the dosage. And then he’d see what Francis could do with a limber fire hose.
Nothing, he thought, smiling. He could just sit there and look at that donkey dick.
“You’re so smart, Brother Emil,” Brother Carl said. “I don’t know what I’d do without you to guide me.”
Emil smiled. “Carl, stick with me, kid, and we’ll soon have all the . . .” Nuts and fruitcakes and cult followers and banana cream pies “. . . world at our feet. When word of this miracle gets around, we’ll have it made, Brother Carl.”
“Oohhh!” Brother Carl gushed all over Emil.
Emil patiently brushed the spittle off the sleeve of his robe.
Carl tugged at the robe after taking a look outside, “let’s get out of here, Brother Emil. We don’t wanna get caught here after dark.”
Emil nodded. He knew that a large hospital complex would be an ideal spot for the Night People to hole up in during the daylight hours. They were probably the ones who trashed the place, looking for medicines. Poor misshapen and twisted bastards would take anything in hopes of relieving their condition. But Emil knew the only thing that would help them was death.
Emil put the package into his knapsack and slipped it over his shoulders, adjusting the straps. He picked up his rifle.
“Let’s split, Brother Emil.”
Both of them breathed a sigh of relief as they walked out of the hospital and into the sunlight of late summer. Both of them held their weapons at the ready, fingers just off the trigger. They walked to Emil’s car, a twenty-five-year-old b
lack limousine. They got in and locked all the doors. Emil cranked it up and checked the gas gauge.
“Crap, Brother Carl. We’re almost out of gas.”
Carl looked out the dusty window and shuddered. Dusk was no more than fifteen or twenty minutes away. “And we used all the gas we had in the can, Brother Emil.”
“We’ll try that old station up there,” Emil said, pointing.
But the storage tanks were dry.
“What are we gonna do, Brother Emil?” Carl asked.
“Don’t panic,” Emil said. “There are lots of stations in this burg.”
“But we ain’t got much time ’fore dark!”
There was panic in Brother Carl’s voice. And for good reason. He knew what happened to people who were taken by the Night People.
“Steady, Brother Carl.” Emil tried to calm the man’s fear. “Blomm is with us.”
Emil believed that about as much as he did in sweet potatos lining up and doing the can-can.
They pulled into another station, the limo just about running on fumes. The storage tanks were empty.
The fuel needle indicated they were slap out of gas.
And the shadows were creeping around them, and with the shadows, hooded figures could be seen.
“They’re out there, Brother Emil!” Carl whispered.
“I see them, Carl,” Emil replied. His heart was beating so fast and so hard he thought it might burst.
“Get us a miracle, Brother Emil,” Carl urged. “You can do it. Call on Blomm.”
Poor simple bastard, Emil thought. Well, Carl’s saved my ass more than once. Now it’s time for me to save his.
“Stand by me, Carl,” Emil heard himself saying.
“I’ll get us out of this mess.”
Carl was too frightened to even reply.
Emil and Carl sat in the limo and watched as the hooded figures drew closer.
Emil pissed in his underwear.
Emil lowered his window and stuck the muzzle of his automatic rifle outside. “You come any closer and I’ll blow your asses off!” he shouted.
The line of hooded figures stopped their advance. Several of them huddled together, their voices low in the dusk; too low for Emil to hear what they were whispering about.
Smoke from the Ashes Page 18
