Smoke from the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  The Rebels and the mercenaries found a breeding center in the ruins of a college. It was there that the Night People bred with normal people, mostly women, in the hopes of straining out the sickness with new generations. After the children were born, the women were usually killed, or kept as slaves. None of the women rescued by the Rebels knew where their babies had been taken. Or what lay in store for the children.

  “Were the children free of the sickness?” Ben asked.

  The looks in the eyes of the women gave him his silent answer.

  “Hideous!” Colonel West said.

  “Any idea how many of these . . . communities there might be scattered around the nation?” Ben asked.

  “Hundreds,” he was told. “In every city of any size.”

  “It appears that our next foe has been lined out for us, general,” Colonel West said.

  “Our next foe, colonel?”

  West smiled. “It appears that action travels with you, general. I like that. I get bored with inactivity.”

  “Thought you couldn’t live under my rules, colonel.”

  “A woman is not the only creature on God’s earth with the right to change its mind.”

  Standing amid the fresh gore, Ben grinned and extended his hand. West shook it.

  “Father,” Buddy said. “I hate to break into such camaraderie.” Both men looked at him. “But night is going to catch us right in the middle of this place.”

  West smiled. “The boy is right.”

  “There is something else, too, Father,” Buddy said. “All these people are armed.” He waved at the dead who walked the night. “So that tells me that occasional gunfire from within the city would not unduly alarm any of Khamsin’s men on the outskirts.”

  “Smart, too,” Ben said with a laugh.

  They had cleared and secured more than half the route Ben had mapped out when one look at the sky told them dusk was about an hour away.

  They pulled their vehicles into a covered parking area and made ready for the night — and the people from the night who were sure to come at them.

  “Get as much rest as you can right now,” Ben urged them. “I think we’re going to be very busy later on.”

  They had seen areas where the Night People had, it looked to them, held open-air meetings. Many torches had been found; or pieces of torches. And that gave Ben an idea.

  “Cocktails,” Ben told his people. “Find as many small bottles as you can and fill them up with gasoline. They won’t make as much noise as a grenade, and can do a hell of a lot of damage, physically and psychologically.”

  They soon had enough Molotov cocktails to withstand a siege. Which is exactly what Ben felt would be coming at them.

  As dusk crawled into full night, robed and hooded figures began moving out of the murk. They darted from rusted old abandoned cars, slithered into and out of doorways, and appeared, disappeared, and reappeared in broken windows high above the closed parking area where the Rebels and the mercenaries were forted up.

  “They have to eat,” Ben said, more to himself than to Colonel West, who was standing beside him.

  The colonel looked at him as if Ben had taken leave of his senses. “What?”

  “They have to eat,” Ben repeated. “And if they never leave the city . . . what the hell do they eat?”

  “You pick the damnedest times to think about food, Ben.”

  “Where do they bury their dead?” Ben pondered aloud. “We’ve not found anyplace. And if they’ve killed as many people as those women over there told us,” Ben said, jerking a thumb toward the small, frightened, huddled-together knot of rescued women, “it would number into the hundreds, right?”

  “Yes, at least. What are you driving at?”

  “The hanged and tortured bodies we’ve found. I think that might be some sort of ceremony; some sort of paganistic rite.”

  “I’ll go along with that. But what does that have to do with food?”

  Ben looked at him in the gathering gloom. “I think the Night People are cannibals. I think they eat any human they’re ready to dispose of.”

  West looked at the half-eaten sandwich in his hand, grimaced, and wrapped it back up and stuck it in his pocket. “Shit, Ben!”

  SEVEN

  “They’re all around us,” one of Colonel West’s men called softly. He was stationed on the second level of the parking garage. “I think they’re tryin’ to run a board across from the other building.”

  “Well, Jeff,” West returned the call, “I hope you know what to do about that.”

  Jeff’s laughter drifted down to Ben and West.

  There were several sharp pops from above them as Jeff fired, using .22 caliber ammunition.

  A short scream cut the night, the yowling cut short as a robed body hit the concrete, falling out of the second floor of the building on one side of the parking garage.

  More small caliber pistols cracked spitefully. Choked-off screams ripped the warm night. Colonel West’s walkie-talkie crackled.

  “They decided to try another plan,” a mercenary’s voice informed him.

  “They’re massing behind the building!” another voice said from out of the walkie-talkie.

  “Fire-bomb them!” West ordered.

  The rear of the parking garage exploded in searing light as the gas-filled cocktails were hurled at the charging Night People. On the heels of the bouncing fire, the screaming of men in pain cut at the nerves of those inside.

  Human shapes, encased in fire as the flames ate at clothing and flesh, ran helter-skelter into the darkness. Some made it only as far as the street, where they lay, kicking and howling in agony as the flames burned life away.

  “Bastards!” Colonel West muttered.

  A robed and hooded figure suddenly leaped in front of Ben; how he got inside was beside the point. He was.

  Ben could smell the fetid, sour body odor of the man as his fingers snaked their way around Ben’s neck. Ben butt-stroked the man with his Thompson, hearing the jaw shatter as the wood slammed against the man’s face. The robed man fell to the dirty and oil-stained floor of the garage, unconscious.

  “Tie him up,” Ben ordered. “I want to talk to him later. And someone find the hole this bastard used to get in here and plug it up.”

  “The third level is full of the bastards!” a man shouted, his voice echoing around the curving concrete driveways.

  “Guess that answers my question,” Ben said. The reverberating sounds of weapons on full automatic hammered throughout the parking garage.

  “Buddy!” Ben shouted. “Three or four of you get in Jeeps, put the lights on bright, and get up there, blind the bastards. Let’s see how they react to harsh light.”

  “Yes, sir!”

  Engines coughed into life, the Jeeps surging and roaring up the levels. Howls of fright tore the garage as the Night People were blinded by the headlights.

  Buddy’s Thompson chugged in rapid fire, the big slugs knocking lines of stinking, robed men spinning and sprawling.

  “Mop it up!” Buddy shouted, fast changing clips.

  Ben lifted his walkie-talkie. “Bring me some prisoners, son.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “They’re falling back, Ben,” West said calmly, as he lifted his M-16 and brought several more of the running Night People down. One pulled himself up to an elbow, his mouth screaming curses at the mercenary. Without changing expression, West shot him through the head.

  The curses were abruptly and forever stilled.

  “I never have liked for people to cuss me,” West said, changing clips.

  “Yes.” Ben smiled. “I can see where it makes you a bit testy.”

  The two soldiers exchanged knowing glances.

  The night settled back into a smoky, burning stillness, broken only by the moaning and crying of the wounded, the pop of fading flames from the cocktails, and the rattle of men and women changing clips of ammo.

  “Report!” Ben shouted.

  No one in his c
ommand, Rebel or mercenary, was dead; a few were suffering minor wounds. Nothing serious.

  “Lucky,” Ben said. “But you can bet those outside aren’t through with us.”

  “Those at the windows and ramps stand back,” West ordered. “Reserve up. Get some rest.” He shifted his gaze. “Your son coming with several prisoners, Ben.”

  Ben ordered camp lanterns lit in what was once an office of some sort, and the Night People were brought in, a sullen bunch. Buddy and Colonel West sat with Ben in the room.

  All three stared in shock as the hoods were jerked back, exposing the face of the prisoners.

  Their faces were twisted and scarred; some were missing lips and nose.

  One made the mistake of spitting at Ben.

  Ben rose to his boots and knocked him to the floor. He reached down and jerked the man to his sandals, shoving him hard against a wall.

  “Bring the others in,” Ben ordered. He lined them up against a wall. “You all have my sympathies for what has happened to you. The Great War was not your fault. What happened to you, initially, was certainly not your fault. But that does not give you the right to attack people without provocation, to torture and rape, and to subsist on human flesh.”

  The Night People exchanged glances at that remark, and Ben knew he’d been right in his assumptions.

  “Fuck you!” a scar-faced man hissed at Ben.

  “So you don’t deny that you live on human flesh?”

  “We deny or admit nothing,” another man told him. “Our way of life is none of your business, Raines.”

  “You know me?” Ben asked, surprise in his voice.

  “We know of you,” the man said. “Our leader has said you are our greatest enemy, and you will, someday, be destroyed.”

  “A lot of people have tried to do that,” Ben said, sitting on the edge of a battered old desk. “I’m still here.”

  The stinking bunch glared at Ben. The one who seemed to be the spokesman said, “Kill us and have done with it, Raines. Our lives are scarcely worth living, so it doesn’t really matter.”

  “In addition to all else that you may be, not much of it worthwhile, you’re also a liar. No man wants to die. If you wanted to die so badly, you wouldn’t be trying to improve your lot.”

  The sullen, smelly bunch glared at Ben.

  “Eaters of human flesh,” Ben muttered. “I don’t know what to do with you.”

  “Keep them here until dawn, good light, and then throw them out in the street,” West suggested. “It would be fitting.”

  “No!” one shouted. “We’ll burn forever if you do that.”

  “Who says you will?” Ben asked.

  The spokesman hesitated, then said, “The Judges.”

  “And who might they be?”

  “They who judge.”

  “Are you being a smart-ass?” West asked.

  “The Judges are the men and women who sit on the council,” the Night Person told the mercenary. “They rule all who follow the night.”

  West shook his head and grimaced. “We had enough kooks and whackos and crackpots and nuts before the war. But what came after boggles the mind.”

  Ben asked a dozen more questions, but received no reply to any of them. It was obvious that the prisoners believed they were going to die and had made ready for it. “Buddy, take them to a secure room and lock them in. We’ll decide what to do with them later on.”

  When they were gone, West said, “What are you going to do with them, Ben?”

  “I don’t know. Suggestions?”

  West shrugged. “Kill them now or kill them later, I suppose. But I have never enjoyed shooting unarmed men. What we did today and will be doing tomorrow with the sleeping Night People was necessary, I guess. It’s all come down to a matter of survival for us all. Was war ever fun for you, Ben?”

  “What an odd question at this time, colonel. Fun? I don’t know whether that noun fits, or not. But maybe it does. For the sake of argument, I’ll say yes.”

  West smiled. “War is what it’s all come to, Ben. This is it.” He slapped the palm of his hand down on the desk. “All computers and their banks of knowledge; all the statesmen and intellectuals, and writers and thinkers and doers. Well,” he sighed, “the machines are rusting and the trillions of words are gathering dust. The statesmen and the thinkers and the teachers . . . all gone. It’s all come down to you and me and Ike and Cecil and Buddy and Tina and Dan. Modern day cavemen. With automatic weapons instead of clubs.”

  “West, you’re a frustrated intellectual. You know that?”

  The mercenary laughed, the sound echoing in the small concrete room. “You’re correct to a degree, you know, but don’t let it get out. That would ruin my reputation.”

  The Night People kept the Rebels and the mercenaries awake that seemingly endless darkness before dawn, but no more hard attacks were launched by them. They had learned that while they might outnumber those in the parking garage, their fighting skills were not nearly so honed to perfection.

  At dawn, Ben and his people once more began their grisly hunt and kill mission, mapping out a clear route of escape.

  Teams rescued a few more handfuls of women and kids, and one of the groups gave truth to Ben’s awful theory. The Night People were cannibals.

  It made the hunt and kill mission a bit easier to take.

  At noon, the Rebels moving west began calling in.

  Ike and his bunch were on the outskirts of Atlanta. They had traveled all through the night, gathering people behind them as they came. They had seen no sign of any of Khamsin’s troops.

  “How far is the next column behind you?” Ben radioed.

  “Sittin’ right on my ass.”

  “Get inside the city proper,” Ben ordered. “Get them all in. We’re going to be busting out of here at dark. Did you and the others set up the dummy installations?”

  “Ten-four, Ben. From a distance, they look just like the real thing.”

  “Come on, Ike.”

  “Rolling.”

  The Rebels had left behind as many trucks and other vehicles as they could spare. They had dragged in others and placed them around their positions. They had made straw dummies with real weapons before them. They had left behind many tents and clothes hanging on the line. From a distance, the camps appeared the same.

  It would appear to any spotters that some Rebels were staying, others were moving out to beef up the long battle line that was the interstate. Ben hoped, at least.

  “So we’re going down the big fat middle of Atlanta, following this road, until we intersect with Twenty at Carroll Road?” Ike asked.

  “That’s it,” Ben told him.

  “It’s worked so far, Ben. From all indications, Khamsin thinks we’re just spreadin’ out a little.”

  Buddy strolled up. “The bridge over the Chattahoochee is intact,” he told his father. “I left a team there to see that it remains so.”

  “Good,” Ben said. To Ike: “Where the hell is Cecil?”

  “Relax, Ben. He’s about a half hour behind me. And he’s going to stay that way,” Ike added.

  Ben’s look was sharp. “What the hell do you mean?”

  “Cecil’s pulling rear guard duty, Ben. Told me early this morning. Said you wasn’t gonna like it, but that’s the way it was going to be.”

  Ben opened his mouth to protest, then closed it. There was no point in arguing. Once Cecil made up his mind, that was that.

  Ike waved a Rebel to him. He outlined the plan and said, “Take it back to General Jefferys. And son . . . tell him that I said to watch his ass. He may be a night-fighter, but he still bleeds red.”

  The scout grinned. “Yes, sir.”

  West had listened without comment. He said, “Cecil Jefferys is a very brave man, Ben.”

  Smiling, Ben said, “For a black person, you mean,” he said, needling the mercenary.

  “Like I said, Ben: There are exceptions to every rule.”

  Ben checked his Thompson. �
��West, if you ever decide exactly where you stand, you are going to be a person to be reckoned with.”

  “I am a soldier, Ben. Nothing more, nothing less.”

  But Ben wasn’t so sure of that. He wondered what the mercenary really was — and wondered if he’d ever find out.

  And finally, he wondered if he really wanted to know.

  EIGHT

  The western-most team, a squad of West’s mercenaries, radioed back that the route was clear. The route had been cleared of all blockades, living and stationary.

  It was late afternoon in the dead city of Atlanta.

  “All units in?” Ben asked.

  “Everybody here, Ben,” Ike told him. “Joe Williams’s gang pulled in right behind Mark and Alvaro’s team. Cecil and his battalion have bivouacked out at the old federal prison farm, just south of Interstate Twenty.”

  Big Louie’s timer, back in Kansas, had about twenty hours to go before the bird would fly.

  “It worked,” Ben said. “I had my doubts, but it really worked. But the next few hours are critical for us.”

  “I’ve ordered guards out and the rest to relax,” Ike told him. “It’s gonna be a wild ride to the Chattahoochee tonight.”

  “We bug out at full dark. Tell Cecil I want his people to pull in closer. And that isn’t a request, that’s an order.”

  Ike nodded his head.

  Ben continued. “I’ll be waiting at the bridge for him. We’ll blow it just as soon as his people are past.”

  “It would be an honor if you would allow me to do that, Ben,” West spoke up.

  Both Ben and Ike glanced at the mercenary.

  “Do I have to ask if you know what you’re letting yourself in for?” Ben questioned.

  “I am fully cognizant of the consequences, general.”

  “Very well. Get your men in position.”

  Ben held out his hand and the mercenary shook it.

  “See you all on the fair side of freedom, general,” West said, then turned on his heel and walked away, shouting for his men to join him.

  “That’s a strange fellow, Ben,” Ike observed. “Likable ol’ boy; but strange.”