Survival in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  “Shit, Satan!” one said. “There ain’t nobody left in this town.”

  Satan looked all around him, doing his best to peer through the darkness. “Shut ’em down,” he ordered.

  The bikers cut their engines and the following silence was heavy.

  “Fan out,” Satan said. “Inspect the buildings.” Satan left his Hog and walked across the road, to a line of office buildings. Cautiously, he pushed open the door with the muzzle of his Uzi and clicked on a flashlight, the beam strong in the murk.

  The narrow beam of light picked up the litter on the floor. It showed him the unmarked dust and undisturbed cobwebs. What it did not show him was how the Rebels had entered the building without disturbing anything.

  Ladders. Few Rebels were on the ground floor anywhere in the city. They had climbed up ladders to the second and third floors and set up their machine gun emplacements, then another team removed the ladders and went on to another location.

  The outlaw bikers inspected a dozen buildings along the road and found nothing to indicate the Rebels were anywhere close.

  Which is exactly what Ben wanted them to think. Soon, if all went according to plan, Ben and his Rebels would not be the only ones in a box. But Ben and Rebels would be in control of that box.

  “It was a damn trick all the time!” Satan said, kicking at a beer can that had laid in the street for years, still just as shiny as the day it rolled off the line.

  “What you mean?”

  “I bet you Ben Raines ain’t even in this city. I bet you he left a few soldier boys and girls downtown and he hauled his ass off to the north, chasin’ that Villar-what’s-his-name.”

  “I bet you right, Satan.”

  The outlaw biker lifted his walkie-talkie. “It’s clean in here,” he radioed. “They might be some Rebs downtown, but they ain’t any out here. Come on in.”

  “Fall back,” Voleta ordered. “We’ll enter the city at dawn.”

  “That woman beats all I ever seen,” Satan said. “If she don’t screw no better than she gives orders, I don’t think I want any of it.”

  “She’s ordered the bikers back,” Corrie told Ben, after monitoring the transmissions. “They’ll enter the city at dawn.”

  “Stay on the tach frequency and order no fires, no lights of any kind. Maintain noise discipline. Tell them to get some rest. Tomorrow is going to be a busy day.”

  At dawn, Voleta ordered her troops into the cities of Jefferson City and Columbia.

  “Take what few Rebels are in the cities alive,” she ordered. “I want to torture them. We can have days of pleasure with them.”

  Satan shook his head. It wasn’t that he minded seeing people tortured — he kind of liked it, especially when it lasted a long time and they screamed a lot — but with Rebels this close around them, wherever they were, it just seemed like a waste of valuable time.

  “It’s chancy from here on in,” Ben said to his staff. “At any time, one of those kooks could look up and see a gun emplacement or the muzzle of a tank; or a Rebel could sneeze. Anything might happen. We can’t wait much longer.”

  “You were very lucky last night,” Voleta told Satan. “The Rebels are famous for booby-trapping buildings.” She turned to her radio operator. “Tell the people to stay out of the buildings. Inspect them through the windows.”

  Ben listened to the orders being given and smiled. “That’s right, Voleta. Play it cautiously, you witch. And come on in.”

  Buddy’s face was impassive as he stood in the command post, listening to his father. This had been a very chancy move for his father to make, and not one that the other Rebel commanders liked. But so far, it was working.

  “The points of the column have moved past Boonville Road, Ellis Avenue, and have reached Fifty-four near the downtown,” Corrie informed them.

  “Let them come,” Ben said, his voice calm.

  “Father,” Buddy said. “Taking chances is one thing. But we are going to be smelling the stink of them in a moment.”

  “That’s right,” Ben said cheerfully.

  The sounds of the advancing vehicles could now be clearly heard on the second floor of the CP.

  “Goddamnit, Raines!” the voice of Doctor Chase came over the scrambled tach frequency. “The bastards are outside my hospital. Will you please give the orders to open fire?”

  “Tell him staying here was his idea,” Ben told Corrie. “And to shut up.”

  Through the dirty window on the second floor, Ben could see the troops of Voleta moving down the center of the street. “I love dealing with amateurs,” he said with a smile. “Corrie, give the orders to open fire, please.”

  “With the utmost of pleasure, sir,” she said, with just a touch of nervousness in her voice.

  Ben smashed the window with the butt of his old Thunder Lizard and emptied the clip at the followers of the Ninth Order.

  Voleta lost nearly half her troops in the first thirty seconds as the Rebels popped up and gave her a taste of Rebel justice. Rockets turned the vehicles into fireballs, 90mm and 105 howitzers, firing at nearly point-blank range, literally blew the enemy trucks off their tires and sent the trucks and those inside thundering into hell, the bodies mangled and burned beyond recognition.

  The .223, .308, .50, and .45 caliber slugs tore into flesh. The streets and gutters of the city ran red and slick with blood.

  There was no place for the troops of the Ninth Order to escape. Ben had plugged all the holes with his orders to open fire.

  Those troops of the Ninth Order laying back outside the city limits did not escape, nor did the followers of Voleta who sat smugly within the perimeters of the airport across the river.

  Heavy artillery began shattering the morning, the booming of shells impacting against the ground rattled the city. The gunners had the range and dropped them in with deadly accuracy.

  In Columbia, those troops of Voleta met the same fate at the hands of Colonel West’s mercenaries. Ben had given the orders that no one was to be left alive. No prisoners taken.

  He wanted to end this scourge upon the earth now. He wanted to crush the Ninth Order . . . crush it so badly it could never recover. Wipe it from the face of the earth and have the pleasure — perverse though it might be — of looking down into the dead face of Voleta.

  Corrie kept glancing at him, wondering when Ben was going to call for a cease fire.

  But Ben was not. His Rebels — and they were his — had been battling Sister Voleta and the Ninth Order for years. He would let his troops vent their anger with hot lead until it had passed.

  He walked out of the room, turned, and went down the hall, to the old fire door that faced an alley — an alley now littered with the bodies of those who chose to follow Sister Voleta.

  Then he saw her, standing in a doorway, looking up at him.

  “You son of a bitch!” she screamed at him, her words just audible over the roar of gunfire.

  She lifted a pistol and pulled the trigger.

  The glass exploded where Ben had stood an instant before.

  On his back on the floor, Ben kicked the old door open and crawled out onto the catwalk, cutting his arms and legs on the broken glass.

  He peeked over the edge of the catwalk. Voleta had disappeared.

  He looked back over his shoulder. No one in the building had noticed the lone shot and apparently, no one had any idea Ben was anywhere other than safe.

  They probably thought he went to the bathroom.

  Ben caught a glimpse of a black robe in the shadows of a doorway and began bouncing lead around the small enclosure. He heard a scream and then something lurched out of the doorway, staggered, and fell to the bloody alleyway.

  Voleta.

  She was down, but far from out and far from staying down for very long.

  The woman jumped to her feet and ran across the alley, into a building.

  Ben started to use his walkie-talkie, to advise his people that the witch was near. He decided against it. Ben reach
ed up and slipped a grenade from his battle harness, pulling the pin and holding it down. This was his fight, and he wanted to settle it personally.

  Ben leaned out of the metal catwalk as far as he could and tossed the grenade into a window just opposite the door he’d seen Voleta enter. When it blew, it set her robe on fire and she came screaming out of the building, running blindly with her hair burning.

  She ran into a brick wall and fell backward, just as a main battle tank picked that time to round the corner. Ben could not turn away, even though he really did not want to see the treads crush the life from her.

  In an effort to get away from the burning woman, the tank swerved and slammed into an old brick building, knocking part of the wall down. Ben stood on the catwalk and looked down at what was left of Voleta: two bare legs, from the knees down, protruding out from under the bricks, in a puddle of blood. From where Ben stood, it looked like her feet were dirty.

  Jerre told him that Buddy had gone to the place where his mother was lying under several tons of bricks. He had stood silent for a long time, and then knelt down by her bare legs. Jerre felt uncomfortable watching him and had walked away, leaving him alone. She had not looked back.

  The Ninth Order was no more. If the Rebels found any alive, they shot them where they lay. Leadfoot told Ben that Satan and his bunch had got away. They headed west out of the city.

  Ben ordered his Rebels out of Jefferson City and Columbia and told his demolition people to bring the cities down to ruin.

  He had not seen Buddy all that day.

  He waved Jerre over to him. “See if you can find Buddy, will you, Jerre?”

  “He’s getting his team squared away, Ben. Said you’d probably want him to take the point and he wanted to be ready to go.”

  “How is he?”

  “Seems to be fine. A little quieter than usual, but that’s to be expected. He knew his mother was evil, but her death still was a jolt to him.”

  “Sure it was. I wish I’d had a dozer push those bricks off of her just to make sure she was dead.”

  “Good God, Ben! A tank ran over her!”

  “Yeah. At least it ran over her legs. But I’ll always wonder.”

  Jerre shook her head. “If she survived that, Ben, I’ll believe she really is a witch. Do we rest now?”

  “No. We can’t take the time. We’re pulling out within the hour. The demolition crews can catch up with us along the way. I’ve already told Corrie to send Ike and Georgi on their way behind Dan. Cecil is to link up with us anytime now and we’ll head west.”

  Behind them, dull explosions began erupting throughout the city and buildings began coming down in great clouds of dust.

  Buddy rode up and got out.

  “Son,” Ben said. “Your Rat Team about ready to pull out?”

  “All ready, sir.”

  There was something in Buddy’s voice that sounded odd to Jerre. “You want me to leave, Buddy? So you can talk to your father alone?”

  “Oh, no! No. Please stay. Father,” he said with a sigh. “I don’t believe my mother is dead.”

  It took several seconds for that to register with Ben. “What did you say, son?” He repeated it.

  “Son, I shot her. Personally. Then I tossed a grenade in on her and she was a ball of fire when she bounced off that wall. Then a goddamn tank ran over her. Jesus, boy. Nobody could survive that!”

  “She did. I don’t know for how long, but she survived it.”

  “After I walked away, Buddy,” Jerre said, “leaving you alone with her. What did you do?”

  “Reached down and pulled on her feet. The tank obviously severed her limbs at the knees. I felt sort of . . . well, stupid, standing there holding her by the feet. Sort of macabre. I dug into the bricks. She wasn’t there, Father. I dug all the way to where the wall was. There was a trail of blood leading into the building. I looked all over the place for her. She was not there, Father. She’s beaten us again. She’s alive.”

  SIXTEEN

  Dan and the Canadian forces, commanded by Rebet and Danjou were hot after what was left of the terrorist army as they moved west. But despite everything Colonel Gray did, he could not catch up with them. They had too big a head start. With both sides traveling night and day, Villar and his people managed to stay a good half a day in front of the Rebels.

  Striganov and his people headed west on 212, taking them through South Dakota. Ike and his battalion took off on Highway 36, heading through Kansas. Cecil linked up with Ben and West and they began their trek westward on Interstate 70. Those units south of Dan would gradually work their way north. Seven Battalion, always short, had been incorporated into Five and Six, beefing them up.

  Villar, knowing that with the slaughter of Voleta’s troops, every Rebel under Ben’s command would be hot after them, never let up. They traveled night and day, pushing the vehicles and themselves. If a vehicle broke down, it was abandoned along the road. They could not risk the time needed to make repairs.

  “Break it off,” Ben finally gave the orders. “We can’t keep up this pace. We’re losing ground anyway according to outpost reports.”

  Ben ordered his people to rest and work on the vehicles. And he was debating whether or not to order Dan to halt. Ben knew the Englishmen would pursue Villar, but would not endanger his men tackling a much greater force should he not catch Villar before he reached the wilderness area and linked up with Malone.

  “What’s the last report on Dan?” Ben asked Corrie.

  “Wyoming, sir. He had to stop for major repairs on some of the vehicles.”

  Ben made up his mind. “Get him for me, please.”

  Colonel Gray on the horn, Ben told him, “That’s it, Dan. Just hold what you’ve got. I’m ordering all units to link up with you. So for now, you stay put and get some rest. We know where Villar is heading. We’ll deal with them all.”

  “That’s affirmative, General. I’d about made up my mind to stop when the vehicles broke down. I just never could catch up with the bastard.”

  “You gave it your best shot, Dan. Get some rest. We’ll be there in a couple or three days. I’m not going to push it.”

  Ben and his columns were in Western Kansas, south and almost even with the Rebels who had taken the more northern route. He checked his maps and turned to Corrie. “Tell the others to rendezvous just east of the Continental Divide, on Highway Two-eighty-seven. On the Sweetwater. Tell them there is no hurry. Malone and Villar aren’t going anywhere.” He smiled at Thermopolis. “One thing about it, Therm: it’s going to put us a hell of a lot closer to Alaska.”

  The hippie fixed him with a jaundiced look. “I do hope, General, that this upcoming battle will be a short one. I have no desire to be caught in Alaska in the dead of winter.”

  “Well, there is a bright spot should that happen.”

  “I’m afraid to ask what.”

  “All those books you’re toting around from the libraries back in Jeff City.”

  Thermopolis walked away, muttering about transporting approximately twenty-seven tons of books all over the goddamn United States.

  Ben called his son to his side. “You and your Rat Team take off, boy. See what you can find out about Malone and his bunch. How many people answered his call and so forth. Stay out of the Wilderness area. And that’s an order.”

  Buddy tossed his father a very sloppy salute. “On my way, pops.”

  “Pops!” Ben muttered, watching his son jog away.

  Ben walked back to the communications truck and joined Cecil, who was talking with the man he’d left in charge back at Base Camp One. “Trouble, Cec?”

  “Oh, no. Just checking in on Patrice and the kids.”

  “And? . . .”

  “She told me to be sure to take my blood pressure medicine,” Cecil said sheepishly.

  Laughing, Ben walked away, wandering through the camp, stopping to chat with small groups of troops as he strolled among the resting and relaxing men and women, Jersey always a few steps
behind him.

  “We goin’ to Alaska or Ireland, General?” the question was tossed at him.

  “I don’t know, Pete,” Ben replied. “As much blarney as you have, you’d be right at home in Ireland.”

  “You reckon there’s any redheads left over there, General?” another asked.

  “You got a redhead, Marty,” Ben reminded him. “Back at Base Camp One.”

  “Yeah,” a woman called out. “And the truth be known, he can’t even take care of her!”

  Red-faced, Marty shook his head and grinned.

  Ben walked on, liking what he saw as he walked. His people had been resting for two days, and they were ready to go. They were ready to get this fight over with and see some new country.

  He turned to Corrie. “Use your walkie-talkie, Jersey. Bump Corrie. Tell her to alert all commanders. We’re pulling out at dawn.”

  Hundreds of miles away, in a farmhouse, a hooded figure asked, “Will she live?”

  “Despite what she had been through, her signs are good. Shell live if she has the will to do so. But I don’t know that she wants to live.”

  “Why do you say such a thing?” the man cried.

  “Because of the damage done to her. Infection set in. We had to amputate most of what was left of her legs. Her face is horribly scarred from the fire as is most of her body. She will never again have hair.”

  “She must live! She still has hundreds of followers.”

  The medical man shrugged.

  “Has she said anything since her surgery?”

  “Yes. One sentence. Over and over.”

  “And that is? . . .”

  “I hate Ben Raines.”

  The man smiled. “She’ll live, Doctor. She’ll live.”

  Satan and his outlaw pack caught up with Ashley and his men. It was not a joyous encounter for either of them, but with Ben Raines on their butts, they both knew the stronger they were, the better.

  Ashley had shaken his head at the news of the crushing of the Ninth Order. “I tried to warn her, Satan. I did try.”