Survival in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  She returned the smile just as Ben’s eyes caught silent and furtive movement across the street. “Down!” he yelled, and hurled himself against Jerre, putting both of them on the floor just as a light machine gun opened up from across the street.

  Dan had done with Sarah the same as Ben with Jerre and the other Rebels had automatically hit the floor before Ben’s yell had stopped echoing around the big room.

  “Corrie!” Ben shouted, above the yammer of weapons, both Rebel and creepie. “Alert all commanders that we’ve been infiltrated and watch out for the same.”

  Sarah cut her questioning blue eyes from Ben and Jerre back to Dan.

  “Later,” Dan said, and rolled away from her. He jerked his walkie-talkie from a side pouch and keyed it. “Scout leader here. Are you infiltrated?”

  “That’s ten-four, Colonel,” the Scout XO spoke calmly. “They’re all around us.”

  “I shan’t be rejoining you. I’ll stay here with the general. Take command.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Ben had bipodded his M-14 between piled-up bags of sand and dirt dug that afternoon and laid out a line of full clips to his right. “Berets off and helmets on,” he ordered. “Pass it up and down the line, Corrie. Leave chin straps loosened to prevent concussion injury.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Dan, get a rocket launcher and neutralize that son of a bitch across the street, please.”

  “Right, sir.” Dan scrambled across the concrete floor on hands and knees and grabbed a tube and rockets. He slipped out the back.

  “All units have been infiltrated, sir,” Corrie told him. “Five and Six Battalions reporting coming under heavy mortar fire.”

  “They’re throwing it all at us tonight,” Ben said. “It’s going to be a long and noisy night.”

  The Rebels in the old service station stacked the creepies up in dead stinking piles on the street in front of them. The creepies tried an end-around and found that Ben had planned for that by setting up Claymores at the rear of the building. They tried twice from the rear and then gave that up as a very bad idea.

  “Five and Six Battalions getting bloodied, but holding,” Corrie reported. She listened to her headset for a moment and said, “Doctor Chase is cut off. Creepies coming out of Balfour Park have blocked the street and our people can’t bust through.”

  “That isn’t worth a shit,” Ben said. “Main battle tanks rolling, Corrie. Break through and secure the field hospital zone.”

  “Ten-four, sir.”

  “Tell artillery back of the lines to ready flare-shots and to stand by for my orders. I want the sky lit up until I say darken it.”

  Ben went to another frequency and alerted all commanders that flares were going up.

  “Major Halloran is dead, sir,” Corrie reported. “Sniper got him through the head.”

  “Who’s the XO of Five Battalion?”

  “Steinberg, sir.”

  “Tell Steinberg he just got promoted and to take command.”

  “Right, sir.”

  Jerre looked at Ben during a momentary lull in the gunfire. “Jerry Halloran?”

  “That’s him.”

  “He’s my age. I met him at the gathering of the young people, just after I left you in Virginia. He got married after that and he and his wife had some kids. I met her and liked her. She’s really nice.”

  “Yes. He was very much in love with his wife. She and the kids were killed in an ambush by a pack of white trash two years ago.”

  “I’m sorry. He must have taken that terribly hard.”

  “He got over it a few minutes ago.” Ben’s reply was given much more coldly than he intended, and he knew she would take it the wrong way, and she did. Jerre’s look was strange for a moment before turning away from his eyes.

  “Gunners reporting flare-shots ready to pop, sir,” Corrie said.

  “Fire.”

  The darkness over the besieged battlelines was lit up as the flares popped open high in the sky. “Creepie-killing time, people!” Ben yelled. “Pick your targets and put them down.”

  For the creepies nearest the old service station, caught in the harsh artificial light, there were but two options left open to them: either die where they stood, or charge the CP and try to kill the leader of the Rebels, Ben Raines.

  They ran screaming toward the CP.

  ELEVEN

  A half-dozen creepies made the service station area, literally climbing over the bodies of their fallen kind and hurling themselves through the glassless front of the building.

  Ben swung his M-14 like a club, the stock catching one Believer on the jaw and breaking it, sending bloody and broken teeth flying out of his mouth. Beth jammed the muzzle of her CAR into a creepie’s mouth and pulled the trigger, blowing away the back of the cannibal’s head. Jersey was rolling on the dirty and brass-littered floor, battling a creep with a knife in his hand. Jerre stepped over, stuck a .45 to the creepie’s head, and pulled the trigger, ending the struggle.

  “Yukk!” Jersey said, crawling to her knees and shoving the stinking body from her.

  “Here comes more!” Cooper yelled, jerking the butt of his M-16 to his shoulder.

  Dan reached down with his knife and cut the throat of the jaw-broken creepie, then turned to the outside action, Sarah by his side.

  Over the din of battle, and the sound was enormous in the concrete block building, Ben sensed more than heard movement on the flat roof of the building. He could see the plywood decking of the roof where the tile had rotted away over the years. Motioning to Jerre and Corrie, they nodded understanding and lifted their M-16s, waiting for Ben to give the signal.

  Ben opened fire with his old Thunder Lizard, .223 rounds from the women following the .308s from the M-14 a half second after Ben opened the dance. The slugs tore through the decking, knocking great holes, mangling the bodies of those on the roof, and exposing the harsh light of the flares. Already overloaded from the weight, a portion of the decking collapsed, sending howling creepies tumbling inside the service station and another hand-to-hand battle was on.

  A creepie jumped onto the back of Dan and the Englishman expertly flipped him off and smashed his face with his boots, kicking the man unconscious.

  Grenades exploded outside the service station, killing several Rebels and knocking to the floor those closest to the front. Jersey was slammed to the floor as a piece of shrapnel struck her helmet, denting the metal and giving her a hell of a headache.

  Cooper took a piece of hot flying shrapnel on the arm that knocked him down, addled but not seriously hurt. Ben got to his knees and again bipodded his M-14 at the front of the building and let the lead fly.

  “All units under heavy attack!” Corrie yelled over the roar of battle. “Holding.”

  “Fuck this,” Ben said, and turned to Corrie. “Order all units to charge! Charge, goddamnit, charge!”

  Roaring like an enraged tiger, Ben left the building and led his contingent in a charge through the brilliantly lit night.

  The creepies had expected a fierce fight from the Rebels; what they had not anticipated was a charge of screaming Rebels coming dead-bang at them. The move momentarily confused them and that was all that the Rebels needed.

  The charge broke the attack from the Believers and forced them back. From all points around the city, the Rebels advanced two blocks before Ben called a halt to it.

  General Striganov’s forces had pushed to Francis Avenue and now controlled — at least for the moment — everything from Nine Mile Road to Morgan Acres to the east.

  Ben had pushed his people all the way up to the old fairgrounds and now held everything from the Interstate north to the river.

  West and his people controlled the area from Highway 290 up to the Russian’s perimeter.

  Ike and Cecil had bulled their way up to the Interstate and were holding.

  Five and Six Battalions had held tough and beaten back the creepie attacks west and south of the city.

  “Go
od night’s work, people,” Ben radioed. “Damn good work.”

  The commanders met at Ben’s new CP the next morning.

  “Goddamnit, Ben!” Ike got all up in Ben’s face. “You could have ended up like Custer last night, you . . . you . . .” He sputtered to a red-faced halt.

  “I concur,” Cecil said. “It was a very foolhardy thing to do. You could have been killed.”

  “But I wasn’t,” Ben pointed out. “And it broke the back of the creepie attack.”

  “Can’t you do something with this hardhead!” Georgi yelled at Jerre.

  Jerre only smiled and shook her head.

  Ben didn’t let the argument gather any more steam. He slapped a map that had been thumbtacked on a wall. “We can’t let the creeps regain any of the momentum they once had — or thought they had. Order all units to attack at once. Push the creeps toward the center of the city. That’s it!” Ben’s voice was sharp and all gathered around knew the meeting was over. “Attack!”

  The Believers had no chance to recoup from the battering they’d taken only hours before. Slowly, a building at a time, the Rebels began taking the city, pushing the creepies into a corner from which there was no escape.

  The Night People were well-armed, but they had put themselves into a box and they could but fight and die; they knew that for them, there was no surrendering to Ben Raines and his Rebels. A few had tried. The Rebels promptly put them up against a wall and shot them.

  At the end of the third day of bitter fighting, most of it close-in, eyeball to eyeball, using grenades and rifles — and sometimes pistols, camp axes, knives, and entrenching tools — Ben called for a halt to the advance and stood his people down for a rest.

  The Rebels had forced the remaining creepies into a small downtown area.

  Ben called for a face to face with his commanders.

  “How many more prisoners do the creepies hold in the city?”

  “Only a handful,” West told him, leaning on a cane to give his aching ankle some relief. “In my sector, the creeps are shooting the prisoners as we advance, rather than have us rescue them.”

  Ben received the same grim report from the rest of his people.

  “Damned if we do and damned if we don’t,” he muttered. “All right.” He made up his mind, and it was not a decision he liked. “The artillery has had a good long rest. Time for them to go to work. Corrie, order all artillery into place. Ring the city. Tell them to use WP, napalm, and HE, in that order. Gentlemen, pull your people back and give the city to the big guns. Let’s bring it down.”

  The Night People were barbaric and godless, but they were not fools. They knew as soon as the Rebels began withdrawing there was no hope left for them. Ben Raines had made up his mind and death stood just around the corner, waiting patiently.

  The Reaper did not have a long wait.

  The center of Spokane erupted as the shells began dropping in, spewing fire and shrapnel and exploding destruction.

  Interstate 90 had been cleared all the way through the city and Ben had ordered his command post be set up at the airport. Chase had moved his facilities to an old hospital not far from the airport.

  The Rebels had taken casualties during this fight; more casualties than they had suffered in a long time, and it was not to Ben’s liking.

  While the monotonous shelling of the city boomed and the earth trembled, with the center of the city now engulfed in flames, black smoke drifting into the skies, Ben drove over to the hospital.

  He found a very unhappy Lamar Chase.

  “All right, Lamar,” Ben said. “You look like a thundercloud. What’s on your mind?”

  “Is it worth it, Ben?”

  Ben stared at him, knowing what the doctor meant, but wanting him to say the words.

  “We’ve got a hundred dead, Ben. Three times that many wounded. We’ve rescued four hundred-odd people from the creeps. Perhaps, and this is a very optimistic guess, seventy-five out of that number will recover enough to lead normal, useful lives. One Rebel dies and approximately two are wounded for every four freed prisoners. Are the numbers worth it?”

  “It’s a hard thing you’re asking me, Lamar.”

  “Yes. And as a doctor, it’s a dreadful thought to have in my own mind.”

  With a sigh, Ben sat down and took the offer of coffee from Chase. “Lamar, you know as well or better than anyone how the Rebels operate. Those men and women would charge the gates of hell if I asked them to. But something like this? I’ve got to put it to them. You’ve often said that this army will go down in history as the damned army ever to roam the earth. I think perhaps you’re right in that. But no one’s come along to whip us yet.”

  “That’s certainly true. Your personal feelings on the loss of life, Ben?”

  “I don’t like it, Lamar. And now I’m going to tell you something that you’re not going to like. Out of all those men and women we rescue, nine tenths of them were losers to begin with.”

  “What do you mean by that, Ben. Goddamnit, they’re human beings that were captured to be eaten, for Christ’s sake!”

  “Why were they captured? Why didn’t they stand and fight or join a larger group.” He shrugged. “Losers, Lamar. They’d be losers in any environment.”

  “You don’t believe that, Ben! You’ve heard their stories. Many of them did fight, and fight hard. I can’t believe this is coming out of your mouth.”

  “What’s the big uproar, Lamar? You’re the one who brought up concerns about the losses we’re taking rescuing these losers.”

  “They’re not losers!” the doctor roared. “What the hell do you want to do, Raines: kill them along with the creeps?”

  “That was your original idea, wasn’t it?” Ben asked innocently.

  “Hell, no, it wasn’t! It certainly was not. I was just . . . talking, that’s all. The idea is barbaric, Raines. Hideous.”

  “Well, I’m glad that’s settled them. Personally, I’d just as soon lay back and blow hell out of the cities and not lose one Rebel. Damn, I thought I’d found someone who agreed with me.”

  “Well, you haven’t!”

  “Well, I’m very sorry to hear that.” He drained his cup and placed the mug on the desk. “Anything else on your mind, Lamar?”

  “Not at the moment, no.”

  Ben hid his smile as he stood up. “Well, then, I’ll just be going. I want to see the wounded and talk to them. If that’s all right with you?”

  “Sure, it is. Just stay out of the ICU wards. We’ve got some seriously wounded.”

  “I’ll be sure and do that. See you around, Lamar. Oh, by the way: how are the rescued?”

  “They’re doing just fine! We’re making real progress with them. And I’d appreciate it if you’d leave them alone.”

  “I’ll do that. See you, Lamar.” He looked at Jerre. “You coming with me?”

  “I think I’ll stay and chat with Doctor Chase. I’ll catch up with you later.”

  Ben nodded and stepped out into the hall. No longer able to contain his laughter, he leaned against the wall and laughed out loud.

  Jerre sat down and watched as Chase stormed around his office, cussing and bitching and in general low-rating Ben Raines. The chief medical officer stopped and listened to Ben’s laughter in the hallway, a frown on his face.

  “What the hell does he find so goddamn funny about all this?”

  Jerre shrugged. “You know Ben, Doctor. He has a strange sense of humor.”

  “Damn sure does.” Lamar sat down behind his desk and fiddled with a pencil. He suddenly broke the pencil in half and glared at Jerre. She could not contain her laughter, laughing at the expression on the man’s face.

  “That son of a bitch!” Lamar said.

  “What’s the matter, Doctor?” she managed to ask.

  “He conned me again! The bastard did it to me again! He shifted the idea from my shoulders to his and I didn’t even realize he was doing it.”

  They could hear Ben’ s laughter fadin
g as he walked up the hall.

  TWELVE

  The Rebels stood on the outskirts of the city and watched it burn. When the fires had died down and there was no danger of them spreading, Ben ordered the columns out. Five and Six were to head north, checking for survivors in the northeast corner of the state. Ike was to take his battalion and clean out Pullman. Cecil was to take Walla Walla while West took care of the tri-cities along the Columbia River. Ben was going to travel the Interstate over to Ellensburg, then cut down to Yakima. Five and Six would eventually wind their way west and south to Wenatchee and all would link up outside Yakima to plan out the western campaign.

  The Rebels began fanning out all over the eastern half of the state, searching for survivors who might like to join them in setting up outposts — small pockets of civilization in the midst of a world gone mad — and seeking out and destroying those who wished to continue their anti-social and outlaw ways.

  As the Rebels fanned out, they began finding small groups of survivors who had banded together for strength in combatting not only the many outlaw gangs who roamed the state, killing and robbing and raping and enslaving, but also the hideous Night People, or Believers.

  Ben found one group of survivors concentrated around the Moses Lake area, led by Tom Loomis.

  “Two hundred and fifty adults and seventy children,” Tom told him, after introducing himself.

  Ben was taking a walking tour of the town with Tom and a few of the survivors. His practiced and experienced eyes had picked up on the well-bunkered machine gun emplacements that dotted the town, and also how the survivors had strung together the buildings on the outskirts of the town, creating a walled fortress.

  Tom smiled as he noticed the direction Ben’s eyes were taking. “Kind of sad, isn’t it, General? Here we are in the twenty-first century and we’ve reverted back to a fortress existence.”

  Ben shook his head. “We do what we have to do in order to maintain some degree of civilization, Tom. In a way it is sad, but you and your people have done a fine job here. You’ve carved a pocket of order and reason while being surrounded by human crud.”