Flames from the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  “I’ll let Falcon know,” Corrie threw over her shoulder.

  More rounds of small arms slammed into the beefed-up Hummer. A hillside on their right seemed to swarm with dark figures on frenetic motorcycles. Like a pissed-on anthill, Ben thought. Their antics made it impossible to make an accurate count. Around seventy-five, Ben estimated. Too many for them to handle alone. Reluctantly he leaned forward, sighed heavily.

  “Better bump Falcon back and tell them exactly where we are and that we want them up here ASAP.”

  “Already done, General,” Corrie said, grinning. “You know how I hate senseless violence. And our getting killed by these scumbags would certainly be senseless.”

  Ben framed a hot retort, thought better of it, and asked instead, “Where’d you pick up on that pre-Great War slang, Corrie?”

  “Back then my dad was a cop, before he took up playing survivalist. I was a late-life surprise.”

  “Some of the best always are,” Ben said, thinking fondly of Buddy.

  Buddy Raines had been an unexpected, and for a while unknown, result of a one-night stand in Nashville some ten years after Tina had been born. Ben and his first wife, Salina, had thought themselves doomed to childlessness and had adopted twins, a boy and girl, Tina and Jack. Jack and Salina had been killed in the early fighting for the Tri-States. Tina had been battling at his side ever since. But Buddy came as a total surprise.

  He had the height and spread of his father. Also his dark hair and intense eyes, the square chin a mark of the Raines influence. After an initial mutual uneasiness, father and son got on famously. Buddy’s mother turned out to be a complete wacko, who called herself Sister Voleta, leader of the Ninth Order. She blamed everything and anything bad for her on Ben Raines and fought him implacably. Now she was dead and the Ninth Order was no more. All that Buddy had apparently inherited from her was a natural curliness to his thick black hair. Ben turned loose of it; time to concentrate on the immediate threat.

  “Pull onto that bridge and broadside us, Coop. We’re going to make it damn hard for them to come at us.”

  “We gonna kick a little ass, General?” Jersey asked through her grin.

  “Damn right, Jersey.”

  Gabe Trasher cursed the throbbing in his head and tried to concentrate on what the hell that crazy bastard Ben Raines was up to. The bulky vehicle had pulled out onto the bridge over the Platte River and broadsided. Goddamn that Raines, he was up to something, but the little men with their tackhammers in his head wouldn’t let Gabe figure out what. The receiver button in his ear crackled.

  “You sure that’s Ben Raines?” Numb Nuts Nicholson asked.

  “Fuckin’-A I am. That thing’s armored, right? An’ Raines runs around in an armored set of wheels, right? An’ it’s way an’ hell out in front of the main column, right? So it has to be Raines.”

  Numb Nuts gobbled his peculiar laughter. “Only, what’s he up to?”

  “I don’t know,” Gabe answered back. “I’m tryin’ to figger it out.”

  “Best do it fast. We gotta shit or get off the pot,” Numb Nuts put the situation elegantly.

  “I know, I know,” Gabe rapid-fired. “He has to have sent for help. Okay,” Gabe hurried on, desperate for a solution. “We’re gonna hit him from both sides. Ever’body with ears, hear this. Close in on the ends of the bridge. When ever’body gets in place, we hit this fucker hard.”

  “We’ll be shootin’ at each other,” one Alien Secretion protested.

  “Huh? Oh, yeah, I guess you would.” Gabe thought fast, for Gabe. “So, here’s what we do. We leave enough people here to keep Raines on that bridge, and we go back an’ hit whoever is coming up to help him.” A rattle of acknowledgments came to Gabe. “You’ll be in charge, Fart Bucket. Let’s do it now.”

  Ben turned from the window. “They aren’t falling for it. Somehow I had the feeling we could sucker them into shooting at each other.”

  “One of them must still have a functional brain,” Jersey agreed. “What now?”

  Frowning, Ben mulled over that. “First we break out of here. Then we run west and keep them after us, concentrating on this juicy plum, until Falcon hits them in the rear. Corrie, bump Thermopolis and tell him I want Wanda and Leadfoot up here right after we break out. Have them wear their old colors.”

  “Huh?” Jersey asked from his right. “Seems like only yesterday we got them to looking civilized.”

  That brought a smile to Ben’s lips. Big, thick fingers massaged his square chin. “Now, Jersey, you wouldn’t want the Alien Secretions’ new recruits to look out of place, would you?”

  Jersey nodded. “Gotcha, boss. Just how do you figure to keep them focused on us?”

  “Easy. Corrie, can you break in on the frequency that bunch of assholes are using?”

  “Sure. Simple.”

  “Then do it. And hand me the mike.”

  When she had accomplished this, she handed the microphone to Ben Raines with a wink. “This is General Ben Raines. I want you to listen closely to me, you stupid, unwashed sons of bitches.”

  Gabe Thrasher sat gape-mouthed. He didn’t believe what he was hearing. “I say again, this is General Ben Raines. I want you to break up and get the hell out of our way. We’re coming through, and when we do, if you are still in the way, we’ll tear you new assholes.”

  “Not fucking likely, Raines,” Trasher snarled into the handset of his radio. “We got you cold. My guess is you’re outta them nasty grenades. You ain’t got shit and you ain’t worth shit. We’re gonna dust you right off this mudball. I’m gonna eat you for breakfast.”

  “Effing wrong, whoever you are. The Night People tried that and they’re extinct.”

  “I’m Gabe Trasher, president of the Alien Secretions,” Gabe growled.

  Ben’s soft laughter came back to him. “Biker shit, huh? Well, Gabe Trasher, you wouldn’t make a pimple on a creepie’s ass.”

  “That does it, gawdammit! That does it,” Trasher blared with a rage. “You boys on the west side, take that son of a bitch. Later, Raines. I’ll swing by and take a look at your ball-less corpse.”

  Immediately a dozen Harleys snorted to life and began a slow advance on the Hummer that straddled the wide bridge across the Platte River. They rumbled at a stately pace, weapons at the ready. Leading them was a greasy slob named Fart Bucket. The stubble to both sides of his cleft chin, as well as his thick pursed lips, bore the yellow-brown stain of his smokeless tobacco habit. When his hyena pack of bikers had reached a distance of a hundred feet from the Hummer, he spat a long puce stream of home-cured leaf juice that splattered against a crackled and worn support column of the bridge. Another twenty-five feet and he uttered a guttural grunt of speech.

  His biker brigands spread out and halted. Their hogs and choppers braced on one booted leg, they leveled their weapons at the Humvee. At Fart Bucket’s command they loosed an explosive volley.

  Hot lead slammed into the side of the armored Hummer. Thin armor plate made noisy protest. A couple of 12-gauge rifled slugs flatted enough to howl mournfully through the air when they richocheted off the curved front fender. Then the windows on the near side came down.

  Three weapons, Jersey’s M-16, Beth’s H&K, and Ben’s faithful old tommy-chopper, opened up on them in full rock-’n’-roll. Bits of filth-stained, rotting denim cloth flew in a cloud, along with chunks of flesh and gallons of blood. A pink haze hung in the air while Harleys went out from under dying Alien Secretions.

  After the initial fusillade, Ben and team settled down to neat, accurate three-round bursts. Cooper risked exposing his back to step out of the driver’s side and take aim with an M-209 — a GAR-15 with a 40mm grenade launcher under the forestock. The blooper made its characteristic hollow sound and launched from a high-impact plastic casing a small green spheroid with a pale blue nosecone and a white band around its widest circumference.

  White phosphorus from the exploding round ignited spilled gasoline. Fart Bucket, who had so far avoid
ed contact with any ordnance, turned into a sprinting torch. Howling in agony and terror, he ran crazed in circles for a moment before lining out for the bridge railing. With a throat-burning sob of desperation, he flung himself over the side. Contact with the bed of the Platte River broke Fart Bucket’s neck. At least it put out the fire. All except those pesky flecks of WP.

  “Oh, Jesus, no. Oh, shit! Oh, fucking shit!” Gabe Trasher screamed from the hillside where he observed. Then he yelled into the mike. “Go, east side. Go-go-go! Get that motherfucker.”

  They did no better than their comrades. Worse, in fact. Cooper scooted around to the opposite side of the Hummer and began to lob 40mm blooper shots into them even before the first Harley rolled onto the bridge. Ben, Beth, Corrie, and Jersey climbed from the Humvee and took positions that offered good fields of fire.

  Little Dick Bentley, who was going to get himself a little piece of Ben Raines got three little pieces of .45 JHP from Ben’s Thompson. Arms flung wide, he reared backward and the Harley hog rolled out from under him. Several bikers had presence of mind enough to halt and dismount so they could return aimed fire.

  A slug from what had once been an expensive, well-cared-for deer rifle cracked through the air an inch from the head of Ben Raines. Ben settled accounts for the former owner of the Weatherby with a Thompson tornado that would leave the biker singing soprano the rest of his life, if he didn’t die of shock and blood loss.

  Two-twenty-three hornets from Jersey’s M-16 buzzed angrily off the receiver of an AK-47, which sent up a spray of 5.56x28 lead to puncture the sky. Before its owner could override the sudden numbness in his hands, Jersey finished him with a single shot between the eyes.

  Bodies sprawled grotesquely on the floor of the bridge. Once again, Jersey wondered at the quantity of blood in a human being. Awash in it, the bridge gave up the crimson tide to the drain holes along its verge. It poured into the Platte, to be lost in its murky brown current. Two bikers came straight on, kamikaze style.

  Beth straightened out one of them with a short burst from her H&K. He left his bike sideways, with an unrepentant curse on his lips for Ben Raines. “Goddamn you, Raines. This is all your fault,” he yelled before his head made contact with concrete and scrambled what was left of his brain.

  “Mount up,” Ben snapped. “Coop, ram this thing over the top of those burning bikes and let’s head for Kearney.” He put a comradely hand on Cooper’s shoulder. “Only slowly. We want to keep this chicken-shit trash on our tail.”

  EIGHT

  Ben Raines directed Cooper to pull off I-80 at a rest stop. It had been badly vandalized long enough ago that the broken edges of concrete table supports had been rounded by weather and erosion. Ben stepped from the Hummer and stretched. Then he walked around behind what had been neat brick rest-rooms to relieve himself.

  When he returned, he shared his suspicions with his team. “I think we did too good of a job. No sign of Trasher and his Secretions. No loss. The less of that filth we have to deal with, the better. Corrie, bump Falcon and find out what’s going on.”

  “Something coming in now, sir. It’s Falcon.” She gave the handset to Ben.

  “Eagle here, over.”

  “We’ve got some of what looks like bikers taking potshots at us,” Stan McDade’s voice rumbled over the connection.

  “Anything you can’t handle?”

  “An annoyance,” Bull McDade dismissed. “Your people pulled out from Headquarters Company ten minutes ago.”

  “They should be in position any time. After I brief them, I want you to open up with everything you have. Run those dirtbags out of there. Meanwhile, keep your heads down.”

  “That’s a big roger, Eagle. Falcon, out.”

  Ben spoke as much to himself as to the team, all of whom knew the routine only too well. “With Leadfoot and Wanda under radio silence, I’ll be pitching in the dark. I hope the reception is good around here. Well, here goes,” he ended as he keyed the talk switch. “Outlaw, this is Eagle. Do you copy?”

  A faint click interrupted the carrier wave on that frequency. It signified that Leadfoot heard the transmission. Ben nodded and launched into his specific instructions. “In a short while, some biker trash — ah, present company excepted — will be heading your way, thoroughly shocked by our big guns with Falcon. I want you in position near where we had our firefight within ten minutes to give them a little surprise. Do you roger that?” Again the click came. “Stand by for a change in orders, depending on what this Alien Secretions outfit decides to do.” Another momentary silencing of the carrier static. “Eagle out. Falcon, this is Eagle. In exactly ten minutes . . . do it.”

  Leadfoot looked over the streamlined receiver of the M-60 light machine gun. He had the weapon pintle-mounted between the handlebars of his motorcycle. A pair of closed boxes, welded to the steering shaft above the fork, fed it. He had seen the carnage at the bridge and commented laughingly to his second-in-command, Beerbelly.

  “Ben Raines having fun again.”

  Leadfoot, Beerbelly, and their collection of misfits had been implacable enemies of Ben Raines and the Rebels. Their enmity had caused them to swear allegiance to the Night People and their daytime stooges. It didn’t take a lot of the awesome firepower of the Rebel army to convince them that following the rules of Ben Raines wasn’t so bad a thing after all. It did leave you alive. Wanda, who sat across the highway in a screen of trees, had been the same, Leadfoot recalled.

  They had formed a sort of unholy alliance, vowing to fight “that damned Ben Raines” to the death. Leadfoot, his unwashed bikers, and the Sisters had set up defenses outside the ruins of some of California’s most beautiful cities. At least they had been until Ben Raines brought his Rebels howling down on them to exterminate the creepies. The Rebels kept dislodging the outlaw bikers, boys and girls alike. Wanda and her Sisters of Lesbos had resisted taking orders from Leadfoot — from any man, for that matter — until Ben Raines got them on the run.

  Rapid attrition is an excellent mentor. Leadfoot and Wanda soon realized that the battle was lost for their disgusting masters. Raines had offered a generous chance to any who would throw in with his Rebels. Leadfoot and Wanda had talked it over and agreed to check out what the Rebel general had to offer.

  They liked it and stayed. Now, the veteran of hundreds of hours of combat, Leadfoot could but vaguely recall what it had been like not being a Rebel. But what about these bikers? They were brothers, right? They should be given a chance to join, sure. But Ben had said there was no time for that.

  So Leadfoot would do what he had to do. He stiffened suddenly and listened keenly to a distant rumble. The guns of the R Batt had opened up. Leadfoot could imagine the fat shells lobbing through the sky. He checked again to make certain the ammo belt ran right to feed properly. Any time now the Alien Secretions would come runnin’ down the road.

  Leadfoot tensed again a pair of minutes later. Leaning forward, he peered harder at the road. What was that? Gradually a figure solidified out of the heat waves rising from the concrete slab of I-80.

  Long, grimy hair streaming out behind him, he rode laid back on a three-prong sissy-bar that featured a big swastika at the top, feet on high-rise pegs up on the frame near the belly tank. Leadfoot put binoculars to his eyes and saw the look of utter terror on his target’s face. Half a dozen more crested the rise, their faces ghastly white. Another eyeblink, then they filled the road from side to side.

  A quick adjustment of the sights and Leadfoot keyed his microphone. “They’re here,” he said crisply. “A whole shitpot of them.”

  “I see,” Wanda responded.

  Two seconds later, Leadfoot opened up with the M-60. He sprayed the shell-shocked bikers most thoroughly. Men and machines went tumbling along the superslab. Showers of sparks rose, and a tracer set off a gas tank. In a fatally long minute, the fear of what lay behind them became conquered by the terror of what they had run into.

  Without regard for the rules of the road, the Ali
en Secretions reversed course and fled. The dying and wounded littered the highway, writhing in misery. At the first off-ramp, Gabe Trasher directed his thoroughly demoralized gang away from the sure knowledge of eternity. Their hogs sprinted out between open fields, on a secondary road, in an attempt to escape ruin.

  Howling gleefully, Wanda’s Sisters and Leadfoot’s Sons of Satan streamed after them. Leadfoot had been cautioned not to get close enough to be recognized, but he didn’t as yet know why. He merely followed the orders of Ben Raines. In a minute, Leadfoot had his answer.

  “Leadfoot, this is Eagle. Any time now, those scum are going to run into Tina, who’s been flanking them. That should shatter any organizational control remaining. When they break, I want your people to ease up among them and join in. You know the drill. All these fucking Rebels around, you’ve been getting run off every road for days. I think they’ll take you in like long-lost brothers.”

  “Then what happens, O Great Eagle?” Leadfoot asked.

  Ben grimaced, he got enough of that from Emil. “That’s when we give them another surprise.” Lead-foot could almost hear the smile in Ben Raines’s voice.

  “How the hell did they get ahead of us?” Gabe Trasher asked the wind.

  Gabe led his demoralized outlaws south on a dirt road, away from the horror on the interstate. His stomach churned and his mind retreated in terror from the image of Rubber Duck, his chest bristling with those little, gray, ugly dart things. What the fuck did the Rebels have? That kind of shit wasn’t fair. Jee-sus, he’d lost twenty people in less than thirty seconds. Then, somehow, some way, the fuckin’ Rebels had gotten ahead of them and blown shit out of eleven more good men. But he had outsmarted them now.

  They wouldn’t come after him on these shitty roads. Not with all that heavy equipment. And there was a little town not far from where they left the slab. Name of Clay Center. He and his boys used to go there and terrorize the locals in the town’s only beer bar. He wondered if it was still there.