Flames from the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  Gabe and his outlaw bikers didn’t get the chance to find out. They topped a long swell in the prairie and came head-on into more Rebels. Goddamn, they seemed to be everywhere! Big .50 caliber machine guns chuffed and snorted and their fat slugs tore up the sod all around the bikers.

  Already shaken by their encounter with beehive rounds from R Batt, the dope-fogged brains registered this new chapter in devastation and wanted nothing to do with it. Gabe Trasher and Numb Nuts led the way. Gabe raised one hairy arm, a wide, spike-studded wristband sparkled in the sunlight, and he signaled for the Alien Secretions to take to the fields.

  Roostertails of dirt spurting behind them, they ran for their lives. A cascade of copper-jacketed death followed them from the guns of Tina’s Nine Batt. Gabriel Trasher so feared meeting his name-saint that he slobbered and whimpered. Fortunately for his reputation with the outlaws, the roar of his tonepipe-outfitted Harley drowned out the unmanly sounds. Gradually the hell-roar of automatic fire diminished.

  When it cut off with the same suddenness with which it had begun, Gabe Trasher discovered he could think clearly again. They’d head on west, get past that goddamned bridge on I-80 outside Grand Island, then take to the superslab again. Yeah, that sounded good. They could outrun the Rebels easy then. Soothed by the brilliance of this idea, Gabe eased back and propped his boots on the high-rise pegs.

  They’d have to take State 44 north, Gabe continued to plan. The only way to get across the Platte. That would put them in what was left of Kearney. A rotting shithole of a place. Even if Ben Raines was ahead of him, he wouldn’t stop there, Gabe reasoned. Best wait until Raines was for sure and gone from the area, and his goddamned Rebels, too.

  Inspiration came to Gabe. There was an old park sort of place not far from the junction with 44. A tourist joint back before the bombs fell. Pioneer Village, that was the name of it. They could hole up there, take care of the wounded. And fuck Ben Raines! Let him go as far west as he wanted to. Fuck that superkraut, too.

  Gabe Trasher couldn’t put an exact time to when the strange bikers started straggling in. He had a vague impression two or three joined them on the run over country roads toward U.S. 6/34, which led them to the rundown Pioneer Village.

  A couple of the tall outer walls remained standing, the parking lot long ago grown over, only a few shards of blacktop thrusting up through the weeds and dandelions. Gabe and Numb Nuts led the outlaws in among the buildings of what some promoter had imagined a pioneer town to look like. Most structures were burned-out hulks. A stone fireplace and chimney stood starkly against the light blue of the afternoon sky. A prairie breeze whispered through the tall grass covering mounds that looked like graves for elephants.

  They found a picnic area in a grove of mixed maple and oak, grown large now and venerable with age. It had survived most of the ravages of the lawless, the uncaring, and the ignorant. Several tables remained intact, their tops weathered and splintered from lack of maintenance, but usable. Two of the ubiquitous sheet-metal barbecues still rested on their pipe pedestals, and a fire ring of native stone fronted a shelter house.

  The roof had several holes, Gabe soon discovered, but the shelter had sidewalls that would break the wind. It would make do for his band of outlaws. More of the strangers rumbled in while the Alien Secretions unloaded and set up. Gabe started taking note of them, and decided they would do. Especially that great big dude with the machine gun between his handlebars.

  “Don’t think I know you,” Gabe offered by way of introduction to the huge, burly man with the M-60.

  “Handle’s Leadfoot. These are the Sons of Satan. Who might you be?” he said, dropping easily into the outlaw role.

  “Gabe Trasher. These are my folks, the Alien Secretions.”

  Leadfoot studied them for a long minute, then nodded and put on a droll face. “They’ll do.”

  “What brings you this way, Leadfoot?” Gabe probed, conscious that it wasn’t the politest or safest thing to pry into another outlaw’s business.

  “What do you think? Those fuckin’ Rebels!” he punched out hotly. “They’re every-fuckin’-where. They’ve run us off every road we tried to travel. Same’s with you, I reckon, from the sounds of that firefight a while back.”

  “You got that right. What got the Rebels pissed at you people?”

  Leadfoot hoisted both eyebrows and made a slow turn in front of Trasher. “Look at us, man. D’you think those squeaky-clean Rebel bastards would welcome us with open arms and want to play kissy-face?”

  For the first time that day, Gabe Trasher laughed. A long, loud belly laugh that shook his girth. “Brother, you got me there. They sure as shit got no love for our kind. Hang in here a spell. Might be I have an idea that could appeal.”

  “Thank’e kindly,” Leadfoot replied with a straight face. “Oh, there’s some more people comin’, a gang of mommas. Only they ain’t exactly mommas. They’ve got a girl-girl thing goin’.”

  Gabe easily took it in stride. “Can they fight?”

  “Like the fuckin’ Harpies,” Leadfoot replied earnestly. Thermopolis had him reading the classics.

  Trasher paled. “Say what? They got the herpies?”

  Leadfoot wanted to laugh, but stifled it for the sake of the mission. “Naw. Harpies, man, real bitch-kitty fighting ladies from a long time ago. Like in Homer, y’know?”

  “Homer? What comic book was he in?” Trasher betrayed his ignorance.

  “Weren’t no comic book. Homer was a blind poet. He wrote about Ulysses, an’ Helen of Troy, all that ancient shit. The Harpies fucked up Ulysses and his crew.”

  “Well,” Gabe dismissed, totally lost now, “if they can fight, they’re more than welcome. We took some heavy losses with them goddamned Rebels.”

  Leadfoot gave him a shrewd glance. “You aren’t tryin’ to say that you’d consider our throwin’ in with you, are you?”

  Gabe drew a deep breath. He’d already committed himself further than he had planned at this point. “Just what I’m sayin’. We got a shitpot full of vacancies. Whadda you say?”

  “Who gives the orders?”

  “I do, Leadfoot. The Secretions have this contract with that big Nazi dude, th’ one runs the New Army of Liberation. He gives me my orders, I pass them along.”

  “Not to the Sons, you don’t,” Leadfoot stated belligerently. Inwardly he hoped the years with the Rebels hadn’t taken the edge off his ability to gauge biker leaders. “I give them their orders.” He narrowed his eyes, formed an expression of shrewdness. “We talkin’ a partnership, you got a deal. Otherwise, well rest up a bit and ride on.”

  So desperate had Gabe become to fill his devastated ranks that he did not even withhold an answer for the time required by outlaw protocol. “Done.”

  He put an arm, the one with the spiked wristband, around Leadfoot’s shoulder, reaching up from necessity to do so. “Now, come on, we’ve got some prime weed. We’ll have us a little toke and wait for your lezzie friends to show up. I suppose the Bull Dagger who runs the outfit will want the same terms I gave you?”

  “No doubt,” Leadfoot answered dryly.

  “She’ll get it, too.” Gabe gave Leadfoot a conspiratorial wink. “Hey, people, listen up. We got reinforcements,” he called to the Secretions. “This calls for a party. Break out the wine and the grass and let’s get crazy.”

  “How about food?” Martian Mucus complained. “Smokin’ dope gives me the munchies.”

  “It gives everyone the munchies,” Gabe shot back. “Okay, so whatever we brung along is what we’ve got. We can’t go back to our old place.”

  “I’ve got sunflower seeds,” a willowy momma who looked to be about fourteen announced.

  “I have a bag of dried sandhill plums I’ve been savin’ back,” another Secretion volunteered.

  “Scrounge, you dumb fuckers,” Gabe growled at them. “Set up a hunting party. See if you can shoot a couple of rabbits or something.”

  “It’ll take more’n a couple of rabb
its to feed all of us,” Martian Mucus objected.

  “I’ve got some jerked beef, a whole two pounds of it,” a Secretion who called himself Venusian Snot offered.

  “The only jerked meat you’ve got is between your legs,” his momma quipped.

  That brought laughter from all around. “I’m serious,” Gabe pressed when it died down. “We gotta lay in supplies. Hunt around. Find wild stuff we can eat. Nuts, maybe.”

  “Acorns is bitter,” the pouting teeny momma objected.

  “Not if you fix them right,” Leadfoot contributed.

  “Okay — okay, we get what we can. An’ clean out that fire pit,” Gabe commanded. “We gotta get a fire goin’.”

  Within an hour, the party was in full swing. Wanda and her Sisters of Lesbos had arrived and been “convinced” to join with the Alien Secretions. The wine flowed freely, that homemade beverage giving off a sour, yeasty smell. Leadfoot and Wanda compared notes. They fondly hoped they would not have to stay here long.

  It took less time than Leadfoot had expected. The wine and weed and the robust outdoor cooking took a heavy toll of the combat-wearied Alien Secretions. By ten-thirty, only half a dozen remained upright, arms linked around necks, by the fire. They swilled the edgy-tasting wine and talked of earlier conquests. Fired by the bold tales, they began an unsteady, shuffling dance around the rock pit. Leadfoot cut his eyes to Wanda.

  “Time for some of our people to start pulling out. Your girls know where to go. I’ll get on the radio to the general and to R Batt. We wait until they are in position and all our people get clear of the field of fire. Then we stomp this stupid shit into the ground.”

  “I like that,” Wanda responded. “They remind me of someone I once knew. Someone I don’t like much anymore.”

  “I hear you, gal. Me, too, I guess. Well, so much for that. Let’s spread the word.”

  Half an hour later, the last Son of Satan and Sister of Lesbos wheeled bikes away from the old tourist attraction. Walking did not agree with their booted feet, but they endured a mile of it before kicking to life the big choppers and rumbling off into the night. They found the bulk of the company at the rendezvous.

  “Any time now,” Leadfoot was saying to Wanda.

  Then the horizon behind them lighted up. A carpet-thick salvo of 155s, 105s and 4-inch mortars did a Long Island Express over their heads a moment later, followed by the sullen mutter of the guns. Leadfoot whistled softly.

  “That’s a lot of heavy traffic,” he opined. “Gonna make jam outta those Alien Secretions creeps.”

  “You can say that again,” Wanda agreed. “How long’s that going on?”

  “Five minutes. Then we hit them from this flank, R Batt covers the other three sides, and General Raines mops up any who survive to run away.”

  Hell came to visit at midnight. For five minutes it rained down on the coordinates provided by Leadfoot in the form of artillery shells that burst and showered everything living in the old Pioneer Village with shards of metal, screeching flechettes, and searing white phosphorus. Not a man or woman of the Alien Secretion escaped without at least one minor wound.

  Ears ringing and deadened by the tumult of exploding rounds, dizzied and disoriented, they were unable to fully appreciate the utter silence that followed. Few even had sense enough to reach for weapons when grim-faced young men and women in the camo uniforms of the Rebels swarmed out of the smoke and dust, weapons at the ready.

  “Oh, shit, oh, Jesus, they’re comin’ after us again,” Numb Nuts Nicholson wailed when he saw their approach. Blood streamed down his face from a cut above one eye. A flechette had fully penetrated his left forearm just below the elbow. The pain somewhat dulled his pig-squeal whinny giggle.

  NINE

  Tina’s battalion had been assigned to establish a cordon completely around the area occupied by the Alien Secretions. To her disappointment they took no part in the brief fighting. Troopers of R Batt walked through the old tourist spot, eyes alert. Only a few brain-jumbled outlaw bikers offered resistance. Those they gunned down mercilessly. While the Rebel presence increased, Gabe and Numb Nuts set the example.

  Whining, on his knees, bloody face upraised, Numb Nuts cried for mercy. “Don’ shoot me, soldier-boy. I ain’t done nothin’ to you. I give up,” he wailed.

  “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot. I surrender,” Gabe Trasher appealed as he sank to his knees, arms raised above his head.

  He knew that even while the frightening shells slammed into their campsite, some of the Secretions had kicked life into their Harleys and sped away to the west. Gabe fondly hoped that when things sorted themselves out, they would come back in a rush and pull him and Numb Nuts out of the hands of the Rebels.

  While the Rebels rounded up the rest of the survivors, Gabe heard the distant sound of a firefight over the ringing in his ears. It smashed his hopes into ruins.

  * * *

  From the darkness to the side of the road, Cooper whispered into the handset of the AN/PRC-6 field radio. “About eight of them, General. Comin’ on slow.”

  “Let them get good and close,” Ben Raines responded. “There may be more got out of that barrage.”

  Beside him, Jersey nodded with an enthusiasm Ben could not see. “Don’t want to tip our hand too soon.”

  Ben patted her on the shoulder. How, she wondered, could he see so well in the dark? “Always one up on me, aren’t you, Jersey?”

  “Huh? I was only thinkin’ out loud about why you want them close.”

  “Good enough. I’d gleefully kill for a cup of coffee right now,” Ben added wistfully.

  “When this is over, General.”

  Two bikes showed darker silhouettes against the lighter curtain of night. They rolled along barely above idle. The riders hunched low. Ben eased the buttstock of his Thompson into the pocket of his shoulder. A couple of hours shy of moonrise, he would have to use the old point-and-shoot technique. Steadily, he squeezed on the trigger.

  Muzzle blast brightly flamed the darkness. One biker, his bullet-scrambled brain giving confused signals, torqued the grip throttle of his Harley and it leapt forward. A thin, high scream came from his lips as the cycle scooted out from under him and he rebounded off a tree trunk. Blackout covers whisked off headlights illuminated the gory scene, and yellow-orange blooms winked from outlaw weapons.

  “Damn, that’s close!” Ben advised as a trio of rounds impacted the embankment much too near his body.

  Outlaw bike lights revealed the Hummer blocking both lanes of Highway 6/34 on a narrow bridge. One Alien Secretion gunned his Harley in an effort to escape the ambush, certain he could outwit his attackers. He whipped to one side of the road and leapt the ditch. He hurtled the rising bank on that side, and a moment later a loud splash announced that he had lost his bet that the creek would be dry.

  His scoot settled to a depth of twelve feet at mid-channel and carried the unconscious Secretion to a watery grave. Rebel rounds sprayed the remaining six outlaw bikers. Only one avoided wounds. Instead of wisely surrendering, like his companions, he charged toward Ben Raines.

  An ancient AK-47 spitting hollow-base steel-core slugs, he bore down on the dark figure on the verge of the road. The bullets popped noisily into Ben’s body armor. He’d count the bruises in the morning, Ben thought with disgust as he brought up the muzzle of the Thompson.

  Three rounds chopped the front wheel of the bike. Spokes bent and the fork set itself in the macadam surface of the highway. Venusian Snot got a lesson in applied physics as he catapulted over the handlebars and skidded along the roadway.

  “Everyone belly down on the road, arms above your heads,” Ben commanded.

  Quickly his personal team secured the five bandit bikers. Jersey kept an eye on the surroundings as she gained the road and walked backward to Venusian Snot.

  “This one is still alive, General,” she informed Ben with a chuckle. “He’s picked up one hell of a case of road rash.”

  “Scrape him up and bring him alon
g. Time we joined the party with R Batt,” Ben told her.

  Gabe Trasher had recovered part of his shattered ego by the time the Hummer arrived with Ben Raines and the prisoners they had obtained. He had already figured out that he and the other identified leaders were not to be killed outright. That encouraged him.

  Before everyone had gotten stoned out the past evening, he had radioed to Adlerhoff to report that they had been in a sustained firefight with an advance column of Rebels. Also that Ben Raines was along. Field Marshal Hoffman had not been overflowing with praise. Ben Raines still lived, seemed to be his main bone to worry.

  Trasher had dismissed it. Now the full realization of just how much of a tricky bastard Rains could be dawned on him. He felt the fool. And nobody made a fool of Gabe Trasher. No one had since the fifth grade, when he’d cut that sissy preacher’s kid, Bobby Smythe, who spelled his name with a “y” and an V yet.

  “Why you grinnin’, Gabe?” Numb Nuts Nicholson asked glumly. “We’re fuckin’ prisoners of the Man.”

  “Yeah. But maybe not for long,” Gabe informed him. “I still have a trick in my boot that’ll get us out of here, eliminate Ben Raines, and spell the end for this whole damned Rebel slime.”

  Nicholson blinked stupidly. “You’re playin’ head games, Gabe. Raines is one tough bastard. How you gonna work it?”

  “Just watch and see. I’m gonna fix his ass yet.”

  General Field Marshal Jesus Dieguez Mendoza Hoffman danced around his desk in glee. “It’s working, it’s working!” he crowed in delight to his assembled staff officers.

  Orderlies had rousted them out of sound sleep with a summons to the august presence in the middle of the night. None had the least idea why. This manic performance had so far failed to further enlighten them. Hoffman waved to three silver buckets of iced-down champagne on their glittering stands.

  “It’s only from the uplands of Argentina, gentlemen, hardly the fabled Dom Pérignon. But it will have do for our celebration.”