Valor in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  “Damn!”

  “My sentiments also. But what hole would be big enough for over two thousand men?”

  Then it came to Ben. That elusive sensation he’d been experiencing stepped out from the murk of his brain into the light. “I’m going to say this once, Georgi. Then you’d better get your people and bug out fast. We’ve been had. You ask what hole? Tunnels. The Night People have apparently been here for many, many years; long before the war. No telling how many miles, in all directions, they’ve honeycombed. The war just brought them to the surface, that’s all.”

  The Russian was silent for a few seconds. “The ramifications of that theory — if proven correct — could be . . .”

  The horn went dead as the sounds of explosions reached Ben’s ears.

  “Tina’s on the emergency frequency, Ben!” Jerre called. “They’re coming under heavy attack from all directions. She says it looks like thousands of the creepies are moving toward them, pushing them south and slightly east.”

  “Bug out!” Ben ordered. “See if you can get General Striganov.”

  “Got him!”

  Ben took the head set. “Georgi. What’s happening?”

  “Under heavy attack, Ben. My forward teams say it looks like giant black ants totally covering the earth, coming from the west and the north.”

  “Cut and run, Georgi. Valor is one thing, saving your butt is another.”

  “You don’t have to repeat that, Ben. Farmer Brown is breaking new ground. Talk to you later.”

  “Get Ike on the horn, Jerre.”

  “Go,” she told him, seconds later.

  “You copied that from New Jersey, Shark?”

  “Ten-four. Five’ll get you ten they’re putting them in a squeeze. The uglies will have people coming up from the south, Ben. Bet on it.”

  “No bet. Go to translator, Shark. Beth!” he shouted. “I need you in here.”

  She took the headset.

  “Tell Ike he’s got to clear the Holland Tunnel.”

  She spoke in fast Yiddish. Listened. Smiled. Turned to Ben. “General Ike says up yours, too. But if Great Commander orders, so be it. Wants to know why.”

  “I’m ordering all our friendlies in New Jersey to swing toward the Bergen Turnpike and head south for Hoboken and the tunnel. That’s the only tunnel Ike has in his sector that’ll do our people across the river any good.”

  “General Ike says ten-four and all that happy crap, sir.”

  “Relay my orders to all friendlies across the river, Beth.” That done, Ben said, “Order all our heavy guns to the waterfront, Beth. Tell Gene Savie to have his people start spotting for us; call in the rounds. Tell Georgi to stay on the east side of one-nine. I’m going to be dropping in everything I’ve got west of it. Tell Georgi to throw up a line of defense around the tunnel. It’s going to take Ike some time to clear it. Tell our people to grab their butts and hold on.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Across the river, Thermopolis looked at Rosebud. “Well, dear, you always wanted to see the Big Apple. You’re getting your wish.”

  It was fortunate for Thermopolis that his son had put straight pipes on the VW Bug, for Rosebud’s reply would have wilted a field of wildflowers.

  Her husband did catch the gist of it, however, and smiled.

  Emil had been separated from his hearse when the bug-out began and now found himself crowded into the back of a bob truck with a bunch of Russians. “Never fear,” he shouted above the roaring of the engine and the whip of wind. “In the noble words of Churchill: ‘We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. . . . we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender’!”

  The Russians politely applauded.

  Tina and her Scouts were leading the wild ride down to the tunnel, her battalion right behind her. Buddy and his company had elected to bring up the rear of the long column, fighting a rear-guard action as the beleaguered troops smashed their way to their only hope for staying alive.

  All of the friendly troops in New Jersey heard the shells from the Rebels in Manhattan as they began whistling overhead and landing west of the column.

  “Come on!” Ben said to Jersey and Beth. “I’m not sitting in this damn office another minute.”

  Ben had grabbed his battle harness and Thompson and was out the door before anyone could say a word.

  “Hold down the fort,” Beth said to Jerre. “And think about those cows.”

  Jerre shook her head. “Right. Cows.”

  On the street, Cooper slid the Blazer to a halt, Beth and Jersey jumped in the back, and Ben got in the front. “Where to, General?”

  “The bridge.” He busied himself with a map. “That’s well within the range of our one-fifty-fives. That’s about all we can use up here. But Ike can use his One-oh-fives and Eighty-ones from his location. But it’s going to be damn close. Beth, tell Ike’s gunners to start laying down a field of fire. Keep it all west of One-nine.”

  “Those Eighty-ones got a max of thirty-six hundred meters,” Jersey muttered. “That’s gonna be cuttin’ it fine.”

  “I know, Jersey.”

  “General Ike on the horn” Beth said.

  Ben picked up his mike. “Go, Ike.”

  “Man, the air in this tunnel is rank, brother. I got people workin’ to hook up portable generators so we can get some of these fans goin’. I’m only going to try to clear one side, Ben — one lane. We’re lookin’ at a mile and a half of solid black. Cars and trucks abandoned all over the goddamn place. And we got rats down here damn near as big as hogs!”

  “Give a time estimate, Ike. Right off the top of your head.”

  “If our folks on the other side can lend a hand, and we work shifts around the clock . . . forty-eight hours, Ben. We can’t use explosives down here; the stalled cars and trucks are gonna have to be winched out of the way. Ben, there is no evidence the creepies have used this tunnel in any way. The air down here is poisonous and possibly explosive. We can’t risk a spark until we get the fans workin’.”

  “Ten-four, Ike.”

  South of the George Washington Bridge, Ben instructed his gunners. “Work them until the barrels melt, people. We’ve got to help keep the creepies west of One-nine.”

  “Yes, sir. Savie’s people are right on the mark in calling the shots. They report that the night crawlers have halted their eastward push.”

  “Very good.”

  “General?” Beth handed him the mike. There was no point in continuing the use of translators now. The Night People knew what was coming their way. “Tina.”

  “How goes it, girl?”

  “We lost a few on the way, but that was expected. We’re setting up our own mortars and heavy stuff now. Buddy and his people have set up just north of the tunnel, along with Thermopolis and Emil’s people. I think we can hold until the tunnel is cleared.”

  “All right, girl. Hang tough. Eagle out.” Ben motioned his team back away from the 155’s, just going into action. The roaring of the big guns made any type of conversation impossible.

  “Order the CP moved down here, Beth. Have a building over on Fort Washington Avenue cleared for me. It’s going to be a long forty-eight hours for us. But not nearly as long for us as it will be for our people trapped over there.”

  FOURTEEN

  For Ike and his teams under the river, it was slow going clearing the tunnel while above them, the shells whistled across the waters and slammed into New Jersey.

  In the tunnel, the men and women were forced to work in gas masks until the engineers could get the ventilation system back in operation. Without any type of maintenance for more than a decade, the twin tubes of the tunnel were showing signs of deterioration. Before any clearing could be started, pumps had to be brought in to suck up the stinking pools of water that had gathered over ten years of leakage.

  And t
he rats sat like big cats above the Rebels, on the catwalks, watching every move, not one bit afraid, their naked snaky tails twitching back and forth. It was a bit unnerving for the workers.

  “Ten more years,” Ike muttered, the words unheard through his mask, “this place won’t be here.”

  A blast of cold air dried the sweat from the faces of the men and women.

  A grimy-faced Rebel walked up to Ike. “We got the suction pumps working again, General. But we had to divert the outside air to straight in. The expansion boxes under here,” he stomped the road bed, “are all screwed up. What we’re gonna do, once the suction pulls the bad air out, is set up a series of stations, so to speak, using fire hoses to channel the air around. It still isn’t gonna be real pleasant, but it’ll beat the hell out of before.”

  Ike nodded and slapped the man on the back. “Stay with it. Tell me when we can safely cause some sparks in here. We gotta start winching these rust-buckets out of the way.”

  “Doctor Holly’s people said it was OK now. They’ve tested the air for about three thousand feet in,” he waved toward the darkness that yawned westward, “and they haven’t found any signs of methane.”

  Conversation soon became impossible over the squalling and shrieking of metal against concrete as the long-abandoned cars and trucks were pulled out, towed out, or shoved to one side of the tunnel.

  A Rebel backed a bob truck up to where Ike was standing in the middle of a lane. “More extension cords, General. But some of them are dry-rotted. Gonna have to be stretched out and taped.” He grinned. “Wonder what the record is for the world’s longest extension cord.”

  “All the way under and across the Atlantic Ocean,” Ike said. “In a manner of speaking.”

  “No kidding?” the young man asked. “What’d they use it for?”

  “So Mama Leone in Milan could talk to her son in Brooklyn. Come on, let’s get back to work.”

  “Must have been a hell of an expensive phone call,” the young man muttered, walking away.

  * * *

  They had cleared a thousand feet of tunnel by nightfall, another five hundred by midnight. The lights were a problem: faulty extension cords were always going out, sparking briefly in the dampness.

  And Ike had gotten tired of the rats and assigned a squad to rat patrol . . . armed with pump-up pellet guns.

  “First one of you that misses and shoots me in the butt is gonna be in trouble,” he warned with his ever-present grin.

  At midnight, Ben ordered Ike out and to get some rest.

  By dawn, the Rebels had cleared three thousand feet closer to the friendlies trapped in New Jersey.

  Over on the New Jersey side, American, Canadian, and Russian were working just as steadily, but much slower, since they could not run into the nearest store and pick up extension cords and sockets and light bulbs. Teams were sent in as far as Bergen Avenue, on a scrounging mission and to set up as many booby traps as they could.

  The whistle and crash of the shelling continued all night, but at staggered intervals, and not nearly so heavy. Ben was letting his people in New Jersey handle most of it with mortars and 90mm and 40mm cannon fire. The Rebels’ big guns across the river would pick it up again at dawn, when Savie’s spotters could see.

  “It’s going to happen at any moment,” Ben muttered, glancing at his watch just after he had ordered Ike to get some rest.

  “What’s gonna happen, General?” Jersey asked.

  “The creepies are going to pop up and come pouring across the line from Spuyten Duyvil in the north and from University Heights and Morris Heights and High Bridge from the east. That is what I’d forgotten. Passaic brought it back to me. The Night People don’t just live underground here in Manhattan. They’ve been tunneling for years; five or ten or fifteen miles in all directions in New Jersey and over in Brooklyn and up north of us. Maybe even fifty or a hundred years, growing in strength. Beth, use translators on this, and get me our people at the bridges up north.”

  “Got them, sir.”

  “Tell them heads up and go on full alert. Advise Ike’s people to do the same. Prepare for a mass attack. They’re going to be coming up from under us and from all directions. They’re going to be coming out of buildings and out of the subways, across the bridges and by water. And I think they’re going to hit us with everything they’ve got — try to shock us, hurt us bad. Hold. Those are my orders. Tell everybody to hold until we get those people out of New Jersey. And tell what Rebels are still over in Brooklyn to bug out and get over here, pronto.

  “Tell our Dusters and Big Thumper people and heavy machine gunners to lower down and stack up the bodies until they can’t see over them. Everybody on the line, Beth. Tell the cooks and the intel people and the walking wounded to fall out and draw weapons.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “When you’ve done that, you and Jersey and Cooper get some sleep.” Ben tossed a sleeping bag into the back of a deuce-and-a-half and crawled in and closed his eyes. He opened one eye and looked at Jersey. “Wake me up when the action starts.”

  Then he went to sleep.

  They hit at four o’clock in the morning, wave after wave after human wave of stinking, black-robed, screaming Night People. They poured across the Williamsburg Bridge, the Manhattan Bridge, and the Brooklyn Bridge from the east. They came chanting and shouting in a suicide run across the High Bridge, the Alexander Hamilton, the Washington, and the University Heights Bridge. From the north, they came in a dark fury from Spuyten Duyvil.

  Jersey grabbed Ben’s boot through the sleeping bag and shook it. “They’re here, sir. All over the damn place.”

  “Advise the crews in the tunnels to keep working and the gunners to remain in place. They’ll resume shelling across the river at dawn.” Ben slipped out of his sleeping bag and picked up his Thompson.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Get Ike up. Nothing like starting the morning listening to his bitching.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Ben pointed to one of his bodyguards. “See that subway entrance over there, son?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I want two M-60’s right here. There’s gonna be bogies coming out of that hole in the ground at any moment. Let’s be ready for them.”

  To Beth, it seemed that they were completely surrounded by hostile fire.

  “Steady now, Beth,” Ben patted her on the shoulder. “We’ve been in worse spots than this.”

  She looked at him through serious brown eyes. “When and where, sir?”

  Ben laughed. “Good question, Beth.”

  Night People came out of the subway entrance in a rush, bringing conversation to an end as the immediate night was shattered by automatic weapons fire from the bipodded M-60’s.

  “Lob some grenades in there,” Ben ordered. He did not have to specify what type, since the Rebels almost exclusively used their own version of the Fire-Frag, possibly the deadliest grenade ever manufactured.

  The yowls of pain springing from the subway opening offered living, and dying, proof of the Fire-Frag’s effectiveness. No more creepies came from that hole.

  Ben’s presence was a solid one in the midst of what appeared to be mindless chaos. He squatted down beside the deuce-and-a-half and quietly pulled his besieged Rebels together.

  “Hold your positions, people,” he radioed. “We no longer have an identifiable front. It may seem that you’re cut off for a time. Just stay low and hold what you’ve got. The creepies may be all around you, but so are your friends. Don’t shoot at shadows; make damn certain of your targets. Repeat: all Rebels maintain your positions. Hold!” To Beth: “Tell Katzman to keep issuing those orders. Make sure every station understands.”

  A bullet wanged very close to Ben’s head, knocking a hole in the bed of the truck. He lifted his walkie-talkie. “This is Eagle. We have bogies on the rooftops. Let’s start clearing them. I need a Duster at Fort Washington and One Hundred and Seventy-third.”

  A quick little Duster roun
ded the corner, lifted its twin 40mm guns, and began blasting, the rounds directed just below the rooftops, while the machine gunner added to the death-dealing with .50-caliber slugs.

  “Shark to Eagle.”

  Beth handed Ben the mike. “Go, Shark.”

  “Our situation is sorta crappy down here, Eagle. We got bogies coming out of holes where there ain’t supposed to be holes.”

  “That’s ten-four, Shark. Same here. I have ordered all Rebels to hold their positions. Stand tough, Ike.”

  “Ten-four, Eagle. Cec is out of the hospital and has resumed command in his sector. Work is continuing well under the water.”

  “Ten-four. Eagle out.” Ben shifted positions, working his way under the truck, Jersey and Beth and Cooper with him. Beth was practically on top of him. Ben grinned at her. “My, isn’t this cozy?”

  Slugs whined and howled off the street. Beth said, “I have come to the conclusion that cows ain’t so bad, after all.”

  “You’d miss all the excitement, Beth.”

  “Probably,” she admitted glumly.

  The actions of the Rebels confused the Night People. They had expected the Rebels to run, to regroup, to attempt the setting up of a defined front from which to fight.

  When the Rebels did not run, but chose instead to hold their positions and fight only when directly confronted, the creepies became disorganized. This was not what the Judges had told them would happen.

  But theirs was an autocratic society, not a democratic system, albeit a shared dictatorship. The Judges were the law, the first and last word, and all must obey.

  The Night People ducked back into their holes just as gray began pushing the blackness into murky light.

  Ben slipped out from under the truck. “Get me reports, Beth. Let’s see how we fared.”

  Not bad, he thought, after all stations had reported. A lot better than he had expected, considering all the confusion that had reigned for a time.

  “Sir?” Beth said. “Savie’s people are reporting the creepies are once more advancing toward the tunnel.”

  “Tell the gunners to resume shelling. And get me Ike, please.”