Slaughter in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  “Is that a fact?” Ben said. “Well, we’re going to be using your old airport for a few days. We’ll try not to bother you. If any of you need medical care, we have doctors who will see to your needs. We’ll be set up at the airport.” He turned to his team. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  The Rebels stayed in the area for a few days, first making the local airport useable, then resupplying. The doctors saw to the needs of the few citizens who showed up (it was obvious that the locals did not trust the Rebels, which suited Ben just fine; he didn’t care for the citizens either), and then the battalions moved out toward the east.

  Ike kept his battalions south of Ben, but staying just far enough north to avoid the ruins of Washington. Georgi’s battalions stayed to the north, stretched out north to south, working from the shore line of Lake Ontario, down to near Ben’s more central route through the state.

  At Altoona, Ben found several thousand people who had refused to let their town die. They had fought off punks and creeps and rebuilt out of the ashes until they had a thriving community of shops and farms. The roaming gangs of thugs left their area alone, as did the creeps. They wanted no part of the Rebel philosophy, and Ben didn’t push the issue. There, the Rebels had medical supplies flown in for the residents—they had doctors, but few medicines—rested for a time, then moved on.

  Ben pulled in several other battalions, until they had created a wall of troops, running north to south, giving the creeps and thugs no escape except to the east. Scouts, ranging far ahead of the main body of Rebels, reported that the punks were on the run, hardly stopping anywhere except to rest and then keep on running.

  Ben got in touch with several Canadian militia groups and told then what was happening. The Canadians then stretched their people out along the St. Lawrence, patrolling day and night, preventing any large number of gang members from crossing over.

  Ben was herding the creeps and punks and thugs like cattle, moving them slowly eastward until the day they had the ocean to their backs, and Raines’ Rebels facing them.

  Then would come the final showdown.

  “We’re going to hit New Brunswick and Nova Scotia in the fall or early winter,” Beth pointed out one day. “I am not looking forward to wintering in that climate.”

  Ben smiled. “Before that happens, we’ll stretch out in towns north to south running from the Canadian border down to the Atlantic to keep the punks from slipping through, and wait them out until spring. But I don’t think we’ll have to wait that long. By that time the punks will be short on supplies and many of them will surrender rather than starve or freeze to death. We’ll deal with the hard core in the spring. What’s left of them,” he added with a grim smile. “After the winter, they won’t be in very good shape to put up much of a fight.”

  Ben had long had the reputation of being one of the dirtiest guerrilla fighters on the face of the earth. He would offer his enemies surrender and hope (or a quick death), but if they chose to fight, he would show them absolutely no compassion.

  “Scouts reporting a small band of outlaws five miles ahead,” Corrie said. “Forty to 50 men and women and a few children. They’ve stacked their weapons in the middle of the road and stuck up several white flags. They’ve reported by CB radio that they’ve had it. And they know of several other groups who want to pack it in.”

  “What about a set-up?” Ben questioned.

  “The scouts say negative. They’re in rough shape. And the scouts have been in contact with our people in records. This bunch is not on the list as being hard core.”

  “It’s beginning,” Ben said, after a moment. “And it’s happening much sooner than I expected. We’re pushing them so hard they can’t rest and do much scrounging for food. Tell the scouts we’re on the way.” Ben chuckled. “By spring we’ll have the entire eastern half of the nation relatively clean of gangs.”

  “And then, boss?” Jersey asked.

  “We turn around and head west, and deal with Mister Simon Border.”

  FOUR

  In his Rocky Mountain home, Simon Border frowned as he stared at a map that traced the movements of Ben Raines and the Rebels. Raines was moving fast, much faster than Simon had ever imagined he would, or could.

  Simon’s frown turned into a bitter smile as he thought, You underestimated the man, and you knew never to do that. It’s dangerous to underestimate Ben Raines. People who make that mistake usually end up dead.

  Simon relaxed a bit. The fleeing thugs would be forced to turn and make a stand sometime, possibly this late fall or winter. Simon had at least that long to make up his mind what to do about Ben. Simon knew his followers wanted a fight. But picking a fight with Ben Raines was very low on Simon’s priority list. People who picked fights with Ben Raines and the Rebels always lost.

  But, Simon reflected, perhaps the non-aggression pact he had signed with Ben would be honored.

  Then Simon chuckled.

  He knew as well as Ben that document was worthless the instant the ink dried.

  But . . . if he could keep his people from making forays across the border into the NUSA and the SUSA—especially the latter—he might be able to prolong the inevitable for months, or even years. By that time, his own army would be so powerful Raines might be forced to think twice before attacking.

  That was certainly something to hope and pray for.

  And there was something else Simon would pray most fervently for: the death of Ben Raines.

  As the Rebels advanced slowly but steadily eastward, they encountered only a few pockets of resistance. Citizens who came out to greet them said there had been a mass exodus of gangs of thugs for over a month, all of them heading east. The gangs had been stealing all the canned goods and dried and smoked meat they could find.

  Ben offered to replenish what had been stolen, but the people politely refused.

  “We’re just glad to see you folks,” was the usual response. Then, with a smile, “Actually, when we heard the gangs were coming, we hid most of our food.”

  The Rebels set up MASH tents and gave shots and prescribed medications and did what they could. The people were grateful and gracious, but the majority made it clear they did not want to adopt the Tri-States’ form of government, preferring to stay with the NUSA. Ben respected that. He also made it very clear to the locals that he would tolerate no interference from them when it came to the Rebels’ methods of dealing with criminals. They were cleaning out the Northeast, and that was that.

  Some of them did not approve of the Rebels’ harsh methods, but they were wise enough not to interfere.

  The Rebels moved on.

  Ben swung several more of his battalions around to beef up the battalions working north of him, leaving the ruins of Philadelphia, and the states of New Jersey and Delaware to the battalions of Ike, Greenwalt and Buddy.

  For months Rebel intelligence had been receiving reports that what was left of New York City and Long Island were crawling (in some cases, literally crawling) with the most despicable types of humanity. Die-hard creeps, gangs of murderers, rapists, child molesters, and worse. Many, if not most, of the gang leaders that had attacked Base Camp One while the Rebels were in Europe had chosen to make the ruins of the city their last stand.

  And Ben and his 1 Batt were on a collision course with the sprawling ruins of the city that used to be called the Big Apple.

  Just west of the ruins of New York City, Ben brought his battalion to a halt and radioed in for resupplying. Those men and women in Ben’s beefed-up 1 Batt smiled and exchanged sly glances.

  They were going to peel the Big Apple, once and for all.

  Inside the ruined city and out on Long Island, the gang leaders met, as one put it, probably for many of them, for the last time.

  “We got no place left to run,” a gang leader said. “We made our choice to fight it out here, and here we are.”

  For months, while on the move east, the gang leaders had been stealing food from locals as they passed throug
h their towns. They had stockpiled containers of water. When they reached the city, they had worked around the clock reloading brass and making homemade bombs to use when their supply of grenades ran out. They had stolen millions of rounds of ammo during their brief occupation of parts of the SUSA, especially Base Camp One, in addition to grenades and mortar tubes and base-plates. When they had arrived at what for most would be their final destination, many had gone out on Long Island and planted gardens, canning the food for later use. They were ready for a siege.

  “The creeps won’t align with us,” Craig Franklin said. “They prefer to fight Raines on their own.”

  “Which is fine with me,” Rob “Big Tits” Ford, one of the few female gang leaders, said.

  Her brother, Hal, nodded his head in agreement. “I ain’t runnin’ from that son-of-a-bitch Raines no more,” he said. “I’ve had it.”

  “We’ve all had it,” Jack Brittain commented. “The only choice we have left us is how we choose to die, and I choose to die fighting that bastard Raines and his Rebels.”

  Ray Brown, the gang leader Ben had sworn to personally kill with his bare hands, said, “Our patrols all say that Raines is heading his 1 Battalion dead at us. This is gonna be nose-to-nose and personal between us and them.” He smiled, exposing surprisingly good teeth; most of the gang leaders had a mouth filled with rot. “I’m looking forward to it.”

  “Then you’re a fool, Ray,” Dale Jones said. “Ben Raines has swore to kill you personal, and he’ll do it, too.”

  “Best thing for you to do, when the time comes, and it’s coming, is to eat a pistol,” Thad Keel suggested. “Of us all, Raines is gonna be lookin’ hard for you.”

  “I won’t be hard to find,” Ray said. “I hope he does try me hand-to-hand. Ben Raines is a middle-aged man. I’ll take him apart.”

  Sandy Allen spat and said, “And you’ll shit if you eat regular, too. Raines ain’t no pussy, middle-aged or not. He’ll as soon cut your guts out as look at you. Especially you, Ray, on account of you killin’ his pet dogs.”

  Ray gave the speaker a dirty look, but let that part of the subject drop. Ray wasn’t afraid of Ben Raines. The man had to be at least 50 years old. Shit! Who the hell was scared of some 50-year-old? Not him. Over-The-Hill Raines, Ray thought with a smile. Yeah. That was a good name for Ben Raines. Over-The-Hill.

  “Raines and them will be here in about a week,” Sandy Allen said. “Ten days at the most. So any of you wants to cut and run, you’d better do it now.”

  That was met with cold stares from the several dozen gang leaders present in the underground chamber. Above them, the ruins of New York City lay in piles of twisted steel and rubble. The once towering skyscrapers had been halved by the relentless onslaught of Rebel artillery of years past. But an underground culture flourished beneath the piles of rubble, as Ben had suspected it would. Even though the Rebels had blown closed as many entrances to the miles and miles of tunnels beneath the old city as they could find, Ben knew that for every one they had sealed, supposedly trapping the punks and creeps, there was another entrance they had missed.

  Fly-bys clearly showed that hundreds of gardens had been cultivated out on Long Island, keeping the tunnel-dwellers beneath the city supplied with vegetables. The fly-bys also showed pens for hogs and cattle from one end of Long Island to the other. The rubble of the city and in the towns on Long Island might well have been filled with the absolute dregs of society, but the gangs weren’t stupid.

  And the gangs in the city and out on Long Island had laid aside any personal differences and banded together to fight the common enemy: Ben Raines and the Rebels.

  For one last time.

  * * *

  “Tanks will be useless in the city,” Ben told his company commanders and platoon leaders. “The streets are impassable for anything other than motorcycles and bicycles. We’re going to have to go into the city on foot, and slug it out on foot, taking the city block by block.”

  The faces of the COs and PLs remained impassive. The news came as no surprise to any of them; they just wanted to do it. All of them had lost friends and loved ones when the gangs invaded the old Base Camp One, and this was personal for them—intensely personal.

  “I’ve pulled in two companies from Buddy’s 8 Batt,” Ben continued. “Plus platoons from other battalions. Now, this is going to be a son-of-a-bitch, people, and I won’t kid you about it. Artillery will be practically useless, as will air support. This is going to be ‘grunt’ all the way. Some of these gangs have had years to get ready for us—and you’d better believe they are ready. Intel can’t give us any accurate number of the creeps we’ll be facing. We’re practically going in blind. We’re going to cross the river by boat and land in Battery Park, establish a firm foothold and a hospital, and then we spread out west to east, and start working north. And we’re going to do it slowly. If we gain 50 feet a day, that’s fine. But we’re going to do it right.

  “Ike has cut a path for us across New Jersey two miles wide and Tina’s people are holding the docks for us while boats and barges are on the way. Georgi’s people have cut off any escape to the north and they’re holding.” He smiled. “Manhattan and Long Island are all ours. Start drawing supplies and resting up. Because when we step ashore in Battery Park, there won’t be time for much rest.”

  Everyone present had noticed that Ben had replaced his old Thompson with the Colt M4 Carbine, 5.56-caliber. Empty, it weighed about half what his old Chicago Piano weighed, and thus enabled him to carry a lot more ammo. The M4 didn’t have the brute knock-down power of the old .45-caliber Thompson, but for this type of fighting, it was much more practical.

  No one made mention of it, but all had also noticed that Ben had sent Smoot back to Base Camp One for safekeeping. That was a clear sign that Ben expected a very vicious and prolonged fight.

  The way Ben felt about the gangs he was going after—the most vicious, cruel, and degenerate gangs left in North America—it might well turn into a slaughter.

  Craig Franklin, Frankie to his friends. Youngest son of a naval officer who turned bad before he was ten years old and started torturing to death neighborhood cats and dogs. Frankie felt the greatest thing ever to happen to him was when the world fell apart. Has spent the past few years raping and killing and torturing. His gang numbers several hundred strong.

  • Foster Payne, Fos to his friends. Now in his mid-thirties, Payne was a spoiled brat as a kid. His parents gave him everything he hollered for and more. When he was 15 he killed them both with a shotgun because they wouldn’t buy him a new Corvette. His gang numbers about 500 men and women.

  • Thad Keel, Killer to his friends. Killed his first victim when he was 12, a neighborhood girl . . . after he raped and sodomized her. He was 16 when the world blew apart and working on his fifth victim. He had never been caught. His parents suspected he had something to do with the killings, but they just couldn’t turn in their darling precious wonderful little dickhead to the cops. Just wasn’t done, you know? Killer’s gang numbers about 300.

  • Les Justice, not his real name, but if Les even remembered what his real name was, he never mentioned it. A natural-born cold-blooded killer out of northeast Louisiana. His gang numbers about 400 scum of the earth.

  • Jack Brittain, again, not his real name. Claimed to be from England, but no one believed him. Jack was vicious and cruel with his victims. His gang numbers about 300.

  • Jamal Lumumba, not his real name either. No one knew where Jamal was from, and few cared. He was a troublemaker even among his fellow gang members—about 400 of the most worthless dregs of humanity ever assembled in one place.

  • Beth Aleman, nicknamed Tootsie. A man-hater who ran a gang of the most vicious bunch of women ever gathered together. They all shared one thing in common, other than the obvious—they hated Ben Raines.

  • Abdullah Camal, the only friend of Jamal Lumumba, which was good for the both of them, because nobody liked Abdullah any better than they did Jam
al. Camal the Camel, as many gang leaders called him, led one of those gangs Ben and the Rebels had run out of Los Angeles years back. Abdullah blamed society for what he was. He had once filled out (more or less) an application for work with a high tech company in Southern California. When they wouldn’t hire him, much less make him a vice president (which was the position he wanted), he changed his name and vowed to make war on the racist government of the United States. About a month later the whole world fell apart and Abdullah was left wondering where his next meal was coming from. Didn’t take him long to figure out that stealing was a hell of a lot more fun than working. Abdullah’s gang numbers several hundred.

  • Karen Carr was the leader of one of the largest of all the gangs, numbering about 700 men and women. If Karen had any endearing qualities, none had ever been found during her relatively short but very violent tenure as a gang leader. Karen was so vicious and unpredictable, her male counterparts walked light around her.

  • A brother-and-sister team, Hal and Robbie Ford, ran another gang. Robbie was known affectionately as Big Tits. Both had been born and reared in a Christian home, by loving parents, in Memphis, Tennessee. When the world blew apart, Hal and Robbie were at a summer church camp. That same day, Hal and Robbie killed one of their camp counselors, stole his car, and left. Hal and Robbie had found their niche in life. Their gang numbers about 300.

  • Dale Jones, as a cop once observed, was a walking advertisement for the total legalization of abortion. By the time Dale was 15, and the world erupted in war, he had been arrested so many times the local police had a separate file cabinet just for his rap sheets. Dale’s gang numbers about 400.

  • No one knew where Mysterious Sandy Allen (not his real name) was from. His nickname was Spooky. Spooky bore a startling resemblance to a corpse, and had just about the same personality. Spooky liked to drink the blood of his victims. His gang numbers about 350.