Slaughter in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  “Probably,” Ben said, climbing in and relieving the man helping the others inside. He looked behind him and was startled to find that he could not see the cave.

  The others around him laughed. “It’s like one of those trick rooms you used to find in carnivals along the midway, general,” one said. “You can only see the entrance when standing in one narrow spot. Anywhere else you stand, it’s blocked.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Ben muttered, angling around several times and still unable to see the second entrance to the huge cavern.

  Once everybody was out of the subway tunnel and in the cavern, Ben prowled around the enormous room, finding half a dozen smaller caves around the base of the large one.

  “Be careful about going in any of those, general,” Greg warned from across the cavern. “They’re endless, and we have lost one person in them.” He grimaced. “He never came out.”

  “I will certainly keep that in mind,” Ben said, peering into the darkness of the smaller cave.

  Ben did not stick his head out of the cave for nearly 36 hours. He could neither transmit nor receive by radio, so he did not know what was going on up top. Finally, just after noon on the second day in the tunnels, he could take no more of it.

  “I’m going topside,” he told Judy. “I’ve got to find out what’s going on.”

  She nor any of the others made any move to stop him, but Ben could tell none of them thought much of the idea.

  Ben picked up his CAR and backpack. He looked at the group. “Don’t send anyone out looking for me. If I don’t return, write me off. But stay safe.”

  Ben left the cave without another word. He walked the tracks until he came to the old station. There he squatted down for a few moments, listening. He could hear nothing and could smell no telltale odor of creeps.

  Ben walked through the silent and littered old station and climbed the steps to ground level, emerging into a very overcast day, the low clouds threatening rain. There, he squatted down again and listened, breathing deeply of the air. Truth was, Ben despised caves. He had always suspected that he might be a bit claustrophobic.

  The late afternoon air smelled of smoke; the park had really taken a hammering from Rebel artillery.

  Ben slipped into the ruins of an old building and climbed the rickety steps to what remained of the second floor. There he knelt down under the open sky and called in.

  “This is Eagle. Come in.”

  “Go Eagle,” came Corrie’s familiar and welcome voice.

  “Everything OK here. Give me a report from your end.”

  “Plans to assault your position delayed due to build-up of punks on mainland. Don’t know where they came from. Believe they may have been in hiding, waiting to spring the trap on us. Can you hold?”

  “For a few more days.”

  “Are you in a position to receive a drop?”

  “Negative. What about the park?”

  “We creamed it. Aerial recon shows hundreds of punks dead and wounded. Can you give me a position?”

  “East side of the park. About five or six blocks from the waterfront.”

  “Can you and your group make it to Roosevelt Island?”

  “Negative. Too many kids and elderly. Too risky.”

  “Understood, Eagle.”

  “I’m going to do some recon. I’ll get back to you in a few hours.”

  “That’s ten-four, Eagle.”

  “Eagle out.”

  Ben spent the next twenty or so minutes scanning everything he could see through binoculars. He picked up the thin tentacles of cook fires north, east and south, but none very close to his position, and that puzzled him. He thought about that for a moment, then shook his head, unable to figure it out. He carefully climbed back down the steps to ground level, and staying in the ruins of the old building, he secured everything on his person that might clink or rattle and stepped into the alley.

  He walked east until the alley ended on what was left of a street. Ben slipped through the ruins of long-deserted buildings until he reached the end of the block. There, he looked hard for anything that might be left of a street marker. Nothing.

  “Shit!” he muttered, thinking it would be really nice to know his exact location.

  The Rebels had really done a number on Manhattan several years back. Their artillery had leveled some blocks down to street level, but surprisingly, other blocks had survived, with some buildings virtually unscathed.

  Ben entered one of the buildings that had survived—at least several stories of it had—and began an inspection of the place. There was no odor of creeps to be sniffed out, and he could detect no other sign of human inhabitation.

  “Interesting,” he muttered. “Odd, but interesting.”

  He spent a good 45 minutes carefully going over the four stories of the building. The top two floors on the west side of the structure had great gaping holes blown in them, so inspecting that part of the building didn’t take long.

  Looking around on the second floor, Ben was amused to find the front section of the Sunday edition of a New York newspaper. He sat down and read all the news that was fit to print from a decade past. Even though the news was over ten years old, the writing still did nothing to enhance his opinion of the newspaper.

  Ben laid the paper aside just as he heard footsteps on the floor below, then voices.

  “I tell you I seen somebody movin’ around, man.”

  “I think you’re full of shit, Ned. I think you’re seein’ things that ain’t there.”

  Ben had not brought his lead pipe and now looked around for something to use as a club. He did not want to open fire unless it was absolutely necessary, for that would bring the punks running from all directions. He spotted a broken length of two-by-four amid all the crap on the floor and scooped it up, pressing back against the wall and waiting.

  “I hope it’s one of them cunts from the park,” the first voice said in a whisper, as he stood on the second floor landing. “There was some fine lookin’ pussy in that bunch.”

  “Now that I agree with you about.”

  “And this one ain’t armed, neither.”

  “How do you know that, smart-ass?”

  “’Cause they’d be shootin’ at us by now if they was.”

  “Good point, Ned.”

  Ned stuck his head into the room and Ben whacked him in the face, sending the man sprawling back onto the landing and tumbling down the old steps.

  “Shit!” the second man yelled, just as Ben stepped out of the room and swung the two-by-four from right to left. The heavy board caught the punk on the side of the head and he dropped like a concrete block, one side of his head indented.

  Ben did not need their weapons, but he took them anyway, along with their full magazine pouches. He left the men for the rats and exited the building out the back. A block away he cached the weapons in a building and kept on walking.

  He stopped and was looking over the devastation of the city when his eyes caught movement in the ruins of a building. A blown-out window on the second floor. He quickly slipped behind the cover of a jagged fence that had once been a brick wall and slipped along behind it until reaching the back of the building. Ben chanced a quick look and sure enough, his eyes had not fooled him. There was the figure of a person looking out, but looking out toward the front of the building, not toward the rear.

  The figure disappeared and Ben ran across the alley, through the ruins of another building, then out the back. He began a slow and careful circling until he had reached the rear of the building where the person—or persons, he cautioned—was lying in wait.

  They had the high ground, and with that advantage, they could take Ben down with one well-placed shot. He had to take them out. Providing, of course, “they” were hostile. And at this point, he didn’t know that for sure.

  Ben slipped carefully through the destruction, every few seconds lifting his eyes to scan the rear of the suspect building. He had not seen any further movement. The ra
in had turned to a light drizzle, not much more than a mist.

  There were half a dozen rusted-out and burned hulks of cars in a parking area in the rear of the building, and about 50 or so feet of relatively clear area between Ben and the cars. Ben caught his breath, then ran to the protection of the old vehicles. There, he scanned the rear of the building from top to bottom, then ran to the rear wall. He could hear the faint murmur of voices coming from inside, one of the voices definitely female. The voices seemed to be in argument. After a moment they faded into silence.

  He heard the careful whisper of feet, then a female head popped out of the window about a foot from him. Ben stuck the muzzle of the CAR against her face and said, “Just take it easy, lady, and talk to me.”

  “I’ll talk to you, you bastard!” a man’s voice came from behind Ben. “I’ll blow holes in you.”

  “Then she’s surely dead,” Ben replied, as calmly as possible, considering the circumstances. “My finger’s on the trigger. No matter how many times you get lead in me, reflex will still pull this trigger. Think about that.”

  “Don’t do anything stupid, Jeff!” the woman with Ben’s CAR stuck in her ear said. “Easy, now. This guy doesn’t look like a gang member to me.”

  “I’m not,” Ben said. “But who the hell are you people? Talk to me, dammit!”

  “OK, OK!” the woman said. “Back off, Jeff. Back off, I say!”

  “Backing off,” the voice behind Ben said.

  “Come around front so I can see you,” Ben told him.

  Ben guessed the woman to be around thirty, and when the man stepped into view, Ben could see he was about the same age. Both man and woman were reasonably clean, considering how they had to live. Their clothing had certainly seen better days and they both wore black scarves around their necks. Gang colors? Ben questioned. He thought not. But he’d give them a test.

  “Damn punks!” Ben snarled at them.

  “No, sir,” Jeff said. “We’re not gang members. Well . . .” he hesitated. “There is a group of us, but we’re not part of any of the thugs who have taken over the ruins.”

  Ben did some fast visual checking. Jeff was carrying a bolt action rifle; at first glance it appeared to be in the .270 range. The muzzle of the rifle the woman carried, sticking out of what used to be a window, appeared to be no larger than a .22.

  Ben took a chance and lowered his CAR, stepping back a couple of feet. “My name is Ben Raines, commanding general of the SUSA Rebels. You people want to talk to me?”

  “Holy Mother of God!” the woman whispered. “Ben Raines!”

  Jeff stared at Ben for a moment. Then nodded his head. “It’s him, Sue. It’s really him! I’ve seen his picture.”

  The sky opened up and the rain began falling; a cold rain for this time of year. Ben looked up, the fat drops splashing on his face. The raindrops felt good. He cut his eyes to Jeff. “I’ve got some real coffee in my pack.” He smiled. “How about we step inside and have a cup?”

  “Honest-to-God real coffee?” Jeff questioned.

  Ben smiled. “Honest-to-God real coffee.”

  “General, you’re a saint!” the woman said.

  Ben laughed. “I know some chaplains who would give you an argument about that.”

  FOURTEEN

  Jeff and Sue savored the odor of coffee for a few seconds before taking a sip. “My God, that’s good,” Sue said. “That’s the first real coffee we’ve had in years.”

  “Good,” Jeff agreed, a smile on his face. He held up one of the hi-energy bars Ben had given him and the smile faded. “But these . . .”

  Ben laughed at him. “They really don’t taste very good, do they? But they will keep you alive, if not happy.” Ben looked at the couple for a moment. “Want to tell me about yourselves and how you got on this rock, and why?”

  “Getting into Manhattan is easy,” Sue said. “We came over by boat. About six months ago.”

  “You have boats?” Ben asked.

  “Not anymore,” Jeff replied. “We did have five. Five pretty good-sized boats we found over on the Jersey side. We landed and came ashore. Thirty of us. We just wanted to look around some. We’ve been hiding out up in the New Hampshire White Mountains for several years. Then we heard the wars were over and the country was being split up into political sections. We came out of hiding and got this far.” He shook his head. “Truth is, we got stupid, I guess.” He lifted his tin cup and Sue took it.

  “We didn’t leave guards behind with the boats. And when we got back to the waterfront, the boats were gone. We were stuck. Then the gangs started pouring in here and we’ve been running and hiding ever since. We knew there was a large group of people living in and around the park, but we didn’t know how to approach them. We didn’t know what kind of people they were. One of our people surprised a group of them out on some kind of patrol one day, and they opened fire on him. Since then, we’ve stayed far away from them.”

  “There are thirty of you?”

  “Yes,” Jeff replied. “All adults. There are six couples, married. Well . . . paired off, I guess you’d have to say. We had a ceremony, but not with a minister.” He smiled. “We took turns marrying each other.”

  “That’ll work,” Ben said. “But we have chaplains with us if you’d like to do it over sometime.”

  “We’d like that,” they both said.

  Ben stood up and stretched. “Let’s go meet your people and make some plans.”

  “About getting out of Manhattan?” Sue asked.

  “About staying alive until we can,” Ben replied.

  The members of the newest group of survivors were all about the same age, in their early to mid thirties. Ben guessed—as it turned out, accurately—that the bunch had been together for years, probably since their teens, and that most were from the same area of the country.

  Ben had brought enough coffee with him so that each of them could at least have a couple of swallows of the real stuff. They trapped birds and squirrels for food, and had even eaten rat. They offered Ben some fried rat. He refused as politely as possible.

  “How about other groups in the ruins?” Ben asked.

  “There were about a dozen or so when we first got here,” a man who had been introduced as Rob said. “Then the gangs of thugs began arriving and killing them off. They killed the men and took the women. I’d guess there are no more than . . . oh, 150 people left, max, who aren’t aligned with the gangs.”

  “The women they seized, are they still alive?”

  “If that’s what you want to call it,” a woman named Janet said. “They’re slaves. The gangs trade them back and forth. The children too. There are . . . perverts among the gangs who prefer boys as sex objects. If you know what I mean.”

  Ben knew, and it never failed to fill him with the deepest of disgust. “I know,” he said, his words soft but edged with rage. He looked at the group for a moment, meeting every eye. “I’m surprised you people have survived as long as you have.”

  “We move often,” a man called Al said. “And we’ve been doing this for a long time, general. We’ve been on our own since we were teenagers. We were all attending private schools in the Northeast when the Great War hit us. The schools were about ten miles apart. We knew each other through dances and debating societies and so forth. We work well together. Leaving our boats unguarded was one of the few times we really acted stupid.”

  “You searched the waterfront area?”

  “As best we could,” Sue said. “We know they’re hidden down there somewhere. But that’s a big area to search.”

  “The punks didn’t walk on water to get here,” Ben said, as much to himself as to the others. “The boats are hidden somewhere. We just have to find them.”

  Ben stood up and paced the room for a moment, then turned to the group. “I’ll level with you—we’ve got to get off this rock and do it quickly. When my people launch their next assault, it’s going to be all-out. Those are my orders. When the assault starts, I can
keep the artillery away from us, but it won’t take the punks long to figure out our general location. We’re also running out of supplies. I want to find as many of the survivors trapped on this rock as possible. I don’t want innocent deaths on my hands. Can you contact these groups?”

  “Some of them, sure,” Jeff said. “But whether they’ll believe us is another matter. They’re pretty suspicious.” He shrugged. “Who can blame them?”

  “Then do it,” Ben said. “I’m going to contact my people on the mainland and see just how much time we’ve got. In war, timetables are subject to revision very quickly.”

  They sure were. In only a matter of a few hours, the tides of war had shifted dramatically.

  “We’ve got the punks on the run, Ben,” Ike told him. “It won’t be long, maybe two, three days max before we’re ready to hit the ruins of the city. Do you want us to come get you?”

  “Negative, Ike. The gangs are expecting something like that and they’ll be ready, you can bet on it. What they aren’t expecting is for us to locate the hidden boats and try an escape from this side. Give us three days, and then launch the assault.”

  “All right, Ben. But even if you find the boats, you’re going to have a lot of open water to cross. In very small boats.”

  “I know. Continue with your plan to assault the ruins, Ike. Whether we make it out or not. That’s the way I want it OK?”

  “All right, Ben.” Ike’s reply was tinged with sadness, but Ben knew the ex-SEAL wouldn’t hesitate to carry out the orders. “But if you can’t get out in time, I want an exact location from you.”

  “I’ll try, Ike. I can’t promise anything. Just stay ready for anything. You hear me?”

  Ike could read a lot in that last remark. “All right, Ben.”

  “Good luck, Ike.”

  “Same to you, Ben. Shark out.”

  At dark, Ben led the second band of survivors to the various places where he had earlier cached all the weapons and ammo he could not carry. On the way, he showed them the fine art of silent killing by taking out two more punks. Now a full third of the new people were armed with either M-16s or AK-47s, and had ample ammunition for those weapons.