Alone in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  “Hello, you old bastard!” Ike’s voice boomed out of the speaker. “You been behavin’ yourself?”

  Ben decided to level with his old and good friend. “It’s rough out here, Ike,” he admitted. “Damn warlords are everywhere.”

  “And naturally you’ve been avoiding them whenever possible?”

  Ben could not have possibly missed the sarcasm in Ike’s voice. “Of course, Ike.”

  “Bullshit. You always was a terrible liar. I won’t pull your leg, brother. You must know we’ve got a full combat platoon tracking you. Captain Nolan commandin’.”

  “I expected as much.” Nolan was part of Colonel Gray’s Scouts. Nolan and his people did not believe in taking prisoners.

  “Contrary to what you believe, Ben,” Ike said, “we can’t track you from here. But Captain Nolan can from his position. He’s giving us daily radio reports on how you and that little boy been kickin’ ass along the way. Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas. Ben, you got some rough ol’ boys trackin’ you. Three-four hundred strong. And pickin’ up more along the way. Don’t get yourself overloaded.”

  “Give me Nolan’s frequency just in case,” Ben said. “I promise if I get in a bind, I’ll yell for help.”

  “I’ll believe that when I see pigs flyin’,” Ike said to the radio operator. He gave Ben the frequency and the mike to Cecil, who had been summoned by a runner.

  “I don’t like what I’ve been hearing, Ben,” Cecil said. “Let me send just a squad to your location. They won’t get in your way, I promise.”

  “I won’t be nursemaided, Cec,” Ben said. “Bring me up to date on what’s happening at home.”

  “Told you,” Ike said to Cecil, after making sure the mike was off.

  “That hard-headed bastard!” Cecil said. “Ike, get in touch with Colonel Gray. I want a fully equipped combat company of Gray’s Scouts, with Dan leading them, on the way to Texas by first light.”

  “Done.” Ike left the radio room at a lope.

  In the truck Ben winked at Jordy. “They’re plotting something, son. I can feel it over the miles.”

  “If they are,” the boy replied, “it’s because they love you.”

  That sobered Ben. “I guess so, Jordy.”

  Cecil brought Ben up to date on the building of a new community and how things were progressing in Dyersburg. He said the people from Southeast Missouri had contacted the Base Camp and had requested a team of Rebels in. He had sent them. There had been no serious trouble to speak of.

  “All right, Cec,” Ben said. “You take care.”

  Before Cecil could respond, Ben clicked the set off.

  “How come you’re runnin’ away from them people, Ben?”

  “I’m not running away from them.”

  “You sure could have fooled me,” the boy replied.

  The house had obviously belonged to a practicing survivalist. Rani found cases of freeze-dried foods, and as many cases of military canned rations. The canned C-rations were dated 1996, with an expiration date that had years to go before running out.

  She founds cans of water and purification tablets, tents and sleeping bags and blankets and clothing. She turned to Robert.

  “How did you find this place, Robert? It obviously was well-concealed.”

  “The floor didn’t sound right when I walked over it,” the boy said. “Then I noticed that some of the tile didn’t look right.” He shrugged. “I pulled them up and there was the trapdoor.”

  She hugged him. “Thank you, Robert. You’ve probably saved our lives.”

  A more careful inspection of the bunker-type room below the house revealed a steel locker set in concrete. They looked all over the already ransacked house for the keys. Sandra, the seven-year-old, finally pointed to the keys, hanging on a peg by the side of the locker.

  The locker was filled with rifles, shotguns, pistols, and boxes of ammunition.

  “God bless survivalists,” Rani said.

  Cotton, a four-year-old boy, came stumbling down the steps, dragging a radio antenna behind him.

  “Did you take that from the truck, Cotton?” Rani asked.

  “No, ma’am,” the cotton-headed little boy said. “Got it from the ground.”

  “You got it from the ground?” Rani asked. “Show me, Cotton.”

  They trooped up the stairs and back into the sunlight. Cotton marched the group to a barren spot in the back yard.

  “Weeds and grass everywhere else,” Rani said. “But none on this spot. This is the spot, Cotton?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  The area he had pointed out was shoebox shaped, about twenty feet long and ten feet wide. And it was barren of grass or weeds.

  Rani walked across the spot several times. The ground felt soft beneath her shoes; it had a completely different feel from the ground around it.

  “Get me a shovel, somebody,” Rani said.

  She began digging and soon struck something solid. Further investigation revealed a sheet-metal top of some sort.

  “Help me, kids,” Rani said.

  The sheet-metal top covered the entire pit, and it took all of them to pry it up and tip it over. Rani started laughing at what the sunlight revealed.

  “The man actually buried a small truck,” Rani said.

  The compact pickup was covered with sheets of thick plastic. It sat almost-new-looking inside the wooden walls of the boxlike hole, concrete blocks holding the tires off the ground.

  Rani found a jack and took the truck down from its blocks. She checked the oil and battery and gas. The keys were in the ignition. She pumped the pedal a few times, once more for luck, then turned the key. The engine fired, caught, then died. She tried again. This time it roared into life. She dropped the truck into gear and went up the gradual incline the man had built.

  “We’re gonna make it, kids,” she said to herself. “We’re gonna make it. Please, God, let us make it.”

  “Yeah, tell ’em OK,” Campo said, speaking into his mike. “The more the merrier.”

  “What’s up?” West asked.

  “More fodder for the fire,” Campo told him. “Some ol’ boys named Cowboy Vic and Texas Red want to link up with us. We’re gonna meet tomorrow between Plainview and Lubbock, on the interstate.”

  “Not a bad idea,” West agreed. “We can cover a hell of a lot more ground this way. Send teams out all over the place. Then when we find Raines, we kill him—or maybe take him alive for trade—and get rid of the new guys.”

  “Sometimes you can make sense, West.”

  While Rani and the kids, with Robert driving the small truck, wound around county roads, finally coming to 669 and taking that south, Ben and Jordy bypassed Big Spring and set up camp for the night just a mile or so from the junction of Highways 669 and 350. Rani and the kids decided to spend the night at the deserted town of Luther.

  Ben and Rani, two of the most hunted people in Texas, were camped just six miles apart.

  “What do we head for next, Ben?” Jordy asked, warming his hands over a small fire.

  “Oh, I think we’ll head southwest, Jordy. Get on Interstate 20 and see where it takes us. That sound all right to you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Man and boy retired to their blankets early, both of them staring up into the starry skies.

  “Reckon what’s up there, Ben? You think they’s other people up there?”

  “Yes, I do, Jordy. I always have. Maybe not like us, but other lifeforms.”

  “If there is, reckon what they think about us? I mean, what we done to this world?”

  “They probably think we’re a bunch of damned idiots.”

  “I ‘bout got the hang of drivin’ that truck, Miss Rani,” Robert said. “Where do we head for in the morning?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “But I do want to get us down into south Texas for the winter. Get you kids healthy again.”

  “We’ll make it, Miss Rani,” the boy assured her. “What did you make of all that talk on the
radio about Mister Ben Raines, Rani?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t imagine General Raines out traveling by himself. I thought he and his people were in Tennessee or Georgia, setting up a new government out there.”

  “Well, even if he is out here, can’t nothing hurt Ben Raines,” Robert said.

  “He is flesh and blood, Robert,” Rani tried to dispel the rumors about Ben. “He is a human being. Not a god.”

  She knew what was coming next, and the boy did not disappoint her. “Then how come we seen all them shrines and things to Mister Raines?”

  The other children had gathered around, listening. For all except the very youngest had heard of the exploits of Ben Raines and his seemingly undefeatable Rebels.

  Rani had just completed her second year of college when the bottom had dropped out back in 1988, and for a moment, she was flung back in time.

  She had awakened that morning with a terrible headache. She was disoriented and unsteady on her feet. She looked across the bedroom she was sharing with her sister, and a scream boiled out of her throat.

  Her younger sister was on the floor, stiff and cold in death. Her face was twisted and blackened in death. She looked as though she had been dead for some time.

  Rani got to her feet and promptly fell down, her legs unable to support her. She crawled from the room, down the hall. The house was so still and quiet. She staggered to her feet and lurched into her parents’ bedroom. She had steeled herself as to what she might find.

  Both mother and father were dead, lying in bed. Blood had poured from nose, ears, and mouth, staining the whiteness of pillow.

  She backed out of the room, fear gripping her like a band across her chest.

  She jerked on a housecoat and stumbled into the living room, then out onto the porch. The scene that lay before her eyes was something out of a sci-fi thriller.

  Men and women and children lay scrawled on the street, all twisted in various shapes as death struck them and dropped them.

  Rani ran back into her house and, keeping her eyes averted from her sister’s body, she slipped into blue jeans, tennis shoes, and blouse. She backed her parents’ car out of the drive and slowly drove the streets. She could find no one alive.

  She still, after all these years, was not certain exactly what happened after that first day. Not for some time. She remembered driving until she ran out of gas. Then she wandered for days, maybe weeks; she still wasn’t certain. The death that lay in stinking heaps around her had numbed her mind. Perhaps that was the most merciful thing that could have happened to her. She had only very dim memories of being raped and abused. And she had no idea how she arrived a thousand miles from her home. But she did. Only then did she begin to be aware of her surrounding.

  And she never fully understood why she was spared when so many others died.

  “People lost faith,” Rani said quietly. “They just couldn’t believe that God would do something this awful to the human race. Many of them needed someone ... something they could see to worship. They found Ben Raines. This one human man that rose up out of the ashes and built a nation within a nation. Against all odds, he did it. He fought mutants, warlords, outlaws, and the entire central government of the United States ... and won. A lot of people thought him blessed, so to speak. But he is not a god, children. He is flesh and blood and bone. Just like us.”

  But she could tell by the expression on the children’s faces they were not convinced.

  “Have you ever met Ben Raines, Miss Rani?” Paul asked.

  “No.” She shook her head.

  “Then you don’t know for sure, do you?”

  “No,” Rani admitted. “I don’t know for sure.”

  14

  For just a fleeting moment, Ben thought of turning off the interstate and checking out Webb AFB at Big Spring. But he knew from experience what he would find. Nothing. The place would have been picked over a hundred times. And, he smiled, more than likely, most of the gear taken by my own people.

  Was it Webb AFB that Sergeant Buck Osgood and his small band of men had barricaded themselves in a concrete bunker against the hordes of mutant rats?3

  Ben couldn’t remember. He knew it had been someplace in Texas.

  He drove on past the exit sign for Webb AFB.

  “Got anyplace in particular you’d like to see, Jordy?” he asked.

  “Don’t know no place, Ben. Don’t make no difference, long as I’m seein’ it with you.”

  Ben grinned. “OK. Now say your ABC’s for me.”

  The boy got them all right—first try.

  Already, with three squares a day, the boy was gaining weight, filling out. The pinched look of poverty was leaving his face, and the boy was smiling more.

  “We make a pretty good team, don’t we, Jordy?”

  “Sure do, Ben. Are you gonna keep me?”

  “Am I going to what?”

  “Keep me.”

  Ben laughed. “Why, I haven’t given anything other than ‘keeping you’ any thought, Jordy. What did you think I was going to do—toss you out by the side of the road?”

  “Naw. I didn’t figure you’d do that. But nothing good ever lasts long. Not for nobody livin’ out here, anyways.”

  “Well, we’re going to last, Jordy. You and me. We’ll hole up this winter and I’ll teach you how to read and write—as best I can. Then, in the spring, we’ll head on back to Georgia and you’ll have a permanent home.”

  “With you, Ben?”

  “With me, Jordy.”

  “Is that a promise, Ben?”

  Ben ruffled his hair. “That’s a promise, boy.”

  “Close to five hundred men, Jake,” West said. “With more comin’ in. With five-six hundred salty ol’ boys, we could rule half of Texas if we played our cards right.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking, too,” Jake said. “And I know where to get more.”

  “Oh?” West looked at him.

  Jake motioned for his radioman to come over. “Get on the horn, Emmett. Tell the boys back in Tennessee to pack it up and come on out. Bring everything with them. We’ll set up a base camp right here and wait for them.”

  “The big push, boss?” Emmett said, an ugly smile on his face.

  “The big push, Emmett. And when we’re done using Ben Raines’ ass to wipe the sidewalk, we’re gonna rule Texas.”

  Rani and her bunch avoided the main highways, electing to stay on the secondary roads. They took Highway 33 south, but only managed to make about thirty miles the first day. A tire had blown out on the small truck, and Rani was forced to call a halt until she could locate a spare, then a hand pump to inflate the tube.

  Then bad gas forced them to spend a full day blowing out gas lines and siphoning the tanks dry. They were a weary and discouraged little band of travelers when they pulled into the outskirts of Ozona, Texas, to make camp for the night.

  Rani was very wary of towns, preferring the open skies for a roof whenever the weather permitted. Even though the nearby town appeared deserted, Rani was not going to take any chances. Not when they were this close to their final destination. She had made up her mind where they were going to winter. She had absolutely no idea what she might find there. But she was betting on one thing: there would be no people.

  And the winter would be mild. She picked up her map and looked at it.

  “Yes,” she said aloud.

  “You know where we’re goin’ now, Miss Rani?” Robert asked.

  “Terlingua,” she said.

  “What’s them things, Ben?” Jordy asked, pointing to a group of skeletal objects in what had once been a productive field.

  They were on Interstate 10, just outside of Fort Stockton, Texas.

  “Irrigation systems, Jordy. Not enough rainfall in this area, so the farmers brought water up from the ground for their crops.”

  “Why didn’t they just move where there was enough water?” the boy asked.

  “Lots of reasons, Jordy. This was their home, for one th
ing. And nobody likes to be forced from their home. For whatever reason.”

  “Even now, Ben? With all the land and houses just there? Would that still be true?”

  “Even now, Jordy.”

  The man and boy saw no one. Not one living human being. Not for miles and miles. It was as if this part of the country had been abandoned. Ben knew this part of the state had been hard hit by the disease-bearing rats, but he had not expected anything like this.

  At the junction of Highway 17, Ben turned off the interstate and headed north, toward Pecos. Ben traveled warily now, for he knew that even before the great war of ’88, the land west of the Pecos had been filled with the last of the truly tough, old-fashioned folks; good people, but secure in their beliefs and self-sufficient. They were of pioneer stock, and were boot-tough when pushed.

  Before Ben reached Pecos, a sign suspended over the highway pulled him up short: IF YOU’RE FRIENDLY, WELCOME, FRIEND. IF YOU WANT TROUBLE, YOU GOT IT.

  Ben clicked on his CB and keyed the mike. “I’m Ben Raines,” he said. “I’m traveling with a small boy. And we’re friendly.”

  Someone on the other end of the airwaves laughed. “Come on in, General. We’ve been trackin’ you since you cut off the interstate. Ya’ll just in time for lunch.”

  “Son of a bitch!” Colonel Dan Gray cursed. “Now what?”

  “Road is blocked, sir,” a scout radioed back to the main column. “And someone has blown the bridge. We’re gonna have to cut farther south; go across Mississippi and Louisiana.”

  “All right,” the Englishman radioed. “Backtrack. We’ll wait for you here.”

  Gray’s Scouts had been attempting to move across the top of Alabama on Highway 72. They had been forced off that highway after only fifty or so miles. They had wound around country roads until linking up with alternate 72 at Huntsville. That had ended just before reaching Decatur.

  When his recon teams had returned, Gray ordered the column south on Interstate 65. They knew from other reports that 278 west was closed; someone had blown the bridge over the East Fork.