Death in the Ashes

by William W. Johnstone

  “We get rid of a lot of creepies and then sweep the city,” Dan stated.

  “That’s it.”

  “Dad,” Tina said. “The thought has come to me that we may just have to destroy every city and town we come to. The only towns remaining will be the ones our people occupy. That way we can force the creepies out into the countryside where we can deal with them.”

  Ben sighed heavily. “I’m afraid you may be right, Tina. Rebels everywhere may have to go on search-and-destroy missions—nationwide.”

  Ben, traveling with only a small team of handpicked Rebels, personally viewed the area where the warlords handed over prisoners to the creepies. It was located between two small towns on the county line. Ben took the exact coordinates of the area and radioed back to Cecil, briefing the man.

  Talking to him on the scramble frequency, and using translators, Ben said, “Our prisoners say the creepies always come up from the south, Cec. And always on Interstate 35. So I’m betting they’ve occupied Waco. The exchange takes place at midnight. Always at midnight, always on a Friday. They’ve been doing it that way for several years. No reason why they should change it now. We’re constantly monitoring frequencies, and have picked up nothing that would indicate MacNally has alerted the creepies to our presence. I don’t think these outlaws even have long-range radio hookups. Most of what I’ve seen is CB equipment, and it’s in bad shape. So here is what I want . . .”

  For several days the Rebels maintained a very low profile, with not one shot being fired from either side. Many of the warlords felt the Rebels had left the area, moving on to wherever they were originally headed. Captain Tony had reached the airport and found it deserted. He dug his people in tight and stayed out of sight.

  Ben quietly moved a handpicked team of Rebels close to the exchange point; he personally led that team.

  Back at Base Camp One, Cecil and Ike had readied the equipment Ben had requested and were standing by.

  “Want to see a show tonight, Meg?” Ben asked the woman.

  “You mean like a movie?”

  Ben smiled. “Better. This won’t be play-acting.”

  “Sure.”

  “Be ready to go in an hour.”

  Quietly, without attracting any attention—he hoped—Ben moved his teams into position near the exchange point. He climbed to the top floor of a building where nightvision equipment was set up. He glanced at his watch. Nine o’clock.

  “What’s all that stuff?” Meg asked.

  “So we can see this evening. Ever seen a creepie, Meg?”

  “No, but I’ve heard of the disgusting things they do. Even Satan is scared of those people.”

  At Base Camp One, several PUFFs were taking off. The PUFFs were flying instruments of death. Each PUFF carried four 20mm Vulcan cannons, six-barreled Gatling guns, four pairs of 7.62 machines and Bofors cannons, all side and bottom-mounted. When the PUFFs got into position, flying in a slow circle, they were the most destructive flying machines ever built.

  “How many creepies did the prisoners say usually met the outlaws?” Tina asked.

  “They weren’t sure. Only that it was quite a bunch. MacNally and the others usually handed over hundreds of captives.”

  “For the slaughter,” Meg said softly.

  “That is correct—literally for the slaughter.”

  At eleven-thirty, Rebels drove hastily repaired old bob trucks they had found outside the city up to the exchange point. The drivers quietly and very quickly got the hell out of that area.

  “Won’t be long now,” Ben murmured.

  “What won’t be long?” Meg asked.

  “A show like none you have ever seen before,” Ben told her. “I can promise you that.”

  The minutes ticked by in silence. Once again, Ben glanced at his watch. “Corrie, contact the PUFFs.”

  “They’re in position, General,” she told him. “Flying without lights as ordered.”

  “Here they come, General!” a Rebel said, peering through the night scope. “Must be fifty or sixty trucks. And they’re running without lights.”

  “It worked,” Ben whispered. “Come on, you creepie bastards. I have a present for you.”

  “Closer,” the Rebel watching the convoy announced.

  “PUFFs in,” Ben ordered.

  Within seconds, the howl of props reached the Rebels.

  “Creepie convoy stopping within coordinated area,” Ben was informed.

  “PUFFs in position and circle completed,” another Rebel announced.

  “Commence firing,” Ben ordered.

  The night sky was shattered as the crew chiefs and gun mechanics opened fire. The PUFFs trembled and shook as they released their lethal loads. An area the size of several football fields was instantly turned into a deathtrap. Gas tanks on the creepie trucks exploded as hot lead tore into them.

  There was no place for the creeps to run; practically every square foot was being mauled from the air. Sixteen thousand rounds of death was hurled into the coordinated area in only a few minutes. The fires set by the impacting incendiary rounds lit up the sky so all could see the carnage.

  “Cease firing,” Ben ordered.

  The night became still except for the crackling of flames.

  “Return to base,” Ben said. “Good job, people.”

  Meg was standing by the window, her mouth hanging open, still in a mild form of shock at what she had just witnessed.

  She finally shook her head and said, “Are you going to use these against Satan?”

  “I don’t know. A lot depends on the terrain and whether innocents might be harmed. Then there is your father to think of.”

  “My father is nuts,” Meg said flatly. “He’d be better off dead. There is no telling how much human suffering and degradation he has caused ... indirectly and directly. I resigned myself to my father’s fate months ago. I’ll keep the good memories of him; back when conditions were normal. More or less,” she added.

  Ben nodded. “All right, gang. Let’s get back and get some sleep. Tomorrow we start destroying a city.”

  Ben was up long before dawn, as usual. He dressed, pulling on body armor and slipping into his battle harness. He picked up his M14 and stepped outside his quarters to stand beside the sentry.

  “Everything’s been quiet, General,” he was informed. “Last night’s show probably gave the outlaws some second thoughts.”

  “It might have,” Ben replied. “But they’ve got nowhere else to go. They’ll fight, I’m thinking. Unless they have some other tricks up their sleeves. We’ll know just after dawn.”

  After breakfast—S.O.S., nothing ever changes in any army, but at least it was hot and filling—Ben was enjoying an early morning smoke when Dan walked up, a city map in his hand.

  “The outlaws have pulled back, General. To this point.” He held up the map. “And they are flying a white flag. They don’t look like they’re surrendering, so I can but assume they wish to talk.”

  “You’re probably right. Has Captain Tony radioed in?”

  “Affirmative. He said they’ll start clearing a runway for the birds at first light. No creepies.”

  “All right, Dan. Find out what the scum have on their minds.”

  “A deal,” Dan reported back in a few minutes.

  Ben leaned back, smiling. “Let me guess: they would be willing to trade whatever prisoners they hold in return for their safety?”

  “My, my, General,” Dan said with a smile. “What an astute fellow you are.”

  “Why, of course, we’ll make a deal with them!”

  Meg had walked up with Corrie. “You’d deal with outlaws?” Meg asked. “I always heard that Ben Raines didn’t make deals with anybody.”

  Ben put a hand over his heart and hung his head. “How in the world do you suppose such a terrible rumor ever got started? What a horrible thing to have said about a man like me. A heart as big as all outdoors.”

  Then he and Dan burst out laughing.

  Meg an
d Corrie looked at one another and shook their heads. Tina and Buddy had walked up to catch part of what was taking place.

  “Pay absoutely no attention to either of them,” Tina told the women. “My father wouldn’t deal with scum like those in the city if that was Buddy and me being held.”

  Now Meg looked more confused than ever. “I . . . don’t understand.”

  Buddy explained. “General Raines is going to get the prisoners freed, and then he will declare war on the outlaws and probably kill them all ... or as many as don’t run away.”

  “Can you believe this, Dan?” Ben tried his best to look terribly hurt. “My own children speaking about me in such a manner. Oh, the shame of it all. What did I do wrong?”

  “Our father,” Tina said, “also has a lot of B.S. in him. You’ll get used to him ... in time.”

  Ben stood up from the steps where he’d been relaxing and thinking, enjoying the spring weather. “Dan, get the main battle tanks in position, also the Dusters and the 81mm mortar crews. We don’t have enough people to box them in, so this is going to be a frontal assault.”

  “Right, sir.”

  Ben smiled thinly. “Now we’ll see if MacNally and those others of his odious ilk have a sense of humor about them.”

  “In other words, Father,” Buddy said, “we are going to see if they can die well.”

  “Precisely.”

  5

  “I ain’t buyin’ this atall,” MacNally said. “Ben Raines don’t give up this easy. He’s a-pullin’ something. Bet on it.”

  “Scared, Mac?” Pete Jones sneered at him. The huge black man hated MacNally and had never made any attempt to hide that hatred.

  “Yeah, and so are you, you ugly coon. But I got sense enough to admit it. You’re just stupid!”

  Pete faced his white outlaw counterpart. “I think, MacNally, when this . . . situation has been resolved, I shall kill you!”

  “I doubt it. Now git your ugly face outta mine.”

  “Knock it off!” Lopez told them. “We have enough to worry about without fighting among ourselves. Now are we going to take General Raines’s offer, or not?”

  Pete was the first to speak. “I don’t see that we have a choice. But we’re no match for Raines and his Rebels. Not with this rabble around us.”

  “Nigger, you shore talk funny,” Mac told him. “You know ’at?”

  Pete sighed with his race’s centuries-old, built-in patience when dealing with white trash and rednecks. He had educated himself during his second hitch in prison. For rape and murder. He’d killed a dozen men and women before finally getting caught and sentenced. Pete was very literate, but still just as much trash and just as worthless as those around him.

  “Then what do you have in mind, Pete?” the Mexican asked.

  He looked first at Lopez, then at Mac. “I really don’t like you, Mac, but you can fight and you’ve got some good men with you—even though they are a motley crew of white trash . . .”

  “Git to the point, coon,” Mac told him. “You just bumpin’ your gums to hear your head rattle.”

  Pete grunted in disgust. “Mac, you and Lopez and your people. Me and mine. Young, Morgan, Bass, Hardy, and maybe a few more. Yeah. Pipes and Howard. We cut our prisoners loose like all the rest and then get the hell out of this city. I think Raines is going to throw some heavy artillery in on us as soon as the prisoners are clear.”

  “Why not take the prisoners with us?” Lopez asked. “For trade down the line.”

  “Because we’re going to have to be traveling fast,” Pete explained. “And the prisoners are a drag.”

  Lopez nodded. “Makes sense to me. OK. I’m in.” He looked at MacNally. “You?”

  Mac shrugged. “Why not?”

  “Let’s get busy.”

  “Where is the exchange point to be?” Ben asked.

  “This bridge right here on 175,” Dan said, pointing it out. “Noon.”

  “Everybody in position?”

  “Setting on ready.”

  “Corrie, bump the base and alert Cecil that we’re going to need lots of trucks and some medical people over here. We can fly the seriously injured out. And we’re going to need to be resupplied.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “It never ends,” Beth said. “It just never ends. There is no light at the end of the tunnel.”

  Ben knew how she felt. He’d been fighting for a decade, ever since the world was torn apart by nuclear and germ warfare.

  “It’s there, Beth. It’s a very faint light. But it’s there. We have to keep believing that. If we, of all people, can’t have that faith, then civilization is doomed.”

  “I know,” she said. “I just get so discouraged at times.”

  “So do I,” Ben told her.

  “What do you do to shake the mood?” Beth asked.

  “Why,” Ben said with a straight face, “I just sit right down and have myself a good cry!”

  The laugher at the thought of General Raines sitting down on the curb and bawling broke the somber mood.

  “Let’s go get in place, gang,” Ben told them, walking toward the Blazer. He looked around. “Where the hell is Cooper?”

  “Probably trying to put the make on some unsuspecting female,” Jersey said.

  “Around him,” Beth said, “there are no unsuspecting females. I cringe every time he crosses his legs for fear he’ll damage his brain.”

  Ben watched the activity on the other side of White Rock Creek through binoculars from the top floor of a building just off Hawn Freeway. It was getting close to the exchange time and the outlaws were working feverishly to get their prisoners to the bridge.

  “How will we know we won’t be dropping rounds in on innocents the outlaws have held back?” Meg asked, standing beside Ben.

  “We can’t be one hundred percent sure. But we won’t fire until we’ve spoken with some of the exchange prisoners. If we can get the majority out . . . I have to think it’ll be worth it.”

  “Hal and the other men we’re holding are getting a little bit edgy as to their fate,” Buddy told his father.

  “I intend to cut them loose,” Ben replied. “They’ve cooperated with us right down the line. I told them their best bet would be to go far away from what we leave of Dallas-Fort Worth, and take up gardening. I think they got the message.”

  Meg was sure they did. She was learning that Ben Raines could be a compassionate man on one hand, and totally ruthless on the other. To say Ben was a complex man would be understating him.

  “Captain Tony said they have a runway cleared, General,” Corrie told him. “They’ll mark it with flare pots.”

  “Inform Base Camp One of that news, please.” He glanced at her, smiling. “And how is Chester doing these days?”

  “Vaccinated and clean and getting fat. Colonel Gray is his biggest fan. Chester sleeps on the front seat of the Colonel’s Jeep. The two are practically inseparable.”

  Corrie spoke to communications back at the base camp, smiled, and said, “General? Dr. Chase has a message for you.”

  “I just bet he does. What is it?”

  “He says the next time you capture biker women, don’t send them to him. Just shoot them.”

  “Ask the old goat where is all that compassion he’s supposed to possess?”

  After a brief exchange, Corrie said, “Dr. Chase said something in French, General. I don’t speak French.”

  “It’s just as well, Corrie. I have a pretty good idea what he said. Did it sound like mon cul?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “He just told me to kiss his ass.”

  “Yes, sir. And the trucks to take the prisoners back left Base Camp One several hours ago, sir.”

  “Good.” Ben lifted his binoculars. “Heads up, people. Here they come.” Ben lowered the field glasses and handed them to Corrie. “And the prisoners are in pitiful shape. I’m going to enjoy destroying those bastards,” Ben said grimly.

  “Those children look . . . defe
ated,” Corrie said.

  “We’ve found that a percentage of those we’ve rescued will never come all the way back, Corrie. They’ve been too badly abused and used. But most of them make it after a time.”

  “How about the ones who don’t respond?”

  “They’re placed with loving, caring families. We do the best with what we have.”

  They stood, mostly in silence, as the bands of prisoners were handed over to the Rebels. As soon as they were across the bridge, as many as possible were quickly questioned.

  Corrie listened to her headset. “Colonel Gray says he believes all the prisoners were handed over, General. He also says that advance Scouts on the south end of the airport report a large number of men leaving the city on Interstate 30. Heading west. Looks to be several hundred.”

  “The smart ones are bugging out. I expected some to do that. Tell Dan as soon as the last prisoners are across . . . open fire.”

  “With pleasure, sir,” Corrie said.

  There were many outlaws who took Ben at his word. They stood on the bridge and just directly across from the exchange point, grinning foolishly, totally unaware they were looking down the barrels of hundreds of weapons.

  The first volley of rifle fire took the gawking, grinning, arrogant outlaws by surprise, knocking them screaming and spinning and sprawling. Then the tanks started lobbing in 105 rounds, HEP, Willie Peter, Incendiary, in that order. With a range of 3300 meters, the main battle tanks started dealing out misery.

  The 81mm mortars opened up, tossing in one round every twenty seconds. Ben had beefed up his initial request for the self-propelled 81s. Each company had three of the mortar carriers, and with a range of nearly 3700 meters, the 81s could reach out and touch someone two and a half miles away.

  Forty-millimeter Big Thumpers began yowling out their lethal loads in rapid-fire. On the west side of the bridge, chaos became king as the outlaws found themselves with no place to run.