Fire in the Ashes ta-2

by William Wallace Johnstone

“I met him—didn’t like him. I hope his mentality doesn’t take root.”

  “It will,” she predicted flatly. “What are your plans, Ben?”

  He told her, standing in the cool mist of the morning. He told her of his plans, his schedule. He told her of his home in Morrison, and how he had literally slept through the horror after being stung by dozen of wasps, knocking him out.

  “Probably saved your life,” she said. “The venom, the Benadryl.”

  “What are your plans, Salina?”

  “I go with Cecil and Lila.”

  “Kasim called you a zebra. What does that mean?”

  * * *

  “…You’re not telling me everything, Cec,” Ben’s voice brought him back to the present. “Come on, what are you holding back?”

  Cecil grinned at him, the grin quickly fading. “Over in Kentucky, day before yesterday. A woman died because the hospital refused to admit her. She didn’t have the money. I’m not going to tolerate that, Ben.”

  “Nor I, Cec. The plans we talked of, you’re in agreement with them?”

  “A percentage of a person’s income going into a health fund. Of course the rich are going to scream because they’ll be paying more.”

  “They can afford it.”

  “Luxury tax on jewelry, smokes, booze, expensive items. The HHS runs it. Those are the high points; yes, I’m in agreement—but Congress isn’t.”

  “They are now.”

  Cecil lifted an eyebrow.

  “Since I told them to be in favor of it. Representative Jean Purcell is the author of the bill. It will pass.”

  “The liberals will love you for it.”

  “For a week. Next week it’ll be the conservatives who love me.”

  “Yours is going to be a very interesting term of office, Ben.”

  “So I’ve been told,” Ben said dryly.

  THREE

  “Ben,” Doctor Chase told him, “I’m just too damned old for this Richmond nonsense. I love you for thinking of me, but no, I won’t become your surgeon general. I do know a good man for the job, though. Doctor Harrison Lane. Army doctor, although it hurts my mouth to admit it. He’s a good man. I asked him to come in, see you about one this afternoon.”

  Ben nodded. “If you say he’s the man for the job, that’s it. What are you going to do, you old goat?”

  “I’m going back to the mountains, Mr. President,” he said, grinning as Ben flipped him the bird. “That is not a gesture the president of the United States should make. I have… ah… someone back there who is carrying the torch for me something fierce.”

  “’Carrying the torch,’ Lamar? God! I haven’t heard that expression since I was a kid.” Ben laughed, a good, hearty laugh; and it felt good, for of late, Ben had not had that much to laugh about. He wouldn’t admit it, but he was more worried about Jerre than he would allow others to see.

  “You know, Lamar, I did some research on that back when I was making my living pounding the keys of a typewriter. Close as I could figure, that phrase originated about 1949.”

  “I can’t tell you how impressed I am with your knowledge of phrases, Ben. You wouldn’t be implying I’m over the hill, now would you?”

  “Not as long as you can get it up!”

  Both men shared a laugh at the crudeness. Lamar sobered and said, “Ben—get this nation right side up again, then hand it over to someone else. You should be able to do it in two, maybe three years. I think you’re probably the only man who could do it—that’s why I pressed you so hard to take the job. At least, Ben, you’ll have the knowledge and the satisfaction that every man, woman, and child in this nation will have all the rights afforded them by the Bill of Rights.

  “I’m an old bastard, but I’m going to hang on to watch you do these things, Ben—all the while helping to re-form the Tri-States. When you’re done here, come home, back to your dream, and sit with me on the front porch of my house and we’ll talk of things dead and past while we watch my…” he smiled, “…little daughter or son wobble around.”

  “Why, you old bastard!” Ben laughed. “That’s why you’re going back.”

  “Yeah. I should be ashamed of myself, I suppose; but I’m not. I’m damn proud.”

  “You should be. Congratulations. Lamar, you sound as though you believe no matter what I accomplish here, it won’t last.”

  The doctor fixed wise eyes on the revolutionary dreamer. “You know it won’t, Ben. It will work for us in the Tri-States, but not for the majority—you said it yourself, back in Tri-States. You’re a student of history, Ben, just as I am. You know that many—too many—Americans don’t give a flying piece of dog shit what’s good for the nation as a whole. We gathered the cream of the crop back in ‘89, friend; the best we could find to populate Tri-States.

  “Out here,” the doctor waved his hand and snorted, “hell, you know the majority of Americans—even after all the horror we’ve been through—don’t care for anything except themselves or their own little greedy, grasping group or organization. Americans are notorious for wanting to run other people’s lives.

  “No, Ben, for two or maybe three years, if you’re lucky, you’ll see all Americans being treated equal—for the first time in more than seventy-five years. Just think, Ben. Why, a citizen will be able to turn on the TV set and view any damn program he or she chooses to watch, without some so-called Christian organization screaming bloody murder because someone said ‘hell’ or ‘damn’ on the air.”

  “The best censor in the world has always been a parent turning off the set or changing channels,” Ben muttered.

  “Why of course it has!” Chase said. “Or simply telling the kids they can’t watch a certain program and then belting the hell out of them if they disobey. We know that, Ben. Thinking, rational adults have always known it. But there again, ol’ buddy, comes the truth: people simply cannot stand it if they’re not butting in someone else’s life.”

  Ben laughed and shifted his butt in the chair, knowing Lamar was just warming up to his topic. He waited.

  “Right now, Ben—this minute—you have done more in two weeks in office than anyone else in the more than a decade since the bombings. You just jerked the lazy folks off their asses and told them if they didn’t work they weren’t going to eat. That should have been done fifty years ago.”

  “Yeah, but don’t think I haven’t got a bunch of civil rights groups down on my ass for doing it, either. And the ACLU is screaming that everything I’m doing is unconstitutional.”

  Lamar muttered something very uncomplimentary under his breath and Ben laughed at him.

  “It isn’t funny, Ben—not really. It’s tragic that some people—and I’m not singling out the aforementioned group—can’t see, won’t see, what is good for the entire nation just might step on the toes of a few.” He shook his white head and sighed. “Let’s say it, Ben. First, when are the twins due in?”

  “Tomorrow. Ike tracked them down and is having them flown here.”

  “Ben—have you thought that Jerre might be dead?”

  “It’s crossed my mind.”

  “But you reject it.”

  “Yes. I don’t know why, but I just know she is alive. Hartline is holding her—why, I don’t know. Probably as a lever to use against me.”

  Lamar looked at him. “The new Moral Majority is yelling about the president of the United States living in sin with a woman.”

  Ben grinned. “I wonder how much they’d scream if I was living in sin with a man?”

  “Get serious, Raines! Are you going to marry the lady?”

  “No.” His answer came quickly.

  “Do you love her?”

  “No.” Just as quickly.

  “She loves you?”

  “I… don’t think so, Lamar.” Ben leaned forward, propping his elbows on the desk, his chin in his hands. It made him look like a schoolboy. “Can I talk to you man to man, Lamar?”

  “Shore.”

  “I’m fifty-four years ol
d, Lamar. And I truly don’t believe I’ve ever experienced the emotion of love. God knows I’ve written about it many times; but as far as my actually having known it—no.”

  “Great the fall thereof when it smites thee, Ben. I could have sworn you and Salina were in love.”

  “I… felt something, Lamar. I really did. I spoke the words to her just before she died. But I lied.” He shook himself like a big shaggy dog might shake off excess water. He pushed the memories from him and shifted topics. “Did you know Dawn has a degree—a master’s degree—in science?”

  “No. But it doesn’t surprise me. Why’d you bring it up?”

  “Because I’m going to put her in charge of the newly formed EPA.”

  Lamar had to say it. “Congress won’t like it.”

  “I don’t give a shit what Congress likes or dislikes,” came the expected reply. “If they dislike too much, they can carry their ass home. You wait until next week, when I abolish about fifteen departments—then listen to them holler.”

  “Will I be able to hear it in the Tri-States?”

  “Hell, yes. And you won’t even have to turn up your hearing aid.”

  Chase told the president of the United States where to shove that last remark.

  * * *

  “Do you love him, Dawn?” Rosita asked.

  Dawn smiled at the feisty little Irish-Spanish lady. They shared an apartment in Richmond, Rosita electing not to accompany Colonel Ramos back to the southwest. She worked with Dawn.

  “No,” Dawn finally answered the question. “No, I don’t, Rosita. I… have a warm feeling for Ben, as he does for me. But love? No.”

  Her next question surprised Dawn. “Well, then who does he love?”

  But, she mused silently, perhaps it isn’t so surprising after all. For haven’t you asked yourself that question many times? “Rosita, I don’t believe he has ever been in love.”

  “A man of his years and experience?” the petite brunette asked doubtfully.

  “I didn’t say in heat.”

  And both women laughed. “Sí,” Rosita flipped her fingers as if they were burning. “Yo caigo en ello.”

  “Yeah, I just bet you catch on.”

  Rosita was silent for a moment, then asked, “Jerre?”

  Dawn shook her head. “No. But I think that’s the closest he’s ever been. He worries about her a lot. I wish I knew where she was. What was happening to her. Everybody I’ve talked with says she was a good person.”

  “You used the past tense, Dawn,” Rosita said gently.

  “I know,” Dawn replied.

  * * *

  Jerre looked out at the first snowfall of the year in central Illinois. In the room behind her, Lisa and several of her friends sat and talked and laughed. Jerre knew the teenagers had come over just to cheer her up, and she should be grateful for that—but she wished they would just leave her alone.

  “Jerre?” Lisa called. “You better come on ‘fore this pie is all gone. It’s pretty good.”

  Jerre forced a smile and turned around to face the small group. “I don’t think so, girls. Thanks anyway.”

  Lisa rose from her Buddha-like sitting position on the floor and walked to her. “Jake says Hartline can get rough and mean at times. He got that way with you?”

  That was the problem, Jerre thought. He had not. The mercenary had been every inch a gentleman. And, she fought to hide her smile and the dark humor that sprang into her brain, Hartline had more than his share of inches. “No, Lisa, that isn’t it at all. I just want to go home.”

  “I was afraid of Jake at first,” the girl confessed. “But he’s changed in just the time I’ve known him. I… know he’s done some very bad things. Awful things, I’m sure. But with me he’s always been real gentle. Sometimes I even think he loves me. He doesn’t like Hartline.”

  Jerre thought she might see a way out of this mess. Maybe. “Jake really does want to farm, doesn’t he?”

  The girl’s face brightened. “Yes—yes, he really does. Lately that’s all he talks about. Getting away from here and maybe moving away—up in the northwest someplace…” She trailed it off, her eyes clouding with suspicion. “How come you askin’ all these questions?”

  Jerre shrugged. “You came to me, Lisa. I didn’t come to you.”

  The girl smiled. “Yeah, that’s right, ain’t it. I guess some of Jake’s feelings have rubbed off on me. I’d like to talk to you some more, but… I ain’t real sure I can trust you.”

  “You can trust me, Lisa. If there is anyone in this area you can trust, it’s me.”

  “I kinda believe you, Jerre. I want to real bad, you know?”

  “How much education do you have, Lisa?”

  “Not much,” the girl said bitterly. “They didn’t get the schools goin’ where we lived ‘til I was ten. I guess maybe I got a sixth grade schoolin’. ‘Bout as much as any kid my age.”

  “Ben Raines is going to get all the schools going again—real soon.”

  “Will you tell me the truth if I ask you something, Jerre?”

  “Certainly.”

  “Is Ben Raines a god of some sort?”

  “No, Lisa. Ben is no god.”

  “Then how come he can do all these things in so short a time?”

  That stumped her. For in the three weeks Ben had sat in the office of the president, he had accomplished quite a lot. Again, she fought to keep from smiling. Including, she had heard on the radio, hanging about fifty people for various crimes.

  “Some people say he is,” the teenager persisted. “They said any man who’s been shot up as bad as he’s been and not die from it… got to be a god.”

  So it’s spreading, Jerre thought. And not just among Ben’s own people. Maybe, she thought, there is a way out.

  “All right, Lisa,” Jerre said, the lie building in her, leaving a bad taste on her tongue. “Yes. I’ll level with you. Ben… is different from other people.” Not a lie. “I’ve seen what happens to people who make him angry.” Sure have. “It’s not very pleasant.” Sure isn’t. “You don’t want to make him mad.”

  The teenager backed up a step. “He ain’t got no call to be mad at me.”

  “Not yet.”

  “What you mean, Jerre?”

  Jerre fixed her gaze firmly on the girl. “You know exactly what I mean, Lisa. And you’d better not tell anyone about this conversation, either.”

  “I promise I won’t, Miss Jerre,” Lisa whispered. “But what can I do to help?”

  “To help whom?”

  Lisa gulped. “You, I guess.”

  “That is something you’ll have to decide for yourself, Lisa.”

  “I’ll think on it, Miss Jerre. But… something is troubling me. If Ben Raines is so powerful, how come you’re still a prisoner here?”

  “Haven’t you ever heard about how gods move in mysterious ways?”

  “My folks said there ain’t no God in Heaven; and no Jesus Christ, neither. But I’ve heard that line you just said.”

  “Think about that, Lisa.”

  “Do I have to?”

  “What do you think?”

  “Seems like you’re sure putting a lot on me, Miss Jerre?” Jerre’s only reply was a cold look.

  “Is there a shrine to Ben Raines, Miss Jerre?”

  Jerre thought of Tri-States; of the twins. “In a way, yes, there is, Lisa. And it’s beautiful.”

  The girl sucked in her breath. “I sure would like to see that someday.”

  Jerre took another step toward freedom. “You help me, Lisa, and I promise you you’ll see it.”

  “I’d be scared!”

  “No need to be.”

  “I’ll think on it, Miss Jerre. And I won’t tell nobody. Cross my heart.”

  Jerre wanted to weep at the teenager’s ignorance. Instead, she put her hand on Lisa’s arm. “I know I can count on you to do the right thing, Lisa.” She smiled at her. “We’ll talk again. Come back anytime.”

  “I’ll sure do it, Mis
s Jerre.”

  Jerre watched them leave the house. They waved at the guards stationed around the home. Jerre turned her back to the window, gazing into the fireplace, blazing with fire and warmth.

  “I don’t know what I’ve started here, Ben,” she murmured low. “It may mushroom all out of proportion. But please forgive me if it does. I just want to get out and go home. I want my babies!”

  * * *

  Matt drove down the west side of the Mississippi River. He had skirted Dubuque, picked up Highway 67, and would cross into Illinois at the bridge at Savannah. He had a general idea where Hartline had made his headquarters. Matt stopped and looked at his map. He had drawn a crude circle in red.

  The circle had Peoria almost in the dead center, the line running from Galesburg to Macomb to Springfield to Decatur, then northeast to Farmer City. Then it began a gentle curving north through Gibson City and Chatworth. At Chatworth, it curved northwest to Streator, running straight west for about fifty-five miles to just south of Kewanee. Then the line dipped southwest back to Galesburg.

  On a much larger map, Matt had cut the area into quarters, each road in the quarter a different color. He would take them one at a time, just like pieces of a pie. He would find Jerre.

  And he would kill Hartline.

  * * *

  About twenty-five miles north of Terre Haute, Indiana, Ike and his team, made up of ex-SEALs, ex-Green Berets, ex-Marine Force Recon, and ex-Rangers, said their good-byes and good luck.

  “You all know what to do without me goin’ over it again,” Ike told the men. “For the next few months Hartline is somewhere within a ninety-mile radius of Peoria. Word we got is come next spring he’ll be movin’ up to Iowa to set up his HQ. We got to find him ‘fore then. You boys take care.”

  They were gone in teams of three. They would circle the area and on the third day would move in simultaneously. The men drove ragged pickup trucks; but the engines were perfectly tuned and the rubber was new… They looked like movers and drifters, aimlessly wandering the countryside.

  They were anything but.

  * * *

  Captain Dan Gray halted his team at Quincy. “Killing Hartline would be gravy on the potatoes,” he told them. “Just remember our primary objective is getting Jerre out. I have not been in contact with General Raines, but I have a gut feeling he’s sent others in ahead of us. So be careful; we don’t want to mistake any of them for Hartline’s men, or be mistaken ourselves for Hartline’s men. Let’s go, boys and girls. Good luck and God speed.”