Fire in the Ashes ta-2

by William Wallace Johnstone

  Ben found Captain Seymour. “Break out the gas masks,” he told him. “And tell the people to keep them handy. I have a hunch the stench is going to get rough from here on in.”

  “Third day?” the captain said.

  “Yes. People are going to be dropping like dead flies. Or fleas,” he amended that dryly.

  They were parked in a huge deserted parking area of a shopping mall. All were grimy and becoming a bit odorous from lack of bathing.

  “I really hate to bring this up, General,” Rosita said. Her head did not quite reach Ben’s shoulder. “But we are going to have to bathe, if not for the sake of our noses, for health reasons.”

  “I know,” Ben said, grinning down at the feisty petite lady. He looked at Captain Seymour. “Captain, send some troopers over to that hardware store in the mall. Get all the sprayers and flea-killing chemicals your people can find.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The men were back in half an hour, loaded down with pesticides and sprayers.

  “I’m not going to order anyone to do this,” Ben said. “This is volunteer all the way. I’d like for a party of six to scout one day ahead of us. Find a small motel that is located away from any town area, and spray it down. Put a controlled burn on any vegetation surrounding the complex, then radio back to us when that’s done.”

  A hundred men and women stepped forward.

  Ben laughed. “Pick your people, Captain.”

  “Radio message, sir,” a runner handed Ben a slip of paper, then stood by for a reply, if any.

  “Plague has hit the military bases,” Ben told his people. “This is from General Pieston. His doctors believe the last few batches of medicines were somehow tainted, ineffective. He is the only one of the Joint Chiefs left alive, and this communiqué says he is very ill. The plague is now touching all continents around the world. He further states as his last act, he is dissolving the government of the United States and absolving me of any and all blame for the crisis.” Ben looked around him. “We no longer have a government.”

  * * *

  Now was the beginning of nothing for the people of what had once been the most powerful nation on the face of the earth. Now was what revolutionary anarchists dream of: no constituted forms and institutions of society and government, and no purpose of establishing any other system of order.

  Chaos. Confusion. Violence. Death. Rape. Torture. Burning. Looting. Stealing.

  Have a ball, folks, ‘cause this is all there is and when this is all used up, there ain’t no more.

  And as happened back in ‘88, after the bombings that ravaged the world, the prisoners in jails and prisons died a horrible death. Left to die, forgotten men and women. The sick and the elderly, in hospitals and nursing homes called out for help—but their pleas fell on empty halls and echoed back to them in a mocking sneering voice. And the old and the sick died as they had been forced to live: alone.

  But there has never been a total wipeout of all civilization (Noah had some folks around him). It seems that some survive no matter what disaster befalls others around them. Thugs and trash and street slime seem to band together in any crisis situation, pulled together like metal shavings to a magnet. Or like blow flies to a piece of dog shit. Whatever suits the readers’ fancy. Realists usually choose the latter.

  So while semi and pseudo-religious men and women were gathering their dubious flocks around them, the thugs and punks and slime came together, roaming the countryside, preying on the weaker.

  They weren’t afraid; they knew the government of the United States had, for years, either through the blathering of elected liberals or mumbling from the mouths of the high courts, legislated and legaled away the right of citizens to take a human life in defense of personal property and/or self/loved ones. The citizens of America had viewed the innocuous bullshit emanating from TV for years, burning its messages into the brains of the viewers.

  “Take the keys from your car—always. Don’t let a good boy go bad.”

  (Good boys don’t steal cars, folks. Punks and pricks and dickheads and street slime steal cars.)

  “Guns are awful, terrible things. No one should be allowed to own a gun.”

  In a recent survey (1982), the survey showed 1,900 deaths from accidental shootings as compared to almost 12,000 deaths from falling off ladders and slipping in bathtubs. Anybody for banning bathtubs?

  (More people died from accidentally inhaling poisonous gas than from accidental shootings. As a matter of act, more people died from almost anything other than accidental shootings.)

  All people are wonderful! There is no such thing as a bad person. When confronted by those fellows that society has rejected (it’s always society’s fault), even if they have slit your wife’s throat and are taking turns gang-banging your daughter on the den floor—never, never shoot first! That’s a no-no. One simply has to respect the constitutional rights of punks.

  (Uh-huh. Sure.)

  Criminals know all this. They know the American public is easy prey because of all the liberal and legalistic claptrap the law-abiding citizens have been bombarded with for two generations. The average citizen will not shoot first because he’s seen what happened to those who did.

  They were sued and/or put in jail.

  For protecting what was rightfully theirs.

  It is easy to talk of protecting one’s self or loved ones. Fun to pop away at paper targets with a pistol or rifle.

  Paper targets don’t shoot back.

  Ninety percent of the American citizens have been so mentally conditioned as to the dire consequences that will befall them should they take a human life—even if their own life is threatened—they can’t do it.

  Easy prey.

  Of course, those folks that turned to a life of crime because:

  —“The homecoming queen wouldn’t dance with them…”

  —“They had pimples…”

  —“They were poor…”

  —“They were black…”

  —“They were white…”

  —“They didn’t make the football team…”

  —“Nobody liked them…” (probably because there was nothing about them to like)

  —“The teacher picked on them…”

  —“The coach made fun of them…” (that might have more than a modicum of merit)

  And all the other shopworn and clichéd excuses… hadn’t counted on running into Ben Raines and his well-trained and disciplined Rebels.

  The key to survival and success in any personal endeavor is contained in the above sentence.

  * * *

  The convoy rolled slowly westward, and the stench, as Ben had predicted, worsened.

  Ben’s scouts had found a motel just east of Richmond, Indiana, just before Interstate 70 and Highway 35 connected. The rooms had been sprayed, the area around the motel burned and sprayed. Towels and bed linens were washed and dried in high heat, the kitchen area cleaned and disinfected, cooking utensils and silverware boiled before use. Water heaters were turned on as high as they could be adjusted and the lines cleaned before anyone was allowed to bathe. Ben would not allow the drinking of the water until it had been purified and tested.

  At noon of the fourth day, Ben told his people, “Okay, folks. We get to spend a few days sleeping in real beds and taking baths.”

  The cheer that followed that would have put a major pep rally to shame.

  Ben picked a small lower-floor room and allowed himself to luxuriate a few moments longer than was necessary under the hot spray, soaping himself several times, washing his short-cropped hair, sprinkled generously with gray among the dark brown.

  He dressed in tiger-stripe and jump boots and walked to the restaurant, choosing a table set apart from the main dining area.

  There, he enjoyed and lingered over a good cup of fresh-brewed coffee.

  “Something to eat, General?”

  “Not just yet, thank you. I’ll eat when the others do.”

  The young man’s eyes f
licked briefly to the old Thompson SMG leaning against a wall beside Ben’s table. Lots of talk about that old weapon, the young Rebel thought—and more about the man who carried it.

  Most of the young people among the Rebel ranks viewed the man as somewhere between human and god. And the very young stood somewhere between awe and fear of the man. He had heard his own little brother, saying his prayers at bedtime, always mention God and General Raines in the same breath.

  The young Rebel didn’t see a thing wrong with that.

  He wondered if General Raines knew how most of his people felt about him. He decided the general did not. He wondered what the general’s reaction would be when he found out?

  Back behind the serving line, the young man met the eyes of his girlfriend. “It’s funny, you know, Becky? I mean, it’s really—I get the strangest feeling being close to the general. You know what I mean?”

  “He scares me,” Becky admitted. But what she would not admit, not to anybody, was the other feeling she experienced when thinking about General Raines.

  For one thing, her boyfriend might never speak to her again if she told him the truth.

  “Scares you? Why?”

  “Well—you know how talk gets around,” she spoke in a whisper, as if afraid Ben would hear her and punish her in some manner. “You know he’s been shot fifty times, blown up three or four, and stabbed several times. He won’t die.”

  “No!”

  “It’s true,” a young man said from the serving line. “My brother was serving directly in his command the night General Raines’s own brother tried to kill him back in Tri-States. He said Carl Raines emptied an M-16 into the general. But it didn’t kill him. The general just walked away from it.”

  “My God!” another young Rebel spoke.

  “That’s what I think he is,” Becky spoke the words that made legends. “A god.”

  * * *

  How hated Ben’s system of government was did not come home to the people of Tri-States until late fall of the first year. Ben had stepped outside of his home for a breath of the cold, clean air of night. Juno, the big malamute, was with him, and together they walked from the house around to the front. When Juno growled, Ben went into a crouch, and that saved his life. Automatic-weapon fire spider-webbed the windshield of his pickup truck, the slugs hitting and ricocheting off the metal, sparking the night. Ben jerked open the door, punched open the glove box, and grabbed a pistol. He fired at a dark shape running across the yard, then at another. Both went down, screaming in pain.

  A man stepped from the shadows of the house and opened fire just as Ben hit the ground. Lights were popping on all over the street, men with rifles in their hands appearing on the lawns.

  Ben felt a slug slam into his hip, knocking him to one side, spinning him around, the lead traveling down his leg, exiting just above his knee. He pulled himself to one knee and leveled the 9mm, triggering off three rounds into the dark form by the side of his house. The man went down, the rifle dropping from his hands.

  Ben pulled himself up, his leg and hip throbbing from the shock of the wounds. He leaned against the truck just as help reached him.

  “Get the medics!” a man shouted. “Governor’s been shot.”

  “Help me over to that man,” Ben said. “He looks familiar.”

  Standing over the fallen would-be assassin, Ben saw where his shots had gone: two in the stomach, one in the chest. The man was splattered with blood and dying. He coughed and spat at Ben.

  “Goddamned nigger-lovin’ scum,” he said. He closed his eyes, shivered in the convulsions of pain; then died.

  Ben stood for a time, leaning against the side of the house. Salina came to him, putting her arms around him as the wailing of ambulances drew louder. “Do you know him, Ben?” she asked.

  “I used to,” Ben’s reply was sad. “He was my brother.”

  * * *

  Rosita had no such fear of the man. She knew he was quite a man, but still a man. She marched up to his table and sat down after drawing a mug of coffee from the urn.

  Ben smiled at her. Something about this tough-acting very pretty young woman appealed to him. Her green Irish eyes searched his face.

  “Something on your mind, Rosita?”

  "Quizas."

  “My Spanish is nil, Rosita.”

  “Maybe.”

  “So speak.”

  “Is that a command from on high?”

  Ben laughed at her. “You remember a comedian named Rodney Dangerfield, Rosita?”

  “No.”

  “Then you won’t understand the joke. Come on, what’s on your mind?”

  “Forget it. It’s none of my business.”

  “Let’s have it, short-stuff.”

  Her green eyes flashed. Danger or mischief was up to the receiver. “Dynamite comes in small packages, General.”

  “I’m sure. But I don’t think that’s what you came over here to say.”

  “The twins.”

  “What about them?”

  “We’ve been on the road for four days. You haven’t seen them one time.”

  “You’re right, it’s none of your business. But… I don’t want to get too close to them. They will be going with their mother as soon as we reach home. She’s found herself a nice young man and that is how it should be. I don’t want to become attached and have to give them up.”

  “Esta bien. That answers that. I don’t have to agree with it, but you’re right, it’s none of my business.” She wanted to tell him how many of his men and women felt about him—that she thought it a dangerous way of looking at the man. But she held her tongue about that. “Dawn cares for you,” she blurted.

  “We’ve run our course. I think she knows that.” Ben signaled for more coffee and they were silent until the mugs were refilled.

  With her eyes downcast, looking at the coffee mug, Rosita said, “The Spanish in me says no man should be without a woman.”

  Ben said nothing, but she felt his eyes lingering on her.

  “No big deal about it, General. No strings and no talk of forever—enamorado. And don’t get the idea I throw myself at every man that comes along.”

  “I don’t feel that at all.”

  “I… have high goals. Strutting peacocks and paper tigers do not impress me. But the nights are lonely.”

  “I will agree with that. Rosita? I am damn near old enough to be your grandfather.”

  Now her eyes did sparkle with mischief. “Afraid of me, General? Think I’m too much for you to handle?”

  Ben opened his mouth to reply but was cut silent by a shout from the lobby.

  “We got company, General. Looks like a bunch of thugs and hoods. I count half a dozen vans; ‘bout ten pickup trucks; half a dozen cars. They look to be all full.”

  “Get troops in position, roof top and second floor,” Ben spoke calmly. He had not moved from his chair. “Ring the area—you all know the drill. Do it quickly.”

  Rosita appraised him with cool green eyes. “Don’t you ever get excited, General?”

  Ben picked up his Thompson and stood up. “Ask me that about nine o’clock tonight, short-stuff.”

  She tossed her head. “I might do that.”

  Ben chuckled and walked out of the dining room.

  “Keep them outside the burn area,” Ben ordered his people. “If they try to cross it, shoot them.”

  “Yes, sir,” Captain Seymour said.

  “That’s Ben Raines,” the words drifted to Ben as he stood on the concrete parking area, facing the large crowd of dirty men and women. Several of them were scratching their legs and ankles.

  But Ben knew any flea that attempted to cross the area that was first burned, then sprayed, would not make it. The area had been sprayed with a deadly flea-killer, laid down almost full-strength.

  “So what?” a man said. He appeared to be the leader of the group.

  The first man shrugged. “I just thought I’d tell you.”

  “So you told me. No
w shut up.” He looked at Ben, standing calmly across the charred area. “Mr. President without a country to preside over. How about us coming over and having some chow with you folks?”

  “Not a chance,” Ben said.

  “We might decide to come over anyways.”

  “Your choice. We’ll give you a nice burial, that I can promise.”

  “We ain’t made no hostile moves, Raines.”

  “Nor have we. You and your people move on. Find another motel. You leave us alone, we leave you alone. That’s the best deal I’ll make.”

  The man looked at the armed Rebels that stood with weapons at the ready. He swung his gaze back to Ben. “Looks like to me you got ‘bout as many cunts in your outfit as you have swingin’ dicks. I never seen a broad yet that knew anything about weapons. I think we got you outgunned.”

  “Than that makes you a damn fool.”

  “Nobody calls me that!”

  “I just did,” Ben’s words were softly spoken, but with enough force to carry across the fifty feet of burned grass.

  Several of the men shifted positions.

  “The first man to raise a weapon,” Ben called. “Shoot him!”

  “I don’t think you’ll do it,” the leader said.

  “Then that makes you a damned fool twice.”

  He grabbed for the pistol at his side.

  Ben lifted the muzzle of the Thompson and blew the man backward, completely lifting him off his tennis shoe-clad feet and pushing him several feet backward.

  A hundred M-16s, AK-47s, M-60 machine guns and sniper rifles opened fire. The men and women who made the mistake of trying Ben Raines and his Rebels died without firing a shot. They lay in crumpled heaps, the blood from their bodies staining the concrete, running off into the gutters and the ditches.

  Ben ejected the clip from the Thompson and slapped a fresh one in its belly. “General Nathan Bedford Forrest put it as well as anyone, I imagine,” he said.

  Rosita put a fresh clip in her M-16. “And what was that, General?”

  Ben smiled at her. “’Git thar fustest with the mostest,’ is the way it’s usually repeated.”