Fire in the Ashes ta-2

by William Wallace Johnstone

  There was no sense to any of it.

  Ben said as much.

  “Perhaps,” Rosita ventured, “those that did it do not possess sense as we know it?”

  “What are you trying to say, Rosita?”

  “I… don’t really know, Ben. And please don’t press me.”

  “All right.”

  Ben cut to the bridge and saw it was clear except for a few clumsily erected barricades. They looked as though they had been placed there by people without full use of their mental faculties.

  Again, he said, as much aloud.

  Rosita said nothing.

  Ben radioed back to the main column. “Come on through to the bridge at Keokuk, Cec. But be careful.”

  “I copy that. Ben? We just passed through a little town called Good Hope. It looked… what was it the kids used to call it? It looked like it had been trashed.”

  “I know. Same with Hamilton. No sense to it.”

  “We’ll be there as quickly as possible, Ben.”

  “Ten-four.”

  With guards on the bridge, east and west, Ben and the others cleared the bridge in a few minutes. Beneath them, the Mississippi River rolled and boiled and pounded its way south, the waters dark and angry-looking.

  “They look like they hold secrets,” Rosita said, her eyes on the Big Muddy.

  “I’m sure they do,” Ben put an arm around her shoulders, pulling her close.

  They stood for a time, without speaking, content to be close and to look at the mighty flow of water.

  “General?” one of his men called. “Look at this, sir, if you will.”

  Ben and Rosita walked to where the man stood. Painted in white paint on the bridge floor, close to the railing, were these words:

  GOD HELP US ALL. WHAT MANNER OF CREATURE HAVE WE CREATED? THEY CAME IN THE NIGHT. I CANNOT LIVE LIKE THIS.

  It was unsigned.

  “He was talking about the mutant rats,” Ben said. Rosita looked at him, eyes full of doubt. “I wonder what happened to the person who wrote this?” the man who discovered the message asked.

  “He went over the side,” Rosita said.

  “Probably,” Ben agreed.

  No more was said of it until the column rolled onto the bridge. There, in the cold January winds, Ben told his people what had happened to the scouts.

  Roanna stepped forward. “General? President? What the hell are you, now?”

  Ben had to laugh at her reporter’s bluntness. “How about Ben?”

  “I’ll keep it ‘General.’” She then told him of the AP messages and of her sending Jane to Michigan.

  Ben was openly skeptical. “Mutant beings, Roanna? Are you serious?”

  “Yes, I am. Same copy that told of mutant rats. Received the same night from AP.”

  Ben shook his head in disbelief.

  “It’s highly possible, Ben,” Cecil said, as the cold winds whipped around them. “I seem to recall hearing some doctor say after the initial wave of bombings that God alone would know what type of mutations the radiation would bring in animals and humans.”

  When Ben finally spoke, his words were hard and firm. “Now I don’t want a lot of panic to come out of this. None of us know what happened to our scouts. They were killed. By what or whom, I don’t know. What I do know is this: we are going to make the Tri-States. Home, at least for a while. We’ve got rough country to travel, and we’ve been lucky so far. I expect some firefights before we get home. So all of us will stay alert.

  “We’ll be traveling through some… wild country; country that has not been populated for more than a decade. It’s possible we’ll see some… things we aren’t… haven’t witnessed before. I hope not. But let’s be prepared for anything. When we do stop at motels, we’ll double the guards and stay alert. But I don’t want panic and talk of monsters. Let’s move out. We’ll stay on 196 all the way across northern Missouri.

  “Let’s go, people.”

  The column of survivors rolled into Missouri and continued westward.

  Toward the Tri-States.

  Home.

  FIVE

  HOMEWARD BOUND…

  The column rolled all the rest of that day and all that night, stopping only to fuel the vehicles. They angled south at Bethany and entered Kansas between St. Joseph and Kansas City. Kansas City had taken a small nuclear pop and would be “hot” for many centuries.

  They wanted to avoid as much of Nebraska as possible, for that state had taken several strikes back in ‘88, and, like Kansas City, was hot.

  They kept rolling, hitting heavier snow, and Ben kept pushing them westward.

  They picked up Highway 36 and stayed with it until Ben finally called a halt in central Kansas. They had rolled almost five hundred miles and had not seen one living human being.

  It was eerie.

  The men and women were exhausted, for they had been forced to stop many times to push abandoned vehicles out of the road, to clear small bridges, and to backtrack when the road became impossible.

  At a small motel complex, just large enough to accommodate them all—if they doubled and tripled up in the rooms—the tired band of survivors sprayed and boiled and washed and disinfected the area. They went to sleep without even eating.

  When they awakened the next morning, after having slept a full twelve hours, they found themselves snowed in tight.

  * * *

  Ben was, as usual, the first one up and out of bed on the morning the silent snow locked them in. Blizzard or not, Ben knew a patrol had to be sent into town for kerosene to keep the heaters going.

  Either that or freeze.

  Before opening the motel door, to face the bitter cold and blowing snow and winds, Ben looked back at the sleeping beauty of Rosita.

  Not much more than a child, he thought. A deadly child, he reminded himself, or Dan Gray would never have sent her out on her own, but still very young.

  Bitter thoughts of his own age came to him. He shook them off. Thompson in hand, he stepped from the room, quietly closing the door behind him.

  A sentry turned at the soft bootsteps in the snow. “Sir?”

  “Get someone to put chains on my truck. I’m going into town.”

  “Alone, sir!”

  Ben looked at the young man for a moment. “Yes,” he said impetuously, suddenly weary of being constantly bird-dogged and watched and guarded.

  Goddamn it, he had wandered this nation alone, traveling thousands of miles alone, back in ‘88 and ‘89. He didn’t need a nursemaid now.

  Fifteen minutes later he was driving into the small town of Phillipsburg. He found a service station and pulled in. There, he found a half dozen 55-gallon drums of kerosene. He wondered how old they were. He pried the cap off one and stuck a rag into the liquid. Away from the drums, he lit the rag. The flame danced in the blowing snow.

  He radioed back to the motel, telling the radioman where to find the kerosene and to send people in to get it. And to leave him alone.

  He knew he was behaving foolishly; but Ben suddenly needed space—time alone. He drove slowly into the town, stopping on the main street and parking the truck. He got out and began walking.

  The town was dead. Lifeless. Like all the others the convoy had rolled through. Dead dots on a once busy map.

  He knew it had not always been so. For this was farming and ranching country, and he recalled back in ‘89 when he traveled through Kansas, telling people of President Hilton Logan’s plan to relocate the people. The people of this area, as well as most other farming areas, had simply refused to leave.

  But now they had left.

  At least their spirits had.

  He pushed open the door of a drug store and stepped inside. He smiled as he noticed an old-fashioned soda fountain and counter. He sat down on a stool and looked at his reflection in the mirror. Memories came rushing back to him—forty-year-old memories. Cherry Cokes and Elvis Presley; peppermint lipstick and sock hops; young kisses, all full of passion and wanting-to-do-IT, bu
t so afraid. Of drive-in movies and seeing entertainers performing on the tops of the concession stands. Narvel Felts and Joe Keene and Dale Hawkins…

  and

  that special girl.

  What was her name?

  My God! what an injustice—I can’t even remember her name.

  Ben looked at his deeply tanned and lined face; the gray in his hair. Memories came in a rush, flooding and filling him.

  “Let the Good Times Roll” sang Shirley & Lee.

  But they will never roll again, Ben thought. Not for me.

  I am growing old. But Rosita says I have fifty more years.

  He shook his head.

  I hope not.

  Why? a silent voice asked. Why do you say that? Don’t you want to see this nation rebuilt and restore itself?

  “It won’t,” Ben muttered. “No matter what I do—it will not happen.”

  “What won’t?” a voice jarred him out of his reverie.

  Ben almost ruptured himself spinning off the stool, the Thompson coming up, finger tightening on the trigger.

  “Whoa!” the man shouted. “I’m harmless.”

  The man looked to be in his mid to late sixties. A pleasant-appearing man.

  “Who in the hell are you?” Ben asked, his heart slamming in his chest.

  “My God!” the man whispered. “It’s President Raines.”

  “No more,” Ben sat back on the stool. He continued holding the Thompson, the muzzle pointing at the floor. “The government has been dissolved.”

  “So I heard,” the man replied. He smiled. “Relax, Mister Raines. I own this drug store. I’m a pharmacist. I don’t have the plague, I assure you. What drugs are you taking?”

  Ben told him.

  “Don’t overdo it; too much can kill as well as cure. The disease is tapering off now; but it will come back with a vengeance this spring or summer. Save what medications you have left until then.”

  “I was hoping it had run its course.”

  “It is a good way of describing the disease, Mister Raines. I have never heard of any disease moving quite as fast as this one did—or be so unresponsive to proper medication.”

  “You’re the first living soul I’ve seen in seven hundred miles.”

  The man smiled. “There are survivors, sir. Let me warn you of that. The thugs and hoodlums and filth are out and moving—doing what people of that particular ilk do. The decent folks are hiding, quietly getting together at night. You are alone—why?”

  “I’m not alone,” Ben told him. “I’ve got a full company of troops staying at the motel. Are you the only survivor in this town?”

  “No. There are about fifteen others.”

  “You have plans?”

  Again, that smile. “Of course. To live out our lives in peace and solitude and die quietly of old age.”

  “Nothing more than that?”

  The man shook his head. “Very little. Plant gardens in the spring, can the foods, and stay low, attracting no attention.”

  “That’s what I was muttering. This nation will never climb out of the ashes—not wholly.”

  “I’m afraid you’re right, sir. But,” he shrugged, “who knows. You did it once. Don’t you think you can do it again?”

  “I don’t know. I intend to try.”

  “Good luck.”

  “Would you like to come with us?” Ben offered.

  The man shook his head. “No. But I thank you for the offer.”

  “Just give up, eh?” Ben needled the man.

  “No, sir—that’s not it entirely. I… think I should like to live… well, free, I suppose is the right choice of words. I don’t have to lecture you as to the faults of big government.”

  “But big government doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad government, uncaring and unfeeling.”

  “This is true. But they almost always turn into that. Right?”

  “That is true. But without some sort of organized society, a government, if you will, how can this nation ever become what it once was? Or even a semblance of what it once was?”

  “It can’t, sir. But perhaps it’s time for that to occur. Have you given that any thought?”

  “Quite a lot, I’m afraid.”

  “And your conclusion?”

  “I have to try.” Ben rose from the stool, turning toward the door just as several pickup trucks rattled to a tire-chained halt in front of the drug store.

  The owner smiled.

  “Why are you smiling?” Ben asked.

  “Your people are fearful of you deserting them, Mister Raines.”

  Ben walked out of the store without looking back. He faced a half dozen of his troops.

  “Can’t I get off by myself every now and then?” Ben asked, his tone harsh.

  “With all due respect, sir,” Captain Seymour said. “We’d rather you wouldn’t.”

  “I don’t need a nanny, Captain.”

  “No, sir,” the captain agreed. But neither he nor any of his people made any move to leave Ben alone.

  “I see,” Ben said quietly, the words almost torn from his mouth by the cold winds that whipped down the littered main street.

  Ben turned back to the storeowner, standing in the door of the drug store. “How’d you rid yourself of the rat problem?”

  The man opened the door. “We didn’t. They just went away.”

  “Where?”

  The man shrugged his reply.

  “Have you observed any other… well, things out of the ordinary?”

  “I don’t follow you, sir.”

  “Creatures,” Ben spoke the word.

  The man shook his head. “Only those big rats. That’s creature enough for one lifetime, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “Yes,” Ben said. “I wish you luck.”

  “The same to you.”

  * * *

  The Rebels spent three days at the motel, waiting for a break in the weather. On the morning of the fourth day, the sun broke through the clouds and the temperature warmed, melting much of the snow and ice by mid-morning.

  “Let’s roll it,” Ben said.

  Three and a half hours later, the convoy rolled into Colorado and Ben halted them.

  “I’m going to take a chance that 385 is clear up to Interstate 80 in the southwestern part of Nebraska. We’ll take that and roll it across Wyoming until we hit Highway 30. That’ll take us into Idaho. I don’t anticipate meeting any of our people until we get west of Pocatello. It’s five hundred miles to Rock Springs. That’s where we’ll take our next sleep break—providing all the roads are clear. You drive four hours, switch off with your partner. Let’s roll it, folks. We’re almost home and safe. Patrols out. Let’s go.”

  Twenty-one long, tough hours later, the weary column pulled into a motel complex in Rock Springs.

  Ike was waiting for them, with a grin on his face not much smaller than the western skies.

  SIX

  HOME…

  After six hours sleep, which was Ben’s normal time in bed, he showered, shaved, and walked down into the dining area for breakfast.

  Ike’s people had prepared the motel for Ben and his column hours before the convoy arrived. Most of the weary survivors skipped food and went straight to bed.

  Over bacon and eggs and a huge stack of flapjacks, Ben asked, “How’s it looking, Ike?”

  “Fifty-eight hundred, Ben.”

  Ben raised his eyes to those of his friend. “What the hell happened to the rest? We had more than ten thousand six months ago.”

  “They just didn’t make it, partner. Word is still pretty sketchy, but from all reports, we lost a full battalion of people coming out of Georgia. We were in contact one day… next day, nothing. A couple of companies were ambushed up in Michigan. We lost a full platoon of people up in Wisconsin, and we don’t know what killed them.”

  “What do you mean, Ike?”

  “Just that, Ben. We don’t know what happened. The two people who survived died on the way here without
ever regaining consciousness. They were… well… mangled all to hell and gone. I got the pictures if you got the stomach for it.”

  Ben thought he knew what the pictures would reveal; that he had seen something very similar to it on a lonely windy highway in Illinois.

  He said as much.

  Ike toyed with his coffee cup. “And…?”

  Ben slowly shook his head. “We deal with it if or when we see… whatever killed those people with our own eyes.”

  Ike grunted softly. “Probably be best. Keep down horror stories, I reckon.”

  The large dining room was quiet; only a few Rebels were up and about.

  “Goin’ to be a pretty day,” Ike said. “Winds all died down. Jerre asked me to bring her babies to her soon as I could. I could have a chopper down here in an hour; take ‘em to her up in Twin Falls.”

  “That’s a good idea, Ike. Why don’t you do that.”

  “That’d give you time to look in on the babies and play with ‘em some.”

  “I have no intention of doing that,” Ben spoke the words without emotion.

  “I see,” his friend said after a few seconds had ticked past. “You’re a hard man, Ben. Knew that the first day I saw you, down in Florida. Sure you need to be this hard?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “All right.” Ike motioned for a uniformed young woman to come to the table. She rose from a table across the room and walked to where Ike and Ben sat.

  “This is Lieutenant Mary Macklin, Ben.”

  Ben looked into her eyes and nodded.

  “Mary,” Ike said, “you get on the horn and call them ol’ boys up at whirly-bird country. Have one of ‘em bring Jerre down here—pick up her babies.”

  “Yes, sir.” The young woman saluted and left.

  Ben smiled. “Getting a little rigid on discipline, aren’t you, Ike?”

  “That ain’t my idea,” the ex-SEAL replied glumly. “It’s hers. She was regular Army ‘til about six months ago. I can’t get that damned salutin’ out of her. Drives me up the wall.”

  “Tell me how you have the people spread out, Ike.”

  “I had them pulled in pretty tight at first, Ben. But even with that, we sprayed one hell of an area and burned even more. But the burn was all controlled and nothin’ got out of hand. Twins Falls down to the Nevada line, then across the top of Nevada and Utah to Interstate 15 then north to Pocatello. 15 and 80 is the northern line.” He grinned. “I kept folks right busy, wouldn’t you say?”