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  Danger In The Ashes

  The Ashes Series: Book #8

  William W. Johnstone

  To Mike and Debbie Foster

  We are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of Nature has placed in our power. . . . The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave.

  - Patrick Henry

  Madame Montholon, having inquired what troops he considered the best. “Those which are victorious, Madame,” replied Napoleon.

  - Napoleon Bonaparte

  PROLOGUE

  It began one summer’s morning; one gorgeous day when the world went mad. It began when the Soviet plan to take over America with germ warfare backfired . . . but millions and millions of people around the world died horribly because of man’s inability to get along with his fellow man.

  It was a time of great confusion, of panic and little brush wars that sprang up all over the once most powerful nation in all the world.

  One man finally saw his duty, and seized the moment. That man was Ben Raines.

  In years to come, Ben would be called many things: anarchist, dictator, murderer . . . and those were the kind things said about him.

  Actually, Ben Raines was a walking contradiction; one of those rare types that fit no title. He could lean so far to the right that “anarchist” might fit him — inaccurately — for a moment. Then he would confuse and irritate his critics by embracing the most liberal of thoughts.

  But regardless of his lack of titles, Ben Raines and a number of people who thought as he did formed Tri-States and based its running on a common-sense type of government — common sense being something that the Congress of the United States had lacked for decades, back when there was a United States and a Congress.

  The thousands of men and women who joined with Ben Raines had many things in common . . . and that was the reason for their working so well together. Ben Raines’s critics complained that he had taken the best of the survivors into the Tri-States. Ben always got a kick out of that because after taking a breath, those same people would loudly proclaim that the people living in Tri-States were nothing more than savages and murderers and the like.

  Actually, what they were was a group of people, of all colors, all races, all religions, who felt they could put together a society and make it work to the satisfaction of all concerned — and they didn’t much give a damn what those living outside of Tri-States thought about it, or anything else, for that matter.

  It was an approach toward living that had never before been tried. And it had worked.

  Would it have worked in a nation the size of the United States? No one knew.

  And now there was no United States of America — or a Tri-States.

  But there was still Ben Raines.

  There had been few jails in the Tri-States, because there had been virtually no crime. It had not been tolerated. And it was just that simple.

  Everybody had a job. Everybody who was able to work, worked. People who were not able to work were taken care of. No one went hungry; no one had to lock their doors at any time. The life expectancy of a criminal in the Tri-States had been a matter of seconds, if that criminal even remotely considered the thought of resisting.

  Justice was harsh, but it was not cruel. A murderer had a choice: hanging or shooting. A rapist fared no better. It was assumed in the Tri-States that if a person used a weapon during the commission of a crime, that person meant to use that weapon. That person also had a choice: hanging or shooting.

  After only a year of existence, those inclined toward criminal activities learned to avoid Tri-States, at any cost. It wouldn’t have done them much good not to avoid it . . . for the Tri-States’ borders were closed.

  Outside of Tri-States, the world was still reeling about, in shock after a germ and limited nuclear war. Inside Tri-States, people were humming right along; putting factories back into operation, raising crops and kids, building a nice little society.

  One thing that might have contributed to the success of Tri-States was that there were so few lawyers allowed in to screw up matters.

  For as Ben was fond of saying, “If you want to know what Jesus thought about lawyers, just read Luke 11:46 and 11:52.”

  So, naturally, lawyers hated the Tri-States.

  But President Hilton Logan hated Ben Raines. Hated the fact that the maverick Tri-States refused to come under the banner of the United States. Hated Ben because of Ben’s success in rebuilding a sane and sensible community.

  And after a few years, by sheer numbers alone, the armies of the United States crushed the Tri-States.

  But the victory was short-lived for Hilton Logan. Ben sent his Zero Squads after the President and any who voted along with him to destroy the Tri-States.

  And a few years after the world had been nearly destroyed by global warfare, Ben Raines and his army of Rebels launched a guerrilla war within the borders of America.

  But the gods of fate must have been shrieking with wild laughter, for a flea-borne disease struck hard, nearly wiping out civilization . . . or so Ben and his Rebels initially thought. When it was all over, there was not a working government anywhere in the world.

  But there was still Ben Raines.

  BOOK ONE

  ONE

  On the morning of his second day back in Louisiana, Ben drove out to see his old house. He knew it would be a bitter disappointment to him . . . and it was. The house was in disrepair; looked like a band of trash had been living in it.

  “Maybe they have,” Ben muttered.

  Ben’s Thompson SMG was lying on the seat next to him in the Jeep. One could not safely venture out unarmed. There was danger everywhere. All sorts of cults had sprung up, so-called religious orders, preaching all sorts of semireligious bullshit. Most of it hate-filled, and most of it directed toward Ben Raines and his Rebels.

  The far northeast was out of bounds for any exploration . . . so far as Ben knew. And he didn’t know that for a fact. Someday he meant to go and see for himself; maybe soon. He’d like to get away; off by himself.

  And there were mutants that roamed the land, products of the germ and chemical and nuclear bombs. Part human, part animal, and God alone knew what else. Great beasts, the adults larger than the biggest polar bears, and twice as dangerous because they had some capacity for thought and reason.

  There were the Night People, too. They lived mostly in the cities, and the cities were called Cities of the Dead.

  Physically scarred and mentally traumatized by the bombings and aftermath of the Great War — as it was called — and the awful sickness that followed, the Night People banded together, electing to hate and despise those who were not like them. To make matters even worse, the Night People were practicing cannibals.

  Yes, there was danger everywhere one turned.

  Movement caught Ben’s eyes; movement behind the rags that once were curtains.

  “Good God,” Ben muttered. “Somebody is actually living amid all that squalor.”

  “Whut you want, boy?” The question was called out from behind the rags.

  “I’m not here to harm you,” Ben shouted. “Just looking around.”

  “You bes’ carry your ass on, soldier-boy! ‘Fore I take a notion to shoot it off.”

  “I’m not on . . . your property.” Ben’s hackles began to rise. “I’m in the road. And you don’t own that. Furthermore, I doubt seriously that you actually own anything. Very few people do, nowadays.”

  “Haw?”

  “Are you a native of this area?” Ben changed the subject, hoping to get some kind of sense from the man, but beginning to realize that might be a hopeless task.

  “I’m from the parish, yeah. What be
your name?”

  “Ben Raines.”

  “You the feller who writ all them books back yonder?”

  “Yes. I used to live in the house you’re presently occupying.”

  “You don’t no more.”

  Ben realized then that he was not exactly in conversation with a mental giant. Or even a mental midget, for that matter. Ben asked the man if he was from a certain part of the parish.

  “Yep!”

  “That figures,” Ben muttered. Back when the parish had built a new library, several residents of that area had said it was the most useless building in the parish.

  Ben knew then when he was going to build the first westward-stretching outpost. Right here.

  “I’ve got several thousand troops camped just outside of Morriston. Going to be lots of activity around here.”

  The voice behind the ragged curtains was silent for a time. “I reckon with you comin’ back, we’re gonna have all sorts of laws and rules and sich as that again, rat?”

  “That is correct.”

  “’Posin’ I don’t wanna foller ’em?”

  “Then I imagine somebody will shoot you,” Ben called cheerfully.

  As his words were fading away, Ben saw the muzzle of a rifle poked through the rags. He rolled out of the Jeep, grabbing his Thompson as he went over the side. A rifle cracked, the slug popping through the windshield. Ben caught movement by the side of the house. A man stepped into view, carrying an M-16. Ben stitched him across the belly and then lifted the SMG, emptying a clip through the ragged curtains. A scream came from within the house.

  Ben waited; no more shots came his way. He ran, zigzagging across the tree-filled and weed-grown yard, coming up to the edge of the house. Moaning could be heard through the broken windows. Ben thought: I put a lot of money into this house, only to have these trashy bastards screw it all up.

  He kicked in the door, which wasn’t all that difficult a task . . . it was hanging by one hinge.

  Ben looked down at the badly wounded man. The .45 caliber slugs had taken him in the chest. He lay amid filth on the floor. “You’re not exactly a paragon of neatness, are you?”

  “Fuck you, Raines! I didn’t lak your arrogant ass when you lived here ’fore.”

  “Hell, man. I don’t know you.”

  “I knowed you,” the man managed to gasp. “Always lookin’ down your damn snooty nose at the res’ of us.”

  “The word is reserved, not arrogant.” Ben felt a little silly, standing there discussing word meaning with a dying man.

  “Whure’s my brudder?”

  “Was he carrying an M-16?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He’s dead.”

  The man cursed Ben.

  “If you’re quite finished. . . .” Ben looked down at him. “Anything else I can do for you?”

  “Whut you gonna do with me?”

  “Nothing.” Ben turned and walked back outside, across the lawn — loosely called — and got into his Jeep.

  “You jist gonna leave me here?” the redneck hollered.

  “That is correct,” Ben muttered. He cranked the Jeep and drove off.

  It was a hard time, and Ben Raines was a hard man when he had to be. Even when world conditions had been at their best, before the Great War, Ben could not tolerate ignorance, and he was doubly contemptuous of those people who were ignorant and proud of that ignorance. There had been too many schools, both traditional and Vo-Tech, for anyone to remain ignorant; therefore, he had no patience with anyone who chose to muck around in blind mental blankness.

  He met a patrol driving fast up the old blacktop road.

  “We heard shots. What happened, general?”

  “A couple of people just learned a hard lesson about the value of knowledge and civility,” Ben told the lieutenant.

  The Rebel smiled. “Yes, sir. Will they be needing medical assistance, sir?”

  “If you want to mess with them, go ahead.” Ben drove on.

  Used to be a lot of people living in this area, Ben mused, driving slowly along the rutted road. By and large, good people. We’re going to be starting from scratch. He thought of the monumental task ahead of them all.

  First we build the outposts, one every hundred miles, stretching from the Mississippi River to the coast of California. Little oases of civilization, where men and women could live in some higher degree of safety and build schools and homes and once more begin the job of pulling themselves out of the ashes of destruction.

  After the recent battles, the Libyan terrorist Khamsin — the “Hot Wind,” as he called himself — would be weeks, maybe months, rebuilding his army. Khamsin was of no immediate worry to Ben.

  Getting the first real outpost set up and working was Ben’s main concern at the moment. That, and staying alive long enough to do it.

  Hiram Rockingham stepped out onto his front porch and surveyed his own personal little kingdom. It began some twenty miles from Morriston — south. That area had been called, back before the Great War, the last bastion of ignorance, intermarriage, and intolerance in that part of the country. And that was only a mild exaggeration. Every state, and probably a large percentage of the counties therein, had something to compare to this region. Albeit not something the Chamber of Commerce would want to include in any tourist packet.

  Hiram knew that Ben Raines was back, and Hiram knew also that with Ben’s return, things were going to change.

  The two men had hated each other for twenty years. Ben, because Hiram was the personification of an ignorant redneck. And Hiram, even though he would never admit it, indeed, probably didn’t even realize it, had always felt threatened by Ben Raines.

  Both men were strong-willed individualists. Both felt that their way was the best. The similarity ended there.

  Hiram was ignorant. Ben was a man of books and knowledge. Ben preferred to talk matters over and reach some sort of gentlemen’s understanding. Hiram, if he felt slighted, would burn the other party’s house down or shoot his dogs. And then go home and feel very smug about it.

  To Ben’s way of thinking, people like Hiram took much more from society than they gave.

  To Hiram, Ben had always been uppity and snooty. Read books and watched that silly stuff on the Public Broadcasting TV. Ben Raines felt that animals had rights. To Hiram’s way of thinking, that was nonsense; animals didn’t have no rights a-tall.

  Back when the world still was spinning in some degree of order, Hiram and his ilk hated the men who worked for the Wildlife and Fisheries Department; ’specially them bastards in the enforcement arm of it. To Hiram’s way of thinking, a man had a right to shoot a deer anytime he damn pleased. To try to convince Hiram that if everybody felt that way, there would soon be no game left was tantamount to beating your head against a brick wall.

  Ben felt that the wilderness areas and the forests and streams were for the enjoyment of every citizen. And it had not improved relations between the men when it got back to Hiram that Ben had suggested an open season on rednecks. Then you could shoot one, strap it on the hood of your car or truck, and ride around town, showing off your kill.

  “’at damn feller’s plumb crazy!” was Hiram’s response to Ben’s remark.

  “That suggestion of yours is a little extreme, Ben,” a friend told him. “’Necks are human beings, you know?”

  “They walk upright,” was Ben’s reply.

  Hiram believed that there never was and never would be no damn colored man as good as or as smart as a white man. Period. Wasn’t no Jew worth a damn; the Holocaust never happened. Mexicans was lazy and no good. You couldn’t trust them slant-eyed folks. All Wops belonged to the mafia. Anyone who didn’t like black-eyed peas and corn-bread was ignorant. And so on, and on . . . imparting his dubious wisdom to his kids and anyone else who cared to listen.

  Ben, on the other hand, believed, along with a growing number of people, before and after the Great War, that the time was coming when the nation as a whole would be forced to see that p
eople of Hiram’s ilk, regardless of color, could no longer be tolerated, socially, morally, economically, and probably most important, intellectually.

  “Whut the hale’s far does all that mean?” Hiram blustered, upon hearing Ben’s comments.

  “Hit means he’d lak to shoot you,” a slightly more intelligent neighbor informed him. “Ifn you won’t change.”

  “’at bassard’s crazy!” Hiram hollered.

  As Ben drove the old country roads, Hiram sat on his front porch and looked out over the fields he and his kind worked.

  They were good farmers; not even Ben would take that from them.

  The weather had been good and the crops looked fine. Hiram wondered if Ben Raines was going to let him live long enough to get his crops in.

  One thing Ben Raines wouldn’t have to worry about was gettin’ colored folks to join up with him. There wasn’t no colored folks left around these parts. Hiram and his buddies had seen to that. There was some lived over to Morriston, but they stayed to themselves and didn’t mess with white folks.

  That was the way it ought to be.

  Hiram remembered when that damn Kasim and his bunch come in; gonna make this whole place something called New Africa.

  But President Logan had sent mercenaries in and wiped most of them out.

  Then Ben Raines had killed Logan. Funny, Hiram pondered . . . the word he’d got was that Ben didn’t even like Kasim.

  Hiram sighed. All that was four-five years back, at least. He couldn’t ’member ’xactly. Didn’t make no difference noways.

  Ben Raines showed his ass down in this area, and Ben wasn’t gonna show it no more.

  Hiram looked up as a pickup rattled over his cattle guard. Frank Monroe from up the road got out and come walking up to the porch.

  “Mornin’, Hiram.”

  “Frank. What’s on your mind?”

  “Ben Raines is back.”

  “I know it.”

  “Got an army with him.”

  “I hear he had him some soldier-boys. Don’t worry me none.” That was a damn lie, but Hiram wouldn’t admit it for the world. If he hadn’t been worried about it, he never would have thought about Ben killing him.