Tyranny in the Ashes Read online

  TYRANNY IN THE ASHES

  The Ashes Series: Book #30

  William W. Johnstone

  PROLOGUE

  If a war had not engulfed the entire world, plunging every nation into bloody chaos, the theory was the government of the United States would have collapsed anyway. Personal income taxes had been going up for years, and the hard-working, law-abiding citizens were paying well over half their income to the government. The left wing of the Democratic party had taken over and passed massive gun-grab legislation, effectively disarming American citizens—except for the criminals, of course, and about three quarters of a million tough-minded Americans who didn’t give a big rat’s ass what liberals said, thought, or did. Those Americans carefully sealed up their guns and buried them, along with cases of ammunition. When the collapse came, those Americans were able to defend themselves against the hundreds of roaming gangs of punks and thugs that popped up all over what had once been called the United States. The great nation would never again be accurately referred to as the United States of America.

  Slowly, an ever-growing group of people began calling for a man named Ben Raines to lead them. But Ben didn’t want any part of leadership. For months he disregarded the ever-increasing calls from people all over the nation, until finally he could no longer ignore the pleas.

  Months later, thousands of people made the journey to the northwest part of the nation and formed their own nation out of three states. It was called the Tri-States, and those who chose to live there based many of their laws on the Constitution of the United States: the original interpretation of that most revered document Basically, it was a commonsense approach to government, something that had been sadly lacking for years with liberals in control of the old United States of America. But after only a few months in their new nation, Ben knew that only about two out of every ten Americans could—or would was more to the point—live under a commonsense form of government. Under this form of government, everyone, to a very large degree, controlled his or her own destiny. The Rebels, as residents of the Tri-States were named by the press, took wonderful care of the very old, the young, and those unable to care for themselves. But if a person was able to work, he worked . . . whether he liked it or not. There were no free handouts for able-bodied people. If they didn’t want to work, they got the hell out of the Tri-States. Very quickly.

  The first attempt at building a nation within a nation failed when the federal government grew powerful enough to launch a major campaign against the Tri-States. The original Tri-States was destroyed and the Rebel Army was decimated and scattered. But the federal government made one major mistake: They didn’t kill Ben Raines.

  Ben and the few Rebels left alive began rebuilding their Army, and then launched a very nasty guerrilla war against the federal government that lasted for months: hit hard, destroy, and run. It worked.

  But before any type of settlement could be reached, a deadly plague struck the earth: a rat-borne outbreak, the Black Death revisited.

  When the deadly disease finally ran its course, anarchy reigned over what had once been America. Gangs of punks and warlords ruled from border to border, coast to coast. Ben and his Rebels began the long, slow job of clearing the nation of punks and human slime and setting up a new Tri-States. This time they settled in the South, first in Louisiana, in an area they called Base Camp One. Then they began spreading out in all directions as more and more people wanted to become citizens of the new nation called the Southern United States of America: SUSA.

  Ben and the Rebels fought for several years, clearing the cities of the vicious gangs and growing larger and stronger while the SUSA spread out.

  In only a few years, the Rebel Army became the largest and most powerful army on the face of the earth . . . with the possible exception of China. No one knew what was going on in China, for that nation had sealed its borders and cut off nearly all communication with the outside world.

  A few more years drifted by while the Rebels roamed the world at the request of the newly formed United Nations, kicking ass and stabilizing nations as best they could in the time allotted them.

  But back home, the situation was worsening. Outside the SUSA, the nation was turning socialistic with sickening speed. The old FBI was gone, in its place the FPPS: Federal Prevention and Protective Service. It was a fancy title that fooled no one. The FPPS was the nation’s secret police, and they were everywhere, bullyboys and thugs. Day-to-day activities of those living in the USA were highly restricted. The new Liberal/Socialist government of President for Life Claire Osterman and her second in command, Harlan Millard, was now firmly in control.

  There were border guards stationed all along major crossings in every state. But now many of them had been moved south, to patrol along the several-thousand-mile border of the SUSA.

  A bloody civil war was shaping up between the USA and the SUSA. Rewards had been placed on the head of Ben Raines: a million dollars for his capture, dead or alive. But Ben was accustomed to that. He’d had rewards—of one kind or another, from one group or another—on his head for years.

  Anna, Ben’s adopted daughter, had been kidnapped by the FPPS. She was to be tried as a traitor against the Liberal/Socialist government and executed. A very highly irritated Ben knew the taking of Anna was intended to draw him out, for the FPPS was certain Ben would come after her . . . which he damn sure did, with blood in his eyes. That abortive move cost the FPPS several dozen agents and accomplished nothing else for Osterman and her henchman. But it further heightened the already monumental legend of Ben Raines . . . and made Claire Osterman and her government look like a pack of incompetent screwups . . . which they certainly were.

  After Claire completely lost her temper and what little rational judgment she had, she started a civil war with SUSA, using hired mercenaries when half of her own USA troops refused to fight their neighbors. All along a battle line that stretched for thousands of miles, from Texas to Georgia in the Old South, federal troops faced Rebel forces across no-man’s lands.*

  *Standoff in the Ashes.

  Once again the SUSA, led by Ben Raines and his team, kicked her federal troops’ butt in battle after battle, driving her into a fury that knew no bounds.

  When Sugar Babe Osterman got word from her field commanders that Raines had killed Commanding General Walter Berman, head of her entire Army, in a hand-to-hand combat, she almost had a stroke. In a fit of pique, she notified Cecil Jeffreys, President of the SUSA, that if he and his leaders, especially that bastard Ben Raines, didn’t surrender, she was going to launch an all-out missile attack against the SUSA at 0600 hours. The missiles were to contain a highly effective, ancient strain of anthrax bacteria developed by a USA scientist, Yiro Ishi. The vaccinations the SUSA had given their troops against anthrax would be useless due to the ancient nature of this new strain.

  However, Ishi double-crossed Claire Osterman and gave the formula for an effective vaccine to Ben Raines and a fake formula to Osterman’s government. As the plague began to decimate the USA, Otis Warner, one of Claire Osterman’s cabinet officers, conspired with General Joseph Winter to have Claire Osterman killed in a plane crash.

  When the plane went down, Warner and Winter, sure Osterman was dead, took over the government of the USA, then contacted SUSA president Cecil Jeffreys and began to discuss a peace accord.*

  *Crisis in the Ashes.

  However, Claire Osterman survived the plane crash and was taken in by a family in the Ozark Mountains of Tennessee . . .

  ONE

  Claire Osterman looked up into the inky blackness of the night sky as the plane she’d just jumped out of exploded in a fiery ball of flame. The cold air rushed past her face and she flailed her arms, falling at
120 miles an hour toward the Tennessee mountains below.

  She opened her mouth and began to scream . . .

  “Wake up, lady,” a voice said, pulling her from the depths of the nightmare she’d had every night since her plane crash four weeks ago.

  Claire Osterman looked up into Bettye Jean Holt’s face, fighting to come fully awake and put the horrible dream behind her. She glanced around at the small bedroom where she’d been staying since hobbling through five miles of wooded Ozark mountain forest with a broken jaw, broken left arm, and severely sprained left ankle to finally find refuge in the Holts’ small wooden shack a month before.

  Bettye Jean Holt was carrying a bowl of what could only be described as gruel. She’d told Claire it was oatmeal, that being the only thing Claire could manage to eat as her broken jaw healed, but if there were any oats in it, they were few and far between.

  “What time is it?” Claire mumbled sleepily, rubbing her eyes to erase the picture of General Willford Hall being blown to bits above her.

  “Heck,” Bettye Jean said in her thick backwoods accent, “h’it’s almost five in the mornin’. Billy Bob’s gone out to feed the chickens an’ hog.” She grinned, exposing yellowed teeth with several black gaps where malnutrition had caused them to fall out.

  Claire reached for the oatmeal, wincing as pain shot down her left arm, restricted by the crude splint Bettye Jean had taped on it after setting the broken bones.

  “He said to git yore lazy butt up an’ fer me to git his breakfast ’fore he came back, Mary,” Bettye Jean said, using the fake name Claire had given them when she found out they hated Claire Osterman and the entire government of the USA.

  “He said it was about time you started earnin’ yore keep around here, but”—and Bettye Jean’s voice changed to a conspiratorial whisper as she continued—“I tole him yore arm weren’t healed enough jest yet.”

  As Claire took the oatmeal from her, Bettye Jean pulled a folded-up newspaper out of her apron pocket. “I also brung you a paper Billy Bob got when he drove the ol’ pickup into town yesterday. H’it’s a couple’a weeks old, but I figgered you’d like to know what was goin’ on in the world since you fell outta that tree.”

  “What . . . oh, yeah,” Claire said, remembering she’d told the Holts that she’d received her injuries when she climbed a tree to get her bearings after getting lost in the woods. Billy Bob had said he thought she looked like Claire Osterman and if she was, he was going to shoot her. Her cover story had been a quick attempt to save her life until the search party from USA headquarters could find her.

  Claire took the spoon and bowl and began shoveling the soupy mixture into her mouth, wondering why they hadn’t already come for her.

  As she left the room, Bettye Jean lit a small kerosene lantern on a table next to the door. The cabin had no electricity or running water, and the bathroom was in a small shed fifty yards down the path.

  Claire’s face flushed and her heart pounded as she read the headlines of the two-week-old paper. “President Warner and President Jeffreys Make Progress toward Peace Agreement.”

  President Warner? Why that backstabbing son of a bitch, Claire thought. When I get back I’ll show him who’s President! I’ll personally put a bullet in the bastard’s mouth!

  She finished the cereal and struggled out of the bed, hobbling on a still-sore left ankle toward the kitchen. She had to get to a phone so she could let them know at government headquarters she was still alive. She’d be damned if she was going to let this peace proposal go any further!

  “Bettye Jean,” she said from the door to the kitchen.

  Bettye Jean looked over her shoulder from the sink where she was washing dishes. “Oh, you scared me, Mary.”

  “Bettye Jean,” Claire said, handing her the bowl and spoon, “I’ve got to get to a phone. How far is it to the nearest one?”

  Bettye Jean pursed her lips, thinking. “Oh, ’bout five mile down the road. There’s a gas station there that has a phone on the wall.” She shook her head. “Course, they don’t often have any gas to sell, since that crazy Osterman lady done started this here war.”

  “But she had to,” Claire said, exasperated that this simple country woman couldn’t understand the dangers the country faced from Ben Raines and his Rebels. “She had to protect the country against the Rebel Army.”

  Bettye Jean put her finger to her lips. “Shhh, don’t you let Billy Bob hear you takin’ up fer that bitch. He’s liable to take a switch to you, or worse,” she said, naked fear in her eyes.

  “Do you think he’ll take me down to the gasoline station in your pickup?”

  “I doubt it, Mary. He says we don’t got no gas to waste on foolishness, what with it costin’ five dollars a gallon now, when they got any.”

  Claire was getting awfully tired of the crap this hillbilly named Billy Bob was always spouting. She sighed. It was time to take matters into her own hands before it was too late and Otis Warner and his crowd screwed everything up beyond repair.

  “Okay, Bettye Jean. You go on back to your dishwashing and I’ll go out back and ask him myself.”

  “’Member now, don’t go sayin’ nothin’ ’bout that Osterman woman, or you’ll git a beatin’.”

  Claire’s lips curled in a sneer. “Oh, I think Billy Bob’s beating days are over.”

  She left the kitchen, Bettye Jean staring at her back with a worried look on her face. Claire went down the hallway to the Holts’ bedroom and opened the closet door. Leaning in a corner was a double-barreled shotgun. Bettye Jean had told her Billy Bob always kept it loaded with 00-buckshot.

  Claire picked it up, broke open the barrel, and checked the loads. Both barrels full. She clicked it shut, put it over her shoulder, and headed out back to where the hogs and chickens were.

  “Here, chick, chick, chick,” Billy Bob was saying as he scattered a few meager handfuls of grain for the hens. A bucket of slops was next to his feet, intended for the rather skinny hog in a makeshift pen a few yards away.

  “Billy Bob,” Claire called to his back. “I need a ride down the road to the gas station. I need to make a phone call.”

  Without turning around, he answered, “I ain’t got gas to waste on you and yore foolishness, woman. Now git back to the house and hep Bettye Jean with her chores.”

  Claire’s face flushed in anger. No one had talked like that to her in ten years, and she wasn’t about to let this inbred idiot do it now.

  “I don’t think so, Billy Bob,” she said in a low, dangerous voice.

  “You sassin’ me, woman?” he said as he turned around, eyes widening as he saw the long-barreled shotgun cradled in her arms.

  “What you doin’ with my scattergun?” he asked.

  “Thanking you for your hospitality, you dumb son of a bitch,” she said, her eyes sparkling with excitement as she pulled the trigger.

  The shotgun exploded, twisting her half around as the heavy load blew Billy Bob backward to land half in the hog pen.

  “You’ll have something special to eat tonight, hog,” she said as she turned and walked up the hill toward the house.

  Bettye Jean came running out of the door, her hands to her mouth when she saw what Claire had done.

  “Oh, Mary,” she screamed, tears running down her cheeks. “What’d you do that, fer?”

  “I’m sorry, Bettye Jean, but I can’t let you tell anyone I’m here until my people have a chance to come get me. It would be too dangerous with the attitude you mountain people have towards the government.”

  “Huh?” Bettye Jean asked.

  “I’m truly sorry, Bettye Jean. You were really nice to me, but you had the misfortune to become involved in things more important than your miserable life.”

  The shotgun exploded again, knocking Bettye Jean backward through the screened-in rear porch, dead before she hit the ground.

  Claire took the keys to their battered pickup truck off a nail on the kitchen wall. She reloaded the shotgun, just in case, and
started toward the gasoline station down the road. It was time to call in the troops.

  TWO

  Virgie Malone, Otis Warner’s new secretary and “gal Friday,” stuck her head in the door to the President of the United States’ office and called, “Mr. President!”

  Otis glanced up from the latest communique from President Cecil Jeffreys, surprised at the urgent tone in Virgie’s voice. He was interested to see what could make the usually unflappable Virgie so excited.

  “Yes, Virgie? What is it?” he asked.

  “There’s someone on line one,” she said, a little breathless since she’d run the twenty feet down the hall from her office to give him this message personally rather than trusting the interoffice intercom.

  “Who is it?”

  “She says she’s Claire Osterman.”

  “Shit!” Otis exclaimed, sweat popping out on his brow and his stomach feeling as if someone had kicked him in the balls.

  “Should I put her through?” Virgie asked, watching his reaction carefully.

  “Uh . . . yeah, sure, just give me a minute to . . . collect myself. Oh, and get General Whiter down here immediately!”

  “Sir,” Virgie said, “I thought she was dead.”

  Otis pulled a rumpled handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his forehead. “So did I, Virgie, so did we all.”

  She pulled her head out of the doorway like a turtle going back in its shell, and a few moments later the phone on his desk buzzed.

  His hand hesitated just a few seconds as he reached to pick up the receiver, as if he were afraid to touch the instrument lest some venom from the bitch on the other end leak through the plastic and eat his flesh away.

  Finally, he picked the phone up. “Hello, this is Otis Warner.”

  “I’m surprised you didn’t call yourself the President, Otis,” the sarcastic voice on the other end snarled in a tone he remembered so well.