Out of the Ashes Read online

She leaned close, her body hiding the movement of her right hand as it gently squeezed Ben’s crotch. “Don’t lay it on too thick, you damned Yankee—he’ll think we’re both nuts!”

  SIX

  So now Ben was alone. He felt her absence more than he would have ever thought although he knew eventually they would have devoured each other with their conflicting personalities. But he missed her, nonetheless.

  Steady pussy; he smiled as he drove. But he knew it was more than that.

  He made it through Memphis without incident and headed north, on the interstate, toward Cairo. He spent the night in New Madrid, Missouri, a small boot-heel town. And as the night spread its blanket of darkness around him, it was then that Ben missed Fran the most.

  The next morning, in Sikeston, Missouri, a few miles north of New Madrid, Ben pulled into a shopping center and found a good cassette recorder and several good quality cassettes. He also picked up a small portable typewriter. Turning at a slight noise, Ben saw a small boy, no more than nine or ten, racing out of the store. He called to him, but the boy refused to stop. Ben thought about chasing him, then gave it up. There were hundreds, thousands of places to hide. He only hoped the boy was not on his own, for Sikeston’s streets and, he was sure, its homes, were littered with the dead, stiff and stinking.

  He drove around the town, and saw a few more live people, none of whom would answer his call. He said to hell with it and pulled back on the interstate, heading north.

  As he drove, he experimented with the recorder, making the first of what would eventually be thousands of vocal notes and observations and comments.

  He thought about what the colonel had said to him and shook his head in disbelief. “Commander of a Rebel army!” He laughed. “Shit!”

  And as he drove, he found the memory of Fran already fading as the excitement of what lay before him intensified and spread itself out in his mind, exposing to his mental light all the ramifications and historical aspects of his one-man Odyssean undertaking.

  “Maybe a hundred years from now I’ll be famous.” Ben grinned, speaking aloud.

  He would be, but it would be for something other than his writings.

  As he crossed the river into Cairo, Ben slowed and became more alert, scanning the channels of his CB for any chatter—good or bad.

  A voice leaped out at him. “Truck jist crossed the bridge.”

  Ben turned on the recorder, the volume up high to catch all the words.

  “How many?” another voice asked.

  “Jist the one dude.”

  “No pussy with him?”

  “Naw.”

  “Damn! I don’t think they’s a goddamned cunt left in this town. How old is this dude? If he’s a kid and he’s pretty, we can take turns cornholin’ him.”

  “Cain’t tell. He’s gittin’ out of my sight, turnin’ off on 51.”

  “We’ll foller him, laid back, sort of. You listenin’, Ralphie?”

  “Yeah,” Ralphie answered.

  “You and Tarver take your pickup and block this side of 51, over there by that old beer joint we used to hang out at—you ’member it?”

  “Yeah. Will do. If he’s too ugly to cornhole, we’ll have us some fun with him ’fore we kill him.”

  Ben’s smile was savage, a pulling back of the lips into a snarl. “Sorry to spoil your fun, boys,” he muttered. “But I’m going to see if I can’t rid the world of some human scum.”

  Why is it, he thought, the scum always seem to survive any tragedy?

  He shrugged away the age-old question and smiled grimly. What those scumballs didn’t know was that Ben knew Cairo probably better than they knew it. He’d had his first woman—a whore—in Cairo, back when strippers were still bumping and grinding in various clubs.

  Ben turned down a side street, jumped out of the truck, and walked to the rear. He quickly assembled the antitank weapon. It was a one-shot, one-time affair, and Ben had never understood why the Army had replaced the bazooka with it, as the bazooka could be used over and over. But, he didn’t recall the Army ever asking for his opinion. He readied the LAW and laid it in the bed of the truck; then clicked his Thompson off safety.

  Soon, he heard the sounds of a car approaching, and smiled when he saw the vehicle: a new Cadillac. Then he knew the mentality of the men after him: “white trash,” folks in the south called them, and they were correct in that name. He listened to the CB in his truck to be certain he was about to zap the right men. The speaker rattled as the volume grew louder with the approach of the Caddy. Ben waited until all transmissions were concluded, then stepped out of the alley and gave the men a full dose of. 45-caliber medicine. Thirty rounds.

  The Cadillac slewed to one side, the windshield a maze of pocked spiderwebs. It rolled up on the curb, banged into a storefront, then died in a gush of steam from the ruptured radiator.

  Ben looked inside to see if they were both dead—they were—and walked slowly back to his truck, inserting a fresh clip from habit. There was little emotion in him as he pulled out into the street. He did not feel himself an avenging angel; did not feel that he, and he alone, had been appointed to rid the land of vermin. He did not even feel much satisfaction. (Is one supposed to feel satisfaction after stepping on a roach?) But he did feel that this scene would, in all probability, be repeated, if he lived, many more times on his journey.

  Ben drove out of the city proper and headed north on 51. He stopped before he reached a bend in the road and slipped up behind a house, carrying the lightweight LAW. He had chosen the LAW over the grenade launcher because he felt it more accurate. He had taken five of them from the armory—all they had.

  He looked around the corner of the house. The truck, with two men sitting in the cab, was parked about seventy-five meters away. He opened the LAW to its extended position, lifted front and rear sights, armed it, then dropped to one knee and sighted into the truck, making several adjustments before being satisfied. He fired the 66-mm rocket and it was dead-on accurate.

  After the roaring concussion, when the glass and metal had ceased its hot raining, the area was quiet. Ben tossed the LAW aside and walked back to his truck. He suddenly felt eyes on him. He spun, the pistol jumping into his hand.

  Several older men and women stood by the side of the road. One of the men held up his hand in a gesture of submission. “Peace, friend,” he said. “We mean you no harm. You’ve rid this town of filth, and we thank you for it. We were listening to those heathen talk on our CBs.”

  The men were dressed in dark clothing, flat-brimmed hats; the women in long dark dresses, bonnets.

  “Why didn’t you men arm yourselves and do it?” Ben asked. “Why wait and let someone else risk his life?”

  “Our religion forbids the taking of human life,” the older man replied.

  “Then you’re fools!” Ben said. He had no patience with a people who would not defend themselves or their country.

  “The Lord provided you,” the man said, not taking exception at Ben’s hot remark.

  “This time,” Ben countered. “The next time might turn out much differently.”

  The man shrugged. “The Lord will provide.”

  “Wonderful,” Ben said, his voice loaded with sarcasm. He opened the door to his truck. “I have to go find my sister and her family.” The tape recorder was running, recording it all. “I want them to have a Christian burial, if possible.”

  “We have been doing that,” the spokesman said. “Street by street. For health reasons as well as decency. Where did your sister live?”

  Ben told him.

  The man consulted a notepad. “We have seen to that.”

  “Thanks.”

  “It is we who owe you, brother.”

  “Do you know what happened?” Ben asked. “Any idea what brought all this on?”

  The man again shrugged. “The Lord’s will.”

  “Yeah,” Ben said dryly. “Right. As good an answer as any, I suppose.”

  The man smiled.


  Ben got into his truck and drove away, up 51, heading toward the junction with highway 37. The darkly dressed people stood out in his mirrors, fading quickly. They looked so vulnerable standing there.

  But, Ben thought—they had survived.

  At a farmhouse just a few miles south of Marion, Ben pulled into the drive and looked for a long time at the place of his birth and his youth and his growing up—the good years, including the lickings he had received and so richly deserved, every one of them. He really did not want to go inside that old two-story home. But he felt he had to do it. Reluctantly, he drove up to the house and got out.

  He stood for a time, looking around him, all the memories rushing back, clouding his mind and filling his eyes. He took in the land he had helped his father farm. Fighting back tears, he climbed the steps and opened the front door.

  His parents were sitting on the couch, an open Bible on the coffee table in front of them. Ben’s dad had his arm around his wife of so many years, comforting her even in death.

  They had been dead for some time and were not a pretty sight for Ben to witness.

  Ben walked through the house, touching a picture of the family taken years before, when life had been simpler. Suddenly, he whirled away from the scene and walked from the house, leaving his parents as he had found them. He carefully locked the front door and stood for a time, looking through the window at his parents. Through the dusty window, it appeared that his mother and father were sitting on the couch, discussing some point in the Bible. Ben preferred that scene. He walked from the porch, got into his truck, and drove away. He did not look back.

  He spent the night on the outskirts of Mt. Vernon, fighting back depression that threatened to grow dark within him. Then, just before sleep took him, he felt a strong new resolve build within him.... What he was doing, this journey of his, was right and just; it had to be done. Ben wanted to discover why he was spared when so many others had died. Did the wasp stings have anything to do with it, or everything? Why had the deadly gases that had swept over the land killed some and not others? And he was right and correct in killing those who would prey on others less able to defend themselves.

  Ben felt he was not alone in his one-man style of justice. He felt there were others like him throughout the country—the world. They, too, felt an outrage when witnessing the scum and slime who traveled the land, raping and killing and torturing at their leisure. Perhaps many who felt that outrage did not have automatic weapons and what was left of modern technology at their disposal; perhaps they were using clubs and stone axes, but they were his counterparts, nonetheless.

  He stirred on the bed, shaking away his meandering philosophizing. Finally, he slept, dreaming of his parents and of an army of Rebels with no commander, no leader, no direction. He woke up tired.

  His brother’s home in Mt. Vernon was burned to the foundation. He had no idea where else to look, so he drove away, his CB on. There were people alive in the town, but they ran away when Ben approached them.

  He angled to the northwest until he picked up highway 127, staying with it, passing through a half-dozen small towns, stopping in each to look around, to make recorded notes. There were people alive in each place, but they appeared to be in some sort of shock, not knowing what to do. It appeared to Ben they seemed to be waiting for someone to tell them what to do. The smell of rotting human flesh was almost overpowering.

  “Why don’t you clean up these dead bodies?” Ben asked them. “What are you going to do, just leave them to rot?”

  “What business is it of yours?” he was asked.

  Ben shrugged and drove away. “The hell with you,” he muttered.

  He saw, he guessed, about a hundred people alive in Springfield, but they were not receptive to Ben’s questions. Most ran away when he approached them. He found one group that seemed to have some direction about them. They were not overly friendly, but neither were they openly hostile. Nine whites and three blacks; two women, ten men. He asked them a few questions, but the answers he received were of the monosyllable type.

  “What are you people going to do?” he asked one of the women. She appeared to be the leader of the group.

  She looked at him and walked away without replying.

  End of interview.

  Ben got the strong impression they all wished he would just leave.

  Ben buried his second brother and his family in a common, shallow grave. Then, after working all afternoon, he realized how pointless it all was.

  Millions, billions of people were dead all over the world, with no dignity in their dying. (Is there ever any dignity in dying?) Why should his family be any different? What the hell was the purpose of it all?

  Ben threw the shovel on the grass and walked away as the cool fall winds blew across the yard. And that raised another issue in Ben’s mind: he did not want to be caught in the North during winter; winter was rough in Illinois even under the best of conditions. No, he would drive on to Normal, see about his sister, then on to the suburbs of Chicago to see about his brother, and then he would head for the deep South or the deserts of the West.

  No—he shook his head—let’s take it, if we’re going to do it, all the way: over to the east as far as possible, then work down the east coast, all the way down to Florida. Slowly work your way back up during the last of the winter weeks, then head west. Let’s do it right, or not at all.

  He found his sister—or what was left of her—in the back yard of her home in Normal. Dogs, or some kind of animal, had been feeding. Despite his earlier feelings, Ben could not leave her like that. He scraped a narrow grave in the back yard and then, gagging, moved his sister into the trench and covered that with earth and stones and concrete blocks.

  Her husband he left in the house. In bed. Son of a bitch had probably been taking a nap while his wife mowed the yard. Ben wouldn’t have buried him even if he had been outside. Her husband was (or had been) a college professor at a local institution; a left-leaning type who got his nuts off just thinking about people like Hilton Logan, who wept every time a mass murderer was taken to the gas chamber or the barbecue chair. Ben despised him and the feeling was shared.

  Ben drove on to the suburbs of Chicago, being very careful, all his senses working, for the chatter on the CB—on almost every channel—was picking up, and a lot of it was unfriendly. The hatred that Ben had sensed between the races had leaped to the surface after the catastrophe.

  He heard a lot of “motherfuckers” and “honkies” on the CB, and a lot of what Ben called jive-talk. He also heard a lot of “nigger bastards, coons, shines, and porch monkeys.”

  The hate had erupted.

  Ben had no intention of driving into downtown Chicago.

  There was very little actual fear behind that decision, but a great deal of common sense. Ben was not a racist, but he did not believe in giveaway programs that merely squandered money without solving any social ills. He was an advocate of forcing people to work, but only as a last resort. He had always felt that hard work, some conformity, and some bending was needed from both sides of the color line.

  Of course, he thought, all that is moot, now.

  He adjusted the volume of his recorder to catch all the hatred that sprang from the speaker of his CB.

  He gathered that a race war was building between the blacks in the city and the whites in the suburbs. And he guessed, from listening to the chatter, that there must be fifteen or twenty thousand people alive in and around the city. So it was shaping up to be a hell of a battle.

  What stupidity, Ben thought. We should all be working to build a wonderful new world from out of the ashes, all this misery. We should be putting past hates and distrust behind us, but instead, here we go again; nothing has changed.

  Fools!

  “The hell with you all!” Ben muttered. “Go ahead—kill each other. But you are going to regret you stayed in the city come this December, when the cold and snow hits.”

  He encountered no trouble until he reac
hed the town where his brother lived. The roads were blocked and armed white men patrolled the area. Ben had to smile at the sight. A sad smile. Back to the jungles, he thought.

  “I’m trying to reach my brother, if he’s still alive,” Ben told a group of men. “Carl Raines.”

  “I know him. He’s alive. What do you want with him?”

  “Well, goddamn it!” Ben almost shouted the words. “He’s my brother. What the hell do you think I want with him?”

  “Relax, mister,” the man said, softening his words with a faint smile. “Sure, you can go see him, but you’re not leaving once you get in.”

  “What?”

  “We need every gun and every white man we can get in this fight. We’re gonna wipe those damned niggers out once and for all. Then we can rebuild a decent society.”

  I don’t believe I’m hearing this, Ben thought. He stared at the man.

  “Let him go in, see his brother.” The voice spoke from behind Ben.

  Ben turned to face an older, neatly dressed man. In his late fifties or early sixties, Ben guessed. “I thank you, mister,” Ben said.

  “We’re all a little bit tense here, I’m afraid.” The man offered an apology along with an explanation. “We’re outnumbered, you see. I’ll wait for you here; see you get back out. We have no right to detain you. This isn’t your fight.”

  Ben nodded his thanks and drove to his brother’s house through what appeared to be an armed camp. His brother was waiting for him in the front yard, a walkie-talkie on his belt. He had been alerted to Ben’s arrival.

  It had been eight years since the brothers had seen one another; the moment was awkward after they shook hands.

  Ben opened the conversation. “Get Mary and the kids, Carl ... let’s get the hell out of here.”

  His brother shook his head. “No. Mary’s still alive—thank God. Alice, she’s the oldest, you know ... she made it O.K. All the rest are dead, near as we can tell. Isn’t safe to go into the city. Can’t search for them. I hope they’re dead. Be better than gettin’ raped by them coons.”