Chaos in the Ashes Read online

  She now found herself with her hands tied behind her back, facing Ben Raines.

  Carrie was an attractive woman, in her mid-thirties. But her eyes were cold and cruel and her mouth set in what appeared to be a permanent snarl. She glared defiantly at Ben.

  “We’ll skip the social amenities,” Ben told her. “I know who you are and you know who I am. And I imagine you’ve got a pretty good idea what is going to happen to you. Do you have anything to say?”

  “Fuck you, Ben Raines!”

  “Not terribly original.” Ben leaned back in the old kitchen chair in the dusty living room of an abandoned farmhouse and looked at the woman. “Oh, come on, Carrie. You mean you’re not going to tell me about your tragic childhood, or how you don’t know right from wrong, or how you were molested by your cousin as a child, or how you were traumatized by a police officer when you were a teenager, or some such shit as that?”

  She spat at Ben, the spittle landing on the scarred old table he was using as a desk. “If I did, would that make much difference to you?”

  “Not a bit, Carrie. Because I don’t buy any of it. Never have, never will.”

  “Me and my gang sure fucked up your little playhouse down south, didn’t we?” she asked proudly.

  “Oh, for a very brief time. We’ll get back to normal before long. But you’ll be dead and in the ground. So what did you accomplish?”

  It slowly began to dawn on the gang leader that Ben was going to have her shot. Ben watched her face change as the realization struck home. Carrie jumped as a volley of shots rang out a few hundred yards to the left of the old house. She said, “Hey, man! That was . . .” Her voice failed her.

  “Some of your followers, Carrie. I’ve declared martial law. Resist us in any way, commit crimes against the general populace, and you die. Those leaflets were dropped all over the nation, weeks ago. You can read. You knew we were coming.”

  “Say, uh, you wouldn’t, like, uh, maybe gimme one more chance, would you?”

  “No. We’ve questioned several of your gang. I know your history.”

  “Look here, General,” the woman whose life’s work had been one of all manners of crimes against society blurted, as she began to panic. “I got rights, you know? I mean, like, man, I got a right to a lawyer and a trial and all that shit. If I’m convicted, I got a right to appeal the sentence.”

  Ben slowly shook his head. “You have nothing, Carrie. You have only what I choose to give you, and I am not in a very charitable frame of mind. You see, I lost a lot of good friends down in Base Camp One. I understand you personally castrated one Rebel officer and left him to bleed to death.”

  She sighed. “I could give you names, General. I mean . . .”

  “I know all the names, Carrie.” Ben read from a clipboard. “Ray Brown, Tommy Monroe, Dave Holton, Sandy Allen, Dale Jones, Hal and Robin Ford, Karen Carr, Fred LaBelle, Beth Aleman, Jack Brittain, Les Justice, Thad Keel, Foster Payne, Craig Franklin . . . Do you want me to continue?”

  “How? I mean, like, there ain’t no law. No computers workin.’ How’d you get all those names?”

  But Ben would only smile at her. Sort of. “We have religious people with us, Carrie. Do you want to speak to a minister, a priest, or a rabbi?”

  “Fuck, no.”

  Ben held out his hand and Beth gave him another clipboard. He glanced at it for a moment, then lifted his eyes to hers. “Some of your people were more than happy to speak to us, Carrie. You have tortured innocent civilians in ways that would be the envy of the Spanish Inquisition. You’ve murdered entire families and laughed and bragged about doing it. The list of things that you’ve done is disgusting and perverted and evil. Do you deny any of it?”

  “Would that do me any good?”

  “No.”

  “Then . . . fuck you, Ben Raines!” she screamed. “Hell, no. I don’t deny any of it. I had a hell of a lot of fun. So go ahead, shoot me. I don’t give a damn.”

  “OK,” Ben said.

  FIFTEEN

  The men and women of 1 Batt waited until the trucks carrying the earth movers arrived, and then watched as the bodies of the Walker gang, including Carrie, were buried in a mass grave. The chaplains with the battalion played hi-lo with a deck of cards to see who would get the duty of speaking a few words over the grave.

  The rabbi lost.

  “Shit!” he said, then composed himself. “I’ll say a silent prayer.”

  “Make it brief,” Ben told him.

  “Thank you.”

  The transports caught up with the Rebels who had jumped in and the Rebels headed north for a day’s fast run, then started spreading out west to east, blocking all major arteries with troops and armor, throwing up a line that stretched for several hundred miles. The easternmost odd-numbered battalion cut due south and met up with the easternmost even-numbered battalion who had turned north. There were gaps in the line, big ones, some of them running for miles, but the gaps were open meadows, swamp and marsh land, nearly impenetrable forests thick with underbrush, rocky ravines, and a couple of mountain ranges. Those areas were patrolled by helicopter gun ships and fixed-wing planes.

  With no way to cross the Mississippi River, the punks found themselves in a box. A very deadly box.

  The Rebels waited.

  The three reporters, Nils, Cassie, and Frank, had driven up to the southern front, along with Janet House-Lewiston. They were stopped at Ike’s 2 Batt HQ and not allowed to go any further. Ike patiently explained to Janet why that had to be.

  “Why don’t you call for them to surrender?” she asked, wondering why Cassie, Nils, and Frank suddenly rolled their eyes in disbelief.

  “They had their chance to do that,” Ike told her. “They had several weeks to do that.”

  Janet’s eyes narrowed. “What are you saying, Ike?”

  “I’m saying, lady, that we don’t take many prisoners. Not after they’ve been offered surrender terms time and again, and continue to fight us and go on raping and torturing and murdering civilians.”

  Janet took a deep breath and Ike sighed patiently. “But these gang members aren’t Night People. They aren’t cannibals. They’re human beings who took a wrong turn, that’s all. They deserve a chance at life.”

  “Stay out of matters that don’t concern you, lady,” Ike warned her.

  “But this does concern me! This should be the concern of all decent human beings everywhere. I overheard someone saying that after the ambush, General Raines had prisoners. If he can take prisoners, why can’t you?”

  Ike stared at her for a moment. “Ben doesn’t have them anymore, lady.”

  “What do you mean? I distinctly heard that soldier—” She stopped mid-sentence as she finally grasped Ike’s coldly spoken words. Her mouth dropped open in shock.

  “Close your mouth, lady,” Ike told her. “It’s summertime. You might swallow a bug.”

  Janet quickly closed her mouth and glared at Ike. She finally found her voice. “Are you telling me that General Raines actually executed those people?”

  “That’s right, lady.”

  “That is . . . monstrous!”

  “No, lady. That’s justice.” Ike turned and walked away.

  Janet whirled around to face the reporters. “Do you people condone this . . . this barbarism?”

  Nils Wilson shrugged his shoulders. “I had a buddy used to say that when in Rome, do as the Rumanians do.”

  The three reporters walked away, leaving Janet trying to figure that one out.

  The Rebels began nailing the lid on the box. Each day, the Rebels would move forward several miles, closing the gap, squeezing tighter and tighter.

  Many of the trapped punks panicked and tried to break free. Rebel snipers, using custom-made .50 caliber sniper rifles, stopped them dead . . . literally. Others were caught out in the open by helicopter gunships and chopped up by machine gun and cannon fire.

  At night, Rebel Scouts and special operations people went head-hunting, with silenc
ed weapons, knives, and garottes. At first they brought back ears as proof of their kills, until Ben got word of it and told them to knock it off.

  A few thugs were taken prisoner and allowed to live—a very few. And then only after they had cooperated fully with the Rebel questioners. The prisoners named many names and told of many atrocities committed.

  The Rebels also learned that many gang leaders and their followers had slipped out of the state before the Rebels sprung their ambushes and closed the box, including Ray Brown and his large gang of punks. The Rebels had trapped and were about to eliminate several thousand gang members, but many of the top leaders had slipped out and gotten away.

  Corrie glanced at Ben’s face one morning and reached for her mic. She knew Ben had lost his patience with the thugs remaining in the box.

  “Finish it,” Ben said.

  Had there been any liberal media types around, they would have called it carnage. Political middle-of-the-roaders and conservatives would have called it justice. The murderers and rapists and child molesters and assorted thugs and street slime caught in the box were dealt with swiftly and with typical Rebel efficiency. Janet House-Lewiston was shocked right down to her toes.

  “Mass graves!” she wailed. “That isn’t Christian.”

  “Neither were the crimes they committed,” a Rebel told her.

  * * *

  Simon Border looked at the dispatch just handed him and frowned. The SUSA had been cleared, for the most part, of criminals. It had taken the Rebels approximately four months to do it. Simon had been certain it would had take them at least a couple of years to accomplish that.

  “Are we next?” one of Simon’s generals asked.

  Simon shook his head. “No. Ben Raines will keep his word as long as I keep mine. Whatever else he may be, the man is honorable. He won’t attack us without provocation. And I don’t intend to provoke him.” Simon smiled and added, “Yet.”

  “The man is a barbarian,” one of Simon’s church elders said. “He and his Rebels are worse than the Vikings. Only the Lord God Almighty knows what they do with women when they sweep through a village.”

  “They rape and pillage and burn,” another of Simon’s church elders said. “They’re savages.”

  “Amen, Brother Carl,” another church leader said.

  Simon knew better, but he let his people talk. This coming Sunday morning, all over the territory Simon controlled, his ministers would be denouncing Ben Raines and the Rebels from pulpits, verbally whipping the congregation into a frenzy against Ben Raines, spreading lies and half-truths all mingled with the word of God.

  Just as Ben Raines had succeeded in setting up his SUSA, Simon had succeeded in establishing his own form of government west of the Mississippi. And it was all in accordance with the teachings found right in the Bible . . . in how Simon and his elders interpreted the Bible, that is.

  In Simon Border’s country, there were no abortion clinics, for abortion was not allowed for any reason. There were no offensive books; all reading material first had to be approved by a blue-nosed, tight-lipped, and narrow-minded censorship board. Nothing but G-rated movies were allowed to be shown in the few theaters open and on the TV stations. Music was heavily censored; only the classics were allowed, with a few exceptions, and that included music played in one’s home. Homosexuality was punishable by death. Any man or woman who strayed into the fleshy adventures of promiscuity had his or her head shaved, was stood up and pointed out in church, and was shunned for an appropriate time. School days began and ended with a lengthy prayer, and Bible study was a course that every student took, in every grade. Divorce was frowned upon and actual divorces were rare indeed. Church attendance was mandatory, every Sunday and Sunday evening, and on Wednesday nights the services could run for hours, with the preachers ranting and raving and sometimes speaking in tongues (depending upon the church). Men worked, the women stayed home and took care of the children, cooking the meals and cleaning the house, subservient to the men at all times. (God said that was the way it should be, said so right in the Bible—sort of.) Women were not allowed to wear any type of revealing clothing and when swimming, men were separated from the women. When a husband and wife made love, only the missionary position was allowed (although just how Simon enforced that was a mystery to all outside his territory). Grunting and groaning and moaning and shrieking out one’s joy in the act was not allowed (people were urged to keep an ear open for any violation of the rule by their neighbors).

  “Fucking sedately, I suppose that would be called,” Ben said, after reading the rules set forth by Simon Border.

  In Simon Border territory, newspapers reported only good things—unless Mrs. Jones was caught fucking Mr. Smith. Such an abomination had to be reported so all the good people would know. For shame, for shame!

  The religious far right had finally succeeded in setting up their own restrictive form of government.

  “If your mommie is a commie, turn her in,” Ben said with a smile, after finishing his reading of just how Simon Border ran his government.

  “What the hell is the missionary position?” Jersey asked, looking up from the lengthy rules and regulations that residents of Simon Border’s territory had to follow.

  “I will be only too glad to show you,” Cooper said quickly.

  Jersey cut her dark eyes to Cooper. “Forget it, Coop. I’ll figure it out.”

  “Man on top, woman on the bottom,” Ben said, before Cooper could get himself in trouble.

  Jersey looked at him. “That’s it?”

  “The singing of ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ is optional, I suppose,” Ben said with a smile.

  “Raines, you are disgraceful,” Doctor Chase said, entering the old house where Ben had set up his CP. “You should be ashamed of yourself.”

  “Oh, I am, Lamar. I am. What do you want?”

  “Fresh vaccines will be here in a couple of hours. Have you decided when we start the next push?”

  “Might as well do it in the morning,” Ben said, standing up and stretching. “Let’s see how the people outside the SUSA receive us.”

  Ben’s battalion crossed over into Southern Illinois. They were not met with open arms by the survivors, but then no one shot at them, either. For the first twenty or so miles, anyway.

  “The punks came through here and stripped our gardens of everything,” a local told Ben. “Took everything me and the wife had canned for the winter.”

  “We’ll see that you get rations to last you through the winter,” Ben told him. “Our field rations might not be the tastiest things in the world, but they will keep you alive.”

  The man was looking over that part of the convoy he could see. “You got all kinds of folks in your army, General. We were told you were operating some kind of racist place down south.”

  “Whoever told you that lied. Racism isn’t allowed in the SUSA. You have a trade before the Great War?”

  “I did whatever was necessary to feed the bulldog, General. I’m a good farmer. I can weld, lay brick, and I’m a good mechanic. Why do you ask?”

  “We’ve got millions of acres of the most fertile land in the world just waiting for a plow. Down in the SUSA, we have electricity, running water, proper sewerage, newspapers, radio and TV, a valid currency, shops and stores. And we don’t have many rules and regulations. We’re a common sense society. You know what I mean by that?”

  “Sure. Man puts up a ‘No Trespassing’ sign on his property, stay the hell off of it. Man has a closed gate, that means he wants to keep it closed. If it’s locked, don’t climb over it unless you want the shit shot out you.” He smiled. “That about the meat of it, General?”

  Ben laughed. “I believe you hit the high points, yes. You interested in relocating?”

  “Damn right!”

  “You know some others who might be interested?”

  “Just about everybody I know.”

  “Get them together. How about a meeting tomorrow morning?”


  “Suits me. Where?”

  “Over where we’ll be bivouacked. We won’t be hard to find.”

  The man looked at the miles-long column. “Sure won’t,” he muttered.

  “See you in the morning,” Ben said. He smiled as the man walked away. “I’ll repopulate the SUSA while I’m helping the good folks who live outside of our boundaries.”

  “You mean,” Corrie said, “you’ll move the cream of the crop down to the SUSA and leave the rest.”

  “Why, Corrie.” Ben feigned great indignation. “You would actually accuse me of doing something underhanded like that?”

  Ben smiled as his team roared with laughter.

  SIXTEEN

  “In the SUSA,” Ben told the gathering of men and women, some one hundred or more, “you control your own destiny to a very large degree. Much more so than the old government, Republican or Democrat, would ever let you. In the SUSA, the government is not your nanny, nor will it ever be. We have very few rules and regulations. Because we have so few government agencies, our taxes are very low, and the tax system is very simple. We don’t have police—not like you’re accustomed to having. And we damn sure don’t have secret police, prowling around in your lives. We don’t have anything that even vaguely resembles the FBI, the Secret Service, the ATF, Postal Inspectors, investigators from OSHA, HUD, IRS, or POOP, CRAP, or FART . . .”

  Ben waited until the applause and laughter had died down.

  “There is no bloated bureaucracy in the SUSA. Agents from the government will not be sneaking and snooping around your property checking to see if you have some sort of assault rifle with a bayonet lug—because you damn sure will have at least one—and it will be fully automatic. Every adult living in the SUSA is part of the home guard and is expected to help defend the SUSA if or when the time comes. If that is something you do not wish to be a part of, then you may leave this meeting now and I respect your decision.”