Fire in the Ashes Read online

  “You're both of the same size and age,” Ben said. “Hit him again if you want to."

  “I'll sue you!” the DA shouted.

  The room exploded in laughter and shouts of hooting derision.

  And many of the Rebels present were suddenly flung back in time, to another day, a more peaceful time, back to the Tri-States.

  Three

  The reception center at the entrance to the Tri-States was large and cool and comfortable, furnished with a variety of chairs and couches. Racks of literature about Tri-States, its people, its economy, and its laws filled half of one wall. A table with doughnuts and two coffee urns sat in the center of the room; soft-drink machines were set to the right of the table. Between two closed doors was a four-foot high desk, fifteen feet long, closed from floor to top. Behind the desk, two young women stood, one of them Tina Raines. The girls were dressed identically: jeans and light blue shirts.

  “Good morning,” Tina greeted the reporters on their first excursion into the heretofore closed state of Tri-States. “Welcome to the Tri-States. My name is Tina, this is Judy. Help yourself to coffee and doughnuts—they're free—or a soft drink."

  A reporter named Barney—known for his arrogance, his rudeness, and his obnoxiousness—leaned on the counter, his gaze on Tina's breasts. She looked older than her seventeen years. Barney smiled at her.

  “Anything else free around here?” he asked, all his famous offensiveness coming through.

  The words had just left his mouth when the door to an office whipped open and a uniformed Rebel stepped out. He was short, muscular, hard-looking, and tanned. He wore a .45 automatic, holstered, on his right side.

  “Tina, who said that?"

  She pointed to Barney. “That one."

  “Oh, hell!” Judith Sparkman said.

  “Quite,” her boss concurred.

  The Rebel master-sergeant walked up to Barney, stopped a foot from him. Barney looked shaken, his color similar to old whipped cream. A minicam operator began rolling, recording the event.

  “I'm Sergeant Roisseau,” the Rebel said. “It would behoove you, in the future, to keep off-color remarks to yourself. You have been warned; this is a one-mistake state, and you've made yours."

  “I ... ah ... was only making a little joke,” Barney said. “I meant nothing by it.” The blood rushed to his face, betraying the truth.

  “Your face says you're a liar,” Roisseau said calmly.

  “And you're armed!” Barney said, blinking. He was indignant; the crowd he ran with did not behave in this manner over a little joke. No matter how poor the taste.

  Smiling, Roisseau unbuckled his web belt and laid his pistol on the desk. “Now, fish or cut bait,” he challenged Barney.

  That shook Barney. All the bets were down and the pot was right. He shook his head. “No ... I won't fight you."

  “Not only do you have a greasy mouth,” Roisseau said. “You're a coward to boot."

  Barney's eyes narrowed, but he wisely kept his mouth shut.

  “All right,” Roisseau said. “When you apologize to the young lady, we'll forget it."

  “I'll be damned!” Barney said, looking around him for help. None came forward.

  “Probably,” Roisseau said. “But that is not the immediate issue.” He looked at Tina and winked, humor in his dark eyes. “So, newsman, if you're too timid to fight me, perhaps you'd rather fight the young lady?"

  “The kid?” Barney questioned, then laughed aloud. “What is this, some kind of joke?"

  Judith walked to Barney's side. She sensed there was very little humor in any of this, and if there was any humor, the joke was going to be on Barney. And it wasn't going to be funny. “Barney, ease off. Apologize to her. You were out of line."

  “No. I was only making a joke."

  “Nobody laughed,” she reminded him. She backed away, thinking: are the people of this state humorless? Or have they just returned to the values my generation tossed aside?

  Barney shook his head. “No way. You people must be crazy."

  The camera rolled, silently recording.

  Roisseau smiled, then looked at Tina. “Miss Raines, the ... gentleman is all yours. No killing blows, girl. Just teach him a hard lesson in manners."

  Tina put her left hand on the desk and, in one fluid motion, as graceful as a cat, vaulted the desk to land on her tennis-shoe-clad feet.

  She stood quietly in front of the man who outweighed her by at least fifty pounds. She offered a slight bow. Had Barney any knowledge of the martial arts, he would have fainted, thus saving himself some bruises.

  Tina held her hands in front of her, palms facing Barney, then drew her left hand back to her side, balling the fist. Her right foot was extended, unlike a boxer's stance. Her right hand open, palm out, knife edge to Barney. Her eyes were strangely void of expression. Barney could not know she was psyching herself for combat.

  Barney did notice the light ridge of calluses that ran from the tips of her fingers to the juncture of wrist. He backed away.

  Almost with the speed of a striking snake, Tina kicked high with her foot, catching Barney on the side of the face. He slammed backward against a wall, then recoiled forward, stunned at the suddenness of it all. With no change in her expression, Tina lashed out with the knife edge of her hand, slamming a blow just above his kidney, then slapped him on the face with a stinging pop. Barney dropped to his knees, his back hurting, his face aching, blood dripping from a corner of his mouth. He rose slowly to his feet, his face a vicious mask of hate and rage and frustration, mingled with disbelief.

  “You bitch,” he snarled. “You rotten little cunt."

  Roisseau laughed. “Now you are in trouble, hotshot."

  Barney shuffled forward, in a boxer's stance, his chin tucked into his shoulder. He swung a wide looping fist at Tina. She smiled at his clumsiness and turned slightly, catching his right wrist. Using the forward motion of his swing against him, and her hips for leverage, she tossed the man over her side and bounced him off a wall. Quickly reaching down, her hands open, positioned on either side of his head, Tina brought them in sharply, hard, slamming the open palms over his ears at precisely the same moment. Barney screamed in pain and rolled in agony on the floor, a small dribble of blood oozing from one damaged ear.

  Tina smoothed her hair. She was not even breathing hard. She looked at Roisseau. “Did I do all right, Sergeant?"

  The reporters then noticed the flap of Roisseau's holster, lying on the desk, open, the butt of the .45 exposed. And all were glad no one tried to interfere.

  Then, from the floor of the reception center, came the battle cry of urbane, modern, twentieth-century man. Unable to cope with a situation, either mentally or physically, or because of laws that have been deballing the species for years, man bellowed the words:

  "I'll sue you!"

  The room rocked with laughter. News commentators, reporters, camerapeople and soundpeople; people who, for years, had recorded the best and worst of humankind, all laughed at the words from their sometimes reluctant colleague.

  "Sue!" the bureau chief of one network managed to gasp the word despite his laughter. “Sue? Sue a little teenage girl who just whipped your big, manly butt? Really, Barney! I've warned you for years your mouth would someday get you in trouble."

  Roisseau spoke to the girl behind the desk. “Judy, get on the horn and call the medics and tell them we have a hotshot with a pulled fuse.” He faced the crowd of newspeople.

  “You're all due at a press conference in two hours. Meanwhile, I'd suggest you all help yourselves to coffee and doughnuts and soft drinks and study the pamphlets we have for you.” He glanced at Barney, sitting on the floor, moaning and holding his head. “As for suing anyone, I'd forget about it. Our form of government discourages lawsuits. You'd lose anyway."

  “I'll take this to the Supreme Court!” Barney yelled.

  “Fine. Governor Raines is someday going to appoint one for us. Next twenty or thirty years. We don't r
ecognize yours."

  Several reporters indicated they thought that to be perfectly ridiculous.

  Roisseau shrugged. “Works for us,” he said, then walked back into his office, closing the door.

  The medics said Barney's only serious injury was a deflated ego. They sat him in a chair, patted him on the head, and left, chuckling.

  “Very simple society we have here,” a reporter observed. “Live and let live, all the while respecting the rights of others who do the same. Very basic."

  “And very unconstitutional,” another remarked.

  “I wonder,” Judith said aloud. She would be the only one of the press corps to stay in the Tri-States, becoming a citizen. “I just wonder if it is?"

  “Oh, come on, Judith,” Clayton said, shaking his head. “The entire argument is superfluous. There is no government of Tri-States. It doesn't exist. The government of the United States doesn't recognize it. It just doesn't exist."

  Several Jeeps pulled into the parking area. The reporters watched a half-dozen Rebel soldiers—male and female, dressed in tiger-stripes—step out of the Jeeps. The soldiers were all armed with automatic weapons and sidearms.

  “Really?” Judith smiled. She pointed to the Rebels. “Well, don't tell me Tri-States doesn't exist—tell them!"

  * * * *

  Ben allowed several of the citizens to shout at one another for a time, then the majority quieted the few unruly ones down. The general mood of the crowd was good; many had had little to be happy about for years. Most had rejected the present government as soon as it took power, viewing it as a society based on fear rather than respect. They were ready for a change for the better.

  But some were thinking: can we really change something we don't like? Can we do that? After all, the government's always told us what to do; how to drive our vehicles; how to run our lives; how to run our schools; how we may and may not treat criminals ... my goodness! what are we going to do with all this freedom?

  “Now, just hold on a minute,” the mayor shouted the crowd into silence. “Radford is a part of the state of Virginia and a part of America. Regardless of what we think of our present form of government—and I'll be the first to admit it's got a lot of bad points—we can't just break away and form our own little society, independent of the central government. We have to..."

  “Ah, hell, Ed!” a man stood up. “Shut up and sit down,” he said good-naturedly. “We know there are laws we can't change; most of us wouldn't want to change them. But there's just a whole bunch of laws on the books we can change—that need to be changed. There are laws that might apply to some far-off city that just don't apply to us. Let's kick it around some. Won't hurt to do that."

  There was an unquestioned roar of approval from the crowd. The crowd talked all at once for several minutes, then, as if all of one mind, they turned to face the stage.

  Ben said, “I think you people are just like ninety percent of the population: you just want to live as free as possible and obey the law. You work for what you have, and work hard for it. You'd like to see as much of your tax dollar stay at home as possible; you'd like to respect your government, and not—as is now the case—live in fear of it.

  “That nine people dressed in black robes, sitting on a bench in some city, have the right to tell millions what is best for them is ridiculous—and most of us know it. But until only recently, we were powerless to change it. It was bad before the bombings—borderlining on asininity; I don't have to tell you what has happened since the world exploded; you've all had the misfortune to live under the rule of a madman and his police state.

  “The price of real freedom never comes cheaply—it is, in fact, very high. Sometimes, in order to gain real freedom, one must break some laws—as we are doing. But I believe—and I think you all agree with me—the end will justify the means. If I didn't believe that, I would not be asking my men and women to lay their lives on the line for you people. I would just take my personnel and head into a section of the nation and rebuild my Tri-States. But I realized that I would have to someday fight the central government. So here we are. Like marriage, for better or for worse."

  The crowd laughed for several moments at that; the men more than the women.

  “Okay,” Ben held up his hand for silence. “We'll be pulling out in the morning, then you folks can have yourselves a real town meeting, without us looking over your shoulders. But at the outset of this meeting, someone in the audience had a beef concerning your local federal police. What was it?"

  A man stood up. “I'm the one. First of all, let me say that I think we in Radford are more fortunate than some other folks. We've been ... well, untouched is not the word, but handled a bit easier than others around us. No torture that I know of—at least not the physical kind, not until the cops grabbed my daughter, that is.

  “Most everyone in this room will tell you those of us in the underground—supporting you, General, I mean—kept our kids out of it completely. They had no knowledge of what was going on. We figured that was the best way to go.

  “Well ... my wife called me at work one afternoon and she was really upset, crying, almost hysterical. It was about our youngest daughter. Pat. I tell her I'm on my way home and I'll call the doctor from the plant. The Doc beat me home and he was with Pat in her bedroom for a long time. When he comes out, he was angry, red-faced, and cussing.

  “The police had got one of those anonymous phone calls telling them Pat and some of her friends were in the Rebel underground. General Raines, Pat is only fourteen years old and small for her age. But she's definitely female, if you know what I mean.

  “Well, the cops took the girls to the jail for questioning; didn't call me or any of the other parents. They kept the girls down there for almost four hours, and they got pretty ugly with the kids.” He paused and shook his head, as if choosing his next words carefully.

  “I guess the best way to say it is just to come right out with it. The cops stripped the girls and searched them ... with their hands and fingers. This is embarrassing, General. And just think how it must have been for those kids.

  “It ... got really ... perverted for a time. I won't go into that. It never was rape—in the strictest sense of the word; but it was dirty, General. Real dirty."

  “Wait a minute,” Ben interrupted, turning to James Riverson standing in the wings. “Go get the cops and bring them in here. Put the young one in question on stage; right over there,” he pointed. “He has a right to hear the charges leveled against him."

  The officers were herded in and placed on both sides of the stage, the young officer in the center of the stage.

  The young officer was scared, and looked it. Steve Mailer, standing in the wings on the right side of the stage pegged the young officer with one quick glance. He was the classic example of small-town federal cop; and also the classic example of small-town cop fifty years back. Maybe a high school education, but probably not. He would swagger and bluster. He would be a womanizer and would use his badge to achieve this goal. He would be a failure at almost anything other than being a small-town cop. He would be an amateur all his life. He would be a bully and a coward.

  Ben pointed to the young man. “You searched several young girls, including that man's daughter?” Ben shifted the accusing finger to the citizen standing alone in the crowd. The audience was very quiet.

  “Yeah, I did,” the cop said defensively.

  Ben looked at the parent. “Tell your story."

  “He searched her after he stripped her naked. It was a very ... personal search, and he—all the cops—said things ... made suggestions and proposals to the girls. He made Pat bend over, naked, and grab her ankles. Then he used his fingers ... on her. Well ... when I finally got the whole story, I went looking for that son of a bitch,” he pointed to the federal officer. “I found him outside the police station."

  “Were you armed?” Ben asked the man.

  “No, sir. All I had was my fists. I told that punk if what my daughter sa
id was true—just one little part of it—I was going to kick his brains out. I've never held much with the way lawyers do things. I feel—maybe wrongly—that when someone does a hurt to me or my family, I have a right to handle it. And I'll meet the problem head-on, not backing away from it."

  “Is what this man says true?” Ben looked at the cop. “And bear in mind, sonny, I'll have a team of doctors pop you with truth serum faster than you can blink if you start stuttering."

  “Yeah,” the young man said after only a second's pause. “That's right. I'm a cop trying to uphold federal law; just trying to protect the citizens."

  The huge room erupted with laughter and hoots and catcalls at this. Some of the remarks verbally thrown at the young cop suggested a lynch mob could easily be formed from both the male and female members of the crowd. One woman even had a rope.

  Ben quieted the crowd and looked at the young cop. “You didn't feel it wrong for a man to search a young girl ... in the manner described?"

  “Hell, no! Not when the girl is as mouthy as that one was."

  “What happened when the girl's father confronted you at the police station about his daughter?"

  “He got lippy and I drew my pistol. I'm a police officer and I have the right to protect myself."

  “Against an unarmed man?"

  “That don't make no difference to me. You can't threaten a police officer and get away with it—nobody can."

  Ben turned back to the parent. “Is that all that happened?"

  “No, it isn't. When I told this punk I was going to stomp him, he laughed and waved his gun around. There was a pretty fair-sized crowd gathering by then, and the chief of police came out and broke it up. Then they arrested me."

  “For what?"

  “Threatening a police officer. They took me inside and shoved me around some—nothing serious. Then they fined me fifty dollars and pushed me out the door. The next day was when they started following my wife around, hassling her. Then I started getting tickets; my kids were picked up several times, questioned. If you hadn't showed up, General, I was going to kill that son of a bitch.” He was looking straight at the young officer.