Survival in the Ashes Read online

  “I was born in the sixties, General,” Tom said. “I remember the pampering and coddling of criminals and the stripping away of the rights of the law-abiding.” His eyes were hard as they met the eyes of Ben Raines. “And the taking away of the citizens’ right to own and bear firearms. I’ll not see that happen again.”

  “It won’t as long as we’re alive, Tom,” Ben assured him. “But we’ve got to make sure those who come after us always remember what led up to the downfall of civilization — and never forget it.”

  Tom nodded. “It’s being taught in our schools, General. We’ve based our philosophy on what we’ve been able to intercept — by radio — from your Base Camp One and outposts.”

  Ben nodded. “I’ll leave two squads of Rebels here. See that your clinic is completely restocked and brought up to date. We’ll clean up the old airport and outfit you with radio equipment. We’ve got to set up other outposts; we can’t leave you stuck out here alone. Any suggestions on that?”

  Tom paused and pulled a map from his pocket, spreading it out on the hood of a truck. “Seventy miles north of here,” he pointed it out, “is Grand Coulee. There is another group of survivors there. We stay in radio contact. Man by the name of Mike Mitchell is in charge. He’s a good man.”

  Ben nodded. “Corrie, bump Five Battalion and tell Steinberg to check that out and set them up. What about this area here?” Ben outlined it with a finger.

  “A gang of thugs took over Ephrata years ago. Probably four hundred strong. They pretty much leave us alone now; but that came only after we showed them that we’ll fight to protect our way of life.”

  “That’s usually all it takes. We’ll clean out Ephrata and that’ll take some of the strain off you people. How about south of here?”

  Tom shook his head. “There’s a few pockets of survivors along the Snake. But other than that, it’s mostly the Believers and outlaws. It’s been grim in this state, General. Really grim.”

  “Conditions will improve, Tom. I promise you that. It’s going to take us some time, but we’ll clean up this country. Town by town and city by city.”

  Tom grinned. “You people sure played hell over in Idaho, General.”

  “That we did. But you can bet that as soon as we pulled out, the outlaws who ran into the wilderness areas resurfaced. But the main thing is that we got rid of the creepies.”

  Tom could not hold back a shudder. “If you’re wondering what happened to many of the people in this area, General, you just spoke the word.”

  “I know. We’ll deal with thugs and outlaws as we come to them. Getting rid of the creepies is our first order of business.”

  “Did you really destroy New York City, General?” *

  *Valor in the Ashes & Trapped in the Ashes — Zebra Books

  “Yes. And with it perhaps the largest concentration of Believers in America. We’ll win the fight, Tom. But it’s going to take a long, long time.”

  “Voleta and her Ninth Order?”

  “I think she’s dead. My son says she is still alive. I hope I’m right and he’s wrong.”

  “That bunch is almost as bad as the Believers.”

  “Almost.”

  Voleta had been moved to a secure zone in Michigan, and with the passing of each day, her chances for a complete recovery improved. If love cures all things, for Voleta it was her burning hatred of Ben Raines that aided her recovery.

  Villar, Khamsim, Parr, Ashley, and the bikers made their way furtively across the country, being very careful to avoid Rebel outposts and raping and killing in only the most out-of-the-way locales. They maintained radio silence and when communication was necessary, they used low-range CBs. None of them liked this tippy-toeing around, but they knew their survival depended upon stealth.

  They all silently cursed Ben Raines as they made their way across country, with Alaska to be their final destination.

  Ephrata was a piece of cake for the Rebels.

  Ben told the outlaws to lay down their arms and surrender, or die. Those were the only two choices he gave them. The thugs and punks and crud elected to fight. They died.

  Ben stood over a wounded man while the town smoked and burned around them. The outlaw glared hate at him.

  “I’ll never live under your rules, Raines!” the thug gasped.

  “Your choice,” Ben told him, then turned away to leave the man to die in the littered street.

  “Ain’t you gonna patch me up?” the wounded thug hollered at Ben’s back.

  “No,” Ben told him. “I won’t waste medicine on the likes of you.”

  “I got rights!” the outlaw squalled, his hands bloody as they gripped his bullet-punctured belly.

  “Not with me, you don’t,” was Ben’s reply. The man was still screaming and thrashing on the street as Ben found Buddy.

  “See that all the outlaws’ guns and ammo are collected,” Ben said. “Arrange for the weapons to be transported to the new outposts. When you’ve seen to that, get your Rat Team and take off for Ellensburg. Give me a report on conditions there just as soon as you can.”

  Dan walked up. “We have prisoners, sir. Among them some of the trashiest women I believe I have ever had the misfortune to encounter.”

  Ben sighed. He knew the answer to his question before he even asked it. “Children?”

  “A goodly number of them. All of them malnourished and most of them showing the signs of abuse — of one kind or another.”

  “Let’s get the kids over to Doctor Chase and then we’ll deal with the women.”

  Chase was muttering curses under his breath as he watched his medical teams examine the kids. He stood up and walked over to Ben.

  “Nearly all the girls over the age of eight or nine have been sexually molested, both vaginally and anally,” he reported, disgust on his face. “Some of them much younger than that. Many of the boys show initial signs of having been sexually abused . . . anally. We’ll know for sure once tests are done. In addition, both the girls and the boys have been severely beaten. Most of the physical scars will fade. The mental scars are quite another matter.”

  “What are they saying about it, Lamar?”

  “They were abused with their mothers’ permission. Several of the women traded their childrens’ sexual favors for protection or whatever.”

  “All right,” Ben said. “We’ll bivouac here and sort this thing out. I want the kids to positively ID the women who willingly sold them out, then we’ll PSE the women for further confirmation.”

  “And after that?” Sarah Bradford asked.

  “I’ll have them shot,” Ben said flatly. “I will not tolerate sexual abuse of children.”

  “I will be more than willing to be a part of that firing squad, General. Anyone who would force their children into prostitution doesn’t deserve to live.”

  Ben looked at her grim face. “Find some other men and women who share that, Sarah. And then meet me at the west end of town tomorrow morning.”

  Jersey, Corrie, and Beth stepped forward, as did Tina, who had just joined her father’s contingent.

  Ben nodded his head. “That’s a starter,” he said softly. “Dan, convene a panel. We’ll meet at dawn tomorrow for the hearing.”

  The vote of the twelve-member tribunal was unanimous: death by firing squad. Ben read the sentence aloud and then the sobbing men and nearly hysterical women were taken from the old gymnasium onto the old football field, placed against the side of a field house, and shot.

  “Bury them in a common grave,” Ben ordered, after the gunfire had died away, his eyes on the crumpled bodies on the ground. “We’ll mount up as soon as the kids are airborne out of here.”

  Some of the outlaws in the town had escaped the attack from the Rebels, and they had watched and listened as Rebel justice was served. They wasted no time in fleeing the area and getting on the air and telling other outlaws what had happened. Most outlaws, thugs, punks, and trash wisely decided that Washington state had become very unhealthy for them. T
hey began scattering in all directions, getting the hell away from Ben Raines and his Rebels. Many of them left with just the clothes on their backs, not even taking the time to pack. The older ones remembered the good times, when liberals ran the country and they could plea-bargain and holler about discrimination and every “i” not being dotted and every “t” not being crossed and they could walk free on the slightest of trial technicalities.

  That was before Ben Raines.

  Ben Raines didn’t give a tinker’s damn about constitutional rights; he’d strap your ass to a table and pump you full of truth serum to get at the truth. The truth was what Raines was all about: whether or not you did the crime.

  “Things are goin’ to hell around here,” one outlaw observed. “I think I’m gonna clean up my act and join up with some survivors. Take to farmin’.”

  “You’re not serious!” a friend in crime remarked. “You mean actually work for a livin’?”

  “It’s either that or have Ben Raines prop you up agin a wall and shoot you! We just ain’t got that many choices left us.”

  “Wait a minute,” his partner said. “I’m goin’ with you.”

  Wherever Ben Raines and the Rebels went, those who chose to live outside the rules of society had but two choices: straighten up or die.

  Ben did not believe in many options.

  THIRTEEN

  Ellensburg, Pullman, Walla Walla, Wenatchee, and the tri-cities fell to the Rebels’ relentless and ruthless advance. Those creepies who had felt themselves safe in Yakima took stock of their situation and deserted the city, fleeing westward toward the bigger cities, taking their prisoners with them.

  Ben had found another group of survivors and set up an outpost near the Canadian border. Now the entire eastern half of the state was, for the most part, a secure zone. There were still bands of outlaws in that section of the state, but they were keeping their heads down and looking for a way out.

  For the moment, outlawing was the last thing on their minds.

  Ben stood his people down and called for a meeting with his field commanders.

  The men and women gathered at the old Yakima airport, where Ben had made his CP. He pointed to a map taped to a wall. “Ike, whenever you feel like your people have had enough rest, shove off for the northwestern corner of the state and start working your way down to just north of Seattle. Five and Six battalions will take that sector — Everett and the towns just south of it — and clean it out. Cecil, you and West take the Tacoma/Olympia area and secure it. Buddy, you and your Rat Teams are with Ike. Tina, you’re with Cec and West. Dan will come with me. We’ll take Vancouver and Portland. Lamar, how about supplies?”

  “We need to be resupplied, Ben. I’d say another two or three days.”

  “That’s fine. That’ll give us all time to clean weapons, rest, and get the birds up here. We need to start an inventory of all that gear we seized from the Air Force base. Wherever we go, scrounge around for maps of Alaska; we’re going to need them. Now then, Seattle is going to be a screaming bastard, people. It was one big metropolitan area when the Great War hit, and the creepies have had years to fortify. Same with Portland and all the rest of the cities out here. And we know they’ve got hundreds, maybe thousands of prisoners in those cities. These cities are going to have to be taken block by bloody block. We’ll grab prisoners when we can and get the locations where the prisoners are being held out of them; try rescue raids. These aren’t nice people, so I don’t particularly care how you get the information we need. We all know that the more the rumors say how brutal we are, the more outlaws decide to stop outlawing and try to turn straight. All right, people. That’s it. Good hunting.”

  Ben waved Dan to his side as the others filed out. “If we try to stay on the north side of the Columbia River, the creepies will blow the bridges and cut us off from Portland. Start moving our people out now, crossing the river and coming up on Interstate Eighty-four and south of the city on Highway Twenty-six.”

  “I’ll get them moving now, sir. Do we destroy the cities after we’ve taken them?”

  Ben hesitated. “I don’t know, Dan. We need ports on both coasts and on the Gulf. We’ll just have to play that tune when we come to it.”

  The Englishman smiled. “Still thinking about going to England, sir?”

  “Oh, yes. We’ll get there, Dan. One of these days. I promise you that.”

  Ben began moving all units out, stretching them south to north. Ike began his pullout immediately, traveling north until junctioning with Highway 20, cutting west across the Cascades. He would turn north on Interstate 5, spreading his people along a line from Mount Vernon in the south to the Canadian line.

  Five and Six Battalions crossed the mountain range on Highway 2 out of Wenatchee. They moved to within fifteen miles of their objective and halted, waiting until everyone got into position.

  Cecil and West pulled out from Yakima on Highway 410, crossing the lower end of the mountains and bivouacking just north of the Clearwater Wilderness area, about thirty miles east of Tacoma.

  Ben and his columns rolled south out of Yakima. They crossed the Columbia River into Oregon and connected with Interstate 84, turning westward toward Portland. At Hood River, Dan cut off from the main columns and took his people south on 35. About fifty miles later he would connect with Highway 26 and move toward Portland, approaching the city a few miles south of Ben.

  Far south of the Rebels, Villar halted his people in California and stood them down, to wait out the battles soon to take place north of them. He would monitor the events by radio and move toward the north only after the Rebels had either won or lost; but Villar knew that thoughts of the Rebels losing was only wistful thinking on his part. Ben Raines and his Rebels did not lose — ever! Over the past few days he had been entertaining the idea of somehow getting ships and sailing back to Europe, and to hell with Ben Raines and America.

  But his ships were three thousand miles and a continent away, and now in Rebel hands, according to radio transmissions he’d picked up. Ben Raines commandeered everything that wasn’t nailed down.

  Goddamn Ben Raines to hell!

  Villar stood his people down in the Marble Mountain Wilderness area and dared them to even breathe hard, warning them, This is a little too close to the Rebels for comfort, people. But we’ll stay undetected if we’re very, very careful. Maintain strict radio silence. Don’t even use CBs — the signals might skip and the Rebels pick them up. If that happens, we’re fucked. Build your cook fires under low-hanging branches to break up the smoke and douse them as soon as you’re done. It’ll take Raines two to three weeks to settle the Believers’ hash, and then he’ll move on. That’s his pattern and I doubt he’ll change it this late in the game. As soon as he moves out, we move up toward Alaska and safety. Don’t screw up, people. Ben Raines doesn’t give an enemy a second chance.”

  “General Jefferys on the horn, sir,” Corrie said.

  Ben moved to a mic and picked it up. “Go, Cec.”

  “Bad news, Ben,” Cecil spoke from outside Tacoma. “The Believers have looted McCord AFB and Fort Lewis. This West Coast bunch now have long-range artillery capabilities and battle tanks.”

  “Have you any news about Portland? Dan’s Scouts haven’t been able to grab a prisoner for interrogation.”

  “That’s ten-four, Ben. The creepies there raided numerous Army and Marine Corps depots. They are very heavily armed with enormous firepower at their disposal. This is going to be a slugfest.”

  “That’s ten-four, Cec. We all expected it to be a tough one. I’m in position. We strike at dawn. Good luck.” Ben glanced at Corrie. “Get me Colonel Gray, please.”

  “Standing by,” she told him a few seconds later.

  Ben lifted his mic. “Dan, you monitored that transmission from Cec?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What’s your situation?”

  “Looking down the barrels of long guns.”

  “Do the approximate locations of the
holding pens for the prisoners still tally up, Dan?”

  “That’s ten-fifty, General. I ordered a fly-by and heat-seekers showed no large concentration of human beings at the locations the Judge told us about.”

  “Damn!” Ben muttered. He lifted the mic. “Then they’ve moved them, Dan.”

  “Or eaten them,” came the Englishman’s reply.

  Jersey looked at Ben and swallowed hard. The disgust all felt was very evident on the faces of those in the command post.

  “We launch attack at dawn, Dan. We’ll just have to take the city street by street and try to somehow rescue the prisoners. If that is at all possible,” he added.

  “That’s ten-four, sir. We strike at dawn.”

  Ben clipped the mic and turned to his personal team. “This is going to be a son of a bitch, people. A bloody son of a bitch.”

  All Rebel units struck at dawn and were thrown back by heavy fire from the creepies’ well-fortified positions up and down the west coast of what had once been the state of Washington and the extreme northwestern part of the state of Oregon. The Rebels did not gain one inch of ground, but neither did they lose any.

  It was an impasse. At least for the time being.

  Ben stood alone, outside his CP on the edge of Portland, making some hard and difficult decisions in his mind. His team knew he did not want to be bothered, and they left him alone.

  Ben walked back into his CP and told Corrie, “Order all units to hit it again. If we can’t gain a better toehold, and keep it, fall back to original lines.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  From Bellingham in the north to Portland in the south, the Rebels attacked, and were once more thrown back, suffering heavy casualties.

  After hearing the field reports, Ben made up his mind. But it was not a decision he liked or an order he enjoyed giving.

  “Corrie, tell all commanders to fall back. Order the artillery up. I won’t kill any more of our people. I just can’t justify it. Tell the FO’s to get in place and artillery to commence firing as soon as coordinates are charted.”