Courage In The Ashes Read online

  “Ah, as far as I know, we does. For a time anyways.”

  “Did you put up that roadblock south of town?”

  “Shore did. Got to keep the unwanted out, you know.”

  Ben stared hard at the man. Although Junior had committed no overt hostile act toward the Rebels, Ben sensed trouble. He had been fighting the Juniors of the nation for years and knew them for what they were: loud-mouthed, ignorant bullies, cruel and dangerous.

  “You cain’t take my baby!” a woman’s cry reached the crowd.

  “The hell I can’t, lady,” Linda’s voice followed that. “If you won’t take care of her, we know lots of people who will.”

  Buddy appeared, leading an elderly man and wife. The woman had a large bruise on the side of her face, and the man’s left arm was in a sling. Ben cut his eyes back to Junior, who did his best to shrink in size. It didn’t work.

  “What’s the problem, son?” Ben asked.

  “This old couple were the sole inhabitants of the town,” Buddy said. “They planted a garden each spring and canned their food, living off of that during the winter. They’ve been doing it for years. Then Junior and his gang appeared a couple of weeks ago. They ate up all the food the old couple had and beat them up. The man’s arm is broken.”

  “See that they get medical attention.” He looked at Junior. “Did you beat that old couple?”

  ‘‘We come in here to protect them,’’ Junior said. “They wouldn’t give us no food for our services so we took some. The old man tried to stop us so I whupped up on him a little bit.”

  “That’s very brave of you,” Ben said sarcastically. “Why did you hit the woman?”

  “She was hittin’ me with a stick.”

  “Oh, my. I’m sure your life was in imminent danger from such a vicious and unprovoked attack.”

  “Huh?”

  Ben hit him with the butt of his M-14. The stock caught Junior right in his big gut and doubled him over. The air whooshed out of the man. Ben brought the butt up and connected solidly with Junior’s jaw. Junior folded to the ground and was still.

  Linda walked through the crowd, carrying a little girl who looked about four. Linda’s expression was tight and her eyes were angry.

  “The child has bruises all over her body,” Linda said. “She’s been beaten and she’s malnourished and frightened.”

  “What happened to her hair?”

  “She had lice. So the mother shaved her head and was treating her scalp with raw gasoline.”

  Ben sighed. The ignorance of a certain class of people never failed to amaze, sadden, and sicken him. Back when the nation was more or less whole, he had watched the government pour billions of tax dollars into so-called impoverished areas over the span of three decades. At the end of that time, the majority of people in those areas were just as ignorant, just as stupid, just as cruel, just as mean-spirited, and just as resistant to change as they had been when the programs started. The elected officials of the government never seemed to have enough sense to realize that. So they started more programs. Fortunately, the Great War ended all that.

  “Take the children and we’ll have them flown to a relocation center for treatment and adoption,” Ben said. “Take the elderly couple, too. They can live out their lives with dignity down at Base Camp One. Away from white trash such as this . . . rabble.”

  “What in the world are we going to do with this bunch?” Dan asked.

  “I don’t know,” Ben admitted. “The world would be better off without them, that’s for sure. But I can’t shoot them.”

  “Oh, Lord!” a man hollered, falling to his knees on the littered old street. “He’s done come in to murder us all. Strike this man dead, Lord. Flang a rattlesnake at him. Hurl down a bolt of lightnin’. Halp us, Lord”

  Junior moaned and stirred on the street.

  “We could take their weapons,” a Rebel suggested. “But they’d just find more.”

  The trash who had suddenly found religion continued to plead for God to strike Ben dead.

  “We’ve had hard times, General,” a man said. “We been driftin’ for years, lookin’ for a peaceful place to settle in.”

  “Then you have seen the many Rebel outposts?” Ben questioned.

  “Yeah,” the man admitted.

  “Why didn’t you offer to settle near one?”

  “We did. But they make a body work too hard. Got to keep your grass cut and plant gardens and keep your kids clean and send ’em to school and all that. That ain’t for us. We’s just not cut out for all that nonsense. We like to hunt and fish and trap and live free.”

  “And make your own rules,” Ben added

  “’At’s sure right, General. You right, there.”

  “And to hell with the rights and wishes of others.”

  “Well . . . if a man has a-plenty he ought to share his bounty with others less fortunate. Like us.”

  “Suppose that person doesn’t wish to share what he has?”

  “We got a right to eat, General.”

  “Get this son of a bitch away from me before I shoot him,” Ben said.

  The man quickly disappeared into the crowd.

  Ben turned and walked back to his vehicle, his team walking with him. He leaned against a fender and slowly began to bring his anger under control.

  After a few moments, he said, “Get Junior on his feet and bring him to me.”

  With his mouth swollen and minus a few teeth, Junior stood in front of Ben. The man made no effort to hide his hatred for Ben Raines.

  “Junior,” Ben said slowly, choosing his words carefully, “I don’t like people like you and those who follow you. I never have. But I can’t just line you up against a wall and shoot you. You have not raised a hand against me. I wish you would. But you’re a coward, Junior. Most bullies are. We’re going to leave you and your followers in this town, Junior. After we fingerprint you and take your pictures. There is a Rebel outpost east of here. I’m going to ask them to check on you folks from time to time. And I’m going to tell you what those patrols will find here, Junior. They’re going to find a very clean and tidy town. They’re going to find proper sanitation and running water. You can do it, Junior. But you’re going to have to work. You’re going to have to plant gardens, Junior. And tend them. Carefully. You’re not going to brutalize anyone else. Ever again. You’re going to be a model citizen. From this moment on. And if they don’t find all those things being done, Junior, they’re going to notify me. And no matter where I am, Junior, no matter if I am standing in the cathedral of Notre Dame, I’ll come back here and I’ll kill you, Junior. I’ll put a .45 to your head and blow your fucking brains out. Do you understand all that, Junior?”

  “You ain’t got no right to do this to us.”

  “Oh, yes, I have, Junior. I’ve got ten thousand heavily armed men and women with me that says I have the right. I’ve got another thirty to forty thousand men and women in outposts from coast to coast and border to border that says I have the right. It’s a brand new world that’s dawning, Junior. And there is no place in it for people like the man who is standing in front of me now. So you’d better change, Junior.”

  Ben smiled at the man. “Now, Junior, I’m not a totally unreasonable man. If you and your people wish to leave this place, you may do so. You may find yourself a spot and live in squalor and ignorance for the rest of your unnatural lives.”

  Junior’s eyes lit up. A smile creased his bruised mouth.

  The light quickly faded and the smile was gone when Ben said, “But if you steal one thing from another human being, if you bully another human being, if you enslave another human being, if you abuse another child or commit another criminal act, I’ll kill you, Junior. The government you grew up under tolerated people like you. But I won’t. Is all that clear, Junior?”

  “You don’t leave a man much of a choice, Ben Raines,” Junior said, a definite note of depression in his words.

  “That’s correct, Junior. The only choic
es I give you are right and wrong. It’s up to you to choose. And you know the difference. So don’t try to con me with a lot of psychiatric bullshit.”

  Junior smiled for the first time—a small smile. “I bet head-shrinkers don’t care much for you either, do they, Ben Raines?”

  “Let’s just say the ones who work for the Rebels know better than to try to tell me that a person who is ten points shy of a so-called normal IQ doesn’t know right from wrong, and that excuses whatever crime the person might be accused of.”

  Junior nodded his big head. “OK, Ben Raines. We’ll play it your way.”

  “Ah, what do this mean, Junior?” Luddy asked.

  “It means, Luddy, that you boys go round up all the garden tools you can find. You women go fetch all the books you can tote from that school over yonder. And it means, Luddy, that when the day’s work is done, you got to wash your funky ass and shave your ugly face.”

  Ben laughed and patted the man on his arm. “You’ll be a fine asset to the Rebel network, Junior.”

  Junior chuckled. “Well, Ben Raines,” he looked around at all the tanks and machine guns and Rebel soldiers. “You do have a mighty convincin’ way of gettin’ a point acrost.”

  The little girl was the only child showing signs of physical abuse, so the Rebels, after much discussion, agreed to return the children to Junior’s flock.

  The elderly couple asked if they, too, could stay, since this had been their home for more than forty years. Ben looked at Junior.

  “There won’t nothin’ happen to them,” the big man replied. He smiled. “Give us a chance, Ben Raines. You see, for the first time in our lives, the existin’ law—that’s you—is really layin’ down the law as to what we can and can’t do. And backin’ it up with more than words. Some folks need that, Ben Raines. And I know you’ll do what you say, ’cause I’ve seen your graveyards. And you don’t have to put up with the two best friends a criminal ever had: lawyers and liberals.”

  The Rebels rolled on, encountering no more people, friendly or otherwise, until they were almost to the Canadian border. There they linked up with the Scouts, who had been sitting back and taking it easy after pulling back over the border.

  Once in bivouac, Ben called a meeting of his commanders. He pointed to maps of British Columbia thumbtacked on the wall. “People, the Scouts tell me there is very large concentration of unfriendlies all across the south area of British Columbia. They stretch from Cache Creek in the western part of the province over to Golden, near the Alberta line. It’s been mentioned that we might just knock a hole through their lines and deal with them on the return trip. Forget that. We deal with them now, get it done, and then move on.

  “Ike, you and Tina take your battalions and move west. You’ll clear out any bogies in Vancouver. Cecil, take your battalion and secure the Cache Creek area. Georgi, you take Merritt, Logan Lake, and end up in Kamloops. I’ll take my people, along with Therm and his Eight Battalion and head straight up 97, ending at Salmon Arm. Rebet, you drive hard north to Revelstoke. Danjou, you and West swing back east and then cut north here at 95 and take it all the way to Golden. That’s it, people. We start moving into position in the morning and cut our wolves loose in seventy-two hours. Good luck.”

  The commanders left the room to gather their units and start the drive into position for jump-off. It was the last week in March. It had been four months since any Rebel had fired a shot in anger—the longest any of them had gone in years. It had been a disconcerting feeling.

  Ben looked around the nearly deserted dining room of the old motel complex. It finally came to him who had been missing. “Where’s Emil?” he asked Therm.

  The hippie grinned. “He found some early blooming berries alongside the road yesterday evening. He picked two buckets full and ate them all. He has been, shall we say, indisposed for about eighteen hours.”

  “Has he been to see the medics?”

  “Yes. They said it was the worst case of diarrhea any of them could remember. Emil thinks he’s going to die. He’s called for all the chaplains.”

  Ben chuckled. “What kind of berries were they?”

  “I honestly don’t know. The doctors checked him out for poisoning; but those tests came out negative. He just has the squirts, that’s all.”

  Linda picked up her kit. “I’d better go see him. Diarrhea can be a lot more dangerous than people suspect.”

  “Oh, relax,” Ben said. “Emil’s so full of shit he can afford to lose some of it.”

  “Look who’s talking,” Linda popped back as she headed out the door.

  Ben endured the laughter from his team with a smile. He was just glad Lamar Chase hadn’t stuck around to hear it. He’d have never heard the end of it.

  * * *

  Ben and his team were gathered around the big Chevy on the morning of the push-off, drinking coffee and talking in low tones. A light mist was falling.

  “Check all units, Corrie,” Ben said.

  A few moments later, she said, “All units reporting in and all in position.”

  “Mount up, people. Corrie, radio everyone to mount up. Scouts out. Tanks one mile behind them.”

  Seconds later, the rumble of tanks filled the misty air. They belched and snorted and clanked into position.

  “Let’s go, folks,” Ben said. “The friendly natives of British Columbia are waiting to entertain us.”

  They rolled through Osoyoos and found it a ghost town. The stores along the business district had obviously been looted and very nearly destroyed years back. The light mist that was falling gave everything a surreal look in the grayness of early dawn.

  “Scouts say to check out the body just up ahead,” Corrie said. “The tanks are pulling over to it.”

  Ben rolled down the window and looked at the body of a man gently swaying at the end of a noose tied to a lamppost. A sign was secured to his chest, secured by a knife blade driven into the dead man’s chest. The sign was printed in crude block letters: BEN RAINES SYMPATHIZER.

  “Do we cut him down and bury him?” Cooper asked.

  “Have the support people coming up behind us do that,” Ben said.

  Corrie gave the orders.

  “Move on,” Ben said, waving his hand at the tank commander who had opened the hatch and was watching him.

  Ben took one more look at the hanging man. “Why do I get the impression that somebody up here really doesn’t like me very much?”

  FOUR

  Dan Gray and his Scouts and Buddy and his Rat Pack had split their people and were taking the smaller and less-traveled highways, flushing out hostiles and clearing their sectors with brutal efficiency. They stayed in contact with the others, not wanting to get too far ahead and find themselves trapped with only light weapons and no armor.

  Second and Nine Battalion found themselves bogged down for a time, fighting hard-entrenched outlaws around the Vancouver area. They were gaining ground a foot at a time.

  Cecil had his hands full in the town of Hope, which had been taken over by outlaws and slavers. Georgi Striganov was stalled just south of the town of Princeton. Rebet, West, and Danjou had managed to cross the border and were immediately caught up in hard firefights.

  “Tell them to call in air strikes,” Ben told Corrie, after she had given him the news. “Choppers and fighters in the air.” He looked around him. So far, none of his people had fired a shot. “I thought I was taking the area with the most hostiles,” he bitched. “Instead I find it’s a cakewalk. Damn!” He shook his head in disgust.

  Ben and Therm’s people had pushed up to the town of Oliver and stopped, not wanting to drive too far north of the others.

  The town was a burned-out, looted ruin that had been picked over a hundred times during the hard years since the Great War. The Rebels could find nothing to salvage.

  “Scouts report a very large force in the town of Penticton,” Corrie told Ben, after acknowledging the radio signal from the advance team of Scouts. “That’s about twenty mil
es north of our location.”

  “How large is very large?” Ben asked.

  “Approximately five hundred men. No sign of women or children.”

  “Mount up,” Ben gave the orders. “Tanks spearhead. Let’s go.”

  At the edge of the small city—population about twenty two thousand before the Great War—Ben met with the Scouts.

  “We told them to surrender,” the Scout team leader said. “They told us to go to hell and come in and get them.”

  “Well, let’s not keep them waiting,” Ben said. “Corrie, give the orders to start shelling.”

  Tanks, mortars, and SP artillery lined up and within a minute were dropping rounds into the town.

  “Friendlies are corning in from the east,” Corrie told him. “About a hundred of them. Lightly armed.”

  Ben moved back from the booming of artillery so he could meet with the citizens.

  “Everybody you pushed out of the United States landed on us,” the citizen told Ben. “And that’s not a criticism, General Raines—just the way it turned out.”

  “I understand,” Ben replied, studying the man. He appeared a solid type, but Ben had learned the hard way not to trust anyone until they had proven themselves. The cannibalistic Night People had learned to mix in well with normal types if they wanted to stay alive against the advancing Rebel army. These people, considering the circumstances, were reasonably clean and free of the distinctive body odor of the creepies.

  “We’ve got some wounded with us,” the citizen told Ben. “And we’re out of rations.”

  Ben began to relax some. No creepie would ask for rations and they certainly wouldn’t ask to be taken to an aid station. Any blood sample would give them away the first time a slide was put under a microscope.

  “That’s a mean group in that town, General,” the Canadian told Ben. “Gene Booker was one of our most vicious criminals before the war. He’s spent the last decade robbing and raping and killing from one end of this province to the other.’’