Slaughter in the Ashes Read online

  As those creeps who had managed to survive the surprise ambush in the huge clearing came into range—and there were plenty of creeps to go around—Ben’s people in the bivouac area opened fire. Rounds of .223s and 7.62s cut the night air and more dead and savagely wounded were added to the bodies already littering the ground in the free fire zone. Bodies and shattered pieces of bodies lay in grotesque and bloodied positions under the hard light of the illumination flares, which kept the night as bright as day.

  Not a single creepie made it through the defensive line of the Rebels. A few of the stinking, robed and hooded men and women came close, but they were cut down by a hail of bullets from the Rebels, some no more than a few meters from the first line of defense.

  “Cease fire, Corrie,” Ben ordered, his voice hollow-sounding and dim to his ears after the sustained roar of battle. “Get me a casualty report from all units, please.”

  “Coming in now, boss.”

  Ben waited. He coughed several times, clearing his throat of the acrid taste of gunsmoke. He took a sip of water from one of his canteens. It tasted flat to his tongue.

  “No dead, boss,” Corrie reported. “Only a few slightly wounded. Nothing serious.”

  “We lucked out again,” Ben said. “How many creeps are estimated to have made it back to the city?”

  “Thirty-five to 40 percent.”

  “We’ll have our work cut out for us tomorrow, then. Beginning tomorrow, that is,” he added.

  “Snipers in position and ready to go,” Corrie said.

  “Keep the flares up until they signal they’re through.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Rebel snipers would spend the next 20 minutes or so putting lead into anything that moved out in the free fire zone. The Rebels did not take creepie prisoners. There was no point.

  “I want bulldozers up here at first light,” Ben ordered.

  “Yes, sir. Contacting the combat engineers now.”

  The combat engineers would scoop out a huge hole and the creeps would be buried in a mass grave. Sometimes, when earth-moving equipment was not available, the Rebels burned creepie bodies. None among them liked that job, for the stench was horrible and the smell difficult to get out of one’s clothing.

  “I think I’ll get some coffee,” Ben said. “Have platoon leaders tell their people to stagger sleep shifts this night The creeps just might decide to try it again. Although I doubt it. We kicked their ass pretty hard.”

  Ben ambled over to a darkened mess tent, carrying his old Thompson casually. As so often occurred when he used the old Chicago Piano—which was seldom now—the younger Rebels, and many of the older ones, shied away from him. The old Thompson, which had been reworked so many times there was not one original part left in it, was viewed by many (although never to Ben’s face) as something almost godlike. Most Rebels refused to touch it. Ben knew all this, and knew too that the Rebels considered him almost godlike.

  Ben Raines was legend, and not just among his own people. He had been wounded so many times he had lost count. He had been taken prisoner several times, escaped, and had singlehandedly waged deadly war against his captors. He had been caught in artillery barrages and survived. He had been shot and fallen off a mountain out west, and survived with only a few broken bones.

  He could have almost any woman he wanted, yet the one woman he had loved with all his heart had constantly spurned him. Jerre had been killed in the Northwest a few years back, buried in a lonely, lovely spot that Ben had chosen. He had never stopped loving Jerre, and Ben knew he probably would take his love for her to the grave.

  Ben pulled a mug of coffee and sat down on a bench in the darkened tent He was left alone, and knew he would be as long as he sat in the tent unless one of his own team came in to join him. Jersey, of course, had followed him to the tent; she never let him out of her sight If anyone wanted to kill Ben Raines, they would first have to go through Jersey. He knew the rest of his team was close by, but they would leave him alone unless something came up.

  Lonely at the top, Ben thought, sipping the strong coffee.

  He remembered when the Rebels were first formed; he knew the names of every member of the small band, of Constitutionalists—the proper name for the Rebels—who had set out to form their own government, based on the constitution of the United States and the writings of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence. But of that original bunch, only a small handful remained. Most were dead. And those that remained, like Ben, were middle-aged.

  Ben smiled in the gloom of the tent, remembering the women he’d known over the years. He had several children, but of them all, only Buddy Raines, his oldest son, showed any interest in command leadership. The others were fine kids, bright and good-looking and outgoing, but not interested in assuming any leadership role . . . at least not yet.

  Ben doubted they ever would, for their mothers kept them as far away from Ben as possible. Ben seldom saw his kids, and doubted he would know them if they walked into the mess tent.

  But if that was the way their mothers wanted it that was fine with Ben.

  He had wars to fight and a country to resettle.

  He looked up as Anna strolled into the tent, his Husky, Smoot, on a leash. The adopted Anna was closer to him than any of his blood children, with the exception of Buddy.

  Ben thought of his first Husky, Juno, whom he had found (or the Husky had found him, rather) down south, just after the Great War, and who had lived to be an old dog. Juno had died fighting government soldiers who had invaded the original Tri-States, up in the Northwest.

  “Good fight, hey, General Ben?” Anna asked, sitting down beside him.

  “Have you ever been in a bad fight, Anna?” Ben questioned.

  “Only the ones when I was on the losing side back in the old country.”

  “I suppose that would spoil your day,” Ben muttered. Anna lived to fight. Ben suspected strongly that in a couple of years, she would be requesting permission to move over to Buddy’s special operations battalion. She had already been through jump training, and even Dan Gray, the former British SAS officer, admitted there was little he could teach the young woman about guerrilla warfare and the art of silent killing. Anna was a natural soldier.

  “So we move into the big city tomorrow, hey?” Anna asked.

  “What’s left of it.”

  “Good,” she replied, flashing a smile. “That means we get to kill creeps close up. See you, General Ben! I’ll take Smoot back to the motor home.” She was gone into the night.

  Ben toyed with his coffee mug for a moment. He had never seen anyone who hated the Night People any more than Anna did. He supposed she had good reason to do so. Back in Europe, the creeps had chased Anna and her small band of young fighters for years, toward the end even offering a reward for her head.

  Ben sat for a time, finishing his coffee, thinking, Anna has no business being here. She needs to be back at Base Camp One, attending college, having fun and seeing boys her awn age. But whenever he brought that up, she fixed him with those cold pale eyes and shook her head.

  “More coffee, general?” one of the cooks quietly asked, standing by the long table with a coffee pot.

  Ben looked up and smiled in the gloom. “No thanks. I’ve had plenty.” He stood up. “I’ll see you in a few hours.”

  Ben walked slowly back to his motor home. The flares were still popping, filling the night with light. The crack of the sniper rifles was less frequent now. In another 30 minutes or so, the mortar crews would stand down and the night would quiet.

  Shifting through the rubble of Pittsburgh would not take long, for if the creeps ran true to form, they would be exiting the ruins now, the women and children moving out first, the adult male survivors the last ones to leave. Only a few volunteers would remain behind, to harass the Rebels. When the Rebels pulled out of the rubble, they would leave behind them a dead city.

  Ben slowed his step and cut his eyes. His team was a dozen or so yards behind; neve
r far away. They would not rest until he was secure.

  In his motor home, Ben cleaned the old Thompson and put it away. “Maybe it’s time to put it away for good,” he muttered. “Bring an end to an era.”

  But he knew he wouldn’t do that. Not yet.

  He took his cut-down M-16 out of a closet and cleaned the CAR, then filled an ammo pouch with full .223 magazines. In the distance, the artillery barrage against the city that lay to the east raged. It would continue all night At dawn, Buddy’s special ops battalion would seize the airport and make it ready to receive planes.

  Ben showered and hit the sack. Smoot jumped up on the bed and curled up at Ben’s side. Within minutes Ben was asleep. As usual, he dreamed of Jerre.

  THREE

  Ben started hammering at the ruins of Pittsburgh from the west, north, and south. He deliberately left the east side open for a time, in hopes the women would take the small kids and bug out. The sight of dead babies was not something any Rebel enjoyed viewing.

  The P-51Es would come in after the artillery stood down for a time, and drop napalm. Soon the ruins were blazing, sending black smoke spiraling high into the blue sky, while the main body of the Rebels stood back a few miles and watched and waited for their turn. Their turn would come the next morning, and that’s when it would get down and dirty—grunt work, digging the nasties out of the stinking lairs, sometimes sealing the tunnels and basements closed, sometimes pumping tear or pepper gas into the openings, driving them out, then shooting them when they surfaced.

  Within an hour after entering the rubble, the Rebels’ clothing would be filthy with soot and ash and stinking from the odor of dead creeps. And although to Ben, it had gotten back to him on more than one occasion that many of the Rebels putting their lives on the line day after day wondered if the civilian population around the country really appreciated what they were doing.

  “About half of them,” Ben muttered. “Maybe.”

  The Rebels moved into the still-smoking rubble just as dawn split the eastern sky. This time they found only a few hard-core creeps waiting for them, but that did not lessen the hard and dirty and dangerous job of digging them out. Joined by other battalions, it took a full week to declare the ruins of Pittsburgh a dead area.

  Five Batt moved north, up into New York state, 6 Batt stayed just north of Ben, in Pennsylvania, and Ben took his 1 Batt straight east, toward Altoona and College Station, while battalions 2 and 11 worked south of Ben, but always moving east. Buddy’s 8 Batt stayed loose, ready to move in any direction.

  Ben saw no signs of life until they were about fifty miles east of the smoking ruins of the city. In a small town on Highway 22, the Rebels encountered their first militia group since entering the state.

  Ben relaxed when he saw that the group was racially mixed. Just before the Great War, some militia groups had aligned themselves with hate groups, and Ben wanted nothing to do with those hard-liners. But this group had members of all races within its ranks. Ben unassed himself from the big wagon and stood for a moment, gazing at the men and women who were staring back in him.

  “Are you really Ben Raines?” A woman finally broke the silence.

  “I am.”

  “My God, general. Are we glad to see you. We’re just about out of everything—holding on with our teeth.”

  “Are you the commander of this group?”

  She laughed easily and openly and Ben liked her immediately. “No, sir. That would be Sonny Kauffman. He’s east of here checking out a report of a gang of thugs working the area. He’ll be back later on this afternoon. I’m Sally Markham. Tell the truth, we can’t offer you folks much, but we’ve had the water system working for some time and it’s cold and as pure as it was before the Great War.”

  “Sounds good,” Ben said, stepping forward and extending his hand. “When’s the last time you folks had a doctor check you out?”

  “Several years, general.”

  Ben turned to Corrie. She was already on the horn, telling the MASH unit behind them to set up and the medics to get ready to go to work.

  “Nearest airport of any size, Sally?”

  “Johnstown, sir. But that town is filled with punks and other assorted assholes. They moved in about six months ago. Maybe . . . three or four hundred of them. They control what is left of the town.”

  Ben smiled. “They won’t for long.” He turned to Corrie. “Six and 12 Batts stay here and assist these people. Let’s go kick some punk ass.”

  Ben had ordered Ike and Greenwalt’s 2 and 11 Batts to come up from the south, with Ike swinging around and blocking any escape to the west. Ben took his 1 Batt and drove down from the north.

  Before the Great War, Johnstown had a population of about 50,000 and had been a pleasant little city. It was anything but pleasant now.

  Just for kicks, Ben ordered several squadrons of P-51Es to do fly-bys over the town, flying very close to the deck. When the souped up P-51Es came screaming in, the pilots laughingly reported punks running in all directions.

  Ben, Ike, and Greenwalt were in position by late that afternoon, with several hours of daylight left.

  “Communications says they’re using CBs, boss,” Corrie told Ben. “Channel 19.”

  “Naturally,” Ben said. “All right.” He held out a hand and Beth put a CB walkie talkie in it, set to 19. Ben keyed the mic. “You assholes in the town, are you receiving me?”

  After a few seconds, a voice popped out of the speaker. “Who you callin’ an asshole, you asshole?”

  Ben smiled. “This is going to get old in a hurry, but what the hell? Let’s have some fun.”

  Beth rolled her eyes.

  “I’m calling you an asshole, you asshole.”

  “Who are you?”

  Ben chuckled. “I know who I am. Who are you?”

  Corrie bit her lip to keep from laughing.

  “Huh?”

  “I said, who are you, asshole?”

  “Big John Parkens, that’s who.”

  “I never heard of you. Are you sure that’s who you are?”

  Jersey sighed.

  “Huh?”

  “Boss,” Cooper said. “That ain’t no mental giant you’re talking with.”

  “He was probably spanked as a child and that traumatized him deeply.”

  “I’m sure that was it,” Cooper replied.

  “John Prickins. Are you listening?”

  “Parkens, goddamnit. Parkens!”

  “That’s what I said, Barkens. This is Ben Raines.”

  There was a very long silence from Big John. “So what?” he finally asked. But there was a definite note of worry in his voice.

  “You and your scummy crew have been terrorizing the few good people left in that town, Fartkins. Take your gang and clear out.”

  “And if we don’t?”

  “We come in and clear you out. Take a good look around you, big mouth. You have Rebel battalions just waiting to come in and kick your ass.”

  After about three minutes of silence, the gang leader said, “There ain’t no troops to the east.”

  “How observant of you. That is correct. Does that give you a clue, Barfins?”

  “Parkens, goddamnit. Parkens!”

  “Whatever.”

  “Ah . . . I guess maybe you want me and the boys to pull out in that direction?”

  “By George, I think he’s got it,” Ben said to his team. “Yes. Of if you choose, you can remain in town and we’ll kill you. The choice is yours to make.”

  “You’ll . . . kill us?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Who the hellfire do you think you are, Raines?”

  “I know who I am, Arkins. The commanding general of the largest army known to exist on the face of the earth. You really want to tangle with us?”

  “Not really, general.”

  “Then start moving out toward the east and keep going. When you reach a very large body of water, that will be the Atlantic Ocean. Once there, you either ch
ange your ways and become a law-abiding citizen, or you can make a stand and fight us. If you choose the former, you have a good chance of living a long life. If you choose the latter, we’ll bury you. Do you understand all that?”

  “I understand.”

  “Move! Now!”

  “Yes, sir. Big John out.”

  “Scouts have him pinpointed, boss,” Corrie said. “He’s standing with some people on the roof of a tall building. Snipers say it’s an easy shot if you want them to take it.”

  “Negative. If he’ll leave peacefully, so much the better. That will give them all ample time to see what they’re up against and quite possibly change their ways.”

  Big John Parkens had taken a long look through binoculars he had stolen and had paled at the sight of some sixty main battle tanks, the muzzles of their main guns pointed directly at the town, and hundreds of Rebels waiting to move in and kick ass. His ass. Within minutes, cars, trucks, and motorcycles began pulling out of the small city, most of them trailing blue smoke from engines badly in need of an overhaul.

  “Either I’m getting soft-hearted in my old age,” Ben muttered, “or the punks are wising up.”

  Anna looked up at him and grinned mischievously.

  “And I don’t expect a reply to the former,” Ben added.

  She winked at him.

  “Big John and his bunch were no better or worse than the other gangs who have come in here and thrown their weight around,” the citizen told Ben. “For the most part, we left them alone and they left us alone.”

  “Uh-huh,” Ben said drily. The man had the look of defeat stamped all over him, and so did the crowd of men and women who had gathered around to gawk at the Rebels and their mighty machines of war. “Are you people originally from this town?”

  “Only a few of us,” a woman answered. “Most of the residents either moved out or were killed a long time ago. A lot of them, those that were young enough, took to the hills to form militia groups to fight the cannibals and the thugs and the like. We don’t know what happened to them. But those of us here now, we figure God will take care of us. You see, none of us believe in the taking of a human life.”