Flames from the Ashes Read online

  Disgruntled by the sequence of events so far that day, Ben grumbled and reached for the mike, then thought better of it. “Tell them goose it and make it in half that time. I want to catch up to those goddamned Nazis.”

  Corrie relayed the message and added, “Bring up the reserve Humvee for Eagle. Roger. Eagle out.”

  “Now we wait,” Ben said in a sour mood.

  “We can always have lunch,” Cooper suggested, his mind always on his belly.

  “Whaat!” Ben sounded outraged. “You mean some of that green-eggs slop Lamar Chase laughingly calls field rations?”

  Ben meant the laboratory-concocted recipe of Dr. Lamar Chase, senior medical officer of the Rebel army. It was filling and nutritious, the good doctor never failed to point out. Jam-packed with vitamins, minerals, basic carbohydrates, and protein. But in the eyes of the Rebel soldiers, the miracle meals had a number of prominent drawbacks: No matter what label the manufacturer back at Base Camp One slapped on it, one meal looked and tasted exactly like any other. And they had a tendency to turn a sickly green when heated.

  “Not this time, General,” Cooper eagerly informed him. “Right after that land mine went off, I spotted some big brown birds trying to fly out of the rubble over there. Looked like chickens.”

  “Probably diseased,” Ben complained, still fixated on the ugly green goop his friend had invented.

  “I don’t think so,” Cooper persisted. “They had all their feathers and beat their stubby wings like crazy hedgehopping blocks of concrete.”

  Ben thought that over a moment and brightened. “Prairie chickens — grouse.” They had returned. Now was no time to quibble over his reverence for wildlife. “Go for it, Coop.”

  Ben Raines badly needed to lighten up, Beth thought as she brushed at a stray strand of dark hair and promoted a smile. “I can have coffee ready in five minutes, General.”

  “Do that. And I’ll see what else is growing around here. We can dine on grouse and wild vegetables.”

  Jersey cocked a dubious brow. “Such as what, General?”

  “Wild turnips, onions, maybe that creek over there has watercress growing. Without people to screw it up, it should have,” Ben waxed enthusiastic.

  “Uh — General, I hate to bring this up,” Jersey began tentatively. “But someone had to put that land mine there in the road. What if they pay us an unfriendly call while we’re slurpin’ up that prairie chicken and nature-boy veggies you’re talking about?”

  Ben gave her a face of innocence. “Why, we follow Ben Raines’s Golden Rule: we do unto them exactly as they are trying to do unto us.”

  By long-ingrained habit, and plain common sense, everyone took his or her primary weapon along when they departed the wounded Humvee to search for luncheon goodies. Ben located what had once been a tidy garden plot in the backyard of a lot that formerly contained a comfortable single-family dwelling of sturdy brick.

  Long ago reduced to piles of decayed mortar and broken bricks, the house held no interest for Ben. The cluster of dark green tops in one corner of the garden did. Tough, prolific volunteers, what his mother had used to call “winter onions,” had escaped even the gleanings of starving human dregs. Ben laid his Thompson aside in order to pluck a suitable number without disturbing the rest.

  In the same instant he bent forward, Ben heard the clatter of a falling brick. Hardly unusual, considering the recent shock-wave effect of the exploding mine. Yet, while his left hand continued downward, covering the action of the right, he eased back to the holster at his side. Another brick rattled down a low pile. Ben tensed.

  Hissing frightfully, a filth-encrusted creature in a long, tattered black robe flung itself at Ben Raines. In a blur, the IMI .50 Desert Eagle auto Mag came out of its sheath. Ben rolled onto his right shoulder and whipped the powerful handgun across his body. His thick index finger flexed on the trigger and the world became a roar.

  Screeching in fear and pain, the apparition landed hard on its butt. Long, blackened nails, chipped and broken, waved clawlike in the air. Instant imprint of memory identified the hideous being as a creepie. Yet, Ben’s nostrils did not report the accustomed carrion stench of the repulsive flesh-eaters.

  Ben had to shove analysis aside as the loathsome thing came to its boots and hurtled itself at him again. The second .50 round popped a neat hole between the eyes of the offensive attacker and blew away the larger portion of the back of his head. So much for body armor, Ben thought. How had the monstrosity survived?

  From a short ways off, Ben heard the chatter of Jersey’s M-16. Ever faithful to her charge, she had drifted along with Ben and now engaged a trio of gaunt spectral beings who appeared to wear trailing fragments of lace curtains and nothing else. This was turning into a drama of the weird, Ben acknowledged to himself. He gave Jersey a wave and called out.

  “I’ll watch your back.”

  “If I wasn’t watching yours, General, these curtain-queens would have had you.”

  “So noted.”

  Ben’s attention immediately focused on half a dozen skinny, completely naked men, their upper torsos painted blue, the lower part bright red, who lumbered over the irregular rubble toward Jersey. Had they stepped into the Twilight Zone? Ben wondered, recalling a favorite old television show from his youth. Chinese red, Ben decided as he turned the belly button of one armed specter into a half-inch-diameter figure eight.

  Howling, the painted man dropped the Kalashnikov he had been clutching and turned partway to the right. He tottered a few steps, eyes fixed on Jersey, then fell face first into a pile of dirt. Ben quickly dropped three more of the weird sextet, while Jersey chopped down the other two.

  In the silence that followed, Ben heard a piercing scream from back by the Hummer. It had to be Corrie, Ben realized, but he’d be willing to bet she would never encounter anything to make her do something so pointedly feminine. He scooped up the Thompson and reholstered his Desert Eagle.

  “Let’s go,” he curtly told Jersey.

  “What in god’s name are these things?” she panted as they trotted toward the Humvee.

  “I was asking myself the same,” Ben admitted. “We’ve stumbled onto some sort of freak show,” he suggested.

  Ben began to believe his jest when they reached the roadway. Corrie stood in a ring of three men who were naked except for loincloths and moccasins, their long blond hair done in braids, feathers sticking up from the back of their heads. They danced around her, each with one hand slapping his mouth, making a woo-woo sound, the other hand holding a gaudily painted, rubber-headed tomahawk, which they all moved in jerky up-down gestures.

  “Jeez,” Jersey said, impressed by the mad gyrations. “The loonies are running the asylum.”

  “We can’t shoot, Jersey. We might hit Corrie.”

  “Yeah, down and dirty, huh, General?”

  Twenty pounds of Thompson, wielded by Ben Raines, butt-stroked one man in the back of the head. It split his skull and he dropped like a stone. Jersey slid an M-5 bayonet into the kidney of another. The third continued his manic dance, careful to step over the bodies of his fallen comrades. Corrie broke her entranced state to reach into the Hummer and retrieve the baseball bat Ben kept there. She hit the last white Indian square in the mouth with it. He went down twitching and gagging. Ben looked to his left from where an eerie screech came.

  Dressed all in black, an old, wrinkled crone sat hunched over a cast-iron kettle. Long, dirt-laden fingernails wove strange figures over the empty container. “Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble,” she cawed.

  Suddenly she jumped up and leveled an AK-47 at them. Ben’s Thompson roared to life a fraction of a second too late. Jersey beat him to it and cut the crazed woman in half with a long burst from her M-16. Slowly the sounds of battle echoed away in the ruins.

  “Can you explain this to me?” Jersey groused. “Can you just freakin’ explain any part of this?”

  Cooper approached from the direction of the creek. He looked about absently and
giggled. His eyes were glassy. An open canteen dangled lazily from one hand.

  “It’s something in their diet,” Ben said tightly. “Has to be.” He eyed Cooper. “Or the water. There’s something in it, a hallucinogen maybe. These people must be a pocket of survivors. Part of the time they are straight. They plant land mines, dig hidey-holes, their weapons are obviously well-cared-for. The rest of the time they’re blown away on . . . something.”

  Jersey eyed Cooper suspiciously. “You must be right, General. What’ll we do about this one, General?”

  “Sober him up. We can’t stay here.” Then Ben added, “Who knows how long that will take.”

  “I’ll drive,” Beth offered.

  Ben and Jersey exchanged glances. “Never mind. I will,” Ben offered. Jersey groaned. “First we have to get the other Hummer from R Batt. By then, maybe Cooper will be all right.”

  “We can always hope so,” Jersey offered sincerely. Ben’s driving threatened to give her ulcers every time he got behind the wheel.

  “Meanwhile, we had better keep a sharp eye. There may be more of this merry band. And — ah — ladies, don’t drink the water.”

  THREE

  Gabe Trasher keyed the mike and spoke directly to the head-honcho Nazi himself. “We found him, ah, Field Marshal. We sure as fuck found Ben Raines. Over.”

  A long hiss of static did well to convey the mood of Jesus Hoffman. “Positive identification? Why wasn’t he eliminated?” the CO of the NAL asked icily.

  “Well, shit, we wasn’t tol’ to — ah . . . er — that is, our orders were to locate and identify, report in, and wait for instructions, Field Marshal Hoffman.”

  Gabe could almost see the icy smile of that smug bastard. “Excellent. You are learning to be a soldier, Mr. Trasher. Discipline, order, unity. They are what we, as you Americans so crudely put it, are about. Very well. You will stand by for orders. My adjutant will give them to you.”

  “Oh, one other thing, Field Marshal. This Ben Raines ain’t such hot crap nohow.”

  Recalling his recent and almost endless string of disasters, Jesus Hoffman framed his question in a dangerous purr. “Oh? How is that?”

  “When they hit that land mine, Raines and his personal team got jumped by a bunch of loonie-tunes.”

  “What do you mean, ah, loonie-tunes?”

  “Some kind of druggies. Smashed on something, all of them doin’ their own weird thing. Three of them was done up like Injuns, only they were blond and as pink as you or me. Real stoner assholes, ’cause they were carry in’ rubber tomahawks.”

  “What has this to do with the military capability of Ben Raines?” Hoffman bit off. Talking with this untermensch was like rolling in slime.

  “M’boys who was watchin’ said they got out of their vehicle — not an armored job, at that — and went sightseeing. Then the freakos showed up and nearly creamed their asses.”

  “But Raines came out of it unscathed?”

  “Un-what? Oh, if you mean he didn’t wind up with his nuts in a sack, yeah. Him an’ those chicks with him blew away all the stoners. His driver . . .” Gabe paused to chuckle, kept the mike open. “His driver got wasted on the same shit those freaks were takin’. Came back to the Hummer glassy-eyed and giggling. Raines about had a cow.”

  Field Marshal Jesus Dieguez Mendoza Hoffman tried to envision Ben Raines giving birth to a bovine. Disgusting animal, this Trasher. But these motorcyclists were highly mobile, and they did manage to obtain detail in their observations. He cleared his throat.

  “My adjutant has specifics on your area of operation, but I can tell you to hold back on Ben Raines for the time being. Maintain visual contact, but do not, I repeat, do not engage. Do you understand, Mr. Trasher?”

  “Uh — yeah, yeah I do. Thank you, Field Marshal.”

  After receiving map coordinates of their AO, re-supply points, and medical facilities friendly to the Nazis, Gabe Trasher had his fill of the sneering superior attitude of his South American allies. He signed off and set the mike aside. He turned a seething snarl on Numb Nuts Nicholson.

  “You watch and see. One day I’m gonna fix the clock for that simpering Nazi cunt.”

  “But first we gotta take care of Ben Raines, huh, Gabe?” Numb Nuts gobbled.

  A faraway look came to Gabe Trasher’s eyes. “Yeah. First we finish off Ben Raines.”

  Corrie passed the handset to Ben. “Got an update from Far Eyes, General.”

  Ben had been patting the head of Smoot, his full-grown Siberian husky who had been brought up with the reserve Hummer. The armored vehicle purred along the pothole-studded U.S. 81 at a steady 40 mph. “Thanks, Corrie.” Ben keyed the mike switch. “Eagle here.”

  “The black-shirts have moved out, Eagle. They’re makin’ good time north on 81 toward York. That’s seventy-three miles north of Bellville, Kansas. Over.”

  Ben frowned. He still outranged the R Batt by a good five miles, but he had plans for these particular Nazi scum. “Eagle copies that, Far Eyes. Keep visual contact and report every hour on the half-hour. How’s the road up your way? Over.”

  A soft chuckle answered him. “Better than where you are. The Nazis are makin’ fifty miles per. They must have scrounged up every rust-bucket and junker in five states. We can follow them from ten miles off by the blue smoke.”

  “Hang in there, Far Eyes. If they go to ground, mark the place and fall back. Our ETA for York is an hour-forty. Eagle out.”

  Ben returned the handset to his lovely RT operator and resumed petting Smoot. “I’m glad you’re here, girl.” Then he added for Jersey what she already knew: “She can smell dope at a hundred yards since that dog handler worked with her while I was away. There may be more of those unfortunates around. Stirred up by Hoffman’s Nazis, no doubt. Or their American counterparts moving northwest.”

  During the long run north, Ben Raines spent the silence in a review of what he knew of Field Marshal Jesus Dieguez Mendoza Hoffman. Hoffman had a sound background in military customs and tradition, that much was obvious. He also had a solid knowledge of tactics — on a battalion commander’s level at least. The man had a hard time thinking strategically. Too often he let his arrogance get in the way of the facts.

  Hoffman had committed a light brigade to the initial invasion of the U.S. and had lost them nearly to a man. From there on, he had reacted rather than initiating positive action to negate the hit-and-run tactics Ben had relied upon. In so doing, he suffered losses in divisional size. Hoffman was subject to rages, Ben noted. Question: Were they real or self-induced in emulation of his hero and god, Adolf Hitler?

  Ben’s days with the CIA and before had made him wise enough to recognize that Hitler’s rug-chewing episodes were figments of American and British propaganda. The opinion makers had taken a German idiomatic expression for being furious and translated it literally. Thus, Hitler “chewed the rug” when he got bad news. Ben accepted as fact that the Führer did not drop on the floor and gnash his teeth in the carpet. But did Hoffman?

  Interrogations of prisoners indicated that Hoffman frequently threw objects against the walls of his mobile headquarters, dashed fine china to the floor in a rage. One defecting general had even recounted how a direct, insulting exchange with Ben himself had sent Hoffman to the floor to kick his feet and pound his fists on the carpet like a three-year-old with a temper tantrum. No doubt Hoffman played the game with a few cards missing from the deck. But that didn’t make him any less dangerous. Ben sighed and looked out the armor-glass window of the Hummer.

  Desolation greeted him. The American Nazis were burning fields as they advanced northward. Other signs of their contemptible behavior began to appear. Grease-stained food wrappings littered the verge of the highway, lifted into the air by the passage of the Humvee. Boxes and scraps of cardboard lay where they had been dropped. Here and there he saw cast-off items of clothing and some toys. Obviously the loot from the unfortunate people of the Concordia and Bellville area.

  When things came
too easily, Ben knew, people quickly got bored. Back before the Great War, far too many of his fellow Americans had fought to get a free ride. Welfare fraud and fraud against Social Security Disability were rampant. Ben recalled with grim humor a report on a commentator’s noontime radio program one day.

  It seems this fellow reported to the police that his Cadillac had been broken into and vandalized. When the officers arrived, the man gave a list of missing items. Included were an expensive CD player/stereo system and the contents of his glove compartment: $600 in food stamps. Then there was the example of the bears in Yellowstone.

  They had been raiding garbage cans and getting handouts from the visitors for several years. A new park administrator decided to put an end to this. He had the bears humanely trapped and transported far away from the public areas of the park. Those who did not find their way back to their soft-hearted benefactors simply sat down and died. They had been on the dole too long to be able to return to a normal way of life.

  The “Gimme!” creed and “Me first” mindset, coupled with a wimpy, bleeding-heart toleration of outrageous criminal activity, had created a deficit for the nation that tolled its death knell long before the lunatic politicians in America and abroad became tempted beyond restraint to put their fingers on the buttons . . . and push. For all its horrors, the Great War had been a cleansing for a sick society. By god, you’re becoming a cynic, Ben chided himself.

  Beyond the window, the countryside rolled past.

  * * *

  Twilight lingered a scant hour away when Ben’s spearhead rendezvoused with his headquarters scouts. They met in a copse of cottonwood trees to the east of U.S. 81. Lt. Bob Fuller, the section leader, made a crisp report.

  “Colonel Gray is holding his Three Batt short at the intersection of Nebraska 15 and I-80. Now, the enemy, sir. They’re on the outskirts of what used to be York, Nebraska, General. About six hundred of them. There are more coming in all the time. Men, women, and kids. Some sort of meeting, like down south. They’ve occupied an old tumbledown drive-in theater. We can lead the battalion there within twenty minutes of their getting here.”