Vengeance in the Ashes Read online

  Books looked out the window at the darkness. He had to smile, but it was a rueful smile.

  “You think all this shit is funny?” Keeler asked him, an edge to his tone.

  “Oh, in a manner of speaking,” Books replied. “Here we sit by lantern light.”

  “So?”

  “First thing the Rebels would have done would be to fix the power plants.”

  “What the hell are you driving at, Books?” Keeler asked.

  “If you can’t see it, Keeler, then there is no point in my discussing it with you.”

  “Well, go to hell then,” the pirate said, but without any real rancor. He stood up and stalked out of the room.

  “What are you driving at, Books?” the L.A. punk called Spit asked.

  “That we aren’t very progressive or far-sighted,” Books said. “We live like pigs, satisfied with the minimum of amenities. As long as we have enough mud to wallow about in, and enough slop to eat, we’re content.”

  “What are we supposed to do?”

  Books waved that off, knowing he was dealing with a near-cretin, and unhappy that he was forced to associate with the likes of Keeler and Spit.

  For a moment, he toyed with the idea of trying to make a deal with Ben Raines. Some kind of arrangement whereby he and his followers could join the Rebels in exchange for a vow to help the Rebels fight the Nazi hordes. Raines had done that with gangs in the midwest, so he’d heard. He wondered how many of his followers would go along with something like that, and concluded there would be damn few of them. He knew—or at least had heard, and had no reason to doubt it—that the Rebels had an elaborate screening system. Fail it, and you were in serious trouble.

  No, Books summed it up, there was nothing for those on the islands to do except fight and hope to win. It was root-hog-or-die time. And Books Houseman had an uncomfortable feeling it was going to be the latter.

  Ben’s battalion was the first to hit the beaches in the darkness of predawn, followed by the battalions commanded by West, Rebet, and Striganov. Seconds after the planted charges blew, the Rebels stormed ashore and put the defenders along the beach into a panic. The charges planted by the special-ops personnel had been a mixture of heavy HE and incendiary, and all along the beaches, stretching for miles, the raging fires laid an eerie backdrop for combat as the Rebels ripped through the thin lines of outlaws and thugs and pirates and secured a beachhead.

  Ben and his team ran onto the brush-covered grounds of an old resort hotel and hit the dirt as machine-gun fire sprang from the lobby. From behind the scant cover of a palm tree, Cooper checked behind him to make sure no Rebel would get scorched by the backblast and leveled a rocket launcher. He sighted in and let the rocket fly. The lobby exploded in flames and ripped and torn body parts.

  “Burn it out,” Ben ordered.

  Rockets tore into the hotel and soon the structure was burning out of control. Thugs and outlaws began screaming from the windows of floors above the flaming lobby. When they saw that the Rebels were not going to lift a finger to help them, they began cursing the Rebels, then many of them jumped, choosing to smash the life from their bodies on the grounds below rather than be burned to death in the rapidly raging inferno.

  The Rebels moved further inland, leaving the once-magnificent hotels and resorts blazing behind them, the grounds around the buildings littered with dead and dying.

  The outlaws and assorted crud and crap on the islands fled in fear and panic. None of them had ever expected anything like the cold and callous warfare that the Rebels were dishing out. After the first few abortive attempts, they had given up trying to surrender. They had been given a chance to surrender and had chosen to ignore it. Now it was too late for most of them.

  The Rebels did take a few prisoners. They would not shoot those who simply sat down in the streets or sidewalks and lifted their hands into the air, many of them bawling like a hurt child. Those were jerked to their feet, their hands tied behind their backs, and handed over to the growing crowds of civilians.

  “No torture,” Ben and the other batt comms told the leaders who had stepped forward. “We won’t tolerate that. Try them and punish them. Hang them or shoot them, if that is your judgment. But no torture.”

  The Rebels moved inland. By noon, they had advanced and driven the outlaws into the West Maui Forest Reserve. There, Ben halted the momentum of his people.

  “Start distributing the weapons we’ve collected,” he ordered. “Let the locals hunt them down; they know this reserve. West, you and Rebet take Highway 340 and start clearing the towns along that route. Georgi and I will be on the other side of the island on Route 30.” He turned to Corrie. “Have Tina and Thermopolis stay in reserve and order Danjou and Colonel Gray’s battalions into Makena and start clearing that area.”

  Books Houseman sat by the radio in his command post on Oahu and listened to the frantic signals. The island of Maui was rapidly falling into Rebel hands. The Rebels were putting the defenders into a panicked rout. The lawless were not even making much of a fight of it.

  “Jesus God!” came the scream out of the speaker. “Help us! Books! Send help, for the love of God.”

  “For the love of God,” Books muttered. “Do they actually think God gives a big rat’s ass what happens to them?”

  “I was raised in the church,” an aide said softly.

  Books looked at him and smiled. “You want to pray, Bobby? You want to pray for forgiveness of your multitude of sins? Go right ahead. I’ll just sit here and laugh while you do.”

  “God will hear me,” the young man said. “He hears everybody’s prayers. He forgave the thief on the cross.”

  “Right, Bobby. And everyone lived happily ever after, floating around on clouds plucking on harps and fucking angels. Why don’t you go outside and give yourself up to the slaves now wandering about the island? See if they forgive you. After they hack you to death with machetes, that is.”

  “You’re serious?”

  “Sure, Bobby. If you want to surrender to them, you go right ahead. I won’t stop you. That will probably beat the hell out of hanging.”

  Bobby stared at him for a moment, then shook his head. “You’ve resigned yourself to death, haven’t you, Books?”

  “We don’t have a choice, my boy. Ben Raines or the Nazis or the former slaves. Take your pick. Or maybe you’d like to go over to the big island and join the Believers?”

  Bobby looked at him in horror.

  Books laughed. “Sure. They’d probably welcome you with open arms. And then eat you!” He threw back his head and laughed.

  Bobby shook his head. “You’re sick, Books. You really need help.”

  Books wiped his eyes. “Help? You damn right we need help, Bobby. With Ben Raines and his Rebels breathing down our necks, we need all the help we can get. Do you have any suggestions . . . besides prayer, that is?”

  Bobby shook his head. “You need me anymore today, Books?”

  “No. Take off, Bobby. Go to church. Pray for your lost soul. Just get out of here until you get over all this religious crap.”

  At the door, Bobby turned around. “I’d like to get out, Books. But that’s the problem with an island. There just isn’t anyplace to run.”

  FOUR

  The outlaws on Maui just quit.

  Communications intercepted no radio call and no flares went up; the outlaws, bandits, pirates, and trash just threw down their weapons, put their hands in the air, and quit. It was the most astonishing sight Ben and the others had ever seen.

  Ben walked up to one group and stared at the men and women. None of them would meet his sharp and piercing eyes. “Look at me!” he said. To a person, they jumped at his voice. They lifted their eyes and Ben could see they were scared half to death. “Why?” he asked them. “Why just give up?”

  The group exchanged glances and a woman said simply, “We can’t win. Not here. Books and them others with him won’t give up, and neither will them stinkin’ Believers, but we can’t
win. So why fight on? Besides, we really didn’t want to fight anyway.”

  Ben blinked at that, then looked at a young man; no more than a boy. “How old are you?”

  “I . . . don’t rightly know, sir. I think I’m fifteen.”

  “I’m Jenny,” another woman said. “The boy has never killed, raped, nor tortured,” she said. “He’s basically a good kid. He was the only survivor on a pleasure boat that drifted up here a couple of years ago. A big yacht. Me and Marge here kind of took him in.”

  “The pleasure boat?” Ben asked. “It belonged to your parents?”

  “No, sir. Slavers. They grabbed me and my sis and mom off Midway. We were shipwrecked there. No one else alive. Some sort of disease hit us about four days out of here. I got sick, but I got well. I was the only one left alive. It was . . . kind of bad. I buried my mom and sis at sea, along with the others as they passed.”

  “You think you can look after Jenny and Marge, boy?”

  “What? Oh. Yes, sir. I guess so. They sure took care of me.”

  “Then the three of you take off and find you a piece of ground to farm and get to doing it.”

  Jenny and Marge exchanged glances. Jenny said, “But we were—”

  “I don’t care what you were. General Georgi Striganov was once my bitter enemy. Colonel West was a mercenary who fought against me in the south of the United States. I’ve got two thousand or more men and women in the ranks who used to be outlaws. But I saw a spark of decency in them, just like I’m seeing in you.”

  “How about us joining up with you?” Jenny asked. “There is a lot of crap and crud on this island, for sure. But there are a number of pretty decent sorts who never took a part in torture or rape or murder. They stole, yes. They had slaves, yes. But they didn’t mistreat them. You see these locals standing around here. They aren’t making any threatening moves toward us. That should tell you something.”

  Ben looked at a local, standing with a shotgun in his hands. The man nodded his head. “She’s telling the truth, General Raines. Of all the islands, the people on this one were the most easygoing. It’s on Oahu, Kauai, and the big island that you’re going to run into trouble.”

  Ben smiled and shrugged his shoulders. “All right. But you people better get ready for the roughest time of your lives. Joining this outfit is anything but fun.”

  Buddy and some of his Rat team rode up on motorcycles, accompanied by Beerbelly and Leadfoot and Wanda and some of her Sisters of Lesbos. The prisoners blinked at the sight.

  “Like I said,” Ben told them. “We have a strange mixture in the Rebel ranks.” He turned to his son. “Take your . . . contingent, son, and go with these people. We have a lot of new recruits to train and not a whole hell of a lot of time in which to do it.”

  Not all the outlaws on the island were so willing to give up the fight. Plenty remained that were brutal hard-core criminals. But within a week’s time, those who chose to fight on were either dead or prisoners.

  By the time the Rebel doctors, under the command of Lamar Chase, had checked out the new recruits, Ben found that he had over three thousand people to train. He knew that approximately twenty percent of them would not make it through the training. But if six hundred fell out, that would still leave him enough to form three new battalions. He pulled Major Greenwalt from Dan’s command to head up Eleven Battalion, Lieutenant Jackie Malone from his own command platoon to head up Twelve Battalion, and Captain Raul Gomez to take over Thirteen Battalion. He split up the volunteers into three groups and told the new batt comms to each take a group and get to it.

  Immediately, several men decided they didn’t want to take orders from a female. Jackie washed them out on the spot and central records recorded the reasons why. Those three would never be a part of any Rebel organization.

  There were those who were blatantly racist. They were kicked out quickly. Still others could not or would not respond to the discipline needed to be a part of the Rebel army. They were soon gone. Some could not meet the physical requirements and others just dragged their butts.

  While the weeding out and the training of the new members intensified, the war went on.

  “The creepies live in underground bunkers,” a special-ops spokesman told the batt comms, after he and his team had returned from a dangerous visit on the big island. “One of their main breeding farms is located at the old Kulani Prison site. It’s going to be a real bastard to get into. Establishing a beachhead will be easy. Most of the towns along the coast have been long deserted. But digging the creeps out of the interior is going to be time-consuming.”

  “We destroy as many as we can,” Ben told the commanders. “We don’t have to kill all of them, just knock them down enough so the locals can come in after us and manage it. Has Jim Peters really put together a fighting battalion?”

  “I’ll say he has,” Tina told her father. “And he’s itching for designation.”

  “Call it Fourteen Battalion,” Ben told Beth. “We’re going to need everybody just to hold our own against those people coming up from South America. G-2 has informed me that the advancing divisions do not have nuclear capabilities. That surprises me, but it’s welcome news. Our new battalions are shaping up, and by the time we’re finished here, they should be fully operational. Now then, I have gone against my own policy and offered surrender terms to those on Oahu and Kauai. Their commander, someone called Books Houseman, refused. The only way they would consider surrender is if we offered them full amnesty. That is unacceptable to me. I warned them that once we start, it’s going to be harsh. Books personally told me by radio to, in his words, ‘Get fucked.’ I told him he wasn’t my type.”

  After the laughter had subsided, Ben walked to a wall map and picked up a pointer. “All right, people, here it is: I’m taking my battalion straight into Hilo. I’ll secure the town and the airport. Dan, you take the airport here at Upolu Point. Georgi, you go in here at Paauhau. West, you’re going in down here at Ka Lae. Rebet, take your battalion in here, at Hookena, drive straight in and take and hold the airport just outside of Waimea. Danjou, go in here at Kalapana. Therm, you seize the airport at Kaupulehu, then split your battalion, move south, and take the airport at Keahole Point. Everyone else stays in reserve. Once our objectives are secure, we’ll start using gunships to punish the creepies. Map packets are in front of you.”

  “Bastards!” Books said, sitting at his desk and looking out the window. “I should have guessed those wimps over on Maui would roll over.”

  John Dodge had come over by boat from Kauai and said, “The Rebels are beginning to shift their armada around. They’re layin’ just outside the channel now. This will probably be the last time I’ll be able to come over. They’re runnin’ PT boats all over the damn place. I’ll go back tonight and that’ll be it for me. The run is gettin’ too risky.”

  Books nodded his head. “No vacillation on the part of any of the gangs on your island?”

  “No.” John was adamant. “Don’t none of us want no part of Rebel law.”

  Books looked at him. “Start killing your slaves. We can’t have them at our backs once it starts. I ordered the extermination on this island this morning.”

  John nodded his agreement. “I noticed. Bodies are beginnin’ to pile up and stink. You better start burnin’ them ’fore you have a disease problem.”

  “Communications says that Raines is going to hit the big island soon. Two, three weeks over there, and then it’ll be our turn.”

  John Dodge stood up and shook hands with Books. “I got to say hello and good-bye to some buddies over here. I’ll see you in hell, Books.”

  Bobby sat in a corner of the room, listening and watching the two gang leaders. He was scared and doing his best to hide that fear. He had never thought it would really come to this. Actually, none of them had. He didn’t want to even think about dying. He had gone to a church and tried to pray. But he felt so guilty about being there, after all the hideous things he’d done over the long years,
he’d left the old sanctuary. He didn’t know what to do. Now the slaves were being killed . . . those that had not fled into the brush. Bloated bodies were littering the streets, rats eating on them. It was terrible. For the first time in his life Bobby was seriously considering suicide. He knew one thing for a fact: he wasn’t going to allow himself to fall into civilian or Rebel hands. He’d been Books’s aide for too many years. They’d hang him for sure.

  “Did you find a church to pray in?” Books asked him with a smile, breaking into Bobby’s thoughts.

  “A church?” John said with a sneer. “You really went to a fuckin’ church?”

  “Yes,” Bobby said. “I went to church. But I didn’t stay very long.”

  “What’s the matter, Bobby?” Books asked, that same sneering smile on his lips. “Was your conscience bothering you?”

  Bobby did not choose to reply. He walked out, leaving the derisive laughter behind him.

  “What’s wrong with him, is he queer?” John Dodge asked, the words reaching Bobby.

  Whatever was Books’s reply, the words did not reach Bobby. The gunfire of outlaws killing slaves blotted them out. Bobby looked at the body-littered and bloody streets and shook his head in disbelief. Bobby was anything but a prude. He’d done his share of killing and raping. But this was so . . . senseless. Needless. The gang leaders were acting like a bunch of spoiled children: if they couldn’t have it, then destroy it.

  Suddenly Bobby wanted out. Just to get away. He could get on his motorcycle and ride up into the mountains and hide. Grow a beard and stay hidden for a long time. He could . . .

  Do nothing, and he knew it. He was too well known. Sooner or later, those former slaves who had escaped into the interior when the wholesale executions started would find him and kill him.

  He walked around the corner and started to step over a woman who was lying in a gathering puddle of blood. She moaned and rolled over, looking up at him through anguish-filled eyes. Somebody had shot her twice in the stomach and left her to die a painful death.