Judgment in the Ashes Read online

  “That is pure nonsense,” Ellen Simmons, the governor of another Northeastern state and liberal from head to toe snapped. “They’re outlaws and rebels. Their society is built on gunsmoke. My God, they’ve hanged people in those areas.”

  “But they have no racial prejudices, no crime, full employment, and a simple, workable set of laws,” Willis pointed out. “What is the very first thing those people did? They rebuilt the schools . . .”

  “And they’re teaching things that should not be taught,” Ellen persisted. “They’re teaching morals and values and their concept of what is right and wrong. I wouldn’t doubt but what they secretly have prayer in school. We just can’t have that. I won’t tolerate it. I will not tolerate it.”

  Governor Willis leaned back in his chair and hid his smile. He knew that the Tri-Staters, at least those in his state, did not have prayer in school. They had a moment of silence, during which the kids could pray silently if they wished, or they could think about homework or the boy or girl across the aisle from them, or whatever they chose to think about. And as far as teaching morals and values and right and wrong . . . what the hell was so wrong with that?

  “And they also teach the kids warfare,” Mayor Danbury said with a frown as he wriggled in his chair. “I find that most repugnant.”

  “They have their equivalent of Junior ROTC,” Willis corrected patiently. “For both genders, with no discrimination. What is wrong with that?”

  “They’re homophobic,” another mayor said.

  “Oh, they are not,” Willis said, more of an edge to his words than he intended. “In many ways they’re much more tolerant than we are.”

  “I resent the hell out of that!” Ellen Simmons shouted. “Don’t you dare cast me in a dimmer light to that bunch of right-wing gun-nuts.”

  “Me, either,” Mayor Danbury said, then tightly compressed his lips into a bloodless pouty slash.

  Willis sighed. “Don’t move against these people. I warn you all. Don’t do it. They’ll fight, and believe me when I say, they’re experts at it.”

  “Thanks to Ben Raines and his Rebels,” Ellen said. “I just hate that man!”

  Willis started to say that it was common knowledge that Ellen hated all men, but curbed his tongue just at the last second.

  “These people have to be made to toe the line,” another governor said. “We simply cannot have little breakaway colonies all over the nation.”

  What’s left of the nation, that is, Willis thought. And it appears to be growing smaller each time I look around. And speaking of looking around, he mused, looking around at this gathering I can see why so many free-thinking and God-fearing men and women don’t want to have anything to do with us. What a bunch of ninnies.

  “And once we stamp out these little pockets of anarchy,” Governor Bradford was saying, “we can turn our attentions toward rebuilding the army and then once and for all defeat Ben Raines and the Rebels.”

  Governor Willis couldn’t contain himself. He started laughing at that ridiculous statement. He was laughing as he stood up and pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and was wiping laughter-tears from his eyes as he walked out the door.

  “Where are you going, Ed?” a mayor called after him. “And what is so damned funny?”

  But Ed merely lifted a hand and kept on walking. Damned if he was going to be part of any group who declared war on Ben Raines and his Rebels. And Raines would hear about it; Ed had absolutely no doubt about that.

  All the ramshackle huts and hooches and shacks in the national park were torn down and the materials used were stacked and burned. Ben knew it was only a stop-gap measure: others would soon inhabit the woods. But perhaps they would not be outlaws and thugs. The Rebels could only hope.

  The column moved on, and the other west-bound columns moved out as well, for when the lead battalion stops, the others must stop as well to maintain the ordered distance.

  Even though neither Ben nor Ike had so much as whispered the rumors about Simon Border and his sexual appetite for young children, the talk was spreading rapidly among the troops. Ben and the other batt coms could sense the tension growing among his people, for the talk was that if Simon was a molester, it was only reasonable to assume that so must be others in the hierarchy of his organization. At the very least, Simon’s people knew of it, and were doing nothing to stop it.

  When the column was only a few hours away from the ruins of San Diego, bivouacked for the night, Jersey came to see Ben as he sat alone in his mobile HQ.

  “I gotta talk to you, boss,” Jersey said.

  Ben waved her to a chair. “What’s on your mind, Jersey?”

  “Simon Border being a pedophile.”

  “The talk is spreading, right?”

  “Right.”

  “And the troops are getting restless and angry about it?”

  “Right.”

  Ben nodded his head as he toyed with his empty coffee mug. “Okay, Jersey. It’s been confirmed. The rumors are true.”

  “And Simon’s followers know of it?”

  “Well . . . some of them, sure. But I don’t think the knowledge is widespread.”

  “How could it not be, boss?”

  Jersey had a point and Ben knew it, but he just refused to believe that once good decent people (before Simon filled their heads with verbal nonsense) would allow such a monstrous thing to happen, and keep on happening, without doing something to stop it.

  He said as much.

  Jersey shook her head and frowned.

  “Say what’s on your mind, Little Bit. We’ve never held back from each other.”

  “It can happen, boss. It has before. We’ve all been reading some of Beth’s books and journals . . . .”

  Ben had to smile despite, or perhaps because of, the seriousness of the charges against Simon. Beth had half of the bed filled to overflowing with her research material, and was forever collecting more. Well, that was part of her job. Hell, it looked as though Ben would never get the chance to write his final book about the Great War and the changes in the world thereafter, so perhaps Beth would do it. She certainly had the talent and the material.

  “I’ve been hearing more and more about Beth’s gathering of material, Jersey.”

  “She’s doing it for you, boss,” Jersey said softly.

  Ben looked up. “What?”

  “She knows you want to write one more book about how the nation was rife for trouble before the Great War, and how the people coped with the collapse of government and the rebuilding and all the trouble after the Great War. We all help her collect every scrap of information we can find. We’ve been doing it for years.”

  Ben was filled with a sudden very warm sensation of deep feeling for his team. Hell, he must be getting old; he should have seen what was happening. He turned his head away quickly and cleared his throat.

  Jersey, sensing what was happening, jumped up and grabbed his coffee mug. “I’ll just refill this cup for you, boss.”

  “Thank you, Jersey.”

  Ben turned in his chair for a moment, until he heard his coffee mug being placed on his desk. He swung his chair around. “I’ll address the troops soon, Jersey. I’ve just been putting it off, hoping against hope the talk about Simon wasn’t true.” Ben frowned. “But . . . I just received word by messenger not thirty minutes ago that pretty much confirms the rumors.”‘

  “Two points to consider, boss: Maybe the followers of Simon just don’t believe the rumors. Or maybe the people think that Simon is such a God that they’ll forgive him for it.”

  “I think it’s the former, Jersey. My God, I hope it is.”

  “I hope it is, too, boss. ’Cause if it’s the latter, God help his followers as we roll north.”

  SIX

  “Creepies,” Ben said, lowering his binoculars. “Miserable damn creepies.” His voice was filled with disgust.

  One Batt was ready to roll past the old city limits sign of San Diego, on the south side of the once second largest city in California.

  “Elegant shopping malls, a world-famous zoo, and seventy-mile-long coastline,” Beth read from a tourist brochure.

  Ben smiled at her.

  “The average temperature is seventy degrees.” She folded the creased brochure and put it in a cargo pocket of her BDUs. “Ain’t that sweet?” she said sarcastically. “Now look at it.”

  Ben and the team burst out laughing. Cooper said, “And the ruins crawling with rats and creepies. What do we do, boss?”

  “By-pass it,” Ben replied. “We’ve got bigger fish to fry.”

  “What about the creepies, boss?” Cooper asked.

  “Scouts report only a small concentration of them. It would take us weeks, maybe months, to flush them all out of the rubble. It isn’t worth our time and effort.”

  “Creepies breed like rats,” Anna said. “Better to take the time to kill them now.”

  Ben was expecting that from Anna. She hated creepies even more than the Rebels did.

  “We might come back and finish the job,” Ben said. “But for now, we roll on. And that is the end of the conversation.”

  Ben smiled as Anna muttered something under her breath. But she let the subject drop.

  The convoy began the long and slow job of picking their way around the ruins of San Diego. Rebel artillery had all but destroyed the interstate loop around the city several years back and the going was very slow. To complicate matters, Ben had to wait for the westward-moving battalions behind him to start their slow turn north; to get more or less in line with his One Batt. He did not want to start the push north until everything was as ready as he could make it. And Ben knew it was going to take a good week until all the batts were lined up. When there are thousands of troops and hundreds of vehicles invol
ved, everything becomes complicated.

  “Not like the old days,” Ben muttered, standing outside the wagon during a break in the by-passing of the city.

  Ike had flown up to join him and the two men had been standing together quietly, content just to enjoy each other’s company.

  “You miss the old days, General?” a Rebel lieutenant asked.

  Ike and Ben turned their heads to look at the young woman for a moment. Then the two middle-aged warriors smiled. The Rebel officer was maybe twenty-two or twenty-three years old.

  How to really explain to the young how it was when this movement all started? Ben thought.

  How to tell this young female warrior how it was back in the old days; back in the beginning? Ike thought.

  How to explain that back in the old days I knew the name of every Rebel in my command? Ben thought.

  How to explain how Ben and I first met? Ike thought.

  How small groups of us talked through many a long night about a new society, a new form of government, and wondered if it would ever come to be and would it work? Ben silently pondered.

  How to tell the younger generation about the hundreds of lonely graves filled with brave Rebels that dot the land from coast to coast and border to border? Ike got all lost in the misty grip of memories.

  How to tell her about the few years we lived in peace and harmony in the old Tri-States of the northwest? Ben wondered.

  Ike sighed, thinking: How to tell her about our rebuilding from the ashes of a society when those outside our boundaries said it would never work . . . but it did work.

  “Yes, Lieutenant,” Ben broke the moment of reflection. “I guess we older people do miss the old days.” He smiled.

  “But wasn’t life so much harder, so much more difficult, back then?” the young officer asked. “I mean . . . back after the Great War, when you and General McGowan and the others were struggling to form our new society?”

  “In many ways it was much simpler,” Ben replied. “The Rebel army was small, we didn’t have an air force, no helicopters, no sophisticated equipment. We weren’t facing great armies the way we are now. We were just trying our best to educate, that is when the people would listen, and rebuilding and fighting for what we believed in.”

  She smiled. “It sounds like you miss that, General?”

  Ben chuckled and glanced at Ike. The ex-SEAL was grinning, lost in memories. “Well, in a way I guess we both do.”

  The young lieutenant returned the smiles and walked on. She did not salute, for that was not done in any area outside the SUSA; every area outside the SUSA was considered to be hostile territory.

  “I’ll be moving my people up to highway 78 starting tomorrow,” Ike said. “Dan will have a rough time of it, for he’ll be taking a secondary road. It’s passable, but just. But we’ll all make it up to I-10.” He frowned. “One way or the other.”

  “We’ll take all the time we need, Ike. I’ve ordered winter gear to be flown in. It’s going to get rough for some pretty damn quick.”

  Ike nodded “Snowing in the mountains now. Any further word from Mike?”

  “Only very short bursts. I think he’s right in the thick of things and very susceptible to getting triangulated.”

  Ike gripped Ben’s upper arm with a strong hand. “Take care of yourself, Ben.”

  “You do the same, Ike.”

  Without another word, Ike turned and walked away, quickly vanishing into the gloom of darkness.

  Both men knew the assault against the massive army of Simon Border was about to kick into high gear.

  The battalions in Southern California finally got lined up along what was left of highway 78 and ready for their northward push. Since a lot of the southern part of eastern California was virtually uninhabited, Ben pulled the battalions closer to each other. Now only a few miles separated the last vehicle in a column from the lead vehicle in the one following. It made for a truly awesome sight. The few people the Rebels did encounter stood by the side of the road and stared at the passing machines of war.

  Ben and his 1 Batt had taken Interstate 5, which hugged the Pacific coastline. Soon that split off into 15, which Ike and his 2 Batt took north, heading toward Rancho California and then cutting slightly east up to Riverside while Ben and his 1 Batt headed for the ruins of Los Angeles.

  “Jesus!” Cooper breathed, as the convoy took a break just south of the city. “I’d forgotten what a number we did on this place.”

  When the Rebels crushed the hundreds of gangs of punks and thugs and street slime and the Night People in L.A. a few years back, they left behind them only a shell of a city. They had pounded the city for days, and when they pulled out, the once sprawling metropolis had been reduced to rubble. The fires had burned for days afterward.

  As the Rebels pulled closer, they were greeted by silence and devastation.

  “What are the fly-overs telling us?” Ben asked.

  “Heat-seekers are picking up some warm bodies,” Corrie responded. “But damn few of them. I think we can call Los Angeles a dead city, boss.”

  “Scouts?”

  “They have made no hostile contact.”

  “Have they made any contact at all, with anything?”

  “No, sir. Nothing.”

  “That’s hard to believe, Corrie.”

  “Yes, sir. My feelings exactly. But we’ve got teams of people spread out from the Pacific running east over to what used to be Garden Grove. There are a few people living among the ruins . . . existing might be a better word, but there have been no shots fired from either side.”

  “Incredible.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Bump Ike, find out what he’s encountered.”

  Ben sat down on the curb beside the road and took a sip of water. He had expected some stiff resistance from Simon’s people upon entering the city. The ruins would make a dandy place to conduct a guerrilla-type campaign, complete with long range snipers. But . . . nothing had happened. Ben smoked a cigarette and waited.

  “Ike says there are a number of people living out in his area, and they’re all Simon Border supporters . . . or so they say,” Corrie reported. “But they are not hostile.”

  “Odd,” Ben muttered. “It’s all very odd. What do the very forward Scouts report?”

  “Simon’s army is still stretched out waiting for us just north of the city.”

  “Air recon show any buildup as far as artillery or tanks?” Ben questioned.

  “No, sir. Same, same.”

  “The man is actually going to butt heads with us in the old-fashioned way,” Ben muttered. He crushed out the butt of his smoke under the heel of his boot and stood up. “Well, let’s go visit downtown L.A., gang.”

  “Nothing, sir,” a Scout reported.

  The team of Scouts had halted the column and Ben had gotten out of the big wagon to stand amid the ruin and desolation of what had once been a bustling suburb of Los Angeles.

  Ben looked carefully all around him. Piles of rubble and the hulls of burned-out buildings were all that could be seen. The odor of decay hung in the air.

  “No sign of creepies?”

  “No sign of anything, sir.”

  “Wow!” was all Anna could manage to say as she slowly turned, looking all around her.

  “We sure didn’t leave much behind when we pulled out of here, did we?” Jersey said.

  “We shelled this city for days,” Ben said. “From all directions and with everything we had.” Some of the Scouts and some of the younger members of the Rebel army now attached to Ben’s One Batt had been far too young to have been a part of that campaign. “And the punks and the thugs and the street slime and the gangs died by the droves,” Ben added softly.

  “Ike on the horn,” Corrie said.

  Ben took the mic. “Go, Ike.”

  “Man,” Ike drawled in his Mississippi accent, “this place is spooky.”

  “No sign of life?”

  “No signs of nothin’, partner.”

  Some of the younger Rebels looked pained at Ike’s casual way of speaking to Ben. Ben smiled at the expressions on their faces. “Where have the creepies gone, Ike? Any ideas?”

  “Personally I think they’ve split up into small groups and worked their way back into society, just like before the Great War. But that’s just my opinion.”