Survival in the Ashes Read online

“We’re all dead,” Jersey said mournfully.

  They’ll do, Ben thought, his eyes touching the neat gardens and well-kept homes of the people who lived close to the small town. He had already mentally noted and approved their defense system.

  The man Ben assumed to be the leader of the small group of people came forward, his hand outstretched. “You passed by us several years back, General. When you and the Russian were slugging it out. I’m glad you made it this time.”

  Ben shook the hand and came right to the point. “You’ve heard about our outpost system?”

  “Yes, indeed. And we’re ready to join you. We know the rules.”

  “And do all the people here agree?”

  “Ninety-five percent of them.”

  “What’s the trouble with that five percent?”

  “They say they’ll educate their kids the way they see fit and nothing you or anybody else says is going to change their minds.”

  “Take any child younger than twelve and tell the adults to hit the trail.”

  The spokesman smiled. “That might not be as easy as you think, General.”

  Ben returned the smile. “I assure you, Mister Leathers, it will be very easily done.”

  Ben accurately pegged the people inside as soon as he saw the falling-down homes they lived in, with animal skins tacked to the sides, drying out. They had big four-wheel-drive vehicles parked alongside what were once called luxury cars in the driveway.

  “Their degree of learning, whether they finished high school or not, is near a sixth-grade level — if that much,” Ben said. “They don’t like anybody not of their skin color and religious beliefs. They’re cruel to animals and beat their kids at the slightest provocation. If they read at all, it’s some old hunting or fishing magazine or book. They are inherently lazy and fond of saying something like: ‘Hit’s God’s will,’ if anything goes wrong. And they place the blame for all their many misfortunes on everybody except themselves.”

  Leathers looked startled. “How in the hell did you know all that!”

  “I’ve been studying them for years, Mister Leathers. They’re commonly called trash. What’s this man’s name?”

  “Bannon. Ed Bannon.”

  “Ham, get on a bullhorn and tell Bannon to get it out here.”

  Bannon had been watching from a dirty window of his shack. But solider boys had never impressed him much before and this long drink of water with a funny-looking hat on his head, standing beside Leathers didn’t impress him either. He stepped out onto the rotting porch and Ben noted that the man was massive.

  “I’ll take ’at thar horn and jam it up your ass, boy!” Bannon yelled at Ham.

  Ben’s voice stopped Ham as he started toward the man. “I’ll handle this, Ham. Back off.” Ben walked into the front yard, littered with wornout tires, rims, various engine parts, and several very weary-looking and malnourished hound dogs.

  Thermopolis had seen it all before. While he agreed with Ben in theory, he felt there were better ways to accomplish it, other than Ben’s blunt and oftentime brutal methods.

  Thermopolis also knew that while he could discuss it all he wanted with Ben, in private, one did not question commanding generals in front of their troops. Therm also could recall several times when members of his group had questioned his decisions in a rather sarcastic and demeaning manner . . . in front of the others. He also recalled that he had knocked them on their ass.

  “I’ll lay it out for you, Bannon,” Ben told the brute of a man. “This town is about to become a Rebel outpost. A clean zone, so to speak. In more ways than one . . .”

  “Shet up!” Bannon told him. “And git off my property.”

  “I have been informed that this isn’t your property,” Ben replied. “And kindly do not tell me to shut up. When I am finished then you may have your say. Now then, how many children do you have under the age of twelve?”

  “Why . . . hale’s-fire, I don’t know. A whole damn passel of ’em.”

  “Damnit, man, they are your offspring! Don’t you know how many you have living under your roof?”

  Bannon tensed up and glared at Ben.

  “Get them out here!” Ben told him.

  “I’ll be damned if’n I will!”

  Ben lifted the muzzle of his M-14, pointing it at Bannon’s chest. “You will most certainly be dead if you don’t,” he said coldly.

  Bannon sucked in as much of his gut as he could. He hunted with a .308. He knew what kind of damage that big slug could do. He turned his head and hollered, “Thelma! Git all them younguns of ourn out here!”

  The porch literally filled with people, most of them kids. Ben guessed their ages from about three to twenty-one, and he pegged the older kids as impossible to rehabilitate. He smiled at a little boy of about eight and the boy shyly returned the smile. Ben noticed the lad’s face was swollen and there was a large bruise on the boy’s face.

  “How’d you get that bruise, son?”

  The boy pointed to his father.

  Bannon slipped down another notch in Ben’s estimation. “You like to read, son?”

  “Cain’t,” the boy admitted.

  Ben turned to Leathers. “You told me you had schools, Mister Leathers.”

  “Of course, we do!” the man replied indignantly. “Nothing on the order of what we were used to before the war, but we certainly have schools! But the only way we could have taken these children into schools would have been to kill Ed Bannon.”

  “Then why didn’t you?” Ben asked the question with about as much emotion in his voice as if he were requesting a cup of coffee.

  Leathers knew then that everything he had heard about Ben Raines was true. Both the good and what many, both before and after the Great War, would consider the bad. Leathers shrugged his shoulders.

  Ben looked back at the young boy. “What’s your name, son?”

  “Adam.”

  Ben pointed to a huge battle tank parked by the curb. “You ever seen one of those, Adam?”

  “In pitcher books.”

  “Would you like to go for a ride in one?”

  The boy’s face brightened. “I shore would!”

  “Then go on. Your father doesn’t mind. Do you, Bannon?”

  Bannon’s eyes were bright with hatred. He knew exactly what Ben was doing; and it was being done as smooth as owl shit was slick.

  “As a matter of fact,” Ben said, “all you kids can leave the porch and go riding in the tanks and APCs. That’s all right with you, isn’t it, Bannon?”

  “Can I go too?” a weary voice came from behind the screen door.

  “You shet your mouth, Thelma!” Bannon yelled over his shoulder. “An’ git your ass back in the kitchen and to cleanin’ and cookin’ them fish for us.”

  “Of course you can go for a ride, Mrs. Bannon,” Ben said. “Come on. Your husband won’t bother you.”

  The woman stepped out onto the porch, grabbed the hand of a tiny girl, and hurriedly walked toward the line of Rebels by the road, all the rest of the younger kids following her.

  “I’ll take a strap to your ass, woman!” Bannon squalled. “You’ll pay for this, I promise you.”

  “Shut your goddamned ignorant mouth,” Ben told him.

  Bannon glared hate at Ben. “I ain’t never gonna see them kids agin, is I?”

  “No. They’ll be taken to Base Camp One and placed with people who will care for them and see to their education. You stupid son of a bitch!” Ben lost his temper, as all gathered around knew he probably would, for Raines hated ignorance above all else. “Can’t you understand that education is the key to rebuilding this nation? Unless we educate our young, we’re doomed! Can’t you see that?”

  “I got a high school education,” Bannon said. “Hit never done me no good. All them smartass college boys always a-tellin’ me what to do on the job. After I whupped four or five of ’um they wouldn’t nobody hire me.”

  “No, Bannon. You didn’t get a high school education. You got s
ocially passed from one grade to the next. But that’s as much your fault as the teachers. You didn’t want to learn. But I bet you were a star football player, weren’t you?”

  “Damn right.”

  “That figures. And an ex-coach was the superintendent of schools, right?”

  “Damn shore was.”

  Ben looked at Leathers. “It took a world war to break that cycle of stupidity in America. And I’ll be goddamned if I’ll see it repeated.” He turned to Bannon. “Bannon, this is now a Rebel-controlled zone. There is no place for you or your kind here . . . not living the type of life you have been. I was informed on the way over here that you are a bully; probably been one all your life. That you’ve killed several men in fights and seriously injured others, and that most of them were people who had done you no harm. Is that right?”

  “’At’s rat,” Bannon said with a grin. “I lak to fight. I laks to whup up on them that thinks they’s better than me. And if you’d lower that there gun, I’ll come off this porch and stomp the guts plumb outta you, General soldier boy bigshot.”

  Ben measured the man carefully with his eyes. He guessed Bannon was a good ten years younger, and probably outweighed him by a good fifty or sixty pounds, but forty pounds of that was in the gut.

  The tanks and APCs had rumbled off, taking the kids and the battered wife with them.

  Ben lowered the muzzle of the M-14 and handed it to Jerre.

  “Oh, shit, Ben!” she muttered. “What don’t you let Ham do it.”

  “’Cause then it wouldn’t be any fun,” he returned the whisper.

  Ben stepped back, slipping on leather work gloves and then holding his hands wide apart. He looked up at the wad of bully. “Well, come on, you jelly-belly son of a bitch. What are you waiting on?”

  NINE

  Bannon came off the porch roaring like a maddened bull, his big feet pounding the earth. He took a wild swing at Ben. Ben ducked the punch and gave him a right to the wind, his fist sinking into the softness of belly.

  Thermopolis shook his head in disgust at the very idea of the commanding general of the largest standing army in the country fistfighting with a redneck bully . . . but he understood why Ben was doing it. He looked at Rosebud. She was jumping around shadowboxing the air.

  “The campaign is certainly bringing out the baser instincts in you,” he remarked.

  “Punch his lights out, Ben!” Rosebud yelled.

  Ben caught a looping left to the side of his head that stung and backed him up. He knew he could not hope to win by standing and slugging it out with the man. Bannon was too powerful. But Ben knew he could win by keeping the man moving, using up his air, and by concentrating his blows to the man’s body.

  Ben danced away and drove a fist above the man’s kidney, then moved to the other side and popped the man a good, solid right directly on the man’s ear, bringing a howl of pain from Bannon.

  Bannon tried to hook a toe behind Ben’s boot and trip him. Ben grabbed onto the man’s shirt with his left hand, maintaining his balance, and drove the stiffened fingers of his right hand into Bannon’s throat. The ’neck gagged and choked and Ben busted his nose with a short, savage right fist.

  With blood streaming down his face, Bannon coughed and backed up, the light in his eyes telling Ben that Bannon was desperately trying to figure out how best to fight him.

  Ben didn’t give him much time to ponder the situation. He faked a left and Bannon followed it, dropping his guard. Ben drove a combination through the opening, the left catching the man on the side of the jaw and the right hitting him flush on the mouth, splitting the man’s lips and loosening rotting teeth.

  With Bannon’s face registering his shock at being punched so easily, Ben pressed the attack with a left to the gut and a right to the jaw.

  Bannon closed, fighting to regain his wind, and grabbed Ben in a bear hug, trying to break his back. Ben stomped on the man’s instep with his jump boot and Bannon screamed in pain, his grip lessening. Ben slipped free and hammered at the man’s kidneys with left’s and right’s.

  Bannon turned and flung one big arm out, the forearm catching Ben in the mouth and knocking him off balance and to the ground. Bannon lumbered forward, trying to kick Ben. Ben rolled and came up on his boots, his mouth bloody.

  Ben stopped the ’neck in his tracks with a hard right to the mouth, then followed that with a left to the man’s belly. Bannon backed up, trying to clear his head.

  Ben gave him no time. He stepped forward and hit him twice in the face: another right to the man’s mouth and a left to the jaw. Ben stepped back and kicked the man on the kneecap. Screaming his pain, Bannon staggered and Ben gave him the toe of a jump boot to the balls.

  Bannon dropped to his knees, both hands holding his throbbing crotch. Ben kicked the man in the face, the toe of his boot shattering Bannon’s front teeth and knocking the man backward.

  Bannon struggled to get to his feet. But Ben had no intention of allowing that. He kicked the man in his big fat ass and knocked him sprawling on the ground, on his face.

  Walking to the man, Ben kicked him as hard as he could in the belly, doubling the man up into a wad of painful and largely self-imposed ignorance.

  The fight was over.

  Ben pulled off his gloves and stowed them in a back pocket of his BDUs.

  “You kilt our daddy!” one of the cretinous-looking young men on the porch squalled.

  Ben ignored him and walked over to Leathers. The civic leader involuntarily backed up at the advance.

  “What about these older boys?” Ben asked.

  “Just like their father. Thieves and bullies.”

  Ben turned to Ham. “Let them get what clothing they want out of the house. No guns. Then burn this shack to the ground.” He swung his glance back to Leathers. “They’ll be back, Leathers. And they’ll cause you trouble until you finally make up your mind to shoot them. Or hang them. That will be your decision to make. But I assure you, unless Bannon changes, you will have it to do.”

  “You ain’t got the right to do this,” Bannon moaned from the ground. “This ain’t no decent thing to do to a hooman bein’.”

  “I wouldn’t do it to a decent human being, Bannon,” Ben told him, after taking a sip of water from his canteen. “But the only resemblance between you and a decent human being is your ability to walk upright.” He look his M-14 from Jerre. “Don’t ever let our paths cross again; not if you insist upon living the way you have been. Because I’ll kill you without hesitation.”

  Ben watched the light in the man’s eyes change from cruel defiance to defeat. Social workers and shrinks would argue the point until exhaustion felled them, but Ben knew, and knew without doubt, that there are people in the world who can respond only to brute force and violence. They cannot relate to compassion because they do not possess even a modicum of that emotion. They have to be hammered into the ground, picked up, and hammered again. Once they realize that unless they change, to fit into the established mores of whatever society, they will know only pain. Then they will understand that society has but two choices: allow them that change, or dispose of them.

  “I ain’t got no place else to go,” Bannon pushed the words past battered lips. “I was borned around here.”

  Ben looked at Leathers. “It’s up to you. You’re the leader of this zone. You make the decision. I can’t make all of them for you.”

  “We’ll have a town meeting on the subject.”

  “Good. That’s the way it should be.”

  “You’ll delay burning down this house?”

  “No. We don’t allow shacks in any controlled zone.”

  Leathers sighed. “I agree with that. To allow filth would be unfair to others who try to maintain a clean living area.”

  “We’re pulling out now. Have your town meeting and make your decision about Bannon.”

  “Whichever way we vote, you won’t interfere?”

  “No. Not unless I learn that the man has returned to his
old ways and you people refuse to do anything to correct the problem.”

  “And then you will? . . .”

  “Dispose of the problem.”

  Leathers stared at him. “Bannon’s wife and kids.”

  “They’re on their way to Base Camp One now. He will not see them again.”

  “You’re a hard man, General Raines.”

  “Hard times, partner.”

  Ben and his column pulled out, heading westward, following the river road.

  “You think Bannon will change, Ben?” Jerre asked, as they rolled along through the afternoon.

  “Others have. So there is a chance. But my guess would be that he won’t. He’s lived too many years as a bully and a slob and a petty thief and a thug . . . and society let him get away with it.”

  Cooper said, “The people back in the town said there is a town about thirty miles up the road that’s filled with a gang of punks and crud, General.”

  “I know. Leathers informed me. They’ve been having trouble out of them for months. Shooting trouble. It’s a pretty well-organized gang of thugs. Ham should be radioing in any time.”

  “Wonder why Thermopolis and his bunch decided to break off from the main column and follow us?” Jersey asked.

  Jerre answered that. “He likes to study Ben. Says the general is a walking contradiction.”

  “So is he,” Beth said.

  “That’s very true. We’re more alike than you think,” Ben spoke. “Cut off his hair and the only difference would be our tastes in music. Thermopolis claims to hate big government, but he knows that the only way to survive in these times is with a form of centralized government. Cut through all his rhetoric and you’ll find that’s one of the main reasons he joined us. He and his bunch will always live apart from us, but not too far away. And I can appreciate that.”

  “Ham calling in,” Corrie said.

  Ben picked up his mic. “Go, Ham.”

  “Fifty to sixty men in the town. Maybe that many women. They have kids, General.”

  “How are they armed?”

  “Pretty well. Mostly small arms. I haven’t seen anything in the way of heavy stuff.”