Alone in the Ashes (6 page)

Ben's Rebels and the newly armed civilians ringed the big camp, keeping the outlaws penned until the last of the prisoners were being safely trucked away back to Dyersburg.

Ben lifted his walkie-talkie. “You and your men are free to leave, now, West. Lay down your weapons and start walking.”

“
What?
” West screamed, the word bouncing out of the walkie-talkie.

“You heard me,” Ben radioed. “Start walking.”

“No goddamn way, Raines. We take our guns and vehicles.”

“Captain Chad,” Ben called. “Put ten rounds of mortars, H.E., into that camp.”

“Yes, sir,” the captain grinned.

A long barracks-type building went first, the high-explosive round sending bits of splintered wood flying. A guard tower was blown all over that part of Tennessee; another building was blown, then a mortar round shattered the big front gates of the labor camp.

“All right, goddamn it!” West screamed. “All right, you bastard. Cool it!”

“Cease firing,” Ben ordered.

“I cain't walk outta here, Raines,” West's voice whined out of the speaker. “Gimmie a break, man.”

Charles Leighton whispered into Ben's ear. Ben grinned and lifted his walkie-talkie. “All right, West. You can ride out. On a mule.”

West did not need a walkie-talkie. His cursing could be heard for half a mile.

“You got anything to say about that, Doctor Barnes?” Ben asked the man.

“Would my opinion make any difference, General?” the man asked.

“Not a bit, Doctor. But this being a democratic society, I thought I'd ask.”

 

 

“We need more medical people in here,” Doctor Barnes bitched to Ben. “The prisoners are in extremely bad shape. We
need
more doctors.”

Ben was tempted to tell the man that a frog probably wished it were more beautiful; people in Hell wished they had ice water, and that if Barnes' aunt had been born with balls, she'd have been his uncle.

Ben was getting awfully weary with Doctor Ralph Barnes.

Ben held his temper. “In addition to Doctor Walland, there are two fully-trained medics with the Rebel platoon. I can't pull any more people in here from Base Camp One.”

“Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute.”

“Guns and butter,” Ben countered. He walked away. He found Judy helping in the makeshift hospital. “I'm pulling out in the morning,” he told her. “If I stay here any longer, I'm going to end up beating the shit out of Doctor Barnes. And that's not going to do either one of us any good.”

“Ben ...” She faced him.

“I know. I know. You're staying. I think you should, Judy. You're needed here. I mean that, kid.”

She kissed him, then smiled up at him. “I'm going to make you proud of me, Ben. I'm going to study and learn how to write books.”

“I think you will, Judy. We'll say good-bye, now.”

“Bye, Ben.”

He walked away.

 

 

Ben was surprised to see Doctor Barnes leaning against his truck in the just-breaking light of dawn. Ben tossed his kit into the protection of the camper and walked around to face Barnes.

“I hope you're not leaving because of me, General,” Barnes said.

“You're part of the reason,” Ben said truthfully. “But the real reason is I'm no longer needed here. Captain Chad and his people will handle it. So it's time for me to be pulling out.” Ben stuck out his hand and the doctor shook it.

“I was thirty-five years old when the bottom dropped out, General,” the doctor said, speaking softly as dawn broke. “I had a family, a fine practice, and everything that went with that. I looked up the next day, and the entire world had gone mad.”

“And you bet your whole roll on Hilton Logan,” Ben said.

“Am I that transparent?” Barnes asked.

“Let's see if I can peg you, Ralph,” Ben said, leaning up against the fender and lighting one of his horrible, homegrown, homemade cigarettes. He offered one to the doctor and Ralph took it.

“It's bad for your health,” the doctor grinned.

“I heard that,” Ben replied with a laugh. “You were what was known as a Yuppie. You belonged to the country club locally. You were politically and socially aware and active ...”

He paused while the doctor inhaled and went into spasms of coughing. “Damn, that's good!” Ralph said. He took another drag and said, “Reasonably accurate. Continue, please. You're a very astute man.”

“You were a democrat, politically. You were opposed to the death penalty and loudly in favor of gun control. You bemoaned the state of the nation's health care for those who could not afford the skyrocketing medical costs, but you were against any type of socialized medicine. And you lived in a two-hundred-thousand-dollar home and your wife drove a Mercedes or BMW. How close am I, Ralph?”

The doctor went on the defensive, as Ben had thought he would. “And what did you do about health care for those who could not afford it, General?”

“Nothing,” Ben said. “I didn't have lobbyists in Washington, Ralph.”

“And you weren't paying fifty thousand dollars a year for malpractice insurance, either, General.”

“Want to jump on the back of lawyers, now, Ralph?” Ben said with a laugh.

Barnes joined in the laughter. “No. I don't believe so. We'll save that for your return trip.” He stuck out his hand and Ben shook it. “See you, General. Good luck to you.”

“Luck to you, too, Ralph. See you on the back swing.”

 

 

His scouts had reported that West and his people had last been seen trudging up Highway 51, heading north toward Kentucky. Ben headed west, taking 155 toward the Mississippi River and into Missouri. The bridge over the Big Muddy was clear and the river rolled beneath him, eternal and silent. Ben stopped on the center of the bridge and got out of his truck, gazing down into the muddy waters.

As he watched the swirling, ever-rushing waters of the Mississippi, a passage from the Bible came to him:
One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth forever.

“But what kind of men and women will the next generation give the earth?” he asked the cool winds of late fall.

Like the river, the winds swirled and rushed, speaking in a language only they could understand.

With a sigh, Ben got back into his truck and headed west.

He stopped at Hayti and looked around. There was no sign of life. But he knew there was life. Almost every town of any size at all held two or ten or twenty survivors. But most, instead of organizing, pulling together, working together in a cooperative effort, for safety and defense and productivity's sake, were instead lone-wolfing it, and by doing so, were helping to drag down what vestiges of civilization remained.

“No good,” Ben muttered. “It can't be allowed to continue. The outpost idea must be implemented—and soon.”

He smiled as he drove on west. “That's right, Ben. Set yourself up as a modern-day version of Don Quixote.” Or perhaps you're playing the role of Sancho Panza, he thought.

Either way, what right do you have to play God, rearranging peoples' lives? Who named you the Great Overseer? Nobody came down from the mountain and whispered in your ear, Raines.

He shook away those thoughts and concentrated on his driving.

But his mind refused to stay idle; the outpost idea kept jumping to the fore. The outposts would, out of necessity, have to start out small. Because of the recent revolt within his ranks, his Rebel number had been cut by forty percent.
²

They could not, as yet, stretch coast to coast; there weren't that many Rebels left. Perhaps a thousand miles without strain. From Base Camp One in Georgia to the middle of Colorado. Maybe. Just maybe. But due to the aftereffects of the limited nuclear strikes, the jet stream had shifted, so he needed to get some people down south, to where the growing season was longer.

“Shit!” he said aloud. “Raines, this is supposed to be a vacation for you. You're supposed to be doing some writing.”

But he doubted that would ever happen. Something always came up to keep him from paper and pencil.

Suddenly, one of those “somethings” reared up from the left side of the road. Ben braked and stopped. He checked both mirrors. It was clear behind him. He was still a good hundred yards from the man with a gun in his hands. Ben got out of the truck, taking his Thompson with him.

The hood of the truck protected him from the chest down. Ben clicked the Thompson off safety as the man slowly raised his rifle.

“I want your truck,” the man called. “Gimmie it here and there won't be no trouble.”

“Why do you need my particular truck?” Ben called. “There are thousands of vehicles for you to choose from.”

“'Cause yours is runnin',” the man said.

“Sorry, friend. Find your own mode of transportation.”

“Then I'll just kill you,” the man said.

Ben stepped from behind the door. Holding the Thompson waist-high, the muzzle pointed at the man's legs, Ben pulled the trigger and held it back.

A hundred yards is straining it for a Thompson, and the first six or eight rounds whined off the road in front of the man. But as the powerful old .45-caliber spitter roared and bucked, the muzzle pulling up and right from the weapon on full auto, a dozen or more rounds struck the man, starting at his ankles and working up, stitching him from ankles to head. Part of the man's skullbone flew out into the field behind him as the man was knocked backward, dead before he hit the ditch.

Ben quickly ejected the drum and slapped in a full thirty-round clip. Crouching beside the truck, Ben did a slow sixty count before moving out. He ran to the body and crouched down in the ditch. The back of his neck was tingling with suspicion. Something was all out of whack here. Working quickly, Ben jerked the web belt off the man. The man was loaded down with M-16 clips, all full. Ben grabbed up the M-16 and inspected it for damage. None of his slugs had struck the weapon. He looked at the dead man. The man wore new boots, reasonably fresh trousers, and clean—discounting the fresh blood stains and bullet holes—shirt and jacket.

“I don't know what your problem was, buddy,” Ben said, walking back to the truck. “But you've been relieved of it.”

He stowed the M-16 and extra ammo in the camper and drove on, thinking it was another mystery that would never be solved.

Ben drove on into Kennett, Missouri, stopping at the edge of town. He could see smoke from fires pluming into the sky, but as it so often was, the smoke was not centralized, but widely separated, as if the people wanted no part of each other.

“You're making a mistake, folks,” he said aloud. “Now is the time to come together, not drift apart. Black, white, red, yellow, tan; we all bleed the same color.”

At the crossroads, Ben flipped a silver dollar he had carried for years into the air. “Heads, I go right; tails I turn left,” he said.

The coin came heads up.

Ben cut the wheel right, heading north.

He did not see another living soul, nor any sign of human life for the next twenty miles. At Campbell, Missouri, sitting out front of a long-unused service station, Ben spotted a man leaned back in a cane-bottomed chair. The man waved in a friendly gesture and Ben pulled over.”

“Howdy, neighbor,” the man said.

“Hello,” Ben returned the greeting.

“Been waitin' for you to show up,” the man said. “Folks over to Kennett radioed you was headin' this way.”

“I see. Then they are a bit more organized than I thought.”

“We're pretty well organized around here. They told me you was travelin' alone and didn't appear to be hostile. Damn, you look familiar to me, mister.”

“Ben Raines.”

The man turned several shades paler. “
The
Ben Raines?”

“I guess so. Is the world ready for two of us?” Ben kidded.

“Well, I'll just be damned! Well, come on out and let's talk some. Let me get on the radio and get the folks together. Not that there's that many of us, mind you.”

“How many?”

“Oh, 'bout two hundred and fifty. And that number is made up of about twenty different bands and knots of folks.”

Ben decided to keep his mouth shut about the man he'd killed on the road.

“I know what you're thinkin', Mr. Raines,” the man said. “Are we under one leader, right? The answer is no. There's about sixty or so of us that would like that, but the rest of the folks are against it.”

“Then get them together,” Ben said. “I'm not interested in speaking to or meeting any of the other people.”

The man smiled. “I heard you was a hard, hard man, Mr. Raines.”

“So I've been told, sir. So I've been told.”

Ben liked what he saw when the group of people was assembled in the old gym. There were sixty-eight adults gathered, their ages ranging from early twenties to what used to be called the Golden Age.

But, Ben thought with a smile, this bunch of elderly folks looked fit and hard.

Ben had met and shaken hands with them all. He'd met a couple of musicians, several farmers, mechanics, former small business people, accountants, two doctors, several lawyers ... a pretty good cross-section of small town America.

Briefly, Ben explained his idea of outposts stretching across the land. He explained the advantages to that plan, and then let the people talk about it among themselves for a time.

“And we can count on help from your Rebels, General Raines?” he was asked.

“Once you people are committed to the plan, yes,” Ben said. “But I'm not going to send my people in here to waste their time and yours if you're not ready for organization and law and order. I think you're all familiar with how the Tri-States operated. That's the way I'll expect you to run your community. You people have the beginnings of a good operation here. All you need to do is break away from the dissidents among you and set it up. And you don't need my help to do that. You're well armed and you look fit. I've given you the frequency of our Base Camp One. If you hit a snag, contact them. The next outpost is just across the river, in Dyersburg. Why don't you send someone over there to look around, compare ideas. All I can tell you is, ‘good luck.'”

 

 

Ben pulled out, alone, early the next morning. For some reason he could not fathom, Texas was pulling at him, and he wanted to get there and spend the winter there, exploring and writing and being alone. He had been surrounded by people for more than a decade, training and fighting and organizing and being pushed and prodded into something he had never really wanted to be: A
leader
.

He just wanted to be alone for a time.

Ben headed straight west, or as straight as the road would allow after he took a county road down to Highway 142. At Neelyville, Missouri, he filled his gas tanks and prowled the deserted town—and this town was definitely deserted. He sat for a time in an old barber shop and thumbed through what was left of an old
Field and Stream
magazine he'd found stuck up under some hair tonic behind the closed doors of a cabinet. He leaned back in the old chair and muttered, “A shave and haircut, please.”

Then the old chair collapsed and dumped him to the floor.

Laughing at himself—something Ben had always been able to do—he continued westward.

Just outside of Gatewood, Missouri, he found the highway blocked by a fallen tree. Using his chain saw, Ben cleared the road and drove on for a few more miles before deciding it was time to hunt a place to spend the night.

He stopped on the west side of the Eleven Point River and caught a mess of fish for his supper, cooking them on his camp stove on the closed porch of a once-fine old home.

When he awakened the next morning, dawn was breaking and the ground was white with frost.

He was also looking down the muzzle of a double-barreled shotgun.

 

 

“Well, now, if that ain't the sorriest lookin' sight I ever did see,” Jake Campo said. “A one-footed warlord ridin' a goddamned mule, and a-leadin' a pack-rat bunch of whupped rednecks.”

The big outlaw lifted his ugly face to the sky and howled with laughter.

“Laugh, you lard-assed son of a bitch!” West snarled at the man. “I got more men than you have, and if you want a fight you damn sure got it.”

“Now, now,” Jake said, wiping tears from his eyes. “Don't get your bowels in no uproar, West. How in the hell did you lose your foot?”

“That bastard Ben Raines shot it off!”

“It appears Raines not only took your foot, but your ear and cars and most of your guns as well,” Jake observed. Campo helped West down from the mule and to a camp chair in front of his tent. He poured the man chicory coffee.

West slurped his coffee and sighed. “Good,” he said. “Warms my belly but don't do nothin' for the hurt in my leg.”

“That'll pass, I reckon,” Jake said. “Or else you'll die. One of the two. Tell me what happened.”

West tried to ease his aching stump by propping it up. He told Campo what had happened, greatly embellishing the heroism of himself and his men against overwhelming odds.

“Uh-huh,” Jake said, slurping his coffee. “Now that we got the bullshit outta the way, tell me the truth.”

“I just tole you!”

“No, you didn't. You told me a bunch of lies. Raines probably pulled together a gang of civilians and then proceeded to kick your ass. He's good at doin' things like that. Now, West, ain't that what
really
happened?”

West slumped back in his chair. His face still silently expressed the ache in his severed stump. “Yeah,” he said. “That's just about it. Jake? You reckon they's any truth in all them stories about Raines?”

“'Bout him being a god, you mean?”

“Yeah.”

“I don't know,” Jake admitted, all humor leaving his eyes. “I've given that some thought. Hartline is probably the best soldier I ever served with. Hartline couldn't take Raines. The Russian couldn't take Raines; Raines whipped him good. The goddamned United States Government couldn't even whip Raines back in '97 or so. Man's been shot a dozen or more times, blown up, stabbed—can't kill him. But he's got to have his Achilles heel.”

“His what?”

“I always forget what a dumb son of a bitch you are,” Jake said contemptuously. “His weak spot.”

“Why didn't you just say so? I'm gonna get him, Jake,” West said. “I swear on my mother's grave, I'm gonna get Ben Raines.”

“Well, he's headin' west, that's for sure. You ready to pitch in with me, now?”

“Yeah.”

“I wish I knew what Raines was up to,” Jake said. “He was travelin' by himself 'til he hooked with that brother-and-sister team. You ride with me from now on, West. We'll get him, boy, don't you worry none.”

 

 

The double-barreled shotgun was just about as big as the boy holding it. Ben cut his eyes upward and could see the shotgun was an old side-hammer type. And the hammers had not been cocked.

“Oh, my,” Ben said. “I guess you got the drop on me, son.”

“I sure do, partner,” the boy replied. “So don't you try nothin' funny.”

“Oh, I won't. Could I ask a favor of you before you shoot me?”

“What is it?”

“You mind if I fix some breakfast? I hate to get shot on an empty stomach.”

“What you got to eat?” the boy asked. “I ain't et in two, three days.”

“Oh, I have bacon and beans and crackers. How about it?”

The boy backed up and lowered the muzzle of the shotgun. “I reckon that'll be all right, mister. Just be careful.”

The shotgun, Ben concluded, was at least a hundred years old. An old Damascus steel barrel. If the boy tried to fire any type of modern ammunition in the ancient weapon, he would probably end up killing himself, the twist barrel exploding and folding back.

Ben smiled as he laced up his boots and pumped up the stove. “You don't need to hold that shotgun on me, son. By the time you could cock that thing, I would have taken it away from you. And even if it could fire, you'd hurt yourself with it.”

The boy's shoulders sagged. He propped the shotgun against a wall of the porch. “You knowed all along, didn't you, mister?”

“Yes. But I can't short you on courage, son. You from around here?”

“I don't know where I'm from, mister. I'm just ... just
here.”

“You travel a lot, then. Right?”

“All the time. I been on my own since I was ...” His face screwed up in thought. “Since I was real little. I seen four season goings and comin's since then.”

“I'd guess you about ten.”

The boy shrugged.

“You have a name, son?”

“Jordy.”

Ben stuck out his hand. “I'm Ben Raines.”

Jordy recoiled backward as if struck by a rattlesnake. “You ain't, neither!” Jordy hissed.

“Yes, I am, Jordy.”

“You kilt a Beast with your bare hands! Cain't no human do that.”

“I used a knife, Jordy, after I shot the thing with a. 45. Besides,” he smiled, “Daniel Boone kilt a b'ar, too.”

“Who?” the boy asked.

Ben sighed. “Sit down and eat, Jordy. We'll talk. Looks like I found me a traveling companion.”

The boy's pinched face wrinkled in a broad smile. “You mean that? Truly?”

“I truly do, Jordy.”

The boy looked at the knife, fork, and spoon in his tin plate. “What's them things for?”

“It should be an interesting journey,” Ben said. “Very interesting.”

 

 

Ben had sat, fascinated, listening to the boy talk. While he ate with his fingers, stuffing his mouth with food as if it might be his last for days, Jordy told of people who lived in caves, deep underground, only venturing out during the night to hunt for food. There were others who lived in caves who would only venture out during the day, for they believed the night held evil spirits. He told Ben of a dozen warlords between the big river to the east and the flat ground to the west.

The Mississippi River and Kansas, Ben assumed.

Jordy told Ben of the many shrines he had seen, all erected toward the god Ben Raines.

“I am not a god, Jordy. And it's wrong for people who believe that I am.”

The boy fixed young-old eyes on him. “You fell off a mountain and lived, didn't you?”

“It was a small mountain.”

“You been shot a hundred times, ain't you?”

“Not quite that many times.”

“The rats couldn't kill you. The Beasts couldn't kill you. Nobody can kill you. You're a leader of people. People do what you tell them to do. You knew my shotgun wouldn't fire, didn't you?”

“Well, yes, but . . .”

“You just don't wanna be a god, that's all. That's all right with me, if that's what you want. I'll play like you're like everybody else.”

Ben sorted out Jordy's rush of words and said, “Thank you.”

Jordy had not ridden in many vehicles and he was fascinated by the truck and all its gadgets.

“What happens if I turn this thing?” the boy asked.

“The radio comes on,” Ben explained.

“The what?”

Ben's smile was very sad. Jordy would have been about five years old when what was left of the U.S. collapsed. He would have absolutely no memory of television, and would have to have lived near a populated center to have any knowledge of radio.

“I know what a radio is!” Jordy blurted. “I think.”

“Tell me.”

“Voices come outta them things from a long way off, right?”

“That's . . . a reasonable assessment, I suppose. Jordy, do you have any memories of your parents?”

He shook his head. “No. But I had a sister. She was older. I haven't seen her in a long time. That was four seasons ago.”

“How did you two separate?”

“Huh?”

“What happened to your sister?”

“Some men grabbed her. She yelled for me to run. I took off. When I went back, she was gone and so was the men.”

No point in asking where it happened, Ben thought. “Can you read or write, Jordy?”

“No, sir. I never had no schoolin'.”

But you can survive, Ben thought. He thought of the young people who had joined his command, some of them as young as six. But already woods-wise, and not hesitant to kill if faced with danger.

Quite a generation we have upcoming, he thought. Just a step away from being savages.

“Town called Thayer just up ahead, Jordy. There should be some people in the town.”

“Yes, sir. A pretty good bunch of them. And they all got guns, too.”

“Have they tried to hurt you?”

“Oh, no, sir. But they have tried to catch me a time or two.”

“Why did they want to catch you?”

“They said they wanted me to live with them. Go to school and all that shit. But they said I'd have to take a bath. With soap,” he added, disgust in his voice.

“Well, Jordy, I hate to tell you this, but you're going to have to take a bath if you want to travel with me. Son,” Ben said, scratching himself, “I think you have fleas.”