Ash: Rise of the Republic (12 page)

By the time I reached the gate, the reverend
and his 'archangel' were waiting with calm smiles.

"Good day Brother!" Began the reverend in
his booming voice. "I hope I find you well on this good day. Have
you had sufficient time to consider Salvation?"

"We've talked it over, reverend. I'm afraid
we won't be joining you."

The reverend's smile dropped. He leaned down
to whisper in his companion's ear. The boy shook his head and
whispered back.

"Very well," said the reverend,
straightening up, "As I told you before, I have been mandated by
our Lord and Savior to cleanse the earth of the corruption of man
in preparation for the Kingdom. Your dwellings, vehicles, and
possessions are forfeit. They will have to be destroyed
immediately. Any supplies you have which might assist me in my
duties will be requisitioned. The Lord is not without Mercy: any
heathen sinner who does not interfere with our work will be spared.
Any who resist will be exterminated humanely using..."

His sneering companion suddenly tugged his
sleeve. The reverend leaned down again to exchange whispers.
Turning his suddenly cold eyes back to me, he growled, "Zadkiel has
told me of your crimes, heathen. The Lord's Mercy will not extend
to you or your wife."

"And what crimes does 'Zadkiel' accuse us
of?"

"Why, murder of course. There is no sense in
denying it, the Lord sees all. You shot down the Lord's messenger
and therefore impeded His plans. There can be no forgiveness for
you."

At this, I lost my temper. I raised my rifle
to my shoulder and leveled the sights on his chest.

"I'm done with this, " I said, savagely,
"turn around and walk away or I'll shoot you both down where you
stand. This is your last chance to leave here with your lives.
These people have done nothing to you, and they aren't going to
give you a damn thing."

The reverend's smile returned, "I fear not
your earthly weapons when the Lord is at my side. Come, Zadkiel,
the Fellowship awaits our orders."

He turned and began walking back down the
road. Werner sneered at me one last time and turned to follow
him.

I should have killed them both right there.
I don't know why I didn't. I just stood there, my finger trembling
above the trigger, and let them walk off. I've regretted that
moment every day since.

We hunkered down in our fighting positions,
expecting attack at any moment. Hours passed with no signs of
movement. As the sun neared the horizon, we sent out three men to
scout the enemy. They found nothing.

At sundown we changed shifts. Those of us
who had spent the long day anxiously squirming in fear with our
eyes darting in futility along the horizon were exhausted. We
retreated to our beds gratefully. We were more than willing to
relinquish responsibility for a few hours. The fatigue overwhelmed
any lingering apprehension of attack. I collapsed into bed fully
clothed.

I awoke to the blaring of a car horn. Grasping for my
weapon in the dark, I tried to count the blasts. I quickly realized
it would be impossible. It sounded like every horn in the
neighborhood. Several booming shots rang out; screams and staccato
shouting followed. Mike burst through the door, still strapping on
his gear, just as Deb and I entered the living room.

"They're over the wall!" He shouted, the
alarms deafening.

"Everywhere?" I replied, indicating the
caucophony of horns.

"That's not us. Clint just woke me up.
They've got trucks all up and down the highway, laying on their
horns. Sentries didn't even see them pull up. Christ, it’s dark!
It's the Northwest corner. Everybody's already heading up."

"How did they..." I broke off at a sudden
crackle of rifle fire.

The three of us scrambled outside. Beyond
the crest of the hill, an orange glow reflected off the low clouds.
Screams of rage and fear drifted toward us, intermixed with frantic
shooting and the blaring of the horns. I stopped, shocked at the
scene. Hell. Maybe the reverend was right. The rapture had come and
gone.

I shook myself free from the vision and
followed Mike and Deb up the hill to join the fight. This wasn't
hell, we weren't doomed to this by some god. The chaos before me
was man-made, or boy-made. The 'Archangel Zadkiel' had not
commanded righteous men to dole out God's vengeance, a twelve year
old psychopath had manipulated an army of criminals into exacting
personal revenge.

I looked up at a shout from Mike. Three
figures had crested the hill, silhouetted in the orange glow. We
left the road and took cover behind the nearest house before they
noticed us. They were walking casually down the street, joking with
each other and chuckling. In the dim light it looked like they were
wearing long flowing white robes. The group turned and walked up
the driveway across from our hiding place. One knelt at the front
door for a moment and then jumped up quickly and ran back to his
comrades. Before I could form a thought, the front of the house
exploded in flames with a heavy whumph. In the sudden light we
could clearly see the three arsonists as they slapped each other's
backs and guffawed in merriment. Each was wrapped in a dirty
bedsheet, surprisingly effective camoflauge in the ash.

We raised our rifles at the clear targets
and let loose a brutal volley of semi-automatic fire. All three of
the enemy fell, patches of dark red spreading across their grey
camouflage. We rushed over, but the flames had already taken hold;
the house would soon be consumed. Mike checked the three corpses
and found several small homemade bombs in their pockets. Only one
of them had a gun, the other two were armed with knives and
axes.

A burst of gunfire from the top of the hill
excited puffs of ash around us. We blindly fired back at the source
as we ran for cover. More bullets hummed past. Our attackers soon
lost sight of us in the oppressive darkness and went in search of
easier targets.

We moved cautiously to the top of the hill,
hoping we weren’t too late. The shooting had grown to a crescendo.
It was now a rolling clap of thunder which nearly drowned out the
blaring of the horns. From the top of the hill we could see with
relief that most of the gunfire was from our own fighting
platforms. Our neighbors were stacked five or six to a rooftop,
firing down at shadowy, running figures. Blooming muzzle flashes
lit the chaos.

Two of the houses which held platforms were
already burning. I could see a few of our people still crouching
behind their barricades, screaming in despair as flames began to
lick at the roofs below them. We ran to the nearest one, desperate
to help. Two Fellowship goons were standing with their backs to us,
watching the inferno in amusement, snapping off a shot each time
one of our neighbors tried to make a break for the ladder. Deb
walked right up to them without a word and shot them both in the
back of the head. They slumped forward into a mess of their
brains.

The people on the roof saw this and
scrambled into action. They made it down just as their platform
began to burn and ran toward us. When they drew near, I recognized
Scott and three of the neighborhood teenagers. We sent them to the
meeting house to begin the evacuation of the children and made our
way toward the escalating firefight.

Two more houses were on fire now. The
Fellowship were avoiding the fighting platforms and focusing on
sowing more confusion and destruction. The shooters on the rooftops
continued firing at the shadowy figures, to little effect.

As we ran forward, the people on the
platforms nearest the new fires broke in terror and began jumping
off their rooftops and running up the hill. Fellowship thugs jumped
from the shadows as they ran, cutting them down with axes and
machetes. We tried to cover them but soon gave up for fear of
hitting our own in the darkness. Half a dozen of our neighbors made
it through and thundered past us. I yelled at them to rally at the
meeting house as they fled.

After the panicked retreat, there were only
two fighting platforms left. As their ammunition began to run low,
their rate of fire began to decrease. Smelling blood, the
Fellowship sharks began to gather around the two houses. In an
attempt to take advantage of the closely packed targets, a man on
the larger of the two platforms stood up to throw the flaming
molotov cocktail in his hand. In the light of the strobing muzzle
flashes, I saw him standing upright, flaming bottle held over his
head. The next flash showed him doubled over, hand clenched to his
gut, the gas filled bottle falling from his grip. Six of my
neighbors burst into flame when the bottle shattered on the
platform. They died screaming as a throng of the Fellowship stood
below them, jeering in their grey sheets.

We turned from the sight; the battle was
clearly lost. The brave men and women on the final platform kept
firing, determined to hold out, but we were under no illusion. It
was time to get out while we could. I took one look back before we
crested the hill. The light of the burning houses illuminated
dozens of grey figures swarming up the ladder of the last
holdout.

Two SUV’s full of frightened children were
just pulling out of the driveway when we made it to the meeting
house. Clint was there with a few others, standing by the pickup
which would carry the rear guard. The look on my face was all he
needed to fire up the truck. The three of us jumped in the bed,
crouching behind the tailgate as we sped down the hill toward the
waiting convoy.

I took one last look at our neighborhood
before we followed the convoy into the cut in the yaupons. The
whole sky was a somber orange. Smoke and flames billowed from a
dozen of our homes. At the top of the hill I saw a small silhouette
waving at us. A taller figure soon appeared next to him. They stood
watching as we fled.

Chapter 6

June, 31 PC (2046 AD)

*

“
The last geologist is dead, I’m
calling it off. The expedition is a failure, we’ll retreat with our
tails between our legs, defeated by a supervolcano bigger than the
sky.”

-Colonel Edward Mendez, ‘The First Expedition to
Yellowstone: Excerpts From The Journal of a Self-Proclaimed
Failure’; RNT University Press, 55 PC (2070 AD);

*

The Captain spent the rest of the week looking over
piles of supply lists, purchasing invoices, fuel tallies, and
personnel rosters. He was commander of the scouting force, but
there would be little scouting to do until the army was on the
move. The Colonel had decided to keep him busy by delegating the
lion’s share of the logistics duties on him. The assignment was
meant to be an insult, it was a job more suited to one of the staff
lieutenants, but McLellan did his duty without complaint. He
wouldn’t give the bastard the satisfaction of seeming miserable.
Still, despite his feigned zeal for the work, the Captain was
annoyed with the enormity of the task.

The small factories on Campus were churning
out ammunition, uniforms, and other gear as fast as they could. The
scale of production was inspiring, but it paled in comparison to
the pre-pillar days. It took all the resources of the fledgling
Republic to arm and feed less than a thousand men. Thirty years
before, that kind of industrial output could be handled in a
morning’s work by the factories of cities like Houston.

Still, it was impressive. There were only a
few primitive city states in the area that could come close to the
productivity of the RNT. Their closest neighbor to the west and
greatest rival, The Texan Union, was the most powerful of those
local city-states. An industrial arms race between the two had
driven the RNT to develop better trade goods and more efficient
factories over the past several years. Plentiful in-house
engineering talent and a steady stream of petrochemicals and fuel
from the Refinery gave the RNT the edge in the feud. More and more
communities and settlements had turned to the RNT for vital
manufactured goods and protection.

The increasing sphere of influence of the
RNT and the declining prosperity of the TU gave rise to a rash of
raiding and border skirmishes. Quelling the violence in the rolling
hills beyond the Brazos had been the Captain’s responsibility for
the last three years.

Now all of that industrial capacity was
pouring materiel and ammunition straight into the Captain’s lap.
Cursing his overdeveloped sense of duty, he slammed the ledger
closed with a puff of dust, leaned back in his chair, and stared
out the window at the low grey clouds with a sigh of resignation. A
timid knock at his door interrupted his moment of self-pity. A
thin, bespectacled clerk, looking slightly harassed, leaned in and
threw him a hasty salute.

“With respect, Captain, the Colonel has
called a general inspection in one hour on the parade ground.”

“Thank you corporal. I was just about to
take a walk to clear my head anyway.”

The clerk nodded and retreated to his desk.
The Captain stomped out after him. It was another inevitably somber
grey day. Light rain fell sporadically; never enough to clean the
grimy buildings but plenty to wet the ash at his feet into a
persistent sludge. A particularly heavy ashfall had sprung up in
the night, and the maintenance crews had not had time to scrape the
sidewalks. His boots were soon thoroughly filthy as he stalked
across the Campus, looking for a victim for the foul temper he felt
brewing.

Lost in thought and wandering aimlessly, he
found himself near the new Ranger headquarters. After the roof
collapse which had killed his old troop, the Rangers had been
billeted in an ancient building in front of the Library. The
remaining rusting letters above the front steps spelled a portion
of the original name: “G. GLASSCOC”.

He played along with fate and walked through
the door. Inside, a few of his rangers were lounging in the central
lobby.