Blood in the Ashes (18 page)

They set their walkie-talkies on low volume and listened to the speakers whisper the news of what was happening at the Base Camp, far to their south and west. Many of the reports were conflicting in nature. Some were hysterically given. Others were almost incoherent. All were second and third hand given, received and then transmitted from point to point along the network of the Ninth Order outposts, stretching far. One thing was certain: Whatever was happening at the Base Camp . . . it was not going well for Willette and his people.

“You heard it,” Ike said, taking the walkie-talkie from his ear.

“Yeah, but most of it was so garbled I don't know what they're talking about.”

“Big break out,” Ike said. “Some coup members have rolled over and are helping Cec and Dan and the others. That's good news. Tina Raines a traitor?” He shook his head in the darkness of the copse where he and Nina had made their night camp. “It's beyond me how anyone could ever convince anybody of that bullshit. For Christ's sake . . . Tina is Ben's adopted daughter. He's more of a father to her than her real father.”

“They have many ways, Ike,” Nina said. “They can wear a person down with half truths, twisted versions of what is real and what is not, and just plain outright lies. What did it used to be called? Oh, yeah, brainwashing. That's it. And believe me, Ike, they know all the tricks.”

“It's bloody and it's awful,” Ike stated the truth quietly. “Friend against friend. Worse than the damned War between the States, I reckon. Or at the very least, a lot like it.”

“The War between the States? I ain't never heard of that one, Ike.”

“Civil War?” he prompted.

“That one neither.”

So very young, Ike thought. But the real sadness lies in the loss of history. She knows
nothing
of history. My God! he mentally raged. It's truly coming apart, just like Ben predicted. If we can't begin some sort of turnaround, with permanent settlements, complete with schools and teachers, any semblance of civilization will be gone in another two decades. All gone. Back to the caves.

Jesus!

“Tell me about that war you just named, Ike,” Nina said.

“That was a war that happened a long time ago, Nina. It ended almost one hundred and forty years ago. It was the North against the South. And it was fought for a number of reasons, one of them being slavery.”

“Who won?”

“Nobody,” Ike said. “The nation did not ever heal properly after that. The slaves were freed, but that would have happened anyway, was happening, all over the south.” He started to tell her the story of President Lincoln meeting the author, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and of the president saying: “Mrs. Stowe. The woman who started the Civil War.” But Nina would never have heard of Lincoln, much less Stowe.

“Somebody had to win, Ike,” Nina prompted him.

“Yeah. The North won.”

“I get the feeling you didn't like that.”

Ike laughed. “Honey, I'm old, but I'm not that old. I was born in the deep south—Mississippi—but I don't hate nobody for the color of their skin. My first wife was black, if you wanna call somebody with skin like burnt honey black. It's just that ... that ol' war was so
stupid.”

“All wars is stupid,” she said flatly.

“Yeah,” Ike agreed, then paraphrased a line of George Orwell's. “But some is more stupid than others.” He laughed at that.

“What's so funny, Ike?”

“I was thinking of a classic work of literature. A book called
Animal Farm.
I'll find a copy for you to read.”

“Will I understand it?”

“I'll help you with it.”

The young woman nestled closer to the comforting bulk of Ike. He put an arm around her. She said, “I wish I was smart like you, Ike.” Her tone was wistful. “I can read and write pretty good, but I mostly had to teach myself. My formal education ended when I was ten, I think. Maybe eleven. That was . . .” She frowned in recall. “‘89, I think. Maybe '90. Maybe I'm a year older than I think. I just don't know. It's all so confused in my mind.”

“Wanna talk about it?”

“I never have before. Maybe it's time.” She stirred in his arms and said, “We didn't get hit the way a lot of places did back in ‘88. We lived in West Virginia. In the mountains. Little bitty place. Yeah, now I remember. It was in the early part of '89. I remember ‘cause it was still winter. Mom and Dad went out to look for food. They . . . well, they just never did come back. I had a brother, too. But he went off one day and never come back neither. Then I went to live with an aunt and uncle, but they had a whole passel of younguns and didn't really want another mouth to feed. When I was thirteen, my uncle tried to rape me in the woods. I took off and never once looked back. I been livin' hand to mouth ever since. I like to read though. I sometimes prowl the old stores and find books that the rats and mice ain't chewed up. It's hard readin' at times, 'cause I ain't got a whole lot of knowledge of big words. Them that I ain't real sure of, I skip over. Sometimes I can find a dictionary and look up the meanin'. It helps.”

“Don't you ever think about a ... a permanent place?” Ike asked. “I mean, a home, with a husband and kids and all that?”

“Aw, Ike. In them books I read about them things. Big ships with dancin' and parties and stuff like that. I read about love and romance and pretty dresses and fine ladies and gentlemen. But that ain't never gonna be no more. It's over. I ain't never gonna see New York City or none of them skyscrapers. They're all gone, Ike. I went into a department store one time, think it was in Kentucky, up north. I found me a right pretty dress and high-heeled shoes and all that stuff. Put on some perfume, too. Then I looked in a big long mirror. Good God, Ike! I looked like a plumb idiot. I like to have never got that perfume smell off me.

“No, Ike, them ways is gone forever, and you know it well as me. It ain't never gonna come no more. The people—them that I choose to talk to—don't even talk about them times no more. They're just too busy trying to
survive,
that's all. You know, Ike, I feel kind of . . . cheated, I guess is the right word. I mean, I ain't bitchin' none about it. Don't do no good. It's . . . all them good things . . . it's just
over.
You know what I mean?”

“Yes,” Ike replied softly. “Part of what you say is true. But Ben Raines has this dream of putting it all back together. And we did it out in Tri-States.”

“Nobody ever put Humpty Dumpty back together again, Ike,” she said with childlike honesty.

“And Little Bo Beep and her sheep?” Ike kidded her.

“I know what you mean. Yeah, I heard about Tri-States. Tried to get there a time or two. Got as far as Kansas one time. I think I was sixteen. Near'bout that. Some men caught me and gang-banged me.” She said it with no more emotion than discussing a can of green beans. “One of them ol' boys had him a dick looked like a fence post. He really hurt me. I started bleedin' real bad and I guess that scared them. They dumped me and took off. Just left me buck-assed naked in a old house. After I got better, I started practicin' my shootin'. That's when I got me my first. 270. I tracked them sorry bastards for two months. Had me a horse back then, too. Good horse. I named him Beauty. I remembered that out of a book I read about a horse and a girl. Me and Beauty followed them men. Took me awhile, but I found 'em and I killed 'em all. Lost Beauty the next year. He just got sick and up and died. I cried.”

She said it all so simply, but with such deep feelings in her voice, Ike felt a tenderness touch him in hidden places within his soul.

“You best get some sleep, Nina,” he said gently. “And don't worry. I promise you, everything will be all right.”

Captain Tom Willette felt his coup attempt coming apart. Gathering up four of his men, they drove to the football stadium amid the wild shooting and shouting. The men stood by the old fence and then, as if on silent signal, they walked to the .50-caliber machine guns placed around the field and without a word opened fire on the weaponless, defenseless prisoners. Willette had a grim smile of satisfaction on his lips as the heavy .50 bucked in his hands, rattling out its death song. The bastards and bitches followed Ben Raines, they were Willette's enemies. That was that. He felt no sympathy for the women and children dying by his hand. Really, he rather enjoyed their screaming and crying.

The belts reached the end of their brass and the .50s fell silent. The Rebels guarding the prisoners looked at the sudden red carnage with horror in their eyes. They knew most of those who now lay dying, chopped to bloody bits on the grass of the old playing field. The screaming was something hideous.

A coup for the sake of General Raines was one thing. But this ... this monstrous act . . . this was just plain
murder.

But before they could react, Willette and his men had vanished.

The young guards threw down their weapons and ran onto the field, calling for the medics to come quick.

Abe Lancer and his men appeared at one end of the old playing field. The scene before their eyes was unreal. That could not have happened. Young children and women lay sprawled in twisted death, the ground beneath them soaked with blood. None of the men had ever witnessed anything to match this awful sight in the blood red night.

“Oh, my God!” Abe said.

“Must be three, four hundred women and kids out there,” Andy said. He turned his head to one side and vomited on the grass.

Through the glare of the portable lights that illuminated the field, Abe and his men saw the young guards running toward the fallen victims. Believing them to be the ones responsible for this act of horror, Abe yelled, “Kill them sons of bitches. Kill all them bastards.”

Rifles cracked in the smoky, dusty, confused and bloody night.

On the edge of the Talladega National Forest in eastern Alabama, Sam Hartline sat in his communications truck and monitored the radio traffic from Raines' new Base Camp in north Georgia to Ben Raines in South Carolina. The mercenary's smile was huge. He was thinking about a statement made years before, from a Red Chinese leader, speaking of the United States of America. “We won't have to attack that country,” the Red leader had stated. “For America will destroy itself from within.”

Hartline laughed aloud. He said, “Quite true. And it happened rather along those lines, too. And now—he laughed again—”the same thing is occurring among the troops of President-General Ben Raines.” He threw back his handsome head and howled his laughter. ”Oh, I love it! I truly love it. Ben Raines, you sanctimonious sort of a bitch, you're finally getting your comeuppance at last, and it's long overdue. Oh, I love it!”

Hartline had suffered too many humiliating and disgraceful defeats at the hand of Ben Raines to possess any feelings toward the man other than raw hate. True, that hatred was intermingled with some degree of respect, but the bad blood between the two men far overrode anything else.

“My nemesis,” Hartline muttered. “The stinking albatross hanging about my neck. Ben Raines. But this time, Ben, I am gleefully witnessing your little kingdom crashing down around your ears. And I am pleased. Oh, I am so very, very pleased to hear it fall.”

Friend shooting friend. Women and babies being slaughtered like dumb animals. This was better than the Civil War.

“I love it!” the mercenary yelled. “Oh, I love it.”

He turned up the volume. “And it looks like about two hundred or more people dead or dying,” the unknown Rebel from north Georgia said to Ben Raines. “Most of them are women and kids. It's bad, General. The camp is still in a lot of confusion. But we think we've put down the coup attempt. Willette and his immediate group got away.”

“But not before they killed the prisoners?” Ben radioed from the depths of the Sumter National Forest.

“Yes, sir. And many of the young Rebels who joined Willette ran off into the deep timber, after grabbing a lot of ammo and other supplies. We have teams out looking for them.”

In South Carolina, Ben released the mic button and cussed.

“Probably cussing a blue streak of profanity,” Hartline said with a mocking, knowing smile. The mercenary was as freelance now as when he was working for the CIA in Laos in the early seventies, for the Mozambique-based units of SWAPO in the late seventies, for Qaddafi out of Libya in the early eighties, and for the Russian IPF forces only recently. Sam Hartline answered, totally, to no master. His services, his army, was for hire to the highest bidder; and unlike most mercs, Hartline would switch sides as quickly as a snake strikes—money was the only master.

Of late, though, money was no good. It was power and women Hartline sought. And now he had broken, temporarily and very amicably, with the Russian general, Striganov, and his IPF forces. Hartline pulled his army out with him. His army was a short combat battalion of thugs and perverts and malcontents. Hartline was looking for Tony Silver. Tony was a man Hartline could understand, for although Hartline would not admit it—indeed, he did not know it—he was as mentally twisted as Silver. Hartline enjoyed torturing people. He enjoyed listening to women scream in pain and sexual humiliation. He enjoyed breaking people, mentally and physically, reducing them to slaves, eager to do his bidding, however perverted and cruel it might be—and usually was.

His men were as twisted as Hartline, most of them—but just like Hartline, they were excellent soldiers, understanding tactics and logistics and weapons and discipline.

And that was something Tony's men were not: good soldiers. But once Hartline got them under his command, he would whip them into shape, both mentally and physically.

Sam Hartline and Ben Raines had one thing in common: They were both fine soldiers. Any similarity ended there.

Hartline turned cold eyes to his radioman. “You have them located yet?”

“Yes, sir. They're in the Sumter National Forest in South Carolina.”

“Very well. We'll let those foolish people who call themselves the Ninth Order suffer some losses trying to take Ben Raines. They'll fail. I don't care how they have him outnumbered, they won't take him. His troops are too good. With any kind of luck, Raines will suffer some casualties. We'll take him on his way out.”

He turned to a man standing quietly in the darkness, just outside the open door at the rear of the truck. “How are the men, Captain?”

“Well rested and spoiling for a good fight, sir. They're getting fat and lazy with nothing to do.”

“Well, if we tangle with Raines' people, they'll damn sure have a good fight on their hands,” Hartline assured the man.

“Looking forward to it, sir.”

“Yes. So am I.”

“Transmissions from the Ninth Order commanders to the men planning to attack Raines, sir,” the radio operator said. “They just received the go-ahead.”

“Good,” Hartline said with a smile, rubbing his hands together. He turned once more to the captain. “Get the men up and moving. Warm up the trucks. I want us to be east of the ruins of Atlanta by dawn.”

“Yes, sir.”

Hartline said, “You've got a hundred tired troops, Raines. I've got five hundred fresh ones. This time, you bastard, I'm going to kill you.”