Alone in the Ashes (10 page)

For just a fleeting moment, Ben thought of turning off the interstate and checking out Webb AFB at Big Spring. But he knew from experience what he would find. Nothing. The place would have been picked over a hundred times. And, he smiled, more than likely, most of the gear taken by my own people.

Was it Webb AFB that Sergeant Buck Osgood and his small band of men had barricaded themselves in a concrete bunker against the hordes of mutant rats?
³

Ben couldn't remember. He knew it had been someplace in Texas.

He drove on past the exit sign for Webb AFB.

“Got anyplace in particular you'd like to see, Jordy?” he asked.

“Don't know no place, Ben. Don't make no difference, long as I'm seein' it with you.”

Ben grinned. “OK. Now say your
ABC
's for me.”

The boy got them all right—first try.

Already, with three squares a day, the boy was gaining weight, filling out. The pinched look of poverty was leaving his face, and the boy was smiling more.

“We make a pretty good team, don't we, Jordy?”

“Sure do, Ben. Are you gonna keep me?”

“Am I going to
what?”

“Keep me.”

Ben laughed. “Why, I haven't given anything other than ‘keeping you' any thought, Jordy. What did you think I was going to do—toss you out by the side of the road?”

“Naw. I didn't figure you'd do that. But nothing good ever lasts long. Not for nobody livin' out here, anyways.”

“Well, we're going to last, Jordy. You and me. We'll hole up this winter and I'll teach you how to read and write—as best I can. Then, in the spring, we'll head on back to Georgia and you'll have a permanent home.”

“With you, Ben?”

“With me, Jordy.”

“Is that a promise, Ben?”

Ben ruffled his hair. “That's a promise, boy.”

 

 

“Close to five hundred men, Jake,” West said. “With more comin' in. With five-six hundred salty ol' boys, we could rule half of Texas if we played our cards right.”

“That's what I'm thinking, too,” Jake said. “And I know where to get more.”

“Oh?” West looked at him.

Jake motioned for his radioman to come over. “Get on the horn, Emmett. Tell the boys back in Tennessee to pack it up and come on out. Bring everything with them. We'll set up a base camp right here and wait for them.”

“The big push, boss?” Emmett said, an ugly smile on his face.

“The big push, Emmett. And when we're done using Ben Raines' ass to wipe the sidewalk, we're gonna rule Texas.”

 

 

Rani and her bunch avoided the main highways, electing to stay on the secondary roads. They took Highway 33 south, but only managed to make about thirty miles the first day. A tire had blown out on the small truck, and Rani was forced to call a halt until she could locate a spare, then a hand pump to inflate the tube.

Then bad gas forced them to spend a full day blowing out gas lines and siphoning the tanks dry. They were a weary and discouraged little band of travelers when they pulled into the outskirts of Ozona, Texas, to make camp for the night.

Rani was very wary of towns, preferring the open skies for a roof whenever the weather permitted. Even though the nearby town appeared deserted, Rani was not going to take any chances. Not when they were this close to their final destination. She had made up her mind where they were going to winter. She had absolutely no idea what she might find there. But she was betting on one thing: there would be no people.

And the winter would be mild. She picked up her map and looked at it.

“Yes,” she said aloud.

“You know where we're goin' now, Miss Rani?” Robert asked.

“Terlingua,” she said.

 

 

“What's them things, Ben?” Jordy asked, pointing to a group of skeletal objects in what had once been a productive field.

They were on Interstate 10, just outside of Fort Stockton, Texas.

“Irrigation systems, Jordy. Not enough rainfall in this area, so the farmers brought water up from the ground for their crops.”

“Why didn't they just move where there was enough water?” the boy asked.

“Lots of reasons, Jordy. This was their home, for one thing. And nobody likes to be forced from their home. For whatever reason.”

“Even now, Ben? With all the land and houses just
there?
Would that still be true?”

“Even now, Jordy.”

The man and boy saw no one. Not one living human being. Not for miles and miles. It was as if this part of the country had been abandoned. Ben knew this part of the state had been hard hit by the disease-bearing rats, but he had not expected anything like this.

At the junction of Highway 17, Ben turned off the interstate and headed north, toward Pecos. Ben traveled warily now, for he knew that even before the great war of '88, the land west of the Pecos had been filled with the last of the truly tough, old-fashioned folks; good people, but secure in their beliefs and self-sufficient. They were of pioneer stock, and were boot-tough when pushed.

Before Ben reached Pecos, a sign suspended over the highway pulled him up short: IF YOU'RE FRIENDLY, WELCOME, FRIEND. IF YOU WANT TROUBLE, YOU GOT IT.

Ben clicked on his CB and keyed the mike. “I'm Ben Raines,” he said. “I'm traveling with a small boy. And we're friendly.”

Someone on the other end of the airwaves laughed. “Come on in, General. We've been trackin' you since you cut off the interstate. Ya'll just in time for lunch.”

 

 

“Son of a bitch!” Colonel Dan Gray cursed. “Now what?”

“Road is blocked, sir,” a scout radioed back to the main column. “And someone has blown the bridge. We're gonna have to cut farther south; go across Mississippi and Louisiana.”

“All right,” the Englishman radioed. “Backtrack. We'll wait for you here.”

Gray's Scouts had been attempting to move across the top of Alabama on Highway 72. They had been forced off that highway after only fifty or so miles. They had wound around country roads until linking up with alternate 72 at Huntsville. That had ended just before reaching Decatur.

When his recon teams had returned, Gray ordered the column south on Interstate 65. They knew from other reports that 278 west was closed; someone had blown the bridge over the East Fork.

“Find us a way around Birmingham,” Dan told his recon teams. “I don't want to get in a fire-fight unless it's absolutely necessary. The KKK has taken over that city, and it would be terribly difficult for me to restrain myself if confronted.” It was a typical understated British remark from Dan. “We'll hook up with 20/59 and take that into Mississippi. We'll stay with 20 all the way across Louisiana. Recon teams—go!”

“Way we're movin',” a young Rebel said sadly, “time we get to West Texas, General Raines will have already killed all the outlaws.”

“Quite,” Dan replied.

 

 

“Sure you won't stay with us, General?” a cowboy asked Ben. “You're sure welcome to.”

“I thank you, but I'm traveling; showing Jordy the country.”

“And getting away from the reins of leadership while you're at it, huh, General?” a silver-haired man said with a grin.

“Sounds like you know about the headaches, too?” Ben said.

“Very much so,” the man said. “I was elected leader of this hardy little band. I'm stuck with it. Ben, we like your idea of outposts. When you've got it all worked out, come back. You can count on us.”

“I'll be back,” Ben assured. “Or someone from my command will.”

“Be careful out there.” The man jerked his thumb. “The outlaws, warlords, and assorted scum have tried to move in on us many times. They finally quit early this year. We were killing too many of them. But they're still roaming around like packs of scavengers.”

“How well I know,” Ben said. He shook hands with a few of the people and pulled out onto Interstate 20.

The people of Pecos had warned him that south of Interstate 10 was no-man's land. The only holdouts were a few people at Alpine, Fort Davis, and Marfa. South of those towns? ... He had only shaken his head.

Ben and Jordy drove as far as Van Horn. It was a ghost town, having been looted and ravaged many times, and then burned. The burning of the small town seemed to Ben to be more an act of vandalism; senseless, pointless.

He turned north on 54, heading for New Mexico. Halfway to the border, Ben found the highway impassable and was forced to backtrack to Van Horn.

Ben checked his map. He was hesitant about going to El Paso, for he had heard many stories about the destruction there. He looked at Jordy.

“Where to, little Man?”

“I'm with you, Ben.” The boy smiled. “But I've already seen where we've been.”

Ben laughed. “It's too dangerous to head south, Jordy. We—”

A bullet whined off the top of the cab. Another slug slammed into the camper. Ben twisted the steering wheel, pointing the nose of the truck west. A bullet ripped through the windshield, just missing Jordy's head.

“Get on the floorboards, Jordy!” Ben yelled, spinning the wheel, heading south. West and east were blocked with unseen snipers; north was impassable.

“That doesn't leave us much choice, boy,” Ben muttered.

Slugs clanged and slammed into the rear of the truck as Ben floorboarded the pickup, the big engine roaring, back tires biting into the road. The pickup fishtailed, then straightened out as Ben found the highway marker for 90 and headed southeast, toward Marfa.

“Going to get tough, Jordy,” Ben said, as the boy crawled off the floorboards and back into the seat.

“We'll make it,” Jordy said. “I been in tougher spots than this.”

Ben didn't doubt that at all.

Rani carefully checked both trucks as best she knew how. She had filled the gas tanks of the vehicles and had ten five-gallon gas cans filled and stored. In Ozona, she had found a small, two-wheeled trailer, and that was now loaded with food, blankets, clothing, and cans and bottles of water. She would pull that behind her truck.

“Who's Davy Crockett?” Robert asked, pointing to the monument of the man.

Rani snapped her fingers. “Books!” she said. “Got to get some books and pencils and paper so you kids can study and do homework.”

But she had seen scurrying shapes of humans ducking in and out of the ruined stores of the town, and did not wish to linger long in the town proper.

“Later,” she said. “But I've got to do it.”

She breathed a little easier when she was outside of the town, on the interstate. She had carefully plotted her route, writing the directions down and pinning them to the sun visor.

Interstate 20 west to Sheffield. Highway 349 south to Dryden. 90 west to Marathon. 385 south, then west to Terlingua.

She said a silent prayer the roads would all be open and no outlaws would spot them.

If there was a God, that is, she thought.

She shook that blasphemy from her mind. Of course there is a God.

And it wasn't Ben Raines.

Was it?

 

 

Twelve miles out of Van Horn, at the tiny deserted town of Lobo, Ben pulled off the highway.

“Close back there, Jordy.”

“I must be gettin' used to it, Ben.”

“Oh?”

“I don't need to change underwear.”

Ben laughed and he and Jordy got out of the truck. Ben lit one of the few cigarettes he allowed himself per day. After a few moments of silence, man and boy enjoying their closeness and the silence of nature, Ben stirred.

“I think I got us in a box, boy. I have a bad feeling about that.”

Jordy stood and looked at the man.

“Folks back there where we stopped told me the town of Valentine was deserted; all the people there having moved to Marfa. They've formed a sort of a triangle of safety. You know what a triangle is, Jordy?”

“No, sir.”

Using his map, Ben showed Jordy the rough triangle, with Fort Davis at the top, Marfa and Alpine at the bottom corners.

“The folks are shooting first and asking questions later, boy. And I don't blame them. So we're not going to risk getting shot. See this county road here, Jordy, just before you get to Marfa?” The boy nodded his head. “We're going to take that all the way to the Mexican border and link up with 170, gradually work our way out of this mess.” I hope, Ben silently added.

Ben radioed in to Captain Nolan and informed the captain of his route.

Ben looked at his map. “I'll meet you boys at Terlingua,” he said.

“Ten-four, General.”

Nolan's radio operator tried to contact Colonel Gray, but for some reason she could not get through to the column. She really didn't think too much of the difficulty, for any traffic of late had been scratchy. The belt of radioactivity that had encircled the globe since the wars of '88 had affected weather and communications. The winters were getting much harsher and longer, and the growing season shorter.

She reported the difficulty to Captain Nolan.

“First high range we come to, try again,” he told her. “Right now, we've got to move and move fast. The general's getting in even over his head.”

He turned to his command, who were gathered around.

“We roll,” Nolan said flatly. “Day and night, we roll. If you're not driving, sleep. We're not going to fuck around with anybody or anything. Move out.”

 

 

“What the hell do you mean, you can't get in touch with Colonel Gray or Captain Nolan?” Ike asked, an edge to his voice. “Goddamn it, we have the finest communcations equipment in the world!”

The communications expert backed up a step. The ex-Navy SEAL's abilities as a cut, slash, and stomp guerrilla fighter were almost as much a legend as General Raines. “I'm sorry, sir. But it's impossible to reach them. At least for the next couple of days. Maybe longer than that.”

“Why?” Cecil Jefferys asked, in a much calmer tone of voice. The black man possessed the ability to remain calm under the worst of circumstances.

“Radioactivity, sir. The only way I can explain it is like this: The belt of radioactivity that has surrounded the earth since the bombings of '88 appears to have tightened, firmed, become more of a mass.”

“I understand tightened, son,” Cecil said. The ex-teacher and former Green Beret had been with Ben since the outset. During Ben's short tenure as President of the United States, Cecil had been sworn in as Vice President. The first black vice-president in the nation's history.

And the two of them had almost pulled the nation further still out of the ashes of war. They came very close. But the gods of fate had chosen that time to laugh and howl at the efforts of those who chose democracy over anarchy, freedom over slavery, enlightenment over ignorance.
⁴

“Keep trying,” Cecil told the communications technician.

“Yes, sir.” He left the room.

Cecil and Ike walked to the big window of the commanding general's office and looked out. People were working dawn to dusk rebuilding and renovating the once-deserted town, building schools and clinics, stores and warehouses.

“All we can hope is that short-range transmissions are getting through,” Cecil said.

“Yeah,” Ike said glumly.

Cecil looked at the man. “Don't start getting it in your mind that you're hitting the rescue trail after Ben. I need you here, and you know it.”

“I know that, buddy,” Ike said. “But that don't keep me from worryin'.”

“You're not alone in that,” Cecil said.

 

 

Ben and Jordy prowled through what was left of Valentine, Texas. Ben knew he was about to take them through an area of the country that was often short of water. Ben told Jordy to start looking for containers.

Ben found an old two-wheeled open-topped trailer and spent the rest of the day working on it. He found two tires in fairly good shape that would fit and a spare that looked as though it might have a few more miles left on it. Using his siphoning pump, Ben brought up enough gas to top his tanks and refill his cans. In a ransacked store, he found some cans and bottles of food. Most of the cans were swollen with contamination, but he found about two cases that still looked good. He wondered, after all the years, how much nutrition remained in the food?

Ben used some water to prime a hand pump, and after a few futile tries, out came water, clear and cold and good tasting. They filled up every can and bottle they had with them and those they could find among the ruins, carefully wrapping the bottles with rags to prevent breakage.

In the entire once-thriving little town, Ben and Jordy could find only six blankets and two big tarps that had escaped the ravages of looters. Ben found a few articles of clothing that would fit Jordy, and a good pair of boy's lace-up boots.

Several times during the afternoon, Ben would look up and catch the glint of sunlight from lenses of binoculars from the hills. He knew they were being watched, but the question was: by
whom?

As dusk began spreading purple fingers over the land, creating shadows throughout the town, Ben pulled his truck and trailer behind a store on the west side of the town.

“I'm hungry, Ben,” Jordy said.

“No fires, Jordy,” Ben told him, handing him a can of C-rations. “Eat this. We'll be pulling out as soon as it's full dark.”

“You think we got trouble?”

“Yes.”

At full dark, Ben cranked his truck. Running without lights, he drove carefully and slowly out of the town. He drove almost ten miles without headlights. He found a dirt road leading off to the southwest and took it, driving almost a mile before pulling over.

“We'll camp here, Jordy. No fires. We'll have our big meal at noon while we're traveling. That way the fire won't be so noticeable. We'll gather dry wood that makes little smoke. You go on to sleep now. I'll stand guard for a few hours.”

The boy was asleep a few seconds after he slipped into his blankets and closed his eyes.

Ben began his lonely vigil.

 

 

Rani heard the men coming, walking as quietly as they could through the night. She reached for the AR-15 she had taken from the survivalist's basement cache and slipped it off safety. She cut her eyes to Robert, just a few feet away from her. The boy held a shotgun in his hands, ready. To her left, Kathy was alert and waiting, the lever action .30–30 ready.

The outlaws had tracked her little convoy all day; she had listened to them talk back and forth on the CB. And the things they said had been perverted, ranging far past filthy.

She had told the kids that when she opened fire, to do the same. She had absolute faith in them to do just that. With the exception of the very youngest, they all knew what lay in store for them should the outlaws take them; all of the older kids were victims of sexual abuse from adults.

The shapes of the men became more distinct, looming ominously out of the night.

Rani waited.

When they were no more than thirty yards away, she raised her weapon and opened fire. The booming of the shotgun and the bark of the .30–30 joined the crack of Rani's AR-15. Muzzle flashes lashed and leaped into the night.

“Kill them all!” Rani screamed.

Each of the three had a spare weapon on the ground beside them. As the weapons they were using ran out of ammo, they dropped their empties and jerked up the spares.

Rani, Kathy, and Robert gave no mercy to the outlaws. They didn't delude themselves into believing they killed them all, but they knew they had inflicted heavy losses upon the men.

The sounds of engines cranking up and the spinning of rear tires in the dirt and sand came to the woman and the kids.

“Take all the guns and bullets!” Rani shouted. “And be careful. Some of them might still be alive.”

The weapons and ammo collected from the dead and dying, Rani yelled for the kids to head for the trucks. By the road, they discovered another truck and a Jeep wagon. Both vehicles were filled with gas, with spare gas cans front and back, in frames. The vehicles held food and blankets and other gear she could not identify in the dark.

“Kathy, Jane! You're going to have to drive these vehicles. We need these supplies. Can you do it, kids?” Rani asked.

The girls nodded their heads.

“Let's go. I'll take the lead. Robert, you bring up the rear. Kathy and Jane, you'll be in the middle. We've got to get out of here.”

The girls—really already young adults, for their lives had been hard, with little time for the joys of youth—got behind the wheels of their respective vehicles, adjusted the seats, and cranked the engines.

“We're ready, Miss Rani,” they called.

The short convoy pulled out into the darkness.

Rani led them for thirty miles before pulling over behind a farm house. There, she set up guards while the rest slept. At first light she would inspect their newly acquired booty and travel on. According to her old map, they had a hundred and seventy miles to go.

A hundred and seventy miles.

She shook her head. God, she was tired.