William Johnstone - Fire in the Ashes

Then the Chinooks began blowing in the third week of February, and the bitter cold and blizzard snows abated. It was not yet spring in the high country, but as Ike put it, “Damn sight better than the past six weeks, boy.”

Frayed nerves and high-strung tempers knitted and healed as plans for the massive move were formulated. Now people had something to do: rounding up and servicing hundreds of vehicles for the push south.

When Ben asked for volunteers to scout the area he had chosen as their new home, five thousand hands went up.

He sent three teams of them south. Stay in radio contact. Don’t take chances. For God’s sake, be careful.

“Southern part of Arkansas, north Louisiana, and central Mississippi,” Ben said, thumping the map. “That’s where we’ll call home.”

Ben turned to Doctor Chase. “Has the plague run its course?”

The man shook his white-maned head. “Typical layman’s question. How the hell do I know! I would say not. Fleas prefer rodents, but they’ll damn sure jump on a human. I would suggest sending teams to that area. Crop dusters, preferably, at first, to spray the outlined borders with insecticide and then put out aerial rat poison; and I mean really put it out all over the projected area. That’s what I’d do—you do what the hell you want to do.”

“Did anybody ever tell you that you’re a crotchety old bastard?” Ben said.

“Of course I am,” Doctor Chase replied. “If you don’t like it, go to another doctor.” He smiled sarcastically, plopped his hat on his head, and walked out.

“Navy doctors,” Ike said with a grin. “’Specially captains—strange bunch of people.” He looked at Ben. “Generals sometimes get that way, too—General.”

Jim Slater and Paul Green and a dozen other dusters headed for the new Tri-States. Transport planes had already flown in the chemicals to airports sprayed and burned by volunteers. The massive job was underway in both the northwest and the southwest parts of the ravaged nation.

“People in that area?” Ben asked the scouts.

“Damn few,” the voice crackled out of the speaker. “But I want to tell you sir, we have met some real squirrels coming down here—and here, as well.”

“Squirrels?”

“Cults popping up everywhere. You know, call themselves religions, but as far as I’m concerned, they are anything but that. Got one over in the Ouachita Mountains run by some nut name of Emil Hite. That’s the biggest one we’ve found. Jim Jones type of thing with a Manson mentality.”

“Any trouble with them?”

“Not since one of my people butt-stroked one of them and knocked out about a dozen teeth. After that, Hite decided to pull back into his hills and stayed there.”

“Rats?”

“A few, but the poison got most of them, I think. We found a lot of dead rats when we got here. Got a man joined up with us in Texas; used to be with the CDC. He says it appears to him the rats are dying of some inner infection of some sort. He’s set up a lab, of sorts, and is working out of that.”

“It’s going to take us a while to get there. Big problem of logistics.”

“We’ll be secure in two weeks here, General.”

“It’ll take us that long to get the first convoy there. I’ll see you in two weeks.”

“Roger, sir. Out.”

“Head ‘em up and move ‘em out time, Ben?” Ike asked. Ben’s eyes clouded, for a moment, he was flung back in time, back years, to just a few days after the bombings of 1988.

As the full impact of what had occurred came to rest with Ben, he drove the town and parish, looking for anyone left alive. On the second day, he found one—just one. Fran Piper.

She hated Ben and the feeling was certainly mutual. From the moment he got out of his truck after seeing her alone on the parish road, the conversation was less than cordial.

“Why, good morning, Mrs. Piper. What a surprise seeing you. Not a pleasure, but certainly a surprise.”

“Mr. Raines—you’re armed! I thought pistols had been outlawed for some time?”

“Yes, ma’am. Three years ago, I believe. Thanks to Hilton Logan and his bunch of misguided liberals. But be that as it may, ma’am, here I am, Ben Raines, at your service. That trashy Yankee writer of all those filthy fuck books, come to save your aristocratic ass from gettin’ pronged by all the slobbering rednecks that must surely be prowlin’ around the parish, just a-lustin’ for a crack at you, ma’am.”

“Raines,” she said, her eyes flashing hatred at him, “you just have to be the most despicable human being I have ever encountered, unfortunately. And if that was supposed to be Rhett Butler, you missed the boat.”

“Paddle-wheel, I’m sure.”

From that point on, the conversation was downhill all the way.

But Ben could not bring himself to leave the woman to fend for herself. She would not have survived alone.

“Well, you can come with me. No play on words intended.”

She rolled her eyes and off they went.

At one point in their wanderings about the parish, Fran had waved her hand, as if a scout with a wagon train.

“Head ‘em up and move ‘em out,” Ben had muttered.

She had stayed with Ben until Memphis. There, she had met Hilton Logan, a bachelor, and the two had hit it off. She eventually married the man and became the First Lady—although a lady she was most definitely not.

After the fall of Tri-States, Fran and one of her lovers had been shot to death by Ben’s Zero Squads.

Just at the moment of mutual climax.

The ultimate orgasm.

“Yes,” Ben brought himself back to the present. “Head ‘em up and move ‘em out.”

“Regrets, partner?”

“I don’t think we can afford regrets, Ike. I think we have to look forward, and not look back for a long time.”

“Well,” Ike stood up and slung his CAR-15. “Let’s get rollin.’ We sure got a ways to go.”

Wreckers and tow trucks and heavy-duty pickups with PTO winches on the front traveled a full day ahead of the main column, clearing the roads of stalled and abandoned vehicles.

The convoy, stretching for miles, left on Interstate 80, picked up Interstate 15, and took that down to south-central Utah. There, they intersected with Interstate 70 and pointed eastward, gently angling south when roads permitted.

It was slow going, the convoy lucky to maintain a 40 mph average—often less than that. Ben, almost always traveling alone, usually was miles ahead of the column. Oftentimes playing games with his guards, deliberately outdistancing them, losing them so he could have some time alone.

When Captain Seymour reported this to Ike and Cecil, both men could only shake their heads.

“Rosita’s not with him anymore?” Captain Gray asked.

“No,” Ike told him. “Ben says she’s too young. I’m worried about him, to speak frankly. He’s becoming more withdrawn.”

“Ben always has been somewhat of a loner,” Cecil said. “But the feeling the men and women have about him is disturbing to him—he told me that.”

“Leave him alone,” Jerre settled the discussion. “Ben is doing what Ben wants to do. He’s got a lot on his mind and this is his way of coping with it. Just leave him alone.” And that settled it.

Crossing over a mountain range, Ben pulled off the interstate and jammed his truck into four-wheel drive, climbing high above the interstate. On a crest, he parked, and squatted alone, watching the column crawling snakelike below.