William Johnstone - Out of the Ashes

“Afternoon,” Ben said, speaking through the screen door. “I’m Ben Raines.”

“The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away,” the man replied.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Armageddon. The battle has been fought. So sayeth the Lord.”

Although not a student of the Bible, Ben had read it. He asked, “Who won—Good or Evil?”

The question seemed to confuse the man. He stammered for a few seconds, then closed his mouth and shook his head.

“Do you realize what has happened?” Ben asked.

“Armageddon.”

Ben sighed and looked past the man into the living room of the home. A fire was raging in the fireplace and a woman was sitting in a chair. She was dead. Ben could smell her from the porch.

“Do you want to come with us?” Ben asked. “Can we help in any way?”

The man shut the door in Ben’s face.

He walked back to the truck and unlocked the door. As they were driving away, Fran asked, “Who was that man?”

“I don’t know.” Then he told her what he had seen.

“That’s awful. What are you going to do about it?”

“Nothing.” Ben shook his head. “Nothing I can do. I’m not a psychiatrist. But I’d say the man has stepped over the line. Pushed over it by what happened. He may come back around; he may not.”

“That’s a pretty cold-blooded attitude, Ben. That poor old man.”

“Those poor old people who died from exposure,” Ben countered.

She glared at him while Ben wondered if this was another side of her, or if she was merely acting for his benefit. “You keep harping on that, Ben Raines. What would you have had me do about them?—Not that it matters at this date.”

“Help them.” His reply was terse.

“I see,” she said. “Well… I would have thought—from reading your books—not that I’ve read many of them, you understand—that you would be the last person in the world to advocate wealth redistribution. I thought you were a conservative.”

“I am a conservative, Fran, in most of my thinking. But I just do not like to see innocent people suffer needlessly. Not when enormous wealth is—was—piled all around them. As for wealth redistribution… it was coming, Fran. It would have been a reality before the end of the century.”

“My daddy said that was communism.”

“While he sat sipping his hundred-year-old cognac, admiring his antiques, in a house valued at about a million dollars—none of those things did he, personally, lift a finger to earn. I don’t buy it, Fran. But it’s all moot now, isn’t it? We’re all equal.”

She shuddered at the thought of being equal with everybody. How… unfair!

They drove for another few hours, but saw no signs of life in the parish. Ben pointed the nose of the truck toward Fran’s mansion. She was unusually silent.

“I’m going to take you back to your home, Fran—you can pick up some clothes. Then we’ll go to my place. Don’t worry, you’ll be safe.”

“All right,” she whispered.

Ben waited in the huge den of the home while Fran filled several suitcases. Ben had never seen such wealth in all his life. He chuckled, thinking, Hell of a lot of good it did them in the long run.

I guess, he mused, if I had all this, I’d fight to keep it, too. Or would I? he questioned. I’ve never even dreamed of living like this.

He had never dreamed that grandly. He had not been raised to dream of wallowing in great luxury.

He helped Fran with her luggage, then, back on the blacktop, she said, “What are we going to do, Ben?”

“First off, don’t look at the bodies in that field just up ahead. There aren’t as many as I thought, but enough.”

Naturally, she looked, and promptly got sick.

Ben stopped the truck and let her out to barf by the side of the road. He stood outside the truck, Thompson at the ready, on the lookout for dogs.

“I hate to be sick!” she said, wiping her mouth with the handkerchief Ben had offered.

“You’ll get used to the bodies,” he said. “I remember in training, the first time I ever ate dog meat. I—”

She doubled over and began up-chucking again. She straightened up, wiped her mouth, tossed the handkerchief in the ditch, and said, “Goddamn you!”

“Sorry,” Ben said, motioning her back in the truck. “And I mean that, Fran. Fran?” She looked at him. “You’ve got urp on your sleeve.”

She nodded, brushed at the urp, then waved her hand forward, like a scout with a wagon train.

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

“I beg your pardon?”

“How old are you, Fran?”

“Twenty-eight.”

“You probably wouldn’t remember that TV show, then.”

“I’m sure it was violent and ugly.”

Ben sighed.

She was silent until they had driven through the small town with the odor of death hanging over it. Then she said, “Let’s be honest with each other, Ben. I don’t like you, and I probably will never like you very much.”

“Agreed.”

“But we’re stuck with each other.”

“How true.”

“All right, then. For however long we are forced to keep company with each other—and I assure you, it will not be long—let’s try to be civil, if not friends.”

Ben grinned. “O.K., Fran.”

“I don’t like to cook; won’t cook. I hate any type of housework, refuse to pick up after myself, and I whine when I don’t get my way.”

Ben laughed at her honesty. “Do you do windows?”

She laughed for the first time that day. “No! But”—she looked at him, appraising him through frankly sexual eyes—“I don’t like to sleep alone.”

“That’s a fair trade-off, I suppose,” Ben said.

Fran didn’t drink; gave her hives, she said. So Ben stayed sober that night. The first time in years, other than when he was sick or visiting his parents, he went to bed completely sober, and was glad he did.

Fran came to him, in his bed, smelling of subtle perfume and naked, her dark hair fanning the pillow beside him. As his hands found her, stroking her, and his lips worked at her breasts, she moaned and found him, working his penis into hardness. She straddled him, guiding him into her wetness, taking him with one hard, hunching motion. And from that moment on, for a half-hour, Fran had been, as one good ol’ boy had described his events of the night before to a group of buddies, “a frantic fuck.” She might not be worth a damn for anything else, Ben reflected, but she knew what she wanted when it came to sex; how she wanted it, and how to get the most out of what was stuck in her.

Ben left her sleeping to stand by the window in the den, gazing out at the darkness. He knew the full impact of what had happened had not yet come home to him—not in its awful entirety… its horrible finality.

Certainly, it had not struck home with Fran. Out of one hundred percent total, she maybe, at the most, was admitting to herself ten percent of the appalling facts surrounding her.

Ben suddenly made up his mind: there was no point in staying here. He wanted to see what had happened around the nation. He wanted to… bury (the word had finally become acceptable in his mind) his parents, brothers, and sisters. If he could find them.

And, as a writer, he was a naturally curious sort of person. He wished he could see years into the future, see just what would be built out of all this tragedy. Out of the ashes.

Something far better than what we had just destroyed, he hoped.

He went back into the bedroom and slipped quietly into bed. Fran snuggled close to him, murmuring softly, something inaudible.

Despite his feeling toward her, Ben felt a soft prodding of sorrow for the young woman. Her type of person had always bought her way through the world. Now… what would happen to people like that? Ben knew most of them were not survivors.