William Johnstone - Out of the Ashes

“Ben—what is this junk?”

“Grenade launcher, 40-mm high-explosive cartridges, and three boxes of hand grenades, mixed. White phosphorous, HE, and smoke.”

“Thank you,” she said dryly. “I don’t ever remember being so impressed with a reply. What in the crap are you going to do with this… shit!”

“Survive. I wish they had some Claymores in there.”

She sighed. “Ben, I don’t even want to know what that is.”

“It’s a mine. Hell! They don’t even have any det cord. What kind of an outfit was this?”

“I never knew you were like this, Ben. I thought writers were sensitive people.” She looked at him. “Well… with you, I should have known.”

He tapped the case containing the grenade launcher. “I wish I could find a fact sheet on this thing. Fran? Go rummage through the files and see if you can locate a fact sheet on the M203 grenade launcher.”

“Ben, you’re impossible!”

He took her by the shoulders and rudely shook her. It startled her. When he spoke, his words were hard and his voice was rough. “Fran? Let me tell you the way it is, baby.” She gazed up at him, taking in the seriousness in his eyes. “Now, you heard that redneck call you a cunt back there, didn’t you?”

She nodded.

“Women, Fran, of any kind or color, young or old, are going to be at a premium, I think. And a good-looking woman is going to be a real prize, worth killing for and more. And you are a good-looking woman. You’ve got the disposition of a pit viper and you’re stubborn as a mule, but you’re a beautiful woman. Now, listen to me. There is no law and order. None! You can’t call a cop, now, Fran. What has happened is a total, complete, one hundred percent breakdown of law and order and civilization and rules and ethics and decency. We’re back to the jungles and the caves, honey. Dog eat dog and the strongest man wins the woman. That’s the way it’s going to be for a while. Believe it. You’re not a stupid woman, Fran, so I don’t have to tell you what a gang-bang is, do I?”

She shook her head.

“You ever been pronged up the ass, Fran?”

“Certainly not!”

“Yeah? Well, don’t give up hope, baby, ‘cause lots of guys like it that way—good and tight. And without me, and all the firepower I can muster, you’re fair game. And you’ve got a pretty ass, Fran.”

“That’s disgusting, Ben Raines. You’re… you’re just telling me all this to scare me; make me dependent on you so you’ll have someone to sleep with, that’s all. Isn’t it, Ben?”

“Honey,” Ben said patiently, “if, or when, I find a community or a gathering of decent, civilized people, I’ll dump you on them faster than I’d turn loose a polecat. Because I’ve got things to do, places to go, and events to record. I hope we’ll find that in Memphis—I thought perhaps Jackson. I believe there are people here, good people, but they’re hiding, afraid, and they have good reason to be. So if not here, then Memphis. If not there, some other place where you’ll be safe, and I will find you a safe place. But until then, we’re stuck with each other, and I don’t know why, but I feel an obligation to take care of you. So you do what I tell you to do, Fran—when I tell you to do it—and I’ll keep you alive. But for now, you carry your butt into that office and find me that fact sheet.”

She stared at him for a long half-minute, both of them silent. Her expression a mixture of fear and respect for the man standing in front of her. “All right,” she said. “You’re quite a man, Ben Raines.”

“I’m a survivor.”

“I’m… I’m glad it was you who found me.”

He nodded his head slowly. He felt that was as close as he would get to hearing a thank you or a compliment from her lips.

“I’ll get you that sheet,” she said.

They spent the first night on the road in a home just off the interstate, a few miles south of Winona, Mississippi. The home was pleasant, well cared for, and devoid of bodies. Fran picked a few late-blooming flowers to decorate the dinner table while Ben made dinner.

“I wonder what happened to the people?” she asked.

“Probably, no one will ever know. Maybe they were visiting friends when… it happened. Maybe they panicked and ran away.”

She watched Ben, watched him as she had never watched anyone before in her life. He was never without a gun, and his walk had become that of a stalking great cat. His face and eyes had changed, becoming hard and cold. And she thought she would not like this man for an enemy, for he was unlike the other men she had known in her life. She wondered about his military life, for she had known many men who had served, but none like this one. Ben Raines was… a predator type. And she admitted—to herself—she was a bit afraid of him. She also knew she was lucky it had been Ben that found her.

At night, he ordered the lights out. “The two-legged animals will be on the prowl,” he told her. “Safer this way.” He had then pulled down the garage door and locked it.

“When we get close to Memphis tomorrow,” he said, as she lay in his arms, the sweat of love-making cooling and drying on them, “we’ll start monitoring the CB much more closely. All channels. We’ll find us a place to hole up and keep our eyes and ears open—we’ll see who comes to us. Maybe you’ll get lucky and some decent people will have banded together.”

“You really want to be rid of me, don’t you, Ben?”

“No,” he replied honestly, and his answer surprised him. “Well,” he added, “yes. In a way.”

“That is a confusing reply, darling.”

“You’re a survivor, Fran—but not the same type as I am. But”—he chuckled—“I have grown quite fond of you. In a way.”

“Yes,” she said, a wry quality to her voice. “We have gotten close, haven’t we? Go ahead, Ben. Drop the other shoe.”

“I want to see this nation, honey—as much as I can. From the Atlantic to the Pacific, from border to border. I want to see what was destroyed, and how. I am going to chronicle this happening, this event, and it’s going to take me a couple of years to do that—maybe more. I’m going to find a good tape recorder and about a million miles of tape and talk to people. Then I’m going to find a beat-up old portable typewriter, put the tapes in some form of order, and hole up in the mountains or by the sea for a couple of years, work ten hours a day, every day of the week, and write it, just the way it happened.”

“Ben? Who, may I ask, is going to be around to read the damned old thing?”

He laughed and cupped a warm round breast, rubbing the nipple against his palm. She stirred against him, her hand seeking and finding his maleness, fingers encircling it, feeling it start the process of thickening. She masturbated him slowly as her breathing became shallow, then a hot pant.

“We will have a civilization again, Fran,” he said, slipping his hand down the softness of her belly, to touch the dampness of pubic hair. His fingers found her and parted her, working in and out, his thumb on her erect clit. “A civilization… someday. And people will want to know exactly what happened. And they will read my work.”

Ben knew she was not a student of history or even much of a reader when she asked, “But you’ll be long dead by then, baby—so, who cares? So what?”

He kissed her and parted her lovely legs, slipping between them, positioning himself. He knew he was going to miss her after they parted.

“Ben?” she said, grasping his penis and inserting the head inside her.

“Yes, Fran?”

“Fuck me, Ben!”

Just outside of Memphis, south of the airport, Ben found a house that was free of bodies and was set back from the street, amid a large number of trees. He and Fran settled in. Once they saw a car drive slowly past, and another time a pickup truck, but he made no attempt to hail them, for they were full of hard-looking men, heavily armed, and they did not look like church-going types.