William Johnstone - Out of the Ashes

“Yes, it does, and it will probably get worse before it gets better. Come on, Jerre, put your arm around my shoulders and keep your weight off that ankle.”

She gazed at him for a moment, then shrugged. “What the hell? You might rape me, but that’s not gonna hurt as bad as my ankle hurts.”

Ben laughed at her. “You can put that pistol away, too, Jerre. It’s not going to fire unless you cock it first.”

She laughed with him. “Doesn’t have any bullets in it, anyway. Least I think it doesn’t. I don’t know how to load it.” She tossed the pistol into the ditch.

The automatic bounced off a large rock, fired, and blew a chunk of wood out of a tree.

Ben looked at her and slowly shook his head.

Ben found a little fast-rushing creek with water cold enough to turn one’s finger blue just from testing it, and for an hour the two of them sat on the bank talking, while she soaked her ankle and bitched about the temperature of the water and how she probably would catch pneumonia, or how her foot would probably rot off from radiation.

She told him she had just started her second year of college in Maryland when the war talk started. Then the panic hit. She had been sick for a week or so while others around her had been dying.

Gross, she called the experience. The absolute pits, man.

“You want to know something else, Ben? I mean, on top of all this stupid war stuff, there is no music.”

“By music, I assume you mean rock and roll?”

“Is there any other kind of music?”

“I wasn’t aware rock and roll was music.”

She cocked her head, blond hair falling over one eye, and stared at him for a time. “I think, Ben Raines, if we’re going to be friends, we’d better not discuss our tastes in music.”

“At least until you grow up.” He smiled at her.

“Whatever.”

When Ben asked why she was walking and not driving, she shrugged her shoulders and said she felt like walking, that’s why. Plenty of cars and plenty of time should she decide to drive.

Ben knew better than to question the logic of the young (do the young have logic?), so he let that slide.

“How come, Ben,” she asked, “we’re not all falling over dead from radiation sickness? I mean, I thought great clouds of that stuff would be floating around.”

“Clean bombs,” he replied.

“Clean bombs?” She looked at him. “What kind of silliness is that? Sounds like a contradiction to me.”

“It is, after a fashion.” Then he told her of the tape he’d heard, and of the Rebels and of the triple cross.

“All that is so confusing to me. Coups. Takeover. Rebels. You’re really a commander of a Rebel army, Ben Raines?”

“I guess so.” He chuckled.

“Where are they?”

“I have no idea, Jerre. It wasn’t my idea.”

“I heard rumors of the Rebels. Just a little bit. Are they radical people?”

“I don’t believe so. Law-and-order types, I’m sure. But Bull Dean was no radical.”

“But he advocated the overthrow of the government, Ben. That’s pretty radical, don’t you think?”

Ben slowly nodded his head. “Yes… yes, that’s true. But one would have to know the Bull, what made him tick. He would not have assumed power for any length of time. What Bull wanted was a return to law and order and morals and discipline. He wasn’t a Castro or some two-bit dictator; just a man who believed very strongly in a government of the people, for the people, and more importantly, by the people.”

“I don’t believe we’ve had that type of government in a long time, Ben. Do you?”

“No,” he said quickly and flatly. “Government got too big—too powerful. Agencies like the IRS had entirely too much power. Same with most government agencies. Well, it’s all moot, now.”

“But… what’s that line, Ben, about ashes?”

“Tabb. ‘Out of the dead, cold ashes, life again.’”

“Snap judgment time, Ben Raines.” She looked at him, her gaze serious. “I think you’re a pretty good man—decent guy. I think you’ll probably link up with those Rebels.”

“No way, Jerre.”

“Yeah, I think you will, Ben. You’ll have to get your shit together first. But after that… yeah, you will. I’ve read some of your stuff. You’re a dreamer and a romanticist and you’d like to go back about a hundred years—have those kinds of laws. Hell, Ben, maybe you’re right. Maybe that’s what the country needs. No harm in trying, is there?” She winked at him. “General.”

“You’re a nut.” He smiled at her.

“But I’m pretty.”

“Yeah,” he said softly. “Yeah, you sure are.”

“Gonna be dark soon, Ben.”

“Yes.” He looked at her ankle. Some of the swelling was gone. “We’ll find a place to sleep down the road. You’ll be all right—safe.”

“I know it.” She spoke the words as though she trusted him. “But the dark scares me,” she admitted. “It didn’t used to scare me until…” She let her sentence trail off to an awkward end. She sat staring into the rushing waters.

“Your parents?”

“It… it was dark when I got back home. Back to Cumberland. I found them in the back yard. All swelled up and gross-looking. I just sat in the den and bawled and hollered. I never felt so alone in my life. Then the guy who lived next door—he made it through, never got sick, or anything—he came over. He lost his whole family and it didn’t seem, at first, to bother him. He said he was going to take care of me, just like I was his daughter. I believed him, so I went with him.” She kicked dirt into the creek.

“He tried to get me drunk later on that night; said it would make me feel better. Then I knew what he was all about. Guys think they’re so smooth, but given a little time, most girls can see through them. If the girl’s got any sense. So I knew what was coming.

“Later on—I thought he’d gone to bed—I tried to slip out of his house, but he was watching for me. We had quite a tussle there on the floor; I marked him pretty good.” She put those startlingly Prussian blue eyes on Ben. Honest eyes. “I’m not a virgin, Ben Raines, but I don’t give it away wholesale, either. And that bastard really pissed me off. I think, had he played it right, I probably would have gone to bed with him. He was a handsome man, and I’d always thought him a nice person. Not that I cared anything about him, but… it would have been… well, someone to hold you—you know. I mean, everything was all screwed up. I don’t know how to explain it.”

Ben knew, but he remained silent, letting Jerre tell it all, her way.

“Finally, he hit me. Boy, did he pop me! When I came out of it, he was ripping my panties off me and talking really wild stuff. Said I was gonna be his private pussy. All kinds of stuff. I got really scared then. Not only because he was trying to rape me, but because I knew then he was really bonkers.

“We were by the fireplace, on the carpet, and when he stood up to take off his pants, I rolled away and grabbed a poker.” Again, she gazed at him. “I think I killed him, Ben. Something popped when I hit him. I don’t think he was breathing. But I wasn’t about to stick around to do any nursing; I’ll tell you that for a fact! I just took off. Got in my dad’s car and left.

“And do you know where I went? Where the damned car quit on me? Smart me! To Wheeling. Talk about a case of the dumb-ass. There was a mob of thugs roaming around. And you know they spotted me. You ever seen one little blond-headed girl trying to break the four-minute mile while being chased by fifty guys, all with their peckers out?”

Despite the gut-wrenching fear Ben knew she must have experienced, the panic within her at the time, he had to laugh at the way she told her story.