Ashes - Wind In The Ashes Part 3

"The underground people?" Sylvia asked, her eyes wide.

"Get Ben to tell you about it."

"He's already promised to tell me about Valkyrie," Sylvia said.

"Who?" Ike looked puzzled. "When'd you run that one by me, Ben? I don't remember her at all." But his eyes were twinkling.

"Ike!"

Ben said. For his bulls.h.i.+t, Ben knew Ike was a highly educated man.

"Them underground people, they been buildin' shrines in the deep timber. And you know to who, whom, whatever."

Ben sighed. He had warned Cecil, in a rather heated discussion, that he did not wish to discuss the matter of various peoples wors.h.i.+pping him.

"Ike ..." he warned.

"I'm just tellin' you what's goin' on, Ben.

Don't get your a.s.s up at me."

Sylvia suppressed a giggle and Ike had to grin, the grin taking years from his tanned and rugged face.

"How are these people armed?"

"Clubs and bows and arrows. Just like Ro and Wade, I reckon."

"I wish I had known about this before the trucks pulled out. We need to have some way of marking our people."

"They know, Ben. We're all in tiger-stripe and lizard camo. They'll know us."

"How about Ro and Wade and the woods-children?"

"Them people know all about them, too. Everybody's all right."

"I'm curious about something, Ike. Ever sinceI got here, I've had the d.a.m.nest feeling of being watched. Has that feeling touched you, too?"

"Yeah. I think it's ... them underground people, Ben. Both of you come with me. There's something I got to show you. I wasn't goin' to. But you're gonna see it sooner or later. Or one like it,"

he added mysteriously.

With Rebels flanking the trio, for n.o.body was going to let Ben Raines get too far out of sight-not again-they moved out. About a mile from the compound, in the deep timber, there sat a crudely carved wooden monument; the carvings were very fresh. A thick tree had been felled, the stump about five feet tall. There, the woodcarver had gone to work with knife and axe.

Ben stood and stared in shocked silence.

It was his face carved into the wood. His face, and the outline of something else.

"Jesus, Ben!" Sylvia blurted.

The Rebels seemed very nervous as they gathered about the wooden monument.

Then Ben recalled how nervous Wade and Ro had been looking at his Thompson. And that day when he confronted many of his young Rebels with the weapon, telling them it was only a weapon. Nothing more.

Beneath Ben's profile, there was the outline of his old Thompson submachine gun.

Chapter Four.

Back in '88, when the world exploded in war, every nation around the globe, including the U.s., went through a period of disorganization and confusion. And for a time, it appeared the battered nations, most of them, would recover. But the G.o.ds of Fate continued to laugh darkly, and through the laughter, hurled thunderbolts of destruction at the world.

First came a deranged President, Hilton Logan, who was instrumental in ordering the wiping-out of Ben Raines and the Tri-States.

Hilton Logan paid dearly for that decision.

With his life.

A full decade after the bombings, the world still seemed unable to pull itself out of the ashes. Only one man and one grouping of peoples had managed to rebuild and pick up their lives: Ben Raines and his Rebels.

Then came the rats, carrying their deadly cargo of fleas, spreading death all over the world, further reducing the earth's population.

Still, Ben Raines and his Rebels survived and grew in strength. Ben's dream seemed impossible to kill: He would bring law and order back to America; he would rebuild from out of the ashes of war.

And the man did not, really, seem to age. That phenomenon only served to heighten the myths and rumors about the man.

Ben Raines was indestructible.

Ben Raines was more than flesh and blood. Ben Raines was a G.o.d.

Nature, as surviving humankind was finding out, could recover much faster than so-called superior humankind. Nature was rapidly reclaiming its own, now that humankind was not fighting her with chemicals and axes and chain saws and bulldozers and choking smoke from millions of cars and trucks and other types of human-produced and often needless pollution.

The trillion-dollar mistake called the interstate highway system now lay like great twisting snakes throughout the land, broken only by the rus.h.i.+ng waters of creeks and rivers.

And nature was slowly but steadily reclaiming much of that, too.

With no maintenance for almost fifteen years, the super-slab was rapidly deteriorating. For the first time since its inception, the 55 mph speed limit made sense.

More than 25 mph now.

And if the interstate system was in bad shape, the two-lane highways could best be cla.s.sified as awful.

Trees were blocking many of the two-lanes, bridges were out, abandoned vehicles squatted like rusting old time machines, mute memorials to an age long ago and far away; an age that would nevermore exist.

And the people. The survivors.

What about them?

Many had forsaken the various religions they had once embraced, believing that if indeed there ever had been a G.o.d, He would never have allowed this ... this awfulness to have occurred. h.e.l.l, you couldn't see Him; you couldn't really talk to Him and expect any reply; there never was really any proof that He existed. So ... all we have is our wits, our strength, our own two hands. Let's stop this other foolishness and survive.

Inhabited towns either became haven for thugs and outlaws and perverts and lawlessness, or they became walled, barbed-wired, bunkered-in fortresses, with the people finally learning to pull together.

Of course, the people now did not have to contend with Big Brother Government and the mumblings of the Supreme Court interfering in their lives.

And many thought that was a blessing. Something good came out of the horror of war.

Now, there was no sign, anywhere, of factory smokestacks, no humming of machinery, no a.s.sembly lines, no commuting to work in car pools ...

... and no lawyers.

But there was silence.

Sometimes the silence, for those who knew what went on Before, was loud. Too loud. They would wander away from the safety of fortress, and never be seen again.

Women became rare prizes, to be taken and usedand then traded for a gun or a horse or a car. It was not an easy time to be a woman.

Or a child. Of either s.e.x.

It was as if law and order had never existed.

Now, there was no law-only the law one was strong enough to enforce. Despite all his efforts, the country that Ben Raines held in his dreams was slowly sliding back into a dark abyss, an abyss that many felt was too deep and too dark to even consider crawling out of.

This, then, was what Ben Raines and his Rebels faced-discounting the Russian and Sam Hartline.

"What is G.o.d, Ben?" Sylvia asked. They were sitting outside the command post as dusk softly gathered her skirts around the land, casting purple hues, creating a false illusion of peace.

"Haven't you ever read the Bible, Sylvia?"

"Yes. Sure. But I can't make any sense out of that, Ben. It's too ... well, contradictory for me. And I don't know what a lot of the words mean. Besides, if G.o.d is all-powerful, He wouldn't have let this happen. He could have stopped it, right?"

"I guess he could have. But if you're asking for my personal opinion as to why He didn't ...

I think He just got tired of it all. I think He became weary of humankind's pettiness, greediness, cruelness, and inhumanity to fellow humans. So He started over." "He created a flood the first time, didn't He?" "Yes.

And said He'd never do it again. And He didn't."

"You think G.o.d did this, don't you?"

"I think He had a mighty hand in it. He just let humankind destroy itself. There are those of us who always maintained our priorities were always wrong. I wrote about them, as writers are p.r.o.ne to do.

Didn't do any good, as far as I could tell."

"I've read all your books. You sure wrote a bunch of them, Ben."

"Yes, I did."

"Some of them were pretty s.e.xy, too."

Ben grinned. "Sure were, Sylvia." He hoped she was not leading up to what he thought she might be.

She was. "Every Rebel has at least one copy of a book you wrote, Ben."

"When they should be carrying a pocket Bible, Sylvia. My words are not chiseled in stone, babe. I wrote paperback books for the ma.s.s market."

"You never had a book done in them stiff covers, Ben?"

He thought for a moment. By G.o.d, he couldn't remember. "No, I never did, Sylvia. I wrote to entertain, not to change the world."

She didn't understand that; and Ben really wasn't sure he did, either. Ben took a sip of water from his canteen and rolled the liquid around in his mouth for a moment before spitting it out on the ground.

"What's the matter?" she asked.

"I can't get the taste of those G.o.dd.a.m.ned eggs out of my mouth."

In the gathering darkness, Ben leaned over and kissed her laughing mouth.

In his command post, General Striganov sat behind his desk, gazing at a map of the United States. He had just received intelligence that some of Raines's command had moved out in trucks, heading west. But only a part of Raines's command had left.

What was the man up to now?

It didn't make any sense to Striganov.

He had Raines heavily outnumbered as it was, so why would the man split his forces?

Curious.

Striganov sat quietly, puffing contentedly on his pipe. Georgi Striganov was a strikingly handsome man; tall and well-built, with pale blue eyes and blond-gray hair. A very intelligent man, Striganov liked Ben Raines. Of course, that would not prevent him from killing Raines when the time came. Well, perhaps like was too strong a word ... but he did admire the man. As to his intelligence, that sometimes worked against Striganov, for he thought himself to be brilliant, when he was merely very intelligent.

Why would Raines cut his forces? Why?

He rose from his chair and walked to the huge wall map, studying it more closely. He shook his head.

Possibly some of Raines's Rebels were airborne qualified, but Raines was too smart to jump in with them, for the man was about the same age as Georgi. And when one gets to fifty years of age, combat jumping was not only reckless but foolish.

And Raines had not left with the truck convoy. His deep recon people were sure of that.

So, Striganov thought, that meant Raines was going to wait awhile before launching his attack.

Good. Then he could take his time about setting up defenses; go slowly and make certain of each and every detail.

But where in the h.e.l.l was that one battalion of Rebels going and what did they hope to accomplish when they got there?

Obviously, he would not know the answer to that for some time. And he couldn't order an attack against a force that large; didn't have enough people out in the field. And another bad point was that his deep recon scouts were on foot, with no way to keep track of the truck convoy once they pa.s.sed their position.

No matter, he brushed that away. He had enough force to crush a battalion like a dry piece of toast.