Anarchy in the Ashes (15 page)

 

 

The brigade was stopped for the night in Cabool, Missouri, some sixteen miles northwest of Willow Springs. Nancy had been bathed and fed and dressed in clean clothing; Doctor Chase had examined her and cleaned and bandaged her cuts. She told her story.

She spoke of what Sam Hartline and his men had done to her. She was blunt, leaving nothing out.

“Those people are perverted beyond imagination,” she said. “I suppose I'm – was – very naive. But I can assure you – all of you – that was tortured out of me.”

“Where are you from?” Ben asked.

“Chicago, originally,” Nancy said. The marks of torture were still very evident on her face and arms. “But my family pulled out of there just after the bombings of 1988.” She looked square at Ben. “You know why, General?”

“Yes,” Ben said, “I know only too well. My brother was a part of that . . . madness.”

“You later killed your brother, did you not, General?” she asked.

“Yes,” Ben said softly, “I did. Back in Tri-States.”

 

 

How hated Ben's system of government was did not come home to the people of the three states until late fall of the first year. Ben had stepped outside of his home for a breath of the cold, clean air of night. Juno went with him, and together they walked from the house around to the front yard. When Juno growled low in his throat, Ben went into a crouch, and that saved his life. Automatic-weapon fire spider-webbed the windshield of his pickup, the slugs hitting and ricocheting off the metal, sparking the night. Ben jerked open the door of the truck, punched open the glove box, and grabbed a pistol. He fired at a dark figure running across the yard, then at another. Both went down, screaming in pain.

A man stepped from the shadows of the house and opened fire just as Ben hit the ground. Lights were popping on up and down the street, men with rifles in their hands appearing on the lawns.

Ben rose to one knee and felt a slug slam into his hip, knocking him to one side, spinning him around, the lead traveling down his leg, exiting just above his knee. He pulled himself up and leveled the 9mm, pumping three rounds into the dark shape by the side of the house. The man went down, the rifle dropping from his hands.

Ben pulled himself up, his leg and hip throbbing from the shock of the wounds. He leaned against the truck just as help reached him.

“Call the medics!” a neighbor shouted. “Governor's been hit.”

“Help me over to that man,” Ben said. “He looks familiar.”

Standing over the fallen man, Ben could see where his shots had gone: two in the stomach, one in the chest. The man was blood-splattered and dying. He coughed and spat at Ben.

“Goddamned nigger-lovin' scum,” the dying man said. He closed his eyes, shivering in the convulsions of pain; then he died.

“God, Governor!” a man asked, “who is he?”

Salina came to Ben, putting her arms around him as the wailing of ambulances grew louder. “Do you know him, Ben?” she asked.

“I used to,” Ben's reply was sad. “He was my brother.”

 

 

“That's horrible, Ben,” Gale said. “Your own brother hated you enough to want to kill you?”

“He was part of Jeb Fargo's Nazi establishment outside of Chicago,” Ben explained. “To this day, I don't know why or how he changed so radically in his thinking.” He looked at Nancy. “You want to continue?”

“Yes,” she said. “My father took us – my mother, my sister, my brother – and went west, into Iowa. We settled in Waterloo. We survived,” she said it flatly. “But it sure wasn't any fun doing so. Never enough to eat, cold and tired most of the time that first year or so. But it gradually got better as things began to settle down. My mother died in '93, my father died a year later. My older sister raised my brother and me. We lived through Logan's . . . reign in office. My older sister always talked about heading out to Tri-States, but somehow we never did get around to doing that. Then Tri-States fell and after that the country seemed to fall apart. I was seventeen when . . . the troops invaded Tri-States.

“We got through the horror of Al Cody and VP Lowry and all that . . . awfulness, all the hate and the discontent. Somehow.

“One day my sister and my brother went out to look for food. I was sick and they didn't want me to go 'cause the weather was bad and I was just beginning to get better. I had pneumonia.” She sighed. “That was last year. They never came back. Then one day the rats came. I never saw anything – up to that point – so . . . so horrible in all my life. And I thought after having lived through the bombings and the roaming gangs of thugs and all that, I could handle anything. I must have a mental block about the rats, because I really can't recall much about them. I know I panicked. I ran. I ran blindly. I don't know how I survived, but I did. In a manner of speaking.”

Tears ran down the young woman's face and Gale reached out to take her hand and hold it.

“I can't ever have children. The IPF doctors . . . gave me a shot. Me, and hundreds – maybe thousands – of other women, and men, too. Orientals, Hispanics, blacks, Jews, Indians.” She wiped her eyes and shook her head. “There is some sort of armed resistance movement north of Interstate 70, General. That was why they were torturing me. Or so they said. I think those people just like to torture people. I know they do. I heard some of them say so. I saw . . . I saw several of the men masturbating while they watched me being tortured. They . . . they would stand in front of me, where I was strapped down, and . . . ejaculate in my face.”

When Gale looked at Ben, the rage of five thousand years was printed invisibly across her face. It seemed to say: Five thousand years of persecution is enough. This time, stop it forever.

“All right,” Ben said.

The other men and women gathered around looked at each other in confusion, not understanding what had just silently transpired between the man and woman.

Ben swung his eyes from Gale, returning them to Nancy as he saw her rub her arm. His arm picked up the numbers tattooed on her forearm.

J-1107.

“The J stands for Jew?” Gale asked, a husky quality to her voice.

“Yes,” Nancy replied. “B for black. O for Oriental. H for Hispanic. I for Indian. M for mental defective. I've seen other letters but I don't know what they represent.”

Ben felt sick to his stomach.

Gale was silently weeping.

Ben looked around at the silent circle, more than one man had tears in his eyes.

Nancy resumed her horror story. “Sam Hartline and his men took me, tried to make me tell what I knew about the resistance movement. But I didn't – still don't – know anything about it, other than that it exists. They ... really had a good time with me,” she said, keeping her eyes downcast. “I ... don't know how many times they raped me or how many men. And women. The women would strap ... would strap huge penises on and ... rape me. There is something terribly perverted about many of those people – maybe all of them. I was raped in every way possible. Over and over. It got so I could sometimes block it out.

“They beat me, shocked me. They attached wires to my breasts and my ... my genital area. The voltage was never strong enough to knock me out. It just hurt so bad. They forced objects up my ... you know. I know they are doing some kind of experimental medical work up there in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Like the Nazis used to do way back then. But I don't know what kind of experiments. Something to do with the mutants, I think. Mutants and humans.

“They kept questioning me, but I think they knew I was telling the truth. They just wanted to see how much I could take. I guess I'm stronger than I thought. What could I tell them? I didn't know anything. I think I would have told them anything. Anything to stop the pain and the humiliation. The pain.” She shook her head.

Nancy held up her left hand. All her fingernails were gone.

“I'm not a coward, but a human being has limits,” she said. “They finally stopped. Just quit. I thought I was dreaming. Maybe dead. I didn't know a person could hurt so much in so many places. I don't even remember the ride down to Missouri. When I woke up tied to that tree, I was naked and cold and hungry and sick. They left me with a little reminder of them. The men, I mean. They had attached a dog collar around my neck and defecated on me.”

Ben was then conscious of a pain in his right hand. He had clenched his fingers into a tight fist.

“I managed to get loose from the tree and found an old farmhouse and cleaned up. I wrapped up in an old quilt and walked down the road until I came to another house. I found some old clothes there. I found a gun and some bullets on a dead man and taught myself how to shoot the thing. I'm not very good at it, but I sure scared the shit out of some mutants, I know that. I hit a couple of them. Then they began tracking me.”

She lifted her eyes, looking at Ben. “They – the mutants – have some kind of intelligence, and some sort of communications system. They have to have that, because they were always one jump ahead of me.”

“Interesting,” Doctor Chase said. “That confirms what I thought all along.”

“And that is?” Ben glanced at him.

“The mutants have leaders, pack leaders, den leaders, if you will, who possess more intelligence than the others. And they have organized them; they have their own form of pecking order.”

“And the males like human women,” Gale added.

“How ghastly,” Colonel Gray remarked. “I believe I could have gotten on quite well without that knowledge.”

“And me,” Gale said. “Gross!”

“Best to know the type of enemy we are facing,” the doctor said. “And it appears we have more than one enemy.”

Chase did not look or act his age. His wife, a woman forty years his junior, could well attest to that. She had just borne him a child.

“What can you tell us about the IPF, Nancy?” Ben asked.

“Not a whole lot,” she admitted. “But I did hear the men talking some when they weren't torturing me. Something about some new people coming in from Iceland. I kept fading in and out, but I think – no, I'm sure – they said several battalions.” She looked at Ben. “Does that help any?”

His smile held no humor. “Well, yes and no, Nancy. I don't know the size of their battalions, but we'll call it twenty-five hundred personnel per battalion. Let's call several three. That would mean we now have approximately seventy-five hundred more troops to contend with.”

“My Lord,” Colonel Gray said after a soft whistle of alarm.

“Yeah,” Ben said. “I hope He is on our side in this upcoming fight.”

“We've been thinking that for five thousand or more years,” Gale said. “Believe me, sometimes I have serious reservations.”

“Let's not tempt fate by becoming sacrilegious at this stage of the game,” Ben said.

“For the first time in a long time,” Nancy said, “I feel a little bit of hope for the future. I feel like I've found a home.”

“Right.” Gale once more took her hand. “Believe me, I need all the help I can get with this bunch of schlubs.”

“Ben,” Doctor Chase said, “have you ever considered taking a hickory stick to her tush?” He jerked a thumb toward Gale.

Gale glared at him. “I didn't know you had turned to wife-beating, Lamar.”

“Only when she needs it, baby.” Chase grinned at her.

Nancy laughed at this exchange, her first laugh in weeks.

Ben patted her gently on the shoulder. “You're safe, now, Nancy.”

“Yes,” the young woman said. “But I keep thinking about all those poor people north of here who are anything but safe.”

“We're going to do our best to stop the Russians,” Ben told her.

“I really hope God is on our side,” Nancy spoke to no one in particular. “I really, really do.”

The column covered only seventy-five miles the next day due to numerous equipment breakdowns and the worsening condition of the roads. The terrible roads contributed to the mechanical problems. The mechanics stayed busy, cussing as they worked frantically, for they realized they had no time to waste. Each hour meant someone in the IPF-controlled areas was being tortured and killed.

Before limping into Rolla, Ben told Colonel Gray, “Take a full platoon in there, Dan. If you find any of the IPF or any civilian who has tossed in with them – kill them.”

The Englishman smiled coldly and knowingly, saluted and pulled out. The ex-British SAS officer was one of the most savage fighters in Ben's command.

The first thing Colonel Gray observed just outside of Rolla was the body of a black man. He had been hanged by the neck and his features were horribly disfigured. A crudely lettered cardboard sign was hanging about his neck: “NIGGERS – STAY IN YOUR PLACE.”

Sgt. Mac Cummings, a young black, swallowed audibly. “My momma used to tell me they'd be days like this, but she didn't tell me they was goin' to come in bunches.”

Colonel Gray said, “When — or if — we find those responsible for this, Mac, you may lead the firing squad.”

“My pleasure, sir.”

A team lowered the body and a medic inspected the stiffened corpse. “Colonel,” he called, “this man's been tortured and castrated.”

Sergeant Cummings made a low sound of anger and spat on the ground.

“Scouts out,” Colonel Gray ordered. “Heads up and steady on, now, lads.”

“And lassies,” Cpl. Anne Lewis reminded him with a smile.

“I could never forget the lassies.” Dan grinned.

“What do you want us to do with the body?” a medic asked.

“Leave it,” Dan said tersely. “It will be a pile of rotting bones in a month.”

Sergeant Cummings's face registered no emotion. He knew they didn't have the time to bury the body; and what the hell difference did one more rotting body make at this stage of the game? But he had never gotten accustomed to the necessary callousness.

One mile up the pitted and weed-grown highway they were stopped by a barricade stretching from shoulder to shoulder across the highway. A sign on the blockade read: “NIGGERS SPICS JEWS & ALL OTHER NON-WHITES STAY OUT.”

“I have just about taken all this crap I am going to tolerate,” a young Jewish Rebel said. His words were laced with venom.

“Calm yourself,” Dan told him. “Les, get General Raines on the horn and inform him of this development and ask what he wants us to do about it.”

The radio operator was back in a moment. “General Raines says to assess the situation, sir. If you think we can handle it, proceed.”

“Thank you, son. Sergeant Cummings? Inspect that barricade for explosives. If it is not touchy, please remove it.”

“You put your black hands on that blockade, nigger, and you'll die!” A hard voice shouted the warning from the woods alongside the highway.

A shot cracked in the morning calm. The sounds of a body hitting the forest floor drifted out. One of Colonel Gray's scouts stepped from the timber, a smoking pistol in his hand.

“I found another one back in the woods always,” the young man said. “I cut his throat.”

“Thank you, Jimmy,” Dan replied, as if thanking a waiter for a fresh cup of tea. “Well done. I take it the timber is secure?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good.”

Dan's walkie-talkie barked. He listened as the message spewed forth. “We got a fight on our hands, Colonel,” the forward scout reported. “The citizens are armed and hostile and waiting for us. The man who appears to be in charge says this is as far as we go. No nigger-lovers welcome in here. Told me to tell you to turn around and get the hell out.”

“How perfectly inhospitable of him,” Dan muttered. “One would think they were void of manners. How many people involved?” Dan asked the scout.

“Couple hundred, sir.”

“Pull back,” Dan ordered the LRRPs. “Take coordinates for the mortar teams.”

“Roger, sir.”

“Tell
me
to get the hell out!” Dan muttered. “Halfwits probably never even heard of Lord Byron.”

 

 

Col. Dan Gray had come to Ben after serving first with the British Special Air Service and then, after the bombings of 1988, with the American Special Forces. His small company of Rebels were known as Gray's Scouts. They could aptly be compared to a cross between Tasmanian devils and French foreign legionnaires, with a little bit of spitting cobra tossed in. They were experts at behind-the-lines, guerrilla-type action, experts with the knife, piano wire, brass knuckles and just plain ol' dirty fighting.

Tina Raines had trained and seen combat with Gray's Scouts. And Col. Dan Gray had given her the highest compliment one soldier could give another: “That lady,” said Colonel Gray, “is no lady.”

 

 

Ben was at the site in half an hour. The barricade had been torn down. Dan quietly and succinctly brought the general up to date.

Ben listened, the anger in him growing as Dan spoke. “Thank you, Dan.” He turned to the young man who had headed up the LRRPs into Rolla. “Are the people united in there?” he asked, jerking a thumb toward the distant town.

“Yes, sir – all the way. They told us they wanted a pure race of people, free of color. There is a Jewish girl hanging by the neck just down the road. We asked them about it; they admitted doing it. Said she got uppity with some of their women. We asked them what they meant by ‘uppity.' Said the Jewish girl was unhappy about being a servant. So they hanged her. Real nice people, General.”

“Yes. Just lovely,” Ben said. “How about the minorities that used to live around here?”

“They were either handed over to the IPF, run out or killed.”

“I see.”

“General,” the young LRRP said. “They, ah, the men in there – they took turns raping the girl before they hanged her.”

“They told you that?”

“Yes, sir. Seemed proud of it. Said she had real good pussy.”

Ben was profoundly glad that Gale was not present during this conversation. He turned to his artillery officer. “Shell it,” he told the man. “Shell and burn it. Blow the goddamned town off the map.”

“Yes, sir,” the officer said. He began speaking into his headset.

Down the highway, the rumble of tanks and mortar carriers getting into position reached the men by the once-barricaded highway. First to whistle and part the air overhead were the 152mm and 155mm cannon shells. 81mm mortars joined the barrage, the projectiles humming overhead. Ben's big self-propelled howitzers began pounding the small city with HE and incendiary rounds. The earth began to shake as the explosions ripped the town. Unit commanders began synchronizing the attack; there was not one full second free of the blasts of artillery, not one full second when an explosion was not rocking and pounding and burning and destroying the coordinated areas.

The limited skyline of the small city was now reduced to burning skeletons of buildings. After five minutes, Ben shouted the order to cease firing.

“Tanks in,” he ordered, his voice quiet in the shocked hush after the rolling thunder. “Infantry behind. Roll it.”

Gale and Nancy stood beside Ben's pickup truck. Neither of them had ever heard anything to match what they had just experienced. War movies were OK, but this had been the real thing. Both their hearts were pounding furiously. Their mouths were dry. Nancy was the first to speak.

“He doesn't believe very much in diplomacy, does he?”

“Only the final kind,” Gale replied, removing her fingers from her ears.

“I'm certain there were probably young children in that town.”

“Probably so.”

“That doesn't bother you?”

“Sam Hartline was once a child.”

Nancy closed her mouth.

Heavy tanks rumbling past them stopped any further conversation for a time. Soon the rattle of automatic weapons drifted through the still air as the mopping up began.

Gale took this time to observe Ben, something she did often, and enjoyed doing. The man was as calm as a professional gambler with a royal flush in a high-stakes poker game. Nothing ever seemed to rattle him. Ben sipped at a cup of coffee – or what now passed for coffee – and munched on a biscuit. He seemed so relaxed he could be watching a croquet match on the greens in England.

Black, ugly smoke from the fires set by the incendiary rounds began pouring into the sky, the flames licking close behind the clouds. With no fire department, the town would soon burn itself out, destroying the ugliness the IPF had spawned.

After an hour, the gunfire had ceased, the tanks had rumbled back to position within the convoy. Far up the highway, Rebels were walking prisoners back to face Ben Raines.

The prisoners did not look overjoyed at that prospect.

They were a beaten and sullen bunch, with no fight left in them. They faced Ben – twenty of them – with downcast eyes. Their hands were behind their necks, fingers interlaced. There was one woman with them, a rather attractive woman. She looked at Ben with frank eyes.

“I give great head, General,” she said. “Let me live and I'll do anything you want. I like it up the ass, too.”

“Shut your fucking mouth,” Ben told her.

“You dirty whore!” snarled the man beside her. “This is one time your pussy won't get you out of trouble.”

She laughed and spat in the man's face.

“I ought to hang every one of you,” Ben told the group. “Slowly. If torture was my forte, that is what you deserve – then I should hang what is left of you.”

A man lifted very frightened eyes. “General . . .”

“Shut up!” Ben roared at him. He turned to a lieutenant. “How many children were found?”

“Twenty-two, sir. The rest of the kids are up at some sort of special school, run by the IPF.”

“They are being brainwashed,” Katrina spoke. “Depending on the time they have spent there, it is very probably too late to save them.” She looked at one man who appeared better fed and in better condition than the others. “How long have the children been at the school?”

“Long enough,” the man said with a smirk on his thick, wet lips. “I know you – ” he stared at hero – “you was here some months ago.”

“That is correct,” Katrina replied.

“Yeah,” the man said. “I heard about you. You're the turncoat. Sorry goddamn traitor to your people.”

Katrina lifted her AK-47 and pulled the trigger once. The single shot took the man in the center of the chest. He flopped on the ground and died.

“He was a pig,” Katrina said. “He made some very filthy comments to me one day. Exposed himself to me and asked me to lick his . . . asked me to lick it.” She looked at Ben. “Am I to be punished for shooting him?”

“Hell, no,” Ben said.

“Katrina,” Colonel Gray said. “Would you be interested in joining my little group of men and women?”

“The scouts and LRRPs?”

“Indeed.”

“I would be honored.”

Dan smiled. “The little bird has sharp claws, General.”

“Quite,” Ben agreed. “How old are the children you found?” he asked the scout.

“Very young. Infants, mostly.”

“Take them back to the convoy. We'll raise them. I won't have these bigots preaching hate to young children.”

“You ain't got no right to take our kids.” A man stepped toward Ben.

Ben butt-stroked the man under the chin with his Thompson. Teeth and jaw cracked and popped under the impact. Blood flew from the man's shattered mouth. He dropped to the ground like a stone and was still.

Ben looked at Colonel Gray. “I don't care what you do with them, Dan. I do not wish to ever see any of them again.”

“Yes, sir.” He looked around him. “Sergeant Cummings?”

“Sir?”

“Take care of this little matter, won't you?”

“Yes, sir,” the black sergeant said. “I will give it my immediate and personal attention.”

“I rather thought you would,” Dan said.

The Jewish Rebel stepped forward. “Like a little help, Mac?”

“Join the party,” Mac replied.

“Dan,” Ben said. “Roll the convoy on through. We'll stop up the road at Vienna.” He looked at Sergeant Cummings. “We'll see you and your squad in about an hour, Mac.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I wonder what is going to happen to those people?” Nancy whispered to Gale.

“Don't even think about it,” she was told.

 

 

“Hello, sweetmeat,” Hartline said to Peggy.

She whirled around, her eyes wide with fear as she gazed up the basement steps to the open door. Hartline's bulk filled the doorway. She looked around for a weapon –
anything
. But there was nothing. Her heart was pounding so heavily she thought she might faint.

“I told you I'd find you, baby,” Hartline said, a cruel smile on his lips.

“How?” Peggy managed to gasp out the one-word question.

“How?” Hartline smiled the question. “How was easy, sweet pussy. This is how.” He stepped down into the basement and waved his hand. A human form tumbled down the steps, bouncing sickeningly on the steps. Lois Peters. Or what was left of her.

The woman was naked. Her toenails and fingernails had been ripped from her. Her fingers had been broken. Her feet had been burned black – lumps of seared meat. Her teeth had been savagely pulled out. Her breasts had been mutilated. Peggy looked at the woman's pubic area and was sick at the sight. Lois looked as though she had been raped by some sort of huge monster. Blood streaked her thighs.