William W. Johnstone - Ashes 09 - Valor In The Ashes

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Valor in the Ashes

Ashes 09

William W. Johnstone

"Here's looking at you, kid."-From

Casablanca

CHAPTER 1

"Seven major bridges, six rivers, five

boroughs, four stadiums, three airports, two

states, and what was once a very exciting and beautiful

city."

Then Ben had to explain to the younger members of his

contingent of Rebels exactly what a borough was.

And it wasn't something that groundhogs did.

Some of them had to go back to school, Ben concluded.

They were going to have to be pulled off the line and given the

chance to gain more knowledge. And like it or not, they would do it, if

Ben ordered it.

Maybe after New York City.

The sheer magnitude of what lay ahead of them, the

awesomeness of the job, was mind-boggling ... at least

to Ben and some of the older Rebels, who had visited

New York City before the great war a decade

past, and who understood that the cleaning out of the mutant,

cannibalistic Night People, headquartered in the

Big Apple, was not going to be a short-term

operation.

It would certainly take all of the fall and all of the

winter, and could well extend into spring or even

summer ... or longer.

But it was something that had to be.

The Judges were here, somewhere within the concrete-and-steel

canyons of the city: those men and women who ruled the

Night People, who dictated the terrible deeds that they

did.

They had to be destroyed.

And there was only one army on the face of the earth-that

Ben was aware of-that had the capability to tackle and

ultimately accomplish that task: Ben

Raines and his Rebels.

Ben stood in the cool fall air and looked over the

watery distance that separated St. George, on

Staten Island, from lower Manhattan.

When the Rebels had first arrived on Staten

Island, they had-Ben included-mistakenly believed

the place was deserted.

Came the first night, and they were proved wrong.

Bloody wrong. The Night People crawled out of the

basements and tunnels and dark musty places

to attack in stinking, foul, human waves. The

fighting had been fierce, but with the Rebels always,

slowly, pushing the Night People back. Sometime during

the third night, the Night People had decided

to retreat back into the city, leaving silently, their

dead behind them.

"Handle the bodies with extreme caution," Ben had

ordered. "Gowned, gloved, and masked. Stack them

up and burn them."

The bodies had been loaded and transported out to the

edge of the Atlantic Ocean and burned. Staten

Island was secure.

But still Ben hesitated to send his people into New York

City. Doubts assailed the man: Was it worth it?

Would whatever they would find there compensate for the

Rebel lives lost in securing that great city?

Ben sighed. He just didn't know.

His daughter, Tina, commander of a contingent of Gray's

Scouts, came to his side. "What's the matter,

Dad?"

"Second thoughts, girl. Seconds thoughts a

hundred times over."

"The treasures in that city, Dad: the recordings,

the paintings, the knowledge ... all the things you told us about.

Those alone would be worth it."

Would they? Or had vandals destroyed it all? Ben

inwardly shuddered and was sickened at the thought of some

two-bit street punk slashing a Renoir,

simply because he or she was too damned

ignorant-voluntarily and eagerly so-to care

what was ruined. He thought of the hundreds of master

tapes and CD'S stored in the vaults. Great

treasures of music. The millions of books,

some of which would be lost forever if not salvaged now. The

medical knowledge contained within that seemingly silent and dead

city.

Ben looked at the World Trade Center, jutting

up a quarter of a mile into the sky. He had been

on the observation deck there several times, and

remembered that on a clear day a person could

see for nearly sixty miles. And the elevators

would take your breath away: from the 107th floor

to ground level took less than a minute.

And if, or when, his people went into the city, they would have

to climb every damned step of the way up in every building.

And then back down.

"What's the word from your brother, Tina?"

"He's recovering fast. He'll be up here in a

couple of weeks, on limited duty."

Ben's son had been badly wounded by a pack of

rednecks while attempting to secure a piece of

land down in Louisiana and bring some education to the

ignorant.

Ben had killed them all.

Ben Raines had absolutely no patience or

tolerance for people who are ignorant, know they are

ignorant, are proud of being ignorant, and intend

to remain ignorant until the day someone does the

world a favor and shovels dirt in their face.

Ben turned to face his daughter, a slight smile

playing around his lips. "You feel like taking a

ride, girl?"

She cocked her head to one side and mentally braced

herself. Her father, if he made up his mind to do it,

would charge Hell armed only with a glass of

water. "Ah ... what do you have in mind, Dad?"

"You game, or not?"

She sighed. "OK. Now tell me where we're

going?"

Ben was amused. Half the camp had gone

into hysterics when he walked into his CP and

announced that he and Tina were going to take a little

drive into the city.

"The Scouts haven't even gone into the damn city,

Ben!" Ike had yelled at him.

"Perfectly ridiculous idea, Ben!" Cecil

snapped at him. "I won't hear of it."

"I say, General," Dan Gray-the

ex-British SAS officer-put his two cents"

worth in, "I find that suggestion to be quite

unreasonable and not fully thought through."

Doctor Chase muttered obscenities under his

breath and glared at Ben.

Little Jersey, about four feet ten inches tall and a

Rebel to the core, summed it all up. "You might

go into the city, General; we don't have the right to stop

you. But you damn sure ain't goin' in alone!" She

turned to face him, the top of her bereted head

hitting him just about chest high.

Ben laughed at her. "All right, Jersey.

What'd you have in mind?"

Now he was rolling along, stuck in a damned

greasy old APC, with tanks in front of and behind

him.

"It would seem," Ben said sourly, "that since I

am the commander of this army, I might have some say in my

method of transportation. I cannot see one lousy

thing!"

They were rolling along over the just-cleared Bayonne

Bridge. What they were going to encounter once the

bridge was past them was anybody's guess.

Gray's Scouts had only advanced as far as one

block past the bridge, and were waiting there for the

convoy.

"It's for your own good, General," Jersey told

him.

"That's what my father used to say, just before he beat my

butt with a belt."

Little Jersey laughed at the expression on his

face, thinking: Yeah, and you probably deserved it,

too!

"As far as we go, General," the driver called.

"Scouts are signaling for us to halt."

"Good," Ben muttered. He banged his head on the

way out and was muttering curses as he walked

up to the Scouts, already in a confab with Dan Gray.

"J. F. Kennedy Boulevard is a real mess,"

Ben was told. "A squad just came back from

checking it out. Not worth the effort, at this time,

to clear it."

Ben looked at an old map. "Five-oh-one?"

"Scouts are only a block up now, General,"

Dan told him. "It's slow work."

"Any sign of life?"

"No, sir. Nothing. But lots of skeletons that

have been picked clean. Scouts report the bones

appear to be old."

Ben nodded and spread his map on the hood of a

Jeep. "All right, people. Well have to do this by the

numbers. I want all the bridges cleared and

passable. And heavily guarded at both ends around the

clock. Round up portable generators, especially

near the waterline. I want the bridges lighted

at night. Ike, see if you can find some Navy

or Coast Guard vessels and get them running.

And block off the subways. They've had years of

neglect and no telling what shape they're in. I

also don't want these Night Crawlers to come at us

from them."

Ike nodded.

Ben turned to Dan. "Tell your Scouts

to return. We don't move until our pilots

have done extensive flybys of the entire city."

To Cecil: "Contact Joe at Base Camp

One and have him fly up some heat-seekers. Let's

just see what we're up against.

"Maggie Thatcher's girdle!" Dan blurted,

looking at the pictures from the flybys. The

heat-seekers showed almost entirely red on any

grid they chose to look at. "There must be several

hundred thousand people left in the city."

"But which ones are friendlies and which ones are bogies?"

Cecil asked.

"And how do they survive?" Doctor Chase

asked.

"Probably with human farms," Ben told them

all. "Their outriders bring back prisoners and they

force-feed them until they're nice and fat. Then the

Night People eat them." He glanced at Chase.

"Don't look so startled, Lamar. You were briefed

on the dietary habits of the Night P."

Doctor Chase drew on nearly seventy years

of living-although he neither looked nor behaved like a

man that age-to sum up his opinion of the Night

Peopled Not one word of it was in the least

complimentary.

"You through?" Ben asked him.

"Perverted, savage, Godless, despicable

bastards!" Chase finished it.

"Thank you, Doctor, for that highly professional

summation of our immediate enemy." Dan smiled at him.

"Up yours, too!" Chase stalked away, Ben's

current ladylove, Doctor Holly Allardt,

walking fast to keep up with him.

The Rebel commanders once more bent over the

pictures taken from spotter planes; but this time they

were looking at blown-up black-and-white photos.

Ike pointed a finger. "Look there. Hand me that

magnifying glass, Jersey." He grinned at

her. "You appoint yourself General Raines's

personal bodyguard, half-pint?"

"He hasn't complained yet," she fired back.

Grinning, Ike studied the picture. He compared the

picture to a detailed map of the city. "On top

of the Solow Building, Ben. That's a man and a

woman, both of them neatly dressed and both of them

armed. Take a look."

Ben bent over the picture, using the glass for

magnification. But he only briefly studied the

man and woman. He moved the magnifying

glass upward, north, into Central Park, past the

Pond, carefully studying the area. "Gardens.

Gardens all over the place, and damn well

tended. Look how clean it is, people. From

Fifty-second at ... ah ..." He checked the

city map. "... Madison, all the way over and

including Columbus Avenue. Then north all the

way up to ... ah ... Seventy-second

Street. Nearly spotless. What the hell is

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ValorintheAshes Ashes09 WilliamW.Johnstone "Here'slookingatyou,kid."-FromCasablanca CHAPTER1"Sevenmajorbridges,sixrivers,fiveboroughs,fourstadiums,threeairports,twostates,andwhatwasonceaveryexcitingandbeautifulcity."ThenBenhadtoexplaintotheyoungermembersofhiscontingentofRebelsexactlywhatabor...

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William W. Johnstone - Ashes 09 - Valor In The Ashes

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