Blood in the Ashes (22 page)

The savage torrents of rain and storm blew past the town of McCormick, South Carolina, in the early morning hours. But the raging passage had also concealed the movements of Sam Hartline's men as they slipped silently into position in the town. With practiced ease, the mercenaries planted explosives around the town, enough explosives to flatten three towns the size of McCormick.

Easy, Hartline thought, smiling in the night. Raines has become so confident he's let his guard down.

The top mercenary knew that happened to the best of people at times. He remembered the time when he'd had one of Raines' women, Jerre, the blond beauty. He, too, had become overconfident and let his guard down. That moment of carelessness had almost cost Hartline his life.
¹⁰

He remembered it with bitterness and hate on his tongue.

Smiling, he lifted his walkie-talkie. “Now!” Hartline whispered hoarsely into the speaker cup.

The small town of McCormick blew apart from the massive charges of explosives planted in key locations. The gasoline in the cars and vans and trucks of Tony Silver and the men of the Ninth Order ignited and blew, sending flames leaping into the air and illuminating the now clear and starry night.

Bits and pieces of bodies were hurled through broken windows to land in a sprawl on the littered street. Great bloody chunks of once human beings were flung about like damp bits of papier-mâché. Ropelike strands of intestines coiled and steamed in the fall coolness. Screaming, mortally wounded men crawled about on the street, yelling for help, watching their life's blood pour from them. Heads without bodies bounced and rolled on the concrete.

As the men being attacked fought their way out of sleep and fear and confusion, reaching for their weapons and their pants, running out into the streets, they were chopped to bloody shards of flesh by heavy machine gunfire. AKs and M-16s and M-60s and heavy .50-caliber slugs ripped and tore and spun the men around to fall in dead heaps on the concrete.

“No prisoners!” Hartline yelled over his walkie-talkie. “Kill them all except Ben Raines. I want to shoot that son of a bitch personally.”

“Ben Raines!” One of Silver's men lifted his head to look at Hartline through the blood dripping from a massive head wound. “But Ben Raines ain't—”

He never got to finish his sentence. A .45 slug from one of Hartline's men put the final period to the man's life.

The firefight was short and bloody and savage. And totally without mercy. Sam Hartline's men took no prisoners. They hunted down the wounded and those few who had escaped the initial carnage and shot them.

Just as dawn was pushing silver gray into the eastern skies, Sam Hartline, cigar clamped between strong, even white teeth, walked the streets, inspecting the bloody havoc he had ordered. Hartline snorted his disgust as he walked up and down each stinking, bloody street that had housed what he had assumed to be Raines' Rebels.

“I should have known better,” he muttered. “Goddamnit, I should have known better.”

Hartline's final smile before he reluctantly accepted what had happened was anything but pleasant.

“The lucky son of a bitch did it to me again,” Hartline said.

“What do you mean, Sam?” his second-in-command asked.

“It was too easy. Just too easy. I should have spotted it. But I didn't. Who in the fuck are these people?” He threw the question at anyone who might know the answer.

His men stood around him, bewildered expressions on their faces.

“Look at the condition of these weapons,” Hartline said, pointing to an M-16. “You think Ben Raines would allow a weapon that filthy? Hell, no, he wouldn't. Look at the clothing. Raines' Rebels wear tiger stripe, black, or leaf cammies. These yo-yos are dressed in anything they can find. Shit! In short, people, we hit the wrong bunch.”

Captain Jennings, his second-in-command, was incredulous. “Well, who in the hell are these people, then?”

Hartline shrugged. “Damned if I know. I'd guess the bunch Raines was fighting when we intercepted the radio messages. No telling where Raines got off to.”

“Well,” Captain Jennings struggled to find something bright out of the butcher job. “At least this gives us fewer people to have to worry about fighting at some later date. Right, Sam?”

Hartline laughed and punched the man lightly on the upper arm. “Right, Jennings. I knew I could count on you to find something of value out of this mistaken identity.”

“So what now, Sam? Do we chase Raines?”

Hartline thought about that for a few seconds. He shook his head. “No. If I know Ben Raines, and believe me, I do, he won't be using any long-range radio transmissions. So we'd be chasing the wind just trying to determine where he is or where he's going. Let's head south. We'll break the good news to Mr. Tony Silver about the misfortune that befell his little army. Without his strong-arm boys to back him up, I think Mr. Silver should be quite easily persuaded to join our ranks.”

“I'm told he's got the market cornered on young chicks,” Jennings said with an ugly, anticipatory smile.

Sam felt a warmth spread throughout his groin. The images of moaning young girls and firm flesh and tight pussies filled his head. Just the thought of inflicting pain excited him. “Yes,” he said, returning the smile. “So I understand.”

Ben's convoy reached Highway 76 and edged west by northwest, traveling slowly, with heavily armed Scouts spearheading the way. They saw a few signs of life passing through Seneca, in western South Carolina, but the smoke from cooking fires coming from chimneys was all they saw. Ben made no attempt to contact any of those inside the closed and shuttered homes.

At Westminster the convoy swung still further north and moved into the mountains, again entering another part of the Sumter National Forest, edging toward the Chattahoochee National Forest, an immense tract of mountainous terrain that stretched for almost a hundred miles across the top of Georgia. The Rebels crossed the Chattoga River and Ben ordered the column halted for the noon meal and some rest at a town called Clayton.

“A hundred and fifteen miles to go, people,” Ben told his contingent. “Approximately. But we're going to take our time getting there. We're going to keep our heads up and stay alert. This is Ninth Order territory, so be alert for ambushes. When we get up to Lake Chatuge, up near the North Carolina border, we'll contact Base Camp. See what's shaking down there. If they can tell us we're close to the headquarters of the Ninth Order, we may just wait there for more troops and just go on and wipe that bunch of nuts from the face of the earth. We'll just have to wait and see. For now, you people get some food in you and take a rest.”

“Like I said, Raines,” Gale told him. “You get off on combat. When did you get your first gun as a child?”

“When I was about six months old,” Ben said with a straight face.

“Come on, Raines! Will you get serious?”

“I am serious. I literally cut my teeth chewing on the barrel of my great grandfather's old Civil War .44. It was a Remington, I think.”

“I believe it, Raines. I really believe it.” She walked away, muttering, toward the chow line.

Ike failed to see the huge hole in the old highway and the right front wheel dropped off into the weather-rutted pothole, slamming both him and Nina around in the cab. Both of them heard metal popping and both began cussing.

Then they saw the entire wheel, with tire intact, go rolling down the old highway.

Nina said some very unladylike words, ending with, “Well, Ike, I guess it's back to walking.”

Ike looked at the right front of the pickup. There was no repairing this damage. Ike said a few choice words and pulled the pickup out of the road, parking it on the shoulder.

Both of them looked at the highway marker on the right side of the road. BLAIRSVILLE. The mileage was unreadable, but it had been a single number.

“At best it's one mile,” Ike said. “The worst it can be is nine miles.”

Ike was thoughtful for a moment, then checked the old map. “I got a hunch, Nina. Let's forget about Blairsville and head for this lake up near the North Carolina border.”

“Why there?” she questioned. “Won't we be going away from Base Camp?”

“Yeah. But like I said: I got a hunch. You game?”

“I'm with you, Ike.”

The pair gathered up what they could carry and began trudging up the center of the road, Ike bitching with each step.

A huge hole had been scraped out of the damp earth and the bagged bodies of the men, women and children killed in the coup attempt were carefully laid in the excavation. The earth began claiming them as the bulldozers covered the silent shapes of friends, wives and husbands, lovers, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters.

Those men and women who had sided with Captain Willette. in the coup attempt were placed in another pit far away and covered with earth. Their final resting place would go unnoticed and unmarked.

Cecil read several passages from the Bible as he stood over the raw earth. The names of those killed had been given to the stone mason and he was working at his laborious task. It would be weeks, perhaps months, before all the names were cut into several large stones.

Cecil closed his Bible, shook his head at the tragedy of it all, and walked away from the grave site. A runner from the communications shack found him and handed him a message.

“It's from that fellow that General Raines told us about,” the runner said. “That Harner fellow down in Macon.”

Cecil looked at the handwritten message. “Have word that a large force of mercenaries destroyed Tony Silver's army along with most of the troops of the Ninth Order who had been in combat with General Raines' Rebels in South Carolina. Have word that slave revolts occurring on many of Silver's work farms in both north Florida and south Georgia. Still about five hundred of Silver's army left and about that many men of the Ninth Order. A full platoon of Silver's men camped just east of the ruins of Atlanta, around Stone Mountain. We skirted them this morning and are proceeding toward your Base Camp. Will arrive camp area noon tomorrow. Harner.”

“Slave revolt!” Cecil said, folding the paper and tucking it in his pocket. “Dear God.
Slaves!
I thought all that ended about 1865.”

“It's a big land, Cec,” Dan Gray told him. “We really don't know what is happening out there.” He waved a hand.

“Yes,” Cecil replied. He looked south. His eyes were bleak. “I can but wish the slaves the best of luck.”

“I wish we had the personnel to help,” Dan said.

“So do I, friend. So do I.”

“No reply from any of our people up north,” Tony was informed. “And I've been trying to contact them all day. What do you think it means, Tony?”

“I think it means they've bought it,” Tony said.

“Yeah.”

Tony slumped back in his chair. That feeling of impending doom he'd been experiencing all day once more settled around him like a damp, stinking shroud. And he couldn't seem to shake it. Not even liquor would dull the sensation.

“Any further word from north Florida?” Tony asked.

“Yeah. All bad. The big plantation down at Live Oak was completely overrun by the slaves. I don't know how they got them guns. The last report we received, the guards had barricaded themselves in the radio building. You could hear all sorts of shootin'. Then the radio went dead. So I guess them guys bought it, too.”

“How bad's our strength been cut?”

The man shook his head. “Well, if our guys up in South Carolina bought it, that means we lost sixty, seventy percent, Tony. But a full company got out of Perry. They're headin' up this way.”

“Ben Raines and his Rebs musta circled around,” Tony said.

“Yeah, boss. He's a sneaky bastard, that one is.”

But Tony didn't believe it was Raines who had wiped out his people and the troops of the Ninth Order. Tony did not possess second sight, but he could tell when things were going sour.

“It wasn't Raines,” Tony said. “I been kiddin' myself about that.”

“What do you mean, boss? If it wasn't Raines, then who in the hell was it? You don't think maybe it was them Russians, do you? Last word we got all them folks was out west.”

“No, I don't think it was the Russians. We've had no reports of them being anywhere near here. But I sure would like to know who the son of a bitch was that zapped my men.”

“Why, my good fellow,” a voice came from the open doorway. “Regrettably, I did.”

Ike lifted the walkie-talkie and listened. From the strength of the transmission, he figured he and Nina must be practically sitting on top of the Ninth Order's headquarters.

Together, they listened in silence. When the transmissions had concluded, Ike summed it up, speaking more to himself than to her. “So the soldiers sent down south were wiped out, to a man, along with several hundred troops of this guy Silver.” He looked at Nina. “You know anything about this guy named Silver?”

“He's a whore-master. He is just as evil as Sister Voleta, in his own way. I've never seen him, but I've heard stories about him. He keeps slaves to work his farms. He has—” she pursed her lips—“oh, I heard about a half dozen farms and ranches down south, in Florida. And he likes young girls. I mean, real young girls. Eleven and twelve, that young. He likes to hurt them during the . . . sex. He has several hundred women of all ages in whorehouses around the country. Young boys, too. And he supplies women and girls and boys to warlords around the country, too. ”

Ike looked at her, a dozen questions on his lips. “Warlords, Nina? Tell me more. Where have I been to have missed all this?”

“You really don't know about the warlords, Ike? You're not just funnin' me?”

“No, I'm not funnin' you, honey. You see, we were kinda isolated—the Rebels—for almost a decade.”

“What's that mean?”

“Isolated?”

“No. Decade.”

“About ten years.”

“Oh. Well, warlords is kinda like in some of them books I read. Back in the olden times, I mean. This one man, he gets hisself a bunch of other men together, and they stake out a certain parcel of land. So many miles thisaway, and so many miles thataway. Him and the men control all that by force. All the land is hisn.”

“His, baby. His. Not hisn.”

“His,” she corrected herself. “Anyways, all the people within the land claimed by the guy pay him for protection. Whether they wants to or not. They ain't got no choice in the matter. If they don't pay, the warlord kills them. They's all kinds of them people spread out acrost the land. You really didn't know, did you, Ike?”

“No,” Ike said softly. “No, I didn't. But it doesn't surprise me. I ...” he sighed. “I guess I should have expected something like it. You've traveled around the country quite a bit, haven't you, Nina?”

Her face brightened in recall. “Oh, yeah! I sure have, Ike. I been all over. I been all the way up to the big water the Indians call ... what was it them Indians called it? Oh, yeah, I remember now. Gitche Gumee. I been—”

“The what?” Ike looked at her, a very startled expression on his face. “What did you just say? Gitche Gumee?”

“Yeah. Ain't you never heard of that before, Ike?”

“Why . . . sure I have! It's from Longfellow's ‘Song of Hiawatha.' Oh. OK. You must be talking about Lake Superior?”

She cocked her head and looked strangely at him. “I don't know nothing about that, Ike. You see, there ain't no white folks up where I went. It's all Indians. That land belongs to them, so they said. And I sure as hell wasn't gonna argue with 'em none. They didn't hurt me a bit. They was real friendly and kind. Give me a bed to sleep in and warm food. And then the next morning, they showed me around the lake and their camp. Tepees and all that. Just like the old times in the books I read. But they called the big water Gitche Gumee. I don't know and never heard of nobody named Hiawatha. Why don't you tell me about him?”

“Well.” Ike opened his mouth, then promptly shut it. No point in confusing her, and that would be just about all he would accomplish. Longfellow cast Hiawatha as an Ojibway. But in truth, he was based on the exploits of the Iroquois tribe. That in itself would probably boggle the girl's mind. Ike sighed heavily. Shit! he thought. Hiawatha, you are just going to have to wait a spell.

Nina looked at the expression on Ike's face. “You're sad with me, aren't you, Ike? I done something wrong.”

“No, no!” Ike looked at her and smiled. “No, I'm not sad or mad with you, Nina. Not at all. I'll tell you the story of Hiawatha someday. I promise. Right now, though, I'd like for you to tell me about these warlords. How many have you seen or heard of?”

“Oh, golly, Ike.” She shrugged. “Bunches and bunches of them. That's what this here Sister Voleta is, kind of. But she's really weird. Up north of here, right on the edge of the big mountains, is a guy name of Joe Blue. He's a mean bastard, but he ain't evil like Sister Voleta. Blue'll just shoot you if he takes it in his head. But he'll do it clean. Blue claims . . . oh, four, five counties. All the way from Johnson City clear up into Virginia. There's another feller named Henshaw over to Boone in North Carolina claims a lot of land, too. I mean, a right smart piece of ground. Up in Kentucky now, over to the Daniel Boone Forest, all that is claimed by a man and woman named Red and Nola. They're crazy, I think. To the east, now, I traveled as far as the big water would let me. I got captured by these men call themselves the Brunswick Vigilantes. They claim all the land for miles up and down the big water. That's the . . .” She was thoughtful. “Yeah! The Atlantic. Them men didn't hurt me none, but they sure made it plain they wasn't happy to see me. They gimmie some food and told me to leave and don't come back. And to warn others not to venture—that's the word they used—over in that part of the country. Oh, Ike, I seen warlords near‘bouts ever'where I been the past two, three years. ”

Ike sat silent for a few moments, deep in thought. So Ben was right, he reflected. As usual. Ben said it would come to this. The survivors are spinning backward in time much faster than our ancestors progressed. Somehow, someway, we—and it's going to be up to men and women my age—must put the brakes on this backward slide.

But how?

“Education,” he said aloud.

“What'd you say, Ike?”

“Education, honey. That's the key. Education. Unlike what was advocated back in the sixties and seventies and eighties, there must be
one
type of education for everybody, regardless of race or religion or whatever. It's that kind of shittiest-assed thinking that helped get us in the shape we're in now. But if you said anything back then, you were immediately branded a racist,”

“Ike, what in the hell are you talkin' about? I don't understand nothin' you just said.”

“Let me put it this way, Nina. You know anything about mules?”

“Hell, yes. Horses, too.”

“Well, then, if you was to put two males in harness, and one wanted to go gee and the other wanted to go haw, you wouldn't get a whole hell of a lot of plowin' done, would you?”

“Any fool knows the answer to that. You sure as hell wouldn't.”

“That's the way it was with education when the country went liberal on us.”

“What's liberal mean?”

Ike sighed and then laughed. “Honey, don't get me started on that. Let's just say that instead of trying to get a curriculum . . .”

She looked strangely at him.

“That means a course of study.”

“Oh.”

“A curriculum that would best educate all, regardless of color, some folks said that was unfair. Some among them—not all, certainly, but some—wanted to bastardize education. Instead of saying we are all Americans, we are going to live and work and speak in English, as set forth by men and women much more intelligent than me, we are going to call an object by its proper name, some wanted to twist and change all that. Some, again, not many, but some, wanted to bring the level of education down to their level, instead of really making an effort to climb upward. It didn't work, Nina. One cannot regress, one cannot stand still. There is only one direction, and that is forward.”

“You sure do talk pretty when you want to, Ike. You know that?”

Ike laughed. “That's the trick, honey. I can butcher the King's English, but I have a solid base in good education. Some folks didn't want that solid base.”

“I sure would like to have it. Anybody that wouldn't must be next to a fool in their thinking.”

“That's my opinion on the matter. And I'll see that you get an education, Nina. I promise.”

“How much further to the lake?”

“We won't make it today. We're gonna have to take it slow and easy from now on. We're right in the middle of Ninth Order territory.” He got to his feet and slipped on his pack, picking up his M-16 and slinging the shotgun. “Let's head out, Nina. And remember this: Before we stick our heads around a curve in the road, we quietlike check what's around the bend first. We've come too far to get caught now.”