Ashes - Battle In The Ashes Part 29

"Give me that bullhorn," Ben said.

A man wearing two pistols got out and stood on the cracked old highway.

"What's the trouble here? We're not lookin' for no fight, mister."

"You won't have a fight if you just turn those jalopies around and head on back where you came from."

"You just ain't got the right to tell us where we can or can't go."

"I've got over twelve hundred heavily armed Rebels that says I can,"

Ben's voice boomed over the yards between them. "You people just turn around and head on back where you came from and there won't be any trouble.

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But I can a.s.sure you of this: you are not going to go west to join Hoffman and his n.a.z.is."

The man waited just a couple of heartbeats too long before he replied.

"What's that you say? h.e.l.l, I ain't never heard of n.o.body called Hoffman."

"His face is flushing," Beth said, looking at him through binoculars.

"Mister," Ben said flatly. "You're a liar."The man opened his mouth to return an angry protest. He bit off the protest as his eyes swept the hundreds of rifles pointing at him. "We got a right to choose the type of government we want to live under, Ben Raines. And yeah, General, I know who you are."

"The n.a.z.i movement will not flourish in this country, mister," Ben told him. "Not now, not ever."

"We got a right to live decent!" the man shouted, his anger boiling over.

"Who is stopping you from doing that?"

"You are, you son of a b.i.t.c.h!"

"How?"

"By forcin' us to live under rules that we don't want to live under.

That's how."

"And you think Hoffman will be an improvement, right?"

"It'll d.a.m.n sure be better than the rules you people enforce, that's for sure."

"Boy, has somebody fed him a line of c.r.a.p," Jersey said.

"Teams are attempting to flank us," Corrie said. "Left and right."

"This guy's going to open the dance any second now," Ben replied. "Get ready to roll for the ditches."

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He lifted the bullhorn. "n.o.body is forcing any of you to live under Rebel law, mister."

"That's s.h.i.t!" The man started to lift a hand.

"Don't do this, Roy!" a man's voice called out from among the movers'

vehicles. "Hear him out."

"Shut up, Tom!" the spokesman said, turning his head. "How come you and your people want to argue with me every step of the way?"

"Because you're wrong!"

"Mister," Ben spoke through the bullhorn. "Call back your teams trying to flank us. They haven't got a chance."

The man's hand shot up into the air. "Now!" he screamed. "Kill the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. All of them."

Ben and his teams dropped to the old road and rolled to the shoulders, then behind APCs. The Rebels opened fire. They just got out of the line of fire as the main battle tanks and Dusters opened fire with cannon and heavy machine guns. For several hundred yards eastward, the lines of cars and trucks erupted in a seemingly endless wall of flame as the gas tanks exploded. Parts of vehicles and pieces of humans were sky-rocketed into the air by the thunderous explosions.Ben came to his knees, lifting his Thompson to fire, but lowered it when he saw there was nothing to fire at. The Rebels had kept their fire away from the last half of the column, in order to spare the women and kids.

Those women had now grabbed up their kids and were running for the safety of the fields, left and right of the road and the inferno. Bodies and pieces of bodies were sprawled in death on both sides of the old highway. Only a few were moving and moaning in pain.

"Cease fire," Ben called. "Shut it down. It's over."

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The movers had been able to fire only a few rounds before the Rebel wall of death collapsed on them. Ben lifted the bullhorn to his lips. "Stand up with your hands empty. Do it, people."

Slowly those movers still alive-most of them to the rear of the column-began getting to their feet. All were careful to keep their hands in plain sight, without weapons. Many held their hands over their heads.

Cooper lowered binoculars. "They're complying, General. All up and down the line."

Ben lifted his own binoculars. He could see plainly the shock on some faces and the open anger on others.

"How's it feel to be the most hated man in all America, Ben Raines?" a woman screamed out of the thick smoke.

"Hate me all you like, lady," Ben muttered. "You're at the end of a long line."

316.

Chapter Fourteen.The badly shaken survivors of the attack were gathered up and placed under guard. A man was brought to see Ben. Ben sat on a camp stool on the front lawn of an old home, under the shade of a huge tree. The home had been a nice one, made of native stone. Ben looked at the man with a b.l.o.o.d.y bandage around his head.

"What in the h.e.l.l is the matter with you people?" Ben asked. "Why would anybody in their right mind want to join the n.a.z.i party?"

"I really didn't. Believe that, or not. It's the truth. Roy and his bunch convinced us to come along. That was me you heard holler for Roy to hear you out."

"But you went along with him."

"Yes, I did. We did. I wanted to see this Hoffman. See if he was as bad as you people made him out to be."

"He is," Ben said. "Believe me. Ask some of the Spanish people I have in my battalion. Ask them what he did to their people. That is, if you have no objection to speaking with people of different backgrounds."

"I'm not a racist, General. Never have been. But I'm317 old enough to remember quotas and giveaway programs for minorities, and I'm dead set against them."

"So am I. So why are you opposed to joining us?" "I don't like what you teach in your Rebel schools and your laws are too d.a.m.n harsh. You have too many rules and regulations for a man to have to follow." Ben studied the man. "What is your name?" "Torn Riley. I was born in Kentucky, thirty years ago. I have never been in trouble with the law in my life.

I was raised to respect the law."

"The law is what we represent, Tom. Yet you refuse to join us. Tell me, why are you so afraid of your .children being educated?"

Tom Riley looked around him. He saw Rebel doctors and medics taking care of the wounded. Other medical personnel were seeing to the needs of the mover children. "Nice of y'all," he said, a wistful note in his voice.

"We had us a doctor once. Outlaws came and took him to care for some wounded they had. Then they killed him. I found the body. He'd been tortured. You folks are well-organized," he added, almost as an afterthought.

"You're welcome to join the movement, Tom." Tom Riley sighed heavily.

"Maybe it's time. I guess it is. We've been on our own for years. Me, and those seventy odd families who sort of follow my direction. Even though we don't agree with a lot of what you do, General Raines, you folks put others in a hard bind." He tried a smile. "Sure, you'll leave us alone to live the way we choose. But when you say alone, you really mean alone. No help of any kind. Our kids subject to being taken from us. That's blackmail, General."

"It sure is," Ben agreed cheerfully. "Tom, let me try 318.

to explain something to you: this old planet has taken quite a beating over the last few centuries. Now, what is left of the population has a chance to give something back. You can either be a part of that, or you can sit back and do nothing except complain. The Rebels have set aside hundreds of thousands of acres for the animals to live free and wild, as G.o.d intended them to do. We will never cut timber or build homes in those areas. We will allow no hunting in those areas.

"We still don't have a clear idea how much of the population we've lost.

We're constantly having to revise figures. But we believe there is room for all of G.o.d's creatures. There was before the Great War, but Americans were just too shallow and greedy to give much thought to G.o.d's lesser creatures-and there is still a lot of spirited debate among the Rebels as to just who is the lesser of the creatures-us or the animals.

"You say you don't like what we teach in our schools. Do you even know what we teach? Probably not. So I'll tell you. We teach reading, writing, math, and keeping one's body in good shape. Every child who is capable of engaging in physical training gets eight to ten hours of that per week. But we really don't give a d.a.m.n who can throw a baseball or football the farthest, or dribble a basketball better than others. What is put into a child's mind is what we're concerned about. It's senseless and useless to have a highly motivated teacher put something in achild's head during the day only to have it removed by stupid parents when the child gets home. Our children are taught respect for the land, the animals on it, and the people who are trying to rise out of the ashes of war. For those who choose not to take part in the re- 319.

building, they can, quite frankly, go straight to h.e.l.l. Do I make myself clear, Mr. Riley?"

Tom Riley looked back at the twisted carnage on the highway, still burning and smoking. He looked at the rows of dead laid out in the fields, ready for ma.s.s burial. He looked at the Rebels, tough and capable and well-fed and in the peak of physical conditioning. He nodded his head. "Oh, yes, General. You're quite clear on that matter."

"Fine, Tom. You and your people can join us and be a part of that rebuilding, or you can fight us, and most of you will die. It's all up to you."

"Can I take your offer up with those who sort of look to me as their leader?"

"Certainly. I want you to do that."

Tom Riley and his people agreed to return to Kentucky, and after being resupplied by the Rebels, they pulled out. Teams of Rebels would meet them back east, to a.s.sist in the setting up of an outpost. Most of the outposts of the Rebels had been destroyed by Hoffman's terrorist teams, with all of the Rebels having lost good friends to Hoffman's vicious and twisted philosophy, so it was all back to square one for Ben and the Rebels. Nearly everything they had physically accomplished over the long b.l.o.o.d.y years, Hoffman and his people had destroyed.

But starting over was nothing new for the Rebels. They'd been doing that for years. The Rebels just resigned themselves to do it and did it.

The Rebels pulled out the following morning and linked up with the battalions of Buddy, Dan Gray, and Jackie Malone. The Rebels began stretching out, south to north, and setting up roadblocks on every highway 320.

leading west. They were fully aware that they could not possibly stop all western movement, but they could block a large percentage of it. Ben ordered helicopter gunships to join them and had light fixed-wing aircraft up as eyes in the skies.

Recon was reporting a ma.s.sive movement from the east, many of the groups well-armed and spoiling for a fight with anybody who stood in their way of joining the new n.a.z.i movement.

"I guess we now know what all the people we couldn't account for were doing all these years," Dr. Chase said to Ben at a staff meeting.

"Practicing n.a.z.ism."

"And now their great savior is calling on them to rise up and fight,"

Dan Gray added. "Hoffman," he spat out the last.

"Yes," Ben agreed, and then smiled. "But they've got one h.e.l.l of amountain to climb before they can join Field Marshal Hoffman. And that mountain is us."