25 Two

Just a few miles after the Rebels moved across the state line, the first thing they noticed as they rolled along the old interstate was no smoke from heating or cooking fires, no evidence of human habitation.

They all knew what that meant the creepies had ranged out from the ruins of the city in search of food. They would be holding human snacks in basements and tunnels all over the city, fattening them up for the slaughter.

Jersey broke the silence of a few miles. “I hate these goddamn people. Sometimes you can rehab a punk and make something decent and useful out of them. But not these … cannibals!” She spat out the last word as she shuddered in revulsion.

Jersey knew, as did every Rebel, that when fighting the Night People, laying back out of harm’s way and letting artillery do most of the work just wouldn’t cut it with the creeps. In the cities, they were nearly always bunkered in, deep underground, and when the big guns ceased their

 

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rain of death, the creeps crawled out of their stinking holes and waited to mix it up hand-to-hand. The Night People were a disgusting and despicable bunch, but no one who had ever faced them could short them on courage and fighting ability.

And they never surrendered. When confronting the creeps, the Rebels knew they could count on a fight to the death.

“Reports coming in.” Corrie spoke from the second seat of the big wagon. “The creeps are waiting for us. Scouts report what appears to be a heavy concentration in the ruins.”

Nobody had to ask how the scouts could tell when the creeps were all underground and approximately where and how many of them: the smell.

Creeps worldwide seemed to share an aversion to bathing, and their body odor was enough to put a polecat to shame.

“Battalions directly north and south of our position not yet in line with us,” Corrie continued. “They’re both at least half a day behind us due to the roads.”

Georgi Striganov’s 5 Batt, Rebet’s 6 Batt, and Jackie Malone’s 12 Batt were north of Ben, slogging through the spring rains and traveling on bad roads, hitting the larger towns and clearing them of punks and creeps. They had encountered only a few gangs of punks and they gave it up without much of a fight. Ike’s 2 Batt and Greenwalt’s 11 Batt were just south of Ben. The other battalions-with a couple of exceptions-were standing by, waiting for the big push to get underway, or helping small communities get back on their feet. Two other battalions were waiting for Ben’s orders to move. Ben planned very carefully. But first there was a little game to be played between Ben and Corrie.

 

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“What about this little town just ahead?” Ben asked innocently.

“That’s where the scouts first reported from,” Corrie said over a smile of her own. “It’s a little bigger than a town, boss. It was a city of just over a quarter of a million before the Great War.”

“Oh. Very well. We’ll bivouac just west of the outskirts. Maybe we’ll get lucky tonight,” he added with a very thin smile.

The team grinned and exchanged glances. Ben knew that without Corrie telling him; it was a game they played. They knew what Ben was up to: he would have his people appear to be bivouacking for the night, but in reality the Rebels would be setting up ambush sites, hoping to sucker the enemy in under cover of darkness; night was the creeps’ favorite time to fight. With luck, the Rebels would draw hundreds of creeps from the larger ruins to the east

“Scouts report the main body of creeps have moved back into the rubble of the city,” Corrie said.

“Pull the scouts back and tell them to pick a spot,” Ben ordered. There was no need for him to tell the forward people to stay alert. That would have been a superfluous order. Nor did he have to tell them in code what he had planned for the night. They knew and would be eyeballing the best locations to lay out anti-personnel mines, stringing black wire ankle-high, and rigging other nasty little surprises the Rebels were famous for. Or infamous.

When it came to warfare, Ben Raines and his Rebels were not nice people.

“Order Buddy, Dan, and Buck to gear up and move in a bit closer,” Ben ordered.

Ben’s son, Buddy, who commanded 8 Batt, designated the special operations battalion, and Dan Gray, the former British SAS officer who commanded 3 Batt, and Buck Taylor, who commanded 15 Batt, had moved into position.

 

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A few miles south, artillery units had moved into place, waiting for Ben’s orders, and the souped-up P-51Es were waiting to go in at Ben’s command.

As the Rebels were setting up their “bivouac” area, Ben said, “Hot coffee only, Corrie. We eat cold rations tonight Everybody stay heads-up all the time.”

The Rebels noticed that Ben was carrying his old Thompson SMG and his magazine pouch was filled with spares. He walked the area, stopping to chat innocuously enough for a moment with platoon leaders and COs. “Everybody stay in body armor. As soon as the creeps start rushing us, and they will just after dark …” The wind had shifted, coming out of the east, bringing with it a strong odor of unwashed bodies. “… The artillery will open up just behind them and keep up the barrage. That will prevent the creeps from retreating. We’ll keep illumination flares up for the duration. Fly-bys have shown the creeps are concentrating on the this side of the city … facing us in a defensive posture and not paying attention behind them as they should. I don’t think they realize they’ve been put in a box. If we have any kind of luck, we can get a lot of our work done tonight. I want everyone with two full canteens of water, enough ammo for a sustained fight Plenty of grenades. Once they realize they’re trapped, die creeps will come at us in their usual banzai attack.” Ben smiled thinly. “This night is going to be very interesting.”

As dusk drew nearer, the Rebels got into position, behaving as if it were the close of a typical day in the field. The mess tents were up, with the cooks moving back and forth as if everything was normal. But their weapons were within easy reach and when the first shot was fired, diey knew exacdy where to jump.

“Buddy and Dan in position,” Corrie reported to Ben. “Artillery ready to go.”

 

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Ben nodded his understanding and looked around him. “Everybody in position?”

“Yes, sir. The tanks were the last to shift around. Everything is setting on ‘go’.”

“Full dark in about 15 minutes. Let’s get the team into position.”

To an observer, the camp looked normal. It was anything but normal. The Rebels were on high alert.

If Ben’s plan worked, and indications were it was working to perfection, the creeps in the ruins of Pittsburgh had already shifted many of their people out and west, to beef up the creeps in what used to be the small city of Washington, hoping to catch the Rebels by surprise.

The surprise was going to be on the creeps.

Corrie was standing very close to Ben, behind what was left of a concrete block wall. “Scouts report a large wave of creeps coming dead at them, boss,” she said in a low voice. “They are approaching what we have designated as the FFZ.” No man’s land, a free fire zone for the Rebels. Soon the slaughter would begin and the night would be sparked with muzzle blasts, the roar of heavy artillery, and the screams of those caught in the open.

“Tell our forward people to fall back.”

“Yes, sir.”

“The creeps never learn,” Ben muttered. “Luckily for us.”

None of his team replied, knowing no reply was expected.

Ben started to say that this time, on this sweep, they would get rid of the creeps once and for all. But he curbed his tongue, recalling that he’d said the same thing on the previous sweeps and the damn Night People just kept coining back. He frowned and shook his head. Scientists down at Base Camp One were now saying the cannibalism

 

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might be caused by an illness due to chemicals in their water.

“Years of drinking bad water?” Ben had asked, struggling to keep sarcasm out of his tone.

“Yes,” they replied.

“The goddamn creepies are all over North America, Mexico, Central America, South America, and Europe. Every place in this world we have gone, we have run into creepies. And you want me to believe it was caused by bad water?”

“Well …” The scientists said in unison.

“Why didn’t any of us go cannibalistic before we formed Tri-States and got water purification systems up and running, back when we were drinking whatever water we could find?” Ben asked.

The scientists had no reply to that question.

“Keep trying,” Ben told them.

Ben smiled as he remembered that scene. His scientists were the finest in the world (he got them from all over the world) but they sometimes had a tendency to keep their heads in the ozone. Somebody had to bring them down and plant their feet firmly on the ground.

“Creeps approaching the point of no return,” Corrie whispered. “Sixty seconds.”

“Ready the IFs,” Ben said softly.

“IFs ready, boss. Thirty seconds.”

“Drop them in,” Ben ordered.

The illumination flares were dropped down the tubes and the night was shattered, a harsh white light ripping the darkness. What appeared to be hundreds of robed men and women were caught in the glare just as 120mm and 155mm rounds began dropping in from miles away. Fifty-caliber machine guns opened up from the Rebel side, and those creeps who weren’t torn apart by the heavy incoming artillery were cut down by machine-gun fire. It

 

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was bloody carnage, and that was exactly what Ben had planned.

As those creeps who had managed to survive the surprise ambush in the huge clearing came into range-and there were plenty of creeps to go around-Ben’s people in the bivouac area opened fire. Rounds of .223s and 7.62s cut the night air and more dead and savagely wounded were added to the bodies already littering the ground in the free fire zone. Bodies and shattered pieces of bodies lay in grotesque and bloodied positions under the hard light of the illumination flares, which kept the night as bright as day.

Not a single creepie made it through the defensive line of the Rebels. A few of the stinking, robed and hooded men and women came close, but they were cut down by a hail of bullets from the Rebels, some no more than a few meters from the first line of defense.

“Cease fire, Corrie,” Ben ordered, his voice hollow-sounding and dim to his ears after the sustained roar of battle. “Get me a casualty report from all units, please.”

“Coming in now, boss.”

Ben waited. He coughed several times, clearing his throat of the acrid taste of gunsmoke. He took a sip of water from one of his canteens. It tasted flat to his tongue.

“No dead, boss,” Corrie reported. “Only a few slightly wounded. Nothing serious.”

“We lucked out again,” Ben said. “How many creeps are estimated to have made it back to the city?”

“Thirty-five to 40 percent.”

“We’ll have our work cut out for us tomorrow, then. Beginning tomorrow, that is,” he added.

“Snipers in position and ready to go,” Corrie said.

“Keep the flares up until they signal they’re through.”

“Yes, sir.”

Rebel snipers would spend the next 20 minutes or so

 

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putting lead into anything that moved out in the free fire zone. The Rebels did not take creepie prisoners. There was no point.

“I want bulldozers up here at first light,” Ben ordered.

“Yes, sir. Contacting the combat engineers now.”

The combat engineers would scoop out a huge hole and the creeps would be buried in a mass grave. Sometimes, when earth-moving equipment was not available, the Rebels burned creepie bodies. None among diem liked that job, for the stench was horrible and die smell difficult to get out of one’s clothing.

“I think I’ll get some coffee,” Ben said. “Have platoon leaders tell their people to stagger sleep shifts diis night. The creeps just might decide to try it again. Although I doubt it We kicked their ass pretty hard.”

Ben ambled over to a darkened mess tent, carrying his old Thompson casually. As so often occurred when he used the old Chicago Piano-which was seldom now-the younger Rebels, and many of the older ones, shied away from him. The old Thompson, which had been reworked so many times diere was not one original part left in it, was viewed by many (aldiough never to Ben’s face) as something almost godlike. Most Rebels refused to touch it. Ben knew all this, and knew too that the Rebels considered him almost godlike.

Ben Raines was legend, and not just among his own people. He had been wounded so many times he had lost count. He had been taken prisoner several times, escaped, and had singlehandedly waged deadly war against his captors. He had been caught in artillery barrages and survived. He had been shot and fallen off a mountain out west, and survived with only a few broken bones.

He could have almost any woman he wanted, yet the one woman he had loved with all his heart had constantly spurned him. Jerre had been killed in die Northwest a few

 

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years back, buried in a lonely, lovely spot that Ben had chosen. He had never stopped loving Jerre, and Ben knew he probably would take his love for her to the grave.

Ben pulled a mug of coffee and sat down on a bench in the darkened tent. He was left alone, and knew he would be as long as he sat in the tent, unless one of his own team came in to join him. Jersey, of course, had followed him to the tent; she never let him out of her sight. If anyone wanted to kill Ben Raines, they would first have to go through Jersey. He knew the rest of his team was close by, but they would leave him alone unless something came up.

Lonely at the top, Ben thought, sipping the strong coffee.

He remembered when the Rebels were first formed; he knew the names of every member of the small band, of Constitutionalists-the proper name for the Rebels-who had set out to form their own government, based on the constitution of the United States and the writings of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence. But of that original bunch, only a small handful remained. Most were dead. And those that remained, like Ben, were middle-aged.

Ben smiled in the gloom of the tent, remembering the women he’d known over the years. He had several children, but of them all, only Buddy Raines, his oldest son, showed any interest in command leadership. The others were fine kids, bright and good-looking and outgoing, but not interested in assuming any leadership role … at least not yet.

Ben doubted they ever would, for their mothers kept them as far away from Ben as possible. Ben seldom saw his kids, and doubted he would know them if they walked into the mess tent.

But if that was the way their mothers wanted it, that was fine with Ben.

 

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He had wars to fight and a country to resettle.

He looked up as Anna strolled into the tent, his Husky, Smoot, on a leash. The adopted Anna was closer to him than any of his blood children, with the exception of Buddy.

Ben thought of his first Husky, Juno, whom he had found (or the Husky had found him, rather) down south, just after the Great War, and who had lived to be an old dog. Juno had died fighting government soldiers who had invaded the original Tri-States, up in the Northwest.

“Good fight, hey, General Ben?” Anna asked, sitting down beside him.

“Have you ever been in a bad fight, Anna?” Ben questioned.

“Only the ones when I was on the losing side back in the old country.”

“I suppose that would spoil your day,” Ben muttered. Anna lived to fight. Ben suspected strongly that in a couple of years, she would be requesting permission to move over to Buddy’s special operations battalion. She had already been through jump training, and even Dan Gray, the former British SAS officer, admitted there was little he could teach the young woman about guerrilla warfare and the art of silent killing. Anna was a natural soldier.

“So we move into the big city tomorrow, hey?” Anna asked.

“What’s left of it.”

“Good,” she replied, flashing a smile. “That means we get to kill creeps close up. See you, General Ben! I’ll take Smoot back to the motor home.” She was gone into the night.

Ben toyed with his coffee mug for a moment. He had never seen anyone who hated the Night People any more than Anna did. He supposed she had good reason to do so. Back in Europe, the creeps had chased Anna and her

 

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small band of young fighters for years, toward the end even offering a reward for her head.

Ben sat for a time, finishing his coffee, thinking, Anna has no business being here. She needs to be back at Base Camp One, attending college, having fun and seeing boys her own age. But whenever he brought that up, she fixed him with those cold pale eyes and shook her head.

“More coffee, general?” one of the cooks quietly asked, standing by the long table with a coffee pot.

Ben looked up and smiled in the gloom. “No thanks. I’ve had plenty.” He stood up. “I’ll see you in a few hours.”

Ben walked slowly back to his motor home. The flares were still popping, filling the night with light. The crack of the sniper rifles was less frequent now. In another 30 minutes or so, the mortar crews would stand down and the night would quiet.

Shifting through the rubble of Pittsburgh would not take long, for if the creeps ran true to form, they would be exiting the ruins now, the women and children moving out first, the adult male survivors the last ones to leave. Only a few volunteers would remain behind, to harass the Rebels. When the Rebels pulled out of the rubble, they would leave behind them a dead city.

Ben slowed his step and cut his eyes. His team was a dozen or so yards behind; never far away. They would not rest until he was secure.

In his motor home, Ben cleaned the old Thompson and put it away. “Maybe it’s time to put it away for good,” he muttered. “Bring an end to an era.”

But he knew he wouldn’t do that. Not yet.

He took his cut-down M-16 out of a closet and cleaned the CAR, then filled an ammo pouch with full .223 magazines. In the distance, the artillery barrage against the city that lay to the east raged. It would continue all night. At

 

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William W. Johnstone

dawn, Buddy’s special ops battalion would seize the airport and make it ready to receive planes.

Ben showered and hit the sack. Smoot jumped up on the bed and curled up at Ben’s side. Within minutes Ben was asleep. As usual, he dreamed of Jerre.