Fire in the Ashes

GOD HELP US ALL. WHAT MANNER OF CREATURE HAVE WE CREATED? THEY CAME IN THE NIGHT. I CANNOT LIVE LIKE THIS.

It was unsigned.

“He was talking about the mutant rats,” Ben said. Rosita looked at him, eyes full of doubt. “I wonder what happened to the person who wrote this?” the man who discovered the message asked.

“He went over the side,” Rosita said.

“Probably,” Ben agreed.

No more was said of it until the column rolled onto the bridge. There, in the cold January winds, Ben told his people what had happened to the scouts.

Roanna stepped forward. “General? President? What the hell are you, now?"

Ben had to laugh at her reporter's bluntness. “How about Ben?"

“I'll keep it ‘General.'” She then told him of the AP messages and of her sending Jane to Michigan.

Ben was openly skeptical. “Mutant beings, Roanna? Are you serious?"

“Yes, I am. Same copy that told of mutant rats. Received the same night from AP."

Ben shook his head in disbelief.

“It's highly possible, Ben,” Cecil said, as the cold winds whipped around them. “I seem to recall hearing some doctor say after the initial wave of bombings that God alone would know what type of mutations the radiation would bring in animals and humans."

When Ben finally spoke, his words were hard and firm. “Now I don't want a lot of panic to come out of this. None of us know what happened to our scouts. They were killed. By what or whom, I don't know. What I do know is this: we are going to make the Tri-States. Home, at least for a while. We've got rough country to travel, and we've been lucky so far. I expect some firefights before we get home. So all of us will stay alert.

“We'll be traveling through some ... wild country; country that has not been populated for more than a decade. It's possible we'll see some ... things we aren't ... haven't witnessed before. I hope not. But let's be prepared for anything. When we do stop at motels, we'll double the guards and stay alert. But I don't want panic and talk of monsters. Let's move out. We'll stay on 196 all the way across northern Missouri.

“Let's go, people."

The column of survivors rolled into Missouri and continued westward.

Toward the Tri-States.

Home.

Five

HOMEWARD BOUND...

The column rolled all the rest of that day and all that night, stopping only to fuel the vehicles. They angled south at Bethany and entered Kansas between St. Joseph and Kansas City. Kansas City had taken a small nuclear pop and would be “hot” for many centuries.

They wanted to avoid as much of Nebraska as possible, for that state had taken several strikes back in ‘88, and, like Kansas City, was hot.

They kept rolling, hitting heavier snow, and Ben kept pushing them westward.

They picked up Highway 36 and stayed with it until Ben finally called a halt in central Kansas. They had rolled almost five hundred miles and had not seen one living human being.

It was eerie.

The men and women were exhausted, for they had been forced to stop many times to push abandoned vehicles out of the road, to clear small bridges, and to backtrack when the road became impossible.

At a small motel complex, just large enough to accommodate them all—if they doubled and tripled up in the rooms—the tired band of survivors sprayed and boiled and washed and disinfected the area. They went to sleep without even eating.

When they awakened the next morning, after having slept a full twelve hours, they found themselves snowed in tight.

* * * *

Ben was, as usual, the first one up and out of bed on the morning the silent snow locked them in. Blizzard or not, Ben knew a patrol had to be sent into town for kerosene to keep the heaters going.

Either that or freeze.

Before opening the motel door, to face the bitter cold and blowing snow and winds, Ben looked back at the sleeping beauty of Rosita.

Not much more than a child, he thought. A deadly child, he reminded himself, or Dan Gray would never have sent her out on her own, but still very young.

Bitter thoughts of his own age came to him. He shook them off. Thompson in hand, he stepped from the room, quietly closing the door behind him.

A sentry turned at the soft bootsteps in the snow. “Sir?"

“Get someone to put chains on my truck. I'm going into town."

“Alone, sir!"

Ben looked at the young man for a moment. “Yes,” he said impetuously, suddenly weary of being constantly bird-dogged and watched and guarded.

Goddamn it, he had wandered this nation alone, traveling thousands of miles alone, back in ‘88 and ‘89. He didn't need a nursemaid now.

Fifteen minutes later he was driving into the small town of Phillipsburg. He found a service station and pulled in. There, he found a half dozen 55-gallon drums of kerosene. He wondered how old they were. He pried the cap off one and stuck a rag into the liquid. Away from the drums, he lit the rag. The flame danced in the blowing snow.

He radioed back to the motel, telling the radioman where to find the kerosene and to send people in to get it. And to leave him alone.