Out of the Ashes

Rep. Carol Helger answered the donging of her apartment doorbell and took a twelve-inch bayonet through her chest. The young woman who shoved the heavy blade into her spat on the still-writhing body, left the blade in her, and quietly left the building.

The zero squads were busy that stormy, revengeful night. Very busy. The final tally was thirty-one senators and seventy-four representatives dead. Twelve cabinet heads dead and the entire Joint Chiefs were also wiped out. A few zero squad members made it out of Richmond to rejoin the eastern-based Rebels. Most died in shootouts with the police. Only one zero squad member had not worked that night of terror. He slept soundly in a motel room three hundred miles from Richmond. He had only one person to kill.

Badger Harbin was to kill the president of the United States.

Richmond went into a panic. No one could possibly guess at the number of assassins roaming the streets, killing at random. Innocent men and women were killed by federal agents and police during raids on suspected Rebel sympathizers. Martial law was declared. The police were federalized. It was the beginning of America's first true police state.

President Logan smiled and leaned back in his leather chair. He was very pleased with the way things were going. Seven weeks since the awful assassinations, and the country was settling down. He had rid himself of a cheating wife and accomplished his life's dream: he had an iron grip on the country. The previous night he had dreamed of being crowned king of America.

Yes, Logan smiled, things were sailing right along. And, best of all, that damned Ben Raines was dead. That damned troublemaker was finally dead and through.

Or was he? The president frowned at the thought. His agents swore that Raines was dead; swore they'd shot him and a young blonde woman who was with him. Said they saw them fall out there in Washington, up near the British Columbia border.

“Damn it!” Logan swore. Why hadn't they made more effort to retrieve the body and bring it back with them? Put the stinking, bullet-riddled carcass on public display, to show people that when the government says do something, by God this is what happens if you don't follow orders.

The president stood and stretched. He walked out of his office and up the hallway. “Get my guards,” he told an aide. “I'm going for a walk.”

Logan tried to take a walk every morning at ten o'clock, rain or shine. He had missed his walk the past few days because of meetings and was irritable because of it. Now he would have his walk.

His last walk.

Outside the new White House, as it was still called, across the street in a public park, a young man sat, feeding the birds and the squirrels, enjoying the cool breeze of fall; a handsome young man, in his late twenties or early thirties. He looked very much the part of a highly successful executive, dressed in the height of fashion. He'd drawn the attentions of a dozen ladies strolling. The young man had smiled at them, then ignored them. Seemingly preoccupied with the time, he kept looking at his wristwatch.

Ben Raines gazed at the reflection of his face and upper torso in the still waters of the little creek in northern Idaho. He said, “Lord, man, you look like you've been dissected and rejected.”

Ben was now in his fifty-third year, completely gray. His face was lined and tanned; body still hard, eyes old.

“No...” A voice spoke from behind him. “Never rejected. Not by me.”

Ben turned, smiling, to look at the woman who had stood by him during the past very bad months. She returned the smile.

“At last count there were nine bullet scars in your hide.” She touched one of the newer scars, pink and dimpled. Her touch became more intimate as she moved her hand from his shoulder to his chest, touching her lips to his mouth.

“I have a meeting in an hour,” he reminded her.

She grinned. “General, there may have been a time when you could last an hour. But not since I've known you.”

Together, they laughed.

In the small park across from the White House, Badger Harbin put his hand on the briefcase. He had heard the newscast, some weeks back, that Gen. Ben Raines was dead. Badger wanted very much not to believe that. And a part of him did not. Gen. Ben Raines, Badger knew, was a hard man to kill.

The attaché case under his hand was ready. In that case he had carefully prepared and packed ten pounds of C-4 plastic explosive, to be detonated electrically, activated by a tiny switch located under the handle of the briefcase.

Badger smiled. It was similiar to the grin of the Grim Reaper.

Vice President Addison stood in the president's now-empty office and fought a silent battle within his mind. The president had been his friend for more than thirty years. But Hilton had done so much twisting and changing in his social and political philosophy over the last years ... Aston felt he no longer knew the man, and he was ashamed of himself for remaining silent at some of Hilton's outrages toward humankind.