Out of the Ashes

This time it was fear that touched him—open, naked fear. “Did the balloon go up?” he asked aloud. “If so, why was I spared?”

He could not answer his question.

He drove on until he could drive no further. Two cars were blocking the street. Ben did not have to get out of his truck to see that the occupants’ bodies were blackened and decomposing in death.

He backed up, turned around, and drove down a side street until he came to a residential area. He saw no signs of human life, but neither did he see any bodies. He wound his way to the service station and pulled into the drive. There, Ben sat in numb silence, staring at the windows of the Exxon station. The windows were smashed, broken; glass littered the drive. The body of his friend lay sprawled half in, half out of the door.

Ben got out of his truck slowly, not really believing all this was happening—had happened. He corrected his thinking. He knelt down beside the man. Mr. Harnack was stiff and black and stinking. Dogs had gnawed on him.

Ben stepped over the body and walked to the phone. He punched out the numbers of the police department, letting the phone ring twenty times. No answer. He called the sheriff's department. Same results.

Ben felt the butt of the .38, and the touch of the wood was reassuring.

He stood in the doorway and listened intently. He could not hear one human sound coming from the town.

He walked to the desk and turned on the small TV. He got the same results from every channel. And this was cable, coming from Chicago and Atlanta. Nothing from Chicago. Blank screen. The others had the civil defense emblem on the screen, but nothing to explain why.

Bold Strike. The words returned to him. Hunt a hole, partner. “I'm dreaming,” Ben said, his voice sounding strange amid the silence and the death. “What the hell happened? It has to be a dream.”

But he knew he was not dreaming.

He thought, this is nationwide—worldwide. Those thoughts chilled him, bringing beads of sweat to his forehead. “Jesus, am I the last man on earth?”

Then the words of that grizzled sergeant drifted back to Ben as he stood in the doorway, looking out at the mute gas pumps. “Survive is the name of this game, men. Fuck a bunch of candy-assed civilians. When the balloon goes up—and it will go up, believe that—most civilians won't make it, ‘cause they don't know their ass from peanut butter about stayin’ alive. And what is so sickenin’ is, they don't wanna know. They're content. They've got their pretty little houses, two cars in the garage, membership in the country club, and they think being tough means playing football. As far as they're concerned, everything is aces up. But they don't know the meaning of tough. They'll be the victims in any holocaust. But I'm gonna teach you men what tough is—mentally and physically. And when I'm through with you, you'll survive. If you men make it through the first wave, if you don't take one nose-on, most of you will survive.”

Ben nodded his head and instinctively moved from the door into the darkness of the station's work area. He squatted down, all his training returning to him.

The sergeant had said, “Maybe most of you won't make the military your life's work; sure, most of you will pull your hitch and get out. But that's no matter, ‘cause what you learn here in this school, and the other schools you go to; well,"—he smiled—"it'll stay with you. You made it this far, and that proves to me you want to learn the meaning of survival. So even if you get out, you'll push all this training way in the back of your minds—some of you will even try to forget it, ‘cause it's nasty and dirty and dehumanizing. But you won't forget it, and if you ever need it, it'll be right there. Now, get on your goddamned feet and get ready to find out what you're really made of.”

Ben squatted in the shade of the garage area until his legs began to protest from the strain. When he rose, walking a bit to relieve the kinks in his leg muscles, he had reviewed what he had been taught ... years back.

And he knew one thing for certain: he was going to survive.

FOUR

He pulled his truck up to the pumps and filled his tanks, topping off his reserve tank. He found four five-gallon gas cans and filled them, placing them in the bed of his truck. He looked back at Mr. Harnack, nodded his head, and drove off, heading for the police station, only a few blocks away.

The dispatcher was dead, not a mark on him. On the note pad on the table was scribbled: “I'm the last one alive. Getting weak. No help. Atomic bombs hit some cities. Some type of germ stuff got the rest of us. God have—”

He never got to finish the sentence.

“Atomic bombs?” Ben said aloud, his voice hollow and echoing in the room. “Germs?”

It really happened! he thought. I slept through a goddamned war!

“Maybe I'm lucky I did,” he muttered.

He started to pick up the mike to see if anyone would answer his call, then pulled his hand back.

“Yeah—somebody might answer it. But it might be somebody I don't want to see.”