Out of the Ashes

“I'm beginning to believe, Ben. Look. There's smoke coming from that house over there.” She pointed, saying it with about as much interest as if she were discussing the price of kumquats in the supermarket.

The day was cool, temperature in the low sixties. But not cool enough for a fire, Ben reckoned. He pulled into the drive and looked for dogs. None. “Stay in the truck,” he told Fran.

“I most certainly will not! And don't you dare order me about, Ben Raines.”

Ben nodded, wondering when she was going into shock. Probably, he guessed, when we drive through town and she sees all the bodies ... with the birds and the dogs and the hogs eating on them.

“Then come with me,” he said. “No play on words intended.”

She opened the door.

“There might be fifteen guys in there, all ready to rape you.”

She closed the door and locked it.

Ben checked to see if he'd taken the keys out of the ignition. He had. It would be just like Fran to drive off and leave him.

He walked up the stone walkway and tapped on the door. He held the Thompson in his right hand. The door swung slowly open. Ben did not know the man, but had seen him in town a number of times. In his early sixties, the man appeared to be in good health.

“Afternoon,” Ben said, speaking through the screen door. “I'm Ben Raines.”

“The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away,” the man replied.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Armageddon. The battle has been fought. So sayeth the Lord.”

Although not a student of the Bible, Ben had read it. He asked, “Who won—Good or Evil?”

The question seemed to confuse the man. He stammered for a few seconds, then closed his mouth and shook his head.

“Do you realize what has happened?” Ben asked.

“Armageddon.”

Ben sighed and looked past the man into the living room of the home. A fire was raging in the fireplace and a woman was sitting in a chair. She was dead. Ben could smell her from the porch.

“Do you want to come with us?” Ben asked. “Can we help in any way?”

The man shut the door in Ben's face.

He walked back to the truck and unlocked the door. As they were driving away, Fran asked, “Who was that man?”

“I don't know.” Then he told her what he had seen.

“That's awful. What are you going to do about it?”

“Nothing.” Ben shook his head. “Nothing I can do. I'm not a psychiatrist. But I'd say the man has stepped over the line. Pushed over it by what happened. He may come back around; he may not.”

“That's a pretty cold-blooded attitude, Ben. That poor old man.”

“Those poor old people who died from exposure,” Ben countered.

She glared at him while Ben wondered if this was another side of her, or if she was merely acting for his benefit. “You keep harping on that, Ben Raines. What would you have had me do about them?—Not that it matters at this date.”

“Help them.” His reply was terse.

“I see,” she said. “Well ... I would have thought—from reading your books—not that I've read many of them, you understand—that you would be the last person in the world to advocate wealth redistribution. I thought you were a conservative.”

“I am a conservative, Fran, in most of my thinking. But I just do not like to see innocent people suffer needlessly. Not when enormous wealth is—was—piled all around them. As for wealth redistribution ... it was coming, Fran. It would have been a reality before the end of the century.”

“My daddy said that was communism.”

“While he sat sipping his hundred-year-old cognac, admiring his antiques, in a house valued at about a million dollars—none of those things did he, personally, lift a finger to earn. I don't buy it, Fran. But it's all moot now, isn't it? We're all equal.”

She shuddered at the thought of being equal with everybody. How ... unfair!

They drove for another few hours, but saw no signs of life in the parish. Ben pointed the nose of the truck toward Fran's mansion. She was unusually silent.

“I'm going to take you back to your home, Fran—you can pick up some clothes. Then we'll go to my place. Don't worry, you'll be safe.”

“All right,” she whispered.

Ben waited in the huge den of the home while Fran filled several suitcases. Ben had never seen such wealth in all his life. He chuckled, thinking, Hell of a lot of good it did them in the long run.

I guess, he mused, if I had all this, I'd fight to keep it, too. Or would I? he questioned. I've never even dreamed of living like this.

He had never dreamed that grandly. He had not been raised to dream of wallowing in great luxury.

He helped Fran with her luggage, then, back on the blacktop, she said, “What are we going to do, Ben?”

“First off, don't look at the bodies in that field just up ahead. There aren't as many as I thought, but enough.”

Naturally, she looked, and promptly got sick.

Ben stopped the truck and let her out to barf by the side of the road. He stood outside the truck, Thompson at the ready, on the lookout for dogs.

“I hate to be sick!” she said, wiping her mouth with the handkerchief Ben had offered.

“You'll get used to the bodies,” he said. “I remember in training, the first time I ever ate dog meat. I—”