Out of the Ashes

“I'll get you that sheet,” she said.

They spent the first night on the road in a home just off the interstate, a few miles south of Winona, Mississippi. The home was pleasant, well cared for, and devoid of bodies. Fran picked a few late-blooming flowers to decorate the dinner table while Ben made dinner.

“I wonder what happened to the people?” she asked.

“Probably, no one will ever know. Maybe they were visiting friends when ... it happened. Maybe they panicked and ran away.”

She watched Ben, watched him as she had never watched anyone before in her life. He was never without a gun, and his walk had become that of a stalking great cat. His face and eyes had changed, becoming hard and cold. And she thought she would not like this man for an enemy, for he was unlike the other men she had known in her life. She wondered about his military life, for she had known many men who had served, but none like this one. Ben Raines was ... a predator type. And she admitted—to herself—she was a bit afraid of him. She also knew she was lucky it had been Ben that found her.

At night, he ordered the lights out. “The two-legged animals will be on the prowl,” he told her. “Safer this way.” He had then pulled down the garage door and locked it.

“When we get close to Memphis tomorrow,” he said, as she lay in his arms, the sweat of love-making cooling and drying on them, “we'll start monitoring the CB much more closely. All channels. We'll find us a place to hole up and keep our eyes and ears open—we'll see who comes to us. Maybe you'll get lucky and some decent people will have banded together.”

“You really want to be rid of me, don't you, Ben?”

“No,” he replied honestly, and his answer surprised him. “Well,” he added, “yes. In a way.”

“That is a confusing reply, darling.”

“You're a survivor, Fran—but not the same type as I am. But"—he chuckled—"I have grown quite fond of you. In a way.”

“Yes,” she said, a wry quality to her voice. “We have gotten close, haven't we? Go ahead, Ben. Drop the other shoe.”

“I want to see this nation, honey—as much as I can. From the Atlantic to the Pacific, from border to border. I want to see what was destroyed, and how. I am going to chronicle this happening, this event, and it's going to take me a couple of years to do that—maybe more. I'm going to find a good tape recorder and about a million miles of tape and talk to people. Then I'm going to find a beat-up old portable typewriter, put the tapes in some form of order, and hole up in the mountains or by the sea for a couple of years, work ten hours a day, every day of the week, and write it, just the way it happened.”

“Ben? Who, may I ask, is going to be around to read the damned old thing?”

He laughed and cupped a warm round breast, rubbing the nipple against his palm. She stirred against him, her hand seeking and finding his maleness, fingers encircling it, feeling it start the process of thickening. She masturbated him slowly as her breathing became shallow, then a hot pant.

“We will have a civilization again, Fran,” he said, slipping his hand down the softness of her belly, to touch the dampness of pubic hair. His fingers found her and parted her, working in and out, his thumb on her erect clit. “A civilization ... someday. And people will want to know exactly what happened. And they will read my work.”

Ben knew she was not a student of history or even much of a reader when she asked, “But you'll be long dead by then, baby—so, who cares? So what?”

He kissed her and parted her lovely legs, slipping between them, positioning himself. He knew he was going to miss her after they parted.

“Ben?” she said, grasping his penis and inserting the head inside her.

“Yes, Fran?”

“Fuck me, Ben!”

Just outside of Memphis, south of the airport, Ben found a house that was free of bodies and was set back from the street, amid a large number of trees. He and Fran settled in. Once they saw a car drive slowly past, and another time a pickup truck, but he made no attempt to hail them, for they were full of hard-looking men, heavily armed, and they did not look like church-going types.

When the wind was right, the stench from the city was horrible.

By monitoring the CB, Ben learned there were people alive in Memphis, several thousand by the way one group talked, and it was that one group that interested Ben.

It appeared they were occupying about a ten-square-block area and clearing about a block a day, also sending out scouts to search for survivors. Their conversation on the CBs was intelligent, and they, of all the groups Ben monitored, did not use profanity. The base station used channel twenty-five and the call sign of Genesis. Ben decided to take a chance.

On the morning of their third day in Memphis, Ben used the CB in his truck to call them. “Break-two-five for Genesis,” he called.

“This is Genesis. Who are you?”

“I'm friendly,” Ben said. “But I have definitely seen some unfriendly types.”

Genesis chuckled. “Yes, we do seem to have a few of those still roaming the city.”