Out of the Ashes

He told her, standing in the cool mist of the morning. He told her all his plans, his schedule he had worked out in his mind while waiting for sleep to take him the night before. He told her of his home in Morriston, and how he had literally slept through the horror after being stung.

“That probably saved your life.”

“What are your plans, Salina?”

She lifted her slender shoulders. “I'm with Cecil and Lila. Where they go, I guess I go.”

“Last night, in the dining room, Kasim called you a zebra. What does that mean?”

She laughed, but it was a rueful laugh. “I'm half white, half black. My mother was a light-skinned woman, good-looking. My father was a handsome man. Yes, they were married.”

“I didn't think you were—”

“Pure coon,” she cut in, but she was smiling.

“That was not my choice of words, Salina.”

She looked up at him, then abruptly put her hands on his shoulders and kissed him on the mouth. She turned and walked away.

Ben watched her leave; watched all of her leave, from her ankles up. She was very shapely. He touched his lips with his fingertips, then called after her, “Remember, my home is Morriston.”

Her reply was a wave; then she rounded the corner of the motel. Ben sensed eyes on him. He looked around him, then glanced up. The face of Kasim, pure animal hate in his eyes, was staring at him from the second floor of the motel. His mouth was swollen from Salina's backhand slap.

“Goddamned, no good, honky motherfucker!” he hissed.

“I thought Muslims weren't supposed to use bad language,” Ben said.

“I'll kill you someday,” Kasim promised.

“I doubt it,” Ben said. He got into his truck, cranked it, and drove away.

He could still feel the warmth of Salina's lips on his and Kasim's wild hatred.

It was disconcerting.

Ben headed south, driving until he came to highway 14, knowing it would take him through only a few towns, and eventually lead to Fort Wayne. He stopped at each small town, finding two or three alive in each. In almost every case, there was no direction to them, no leader; they were accomplishing nothing: not burying the dead, not cleaning the litter—nothing. Just waiting. For what, Ben didn't know, so he asked.

“Help,” a man said.

“From whom?” Ben asked.

“The government, who else?”

“Man ... there is no government. I doubt there is a stable government anywhere in the world. Don't you understand what has happened?”

The man looked at him and walked away. He called over his shoulder, “The government'll help us. You're wrong, mister. If the government wasn't gonna help us, they wouldn't have made ever'body so dependent on them. You're wrong.”

“And you're a fool,” Ben muttered. He drove on.

He found a dozen people alive in Rochester, all in their mid-to-late thirties; a few kids. They seemed genuinely excited to see him, asking where he'd been, what he'd seen, what he was doing. And, where was government help? Here, the women outnumbered the men, two to one; one woman made it very plain she would go with Ben; he had only to ask.

He did not ask, although she was a good-looking woman and Ben was beginning to feel sexual urges rise in him. He told them to be careful, told them what was happening in Chicago; then, after asking a few questions as to why they thought they had survived when others hadn't (none of them had any idea), he pulled out.

In one small town, he found three men alive. They were having a party. A long one. Drunk, and they had been that way for days. No, they weren't from town; come up from Marion, just wandering. Had Ben seen any broads?

He sent them to Rochester.

Ben cut off 14 for a time, then took a county road east to US 24, approaching Fort Wayne from the southeast. On the edge of that city, a billboard brought him up short, brakes smoking.

Ben raines—If you're alive and reading this, or if anybody knows the whereabouts of ben raines, have him contact us on military 39.2. Keep trying; we'll be listening. We need orders.

“Orders?” Ben said. “What fucking orders? From me?” Then it hit him: the Rebels. The colonel hadn't been kidding; the Bull had really done it.

“Well...” Ben muttered. “I'm not your commanding officer. Good luck, boys.”

On the outskirts of Fort Wayne, he tucked his truck behind a motel and stayed the night, his sleep punctuated by sporadic gunfire.

He decided to leave Fort Wayne to whoever held the most firepower.

At dawn, after a cold breakfast, and feeling just a bit depressed, Ben gassed up his tanks. He had long since ceased trying to use the pumps; electricity was gone at nearly every place he stopped, and the pumps were useless. But gasoline tankers were in abundant supply and bulk plants were full. Eventually fire or the elements or crazies might destroy the storage areas, but now he wasn't worried about fuel.

Until things began to settle down, and he felt they would in time, and until people accepted what had happened and tried to rebuild, Ben decided to skip the cities. But he would get as close as possible—within CB range, if he could—attempting to keep a pulse on what was happening.