Out of the Ashes

The figure whirled around at the sound of the truck, then jumped for the ditch, trying for the woods. But the jump was short, and the boy fell hard, grabbing at his ankle. By this time, Ben was on the scene. He stepped out onto the shoulder and turned, finding himself looking down the barrel of a small automatic pistol, held by a very pretty young lady.

“I don't mean you any harm, miss.” Ben tried to calm her.

“Yeah? That's what the last bunch of guys said, while they were trying to tear my clothes off me.”

“How'd you get away?”

“I kicked one of them in the nuts and split, man!”

“You want me to take a look at that ankle?”

“Not particularly. Why don't you just head on out? I'll be all right.”

“I don't mean you any harm, miss. Please believe me. What's your name?”

“None of your damned business.”

“O.K., None-of-Your-Damned-Business, my name is Ben Raines.”

“Big deal. Who cares? Ben Raines. That sounds kinda familiar.”

“I'm a writer. What are you, seventeen?”

“I'm nineteen, if that's any of your business—which it isn't.” She fixed her dark blue eyes on him. “O.K., you can look at my ankle if it means that much to you, but I'm gonna keep this gun on you all the time. One funny move and I'll shoot you.”

“All right, that's a deal.” Ben didn't have the heart to tell her that with an automatic of that type, one first had to cock it before it would fire. She had not cocked it.

Ben knelt down beside her and looked at her ankle. It was swelling badly. Sprained, he hoped, and not broken. She was wearing tennis shoes. Exactly what she should not have been wearing on a hike; no support to the ankles.

“It's sprained, None-of-Your-Damned-Business. We've got to find a creek with cool water and have you soak that for an hour or so.”

“My name is Jerre. J-e-r-r-e.” She spelled it out slowly. “Jerre Hunter.” She looked down at her ankle. “It looks gross.”

“Yes, it does, and it will probably get worse before it gets better. Come on, Jerre, put your arm around my shoulders and keep your weight off that ankle.”

She gazed at him for a moment, then shrugged. “What the hell? You might rape me, but that's not gonna hurt as bad as my ankle hurts.”

Ben laughed at her. “You can put that pistol away, too, Jerre. It's not going to fire unless you cock it first.”

She laughed with him. “Doesn't have any bullets in it, anyway. Least I think it doesn't. I don't know how to load it.” She tossed the pistol into the ditch.

The automatic bounced off a large rock, fired, and blew a chunk of wood out of a tree.

Ben looked at her and slowly shook his head.

Ben found a little fast-rushing creek with water cold enough to turn one's finger blue just from testing it, and for an hour the two of them sat on the bank talking, while she soaked her ankle and bitched about the temperature of the water and how she probably would catch pneumonia, or how her foot would probably rot off from radiation.

She told him she had just started her second year of college in Maryland when the war talk started. Then the panic hit. She had been sick for a week or so while others around her had been dying.

Gross, she called the experience. The absolute pits, man.

“You want to know something else, Ben? I mean, on top of all this stupid war stuff, there is no music.”

“By music, I assume you mean rock and roll?”

“Is there any other kind of music?”

“I wasn't aware rock and roll was music.”

She cocked her head, blond hair falling over one eye, and stared at him for a time. “I think, Ben Raines, if we're going to be friends, we'd better not discuss our tastes in music.”

“At least until you grow up.” He smiled at her.

“Whatever.”

When Ben asked why she was walking and not driving, she shrugged her shoulders and said she felt like walking, that's why. Plenty of cars and plenty of time should she decide to drive.

Ben knew better than to question the logic of the young (do the young have logic?), so he let that slide.

“How come, Ben,” she asked, “we're not all falling over dead from radiation sickness? I mean, I thought great clouds of that stuff would be floating around.”

“Clean bombs,” he replied.

"Clean bombs?" She looked at him. “What kind of silliness is that? Sounds like a contradiction to me.”

“It is, after a fashion.” Then he told her of the tape he'd heard, and of the Rebels and of the triple cross.

“All that is so confusing to me. Coups. Takeover. Rebels. You're really a commander of a Rebel army, Ben Raines?”

“I guess so.” He chuckled.

“Where are they?”

“I have no idea, Jerre. It wasn't my idea.”

“I heard rumors of the Rebels. Just a little bit. Are they radical people?”

“I don't believe so. Law-and-order types, I'm sure. But Bull Dean was no radical.”

“But he advocated the overthrow of the government, Ben. That's pretty radical, don't you think?”