Fire in the Ashes

get him.” He looked at Ms. Olivier. “We can do this easy or hard, lady. It’s all up to you.”

“What do you want?” she said.

“For you to cooperate with your government, stop taking the Rebels’ side in this insurrection. And to submit all copy for government approval before airing.”

“No way,” Sabra said, and Hartline knew he was dealing with a lady that wasn’t going to back up or down. Yet. “Then you want it hard,” he said, the double-meaning not lost on her, as he knew it would not be.

Her dark eyes murdered the mercenary a dozen times in a split second. Her smile was as cold as his. “I never heard of anyone dying from it, Hartline.”

“Oh, I have, Sabra-baby. I have.”

* * *

The students at the University of Virginia, after hearing of the government takeover of the NBC offices and studios in Richmond, marched in protest at this blatant violation of the First Amendment. But this was not the 1960s; the newly federalized police had no restrictions on them as the police in the ‘60s had.

They were met with snarling dogs and batons and live ammunition. The Dobermans and shepherds literally tore one marcher to bloody rags; three others died from slugs fired from M-16s; another died from severe head wounds from a beating. Dozens were arrested in the process, beaten bloody.

VP Lowry ordered classes suspended at the university and the doors closed and locked. Only hours after the takeover at NBC, the faculty and many students refused to leave the building, barricading themselves in the dorms and classrooms. They were driven out by tear gas, and maced as they ran almost blindly from the buildings into the street. There, they were manhandled and bodily thrown into vans to be transported to local police stations.

Many people do not realize just how precious the Bill of Rights is… until they no longer have it.

* * *

“All right,” Sabra Olivier said to Hartline. “Stop it—stop your men. I’ll cooperate.”

The moaning and screaming of her female employees had finally broken her spirit. As Hartline knew it would. And he had not touched Ms. Olivier. Yet.

Hartline nodded to a man standing by the door to the office. Within seconds, the screaming and moaning had ceased.

“You see,” Hartline smiled at her. “That wasn’t so difficult, was it?”

If looks could kill.

Sabra watched, a curious look in her eyes as a Minicam was brought into her office, carried by an agent. She did not understand the smile on Hartline’s lips.

The mercenary pointed to a TV set located just behind her desk. “Turn that one on.”

She did as instructed. A naked man appeared on the screen. She recognized him as one of her anchormen and also knew this was live. “What is the meaning of this?” she demanded. “I said I’d cooperate.”

“This is just a little insurance, Sabra-darling,” Hartline replied. He picked up a phone on her desk and punched a button. “Do it,” he ordered. He looked at Sabra. “Watch, darling.”

She swung reluctant eyes toward the screen. A cattle prod touched the naked newsman on the thigh. His scream chilled her. He rolled on the floor as the prod touched his buttocks and his feet. His screaming was hideous.

“Stop it!” Sabra shouted.

The prod touched the man’s genitals. He ground his teeth together with such force several broke off.

“Goddamn you, Hartline!” Sabra rose from her chair. “Stop it!”

“You’ll cooperate with us?” he questioned.

“I said I would!”

“Anything I say?”

'Yes!'

“I have your son ready to perform for us. Would you like to see that?”

“Goddamn you!”

Hartline laughed. To the operator of the camera, “Start rolling it.” He unzipped his pants. “Come here, Sabra-baby. This one is for VP Lowry. And if you ever fail to obey an order; if you ever let any copy air without government approval… this tape gets shown—in its entirety—on the six o’clock news.”

“You goddamn lowlife miserable son of a bitch!” she cursed him.

Hartline smiled. “Strip, baby. Take it all off while facing the camera. Let’s give Lowry a really good show.”

Naked and embarrassed and trembling with anger, Sabra faced the mercenary.

He netted his penis. “Kneel down here, baby—on your knees. You know what to do. You probably sucked cocks gettin’ to where you are in the network, anyway.”

She took him as the camera recorded it all.

Hartline laughed. “It’s just so fucking easy when you know how. Just so easy.”

* * *

“I wonder how many of us really took this thing seriously?” Dawn said, almost as if speaking to herself. “I mean, before it actually touched us?”

Sunday afternoon in the Great Smokies, a time for rest and napping and talking.

“What a strange thing to say,” a young woman from Baker Company said. “Didn’t you always?”

“No,” Dawn replied. “Hell, I was a member of the press—practically untouchable. None of us ever really took the censorship order seriously. But when I shot that cop in Richmond, my only thought was to get away. I had absolutely no idea of joining anything. It all had kind of a dreamlike quality to it until I saw and heard all those people beaten to death in Memphis.”

Dawn was one of the few who made it out of the safe house in Memphis. She had never talked about it.

“How bad was it?” one of Ben’s regular Rebels from the days of Tri-States asked.

It was quiet, very peaceful in the mountains. A light breeze rippled the leaves as summer, sensing the change, began its slow drifting into fall. Nature’s coloration was beginning its gradual change; a little gold had appeared among the green. When Dawn spoke, her voice was low-pitched, as if the memory itself was painful.

“I can remember a panel truck or van in Richmond,” she recalled vocally. “And I remember that my head hurt and I was bleeding and my hand and wrist were sore from firing that hand-cannon. I don’t remember much about the trip from Richmond to Memphis. I do recall someone saying Memphis was safe because it was a dead city. We stopped several times and there was always someone to change the bandage on my head.

“We made it to Memphis without any trouble. Any of you ever seen that city? God! Dead doesn’t do it justice. It’s eerie. Anyway, we were all kept in this huge mansion there; our testing period. We were drugged and hooked up to polygraph and PSE machines. We all passed the tests except for this one girl; she was a federal agent working undercover.”

Dawn paused in the act of remembrance. “What happened to her?” someone asked.

Dawn shrugged. “I guess someone killed her.”

They all waited for her to continue; waited in the stillness of waning summer.

“We had all passed our tests and were waiting to link up with another group before being sent here. Three of us were way in the back of the house—this was another house, not the mansion. We moved several times. We were playing cards. Gin rummy.

“We never dreamed there would be a contingent of Hartline’s men and agents in the city. But then we didn’t know they had broken some of the people they’d captured in Tennessee. About nine o’clock that night they kicked in the front door and started hammering on people. Just like that—no warning, no nothing. It was… unreal. The guy who was playing cards with us pushed me and this other girl into a closet and up into the crawlspace of the attic. Then he dropped back down to search for a weapon. The two of us lay there, listening and shaking we both were so badly frightened.”

One Rebel paused in the lighting of a cigarette; another looked at the ground. No one said anything. All waited.

“The agents had knowledge that only a few of us would be armed. They killed them first, then started