“How long will this gas remain good?” Rani asked.
“Years, if water doesn’t get into it. Even then, we have the capacity to separate water from gas-so my engineers tell me. We’re going to build a small refinery come next spring. We-was
A bullet smashed into the side of the building, just missing Ben’s head. Bits of broken brick struck Rani in the side of the face, drawing blood. They both hit the ground, weapons at the ready.
“Take the broad alive!” a hoarse voice shouted. “We can use her and then swap her ass for something.”
Rani burned half a clip in the direction of the voice. A man yelled, his voice echoing throughout the emptiness. Whether from shock or pain, Ben couldn’t tell.
“You OK, Elgin?” another voice was added.
Ben pinpointed the location of that one.
“Yeah. Circle around. We got “em in a box.”
“You think,” Ben muttered. He carefully shifted positions, slipping into the deserted, windowless service station, pulling Rani in behind him.
“The trucks?” she whispered.
“They won’t bother them. They want them running. Take the front. I’ll handle that guy slipping up behind us.”
Slugs began slamming into the building, but Ben sensed they were carefully placed; whoever was firing at them wanted Rani alive and well. ,
Ben spotted movement in the alleyway. He lifted his Thompson, exposing as little of himself as possible. He waited.
He heard the quiet crunch of boots on gravel. Then a man’s leg was exposed, from upper thigh to foot.
Ben stitched the leg, the big beblede-caliber slugs shattering knee, ankle, and foot. The man screamed in pain and fell forward, losing his shotgun, the weapon clattering to the ground.
“Dave? Dave? Did you get him?”
“Yeah,” Ben hollered. “Come on.”
The man named Elgin ran out of a building, zigzagging across the street. He got halfway before Rani cut him down. He flopped in the street, both hands holding his lead-punctured belly.
He screamed in pain.
“Shoot him in the head and shut him up,” Ben told Rani.
Before she could raise her M-16, a woman came running out of the building that faced the old service station.
“Damn you!” she squalled. “You kilt my old man.” She lifted a rifle.
Ben leveled his Thompson and cut the woman down. She landed only a few feet from the wounded man in the street.
Ben slipped out the back way and ran to the man he’d shot in the alley. The man’s face was shiny with shock and pain. He had taken at least six .45-caliber slugs in the leg, and in falling he had broken his right arm, the bone sticking out, stark white in the cold light of December.
“Least tell me your name ‘fore you kill me,” the man panted.
“Ben Raines.”
The man forced a laugh. “We shore can pick ‘em. All the folks travelin” “bout, and we got to pick on Ben Raines. Shit! I’m bleedin” to death, General. Finish me.”
Ben shot him between the eyes.
Back in the service station, Ben squatted down beside Rani. “Stay put. I think there might be one more.”
The minutes ticked by. Ben and Rani waited in silence. Finally, impatience drove the last outlaw of the bunch to yell.
“Lemme go!” he yelled. “You go your way, and I’ll go mine. How “bout it?”
“You got him spotted?” Ben asked.
“Almost directly across the street,” Rani said. “But he’s staying low.”
“Start putting fire into the building,” Ben told her. “I’m going to circle around and drop a grenade in on him. Start now.”
With Rani laying down a slow, steady fire, Ben ran down the alleyway and came out on the far end of the street, crossing over until he was by the open windowless storefront. He motioned to Rani, pulled the pin on a grenade, and dropped it in, ducking back.
The grenade must have landed directly on top of the man, for when the dust had settled, Ben looked in and could see bits and pieces of the man scattered around the store.
He walked to the center of the street and stood looking down at the man and woman, sprawled near death in the street.
“What’s your name?” the woman gasped.
“Ben Raines.”
She laughed, exposing stubs of broken and rotted teeth. “Know’d our luck would run out some day.”
“How many travelers have you and your men ambushed and killed?” Ben asked.
“Fifty. Two hundred. Five hundred. Hell, I don’t know,” she said matter-of-factly. “Had a lot of fun for awhile, though.”
Ben looked at her wounds. She might live another two hours, at best. He just didn’t feel like wasting a bullet on her. He kicked their weapons away from the man and woman and left them in the street.
“Hey!” the woman gasped as Ben walked away. “Ain’t you gonna do nothin” fer us?”’
Ben’s laugh was short and ugly. He did not reply to her question. Just kept walking.
She began cursing him, her mouth spewing out more filth than a sewer contained.
Ben motioned Rani into her truck. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
“Hartline’s gonna get you, Raines!” the woman squalled at them.
Ben turned slowly and looked at the woman. “What did you say?”
Her laughter was taunting. “Sam Hartline. He’s who we work for. We take women to him and that uppity Russian.”
“Where are they?”
“Northern California. They got some kind of real fancy hospital there. Hartline meets us up in Reno. ‘At’s where we deliver the women to him.”
“What kind of women?” Ben asked, a sick feeling in his stomach. He knew. Oh, God, he knew only too well.
“Niggers, spies, Jews, all the inferior breeds, you know?”’
“When are you supposed to meet Hartline again?” Ben asked.
“What’ll you gimme to tell you that?” the woman asked, a sly look in her beady eyes.
“A bullet in the head to put you out of your misery.”
““At’s fair, I reckon. Better’n dyin” slow. Next spring. Don’t know when. We just wait.”
“You have any women you’re now holding prisoner?”
The woman coughed up blood. “Naw. We jist got back from deliverin’ a load of greasers.”
Ben walked over to her, pulled his cocked and locked .45 from leather, and shot her in the head.
“You going to tell me about Sam Hartline, Ben?” Rani asked.
“Later. It’s a long story.”* *Fire in the Ashes
Chapter 31
“You mean they’re experimenting on human beings?” Rani asked, horror in her voice.
“Among other things,” Ben said. He then told her of the Russian general, Striganov, and the battles they had fought, hammering away at each other along a mile-long no-man’s-land.
“Hideous!” she said, looking at her plate of food and electing not to eat.
Ben and Rani had traveled a few miles outside of Colorado City and re-pitched their camp, in extreme southern Utah.
Ben stared moodily into the dancing flames of the small fire.
“And you and this Hartline have been enemies for a long time?” Rani asked.
