Ambush in the Ashes by William W. Johnstone Read Free Book Online

the luxury of a prolonged battle with citizens, and had cut out for parts unknown.
     
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    By the time the Rebels arrived, survivors from Rabat were trickling in. The rampaging gangs had struck Rabat in full force just a few hours after leaving Kenitra, and while Rabat was a much larger place, the citizens there were not as prepared as those in Kenitra and had suffered terrible casualties.
    “We’ll be here for awhile,” Chase told Ben.
    “Take as long as you need, Lamar. We’re in no hurry.”
    “Oh, I will, Ben,” the chief of medicine said with a smile. “Count on it.”
    Ben and his team and a unit from his personal platoon of Rebels took a couple of days to tour part of the city, but soon gave it up and returned to their quarters. It was too depressing, for the city, once a thriving place of over half a million people was rapidly falling into decay and ruin. Most of its citizens were barely hanging on at the very edge of survival.
    The museums and finer homes had been looted, the libraries sacked, the books ripped apart and burned.
    There was not a dog or cat or rat to be seen anywhere in the city.
    “The people ate them,” Ben said. “That is why I forbid any mascots to be brought along.”
    Ben and his team checked all the embassies and consulate buildings, in search of anything that might tell some sort of story as to what happened. They found only looted buildings and rat-chewed bits of paper.
    “Nothing,” Beth said one hot and humid afternoon. She threw a wad of paper back to the floor of the embassy building.
    “Same here,” Anna said. “It’s almost as if time just stopped for these people.”
    “Maybe it did,” Ben mused aloud. “Perhaps the end came so quickly they didn’t have time to do anything except run or die.”
     
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    “But if they were killed,” Cooper asked, “where are the bones?”
    Ben shook his head. “I don’t know, Coop. Eaten by animals, maybe.”
    “Or eaten by …” Corrie shut off that thought before the words could leave her mouth.
    “Yeah, Corrie,” Ben said. “I gave the same thought some consideration.”
    “Shit!” Cooper breathed, a disgusted grimace on his face.
    “But we have no proof of that,” Ben quickly added. “And probably never will.”
    “I doubt it’s something the survivors would be willing to talk about,” Beth said.
    “I damn sure wouldn’t admit it,” Anna offered. “I was hungry many times back in the old country, but …” She made a disgusted noise and walked outside.
    “Let’s see what the intel boys and girls have managed to put together,” Ben suggested.
    “We’re getting there,” a Rebel intelligence officer told Ben later that morning. “But it’s slow going, piecing together paper that has been shredded.”
    “You have anything?”
    “Food riots, for one thing. People running in blind fear, for another.”
    “Running in fear … from what?”
    “Don’t know, General. But it seems there was a general panic. And this was after the Great War … several weeks after the war. We’re sure of that. That’s about the only thing we’re sure of at this point.”
    “It’ll probably turn out to be one of those mysteries that will never be solved,” Ben said. “And we have had a few of those over the years.”
    Ben returned to his CP and spent the rest of the day doing paperwork. That evening he met a few of the
     
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    Americans who had remained in the city and assured them they would be granted safe passage back to America.
    None of them impressed Ben very much and after they had left, he dismissed them from his mind.
    Jersey and Anna strolled into his office later that evening and Anna plopped down on a battered old couch. “It’s boring, General Ben,” she announced.
    “Typical teenager,” Ben said with a laugh. “You have to be entertained all the time.”
    “I agree with her,” Jersey said. “And I’m no teenager. So far, this has been a milk run.”
    “Well, it has been