Free Ash: Rise of the Republic by Campbell Paul Young Page A

ready.
    “Looks like they called off the search once
it got dark last night, set up camp near the warehouse. Must have
just got back from a big raid, there’s empty liquor bottles and
food thrown all over. Big party I guess. Most of ‘em are still
snoring,” Stone helped himself to a long drink from Legs’ canteen
as he made his report.
    “If we leave now we’ll have at least a half
day’s lead on them. They don’t look like they’re in too much of a
hurry,” added Blue.
    “I guess we’d better get moving.”
    “Wait, Cap’n, there’s more: I have a present
for you!” Blue winked and gestured at the tunnel.
    The troop followed the scouts out through
the drain. The Captain chuckled when he saw Blue’s present. A
filthy, bearded man, his homespun clothes ragged and stained with
ash, was tied to a tree and gagged. Blood trickled from a huge knot
on his forehead. There was terror in his bloodshot eyes.
    “He walked over to piss on the bush I was
hiding in, I couldn’t resist!” A proud smile stretched across
Blue’s round youthful face.
    The Captain gestured for Grumps and Mason to
go to work on the man. He didn’t hold out long. After the second
punch he started talking. When he had spilled everything, Deb
pulled out her rope. Ten minutes later, the rangers were pulling on
their packs.
    “Well let’s move out, we’ll need as much of
a head start as we can get,” ordered the Captain. The troop headed
Southeast through the trees. Their prisoner still twitched on his
rope, swaying slowly in the light breeze.
    They spent the next two days trudging
through the repetitive wasteland that made up what used to be the
suburbs of Houston. Each subdivision they passed through was eerily
the same as the one before. The fractal, winding artery roads with
their cul-de-sac tributaries were lined with poorly built houses,
each a variation on one of five or six floorplans. Before the
pillar, each of them had been a pretentious, overpriced,
upper-middle class home with two cars in the driveway and a
jungle-gym in the backyard. Now all that showed above the thick
layer of ash were weather beaten roofs and battered second stories.
Many had collapsed over the years, plenty had burned.
    There were no people. The small percentage
of the population who still stubbornly clung to life had moved into
more stable structures. Big multi-story office buildings were best.
Any structure built with strong materials and competent engineering
would do. A few of the big skyscrapers downtown now held fairly
prosperous communes. McLelland had accompanied a diplomatic mission
to the largest of them soon after the refinery was finished. They
had since become one of the Republic’s most profitable trade
partners and a powerful ally.
    Though the ash covered much of the area’s
former prosperity, the landscape was not devoid of life. For the
past several years, the winters had been getting milder and the
summers warmer. The scientists at the University claimed that the
clouds were thinning, though no one could tell the difference. The
cloud cover seemed as thick and gloomy as ever, but surprisingly,
plants had begun to grow in the wild again. Big trees had yet to
make a comeback, but the more industrious and hardy strains of
weeds and bushes were abundant. These were especially thick along
the banks of the new watercourses which had sprung up.
    Years of development had sequestered and
redirected the streams and rivers of the area into concrete
channels and drainage ditches between the neighborhoods. Thirty
years of ash had filled the manmade channels thoroughly, and no one
was around to maintain them. When the rains came, water had to go
somewhere. In many cases the former roads were the natural choice,
being largely free of obstructions and often the lowest point in
any given area. The new rivers and streams had not been mapped yet,
though there was some talk at the University of arranging an
expedition to do so. The Captain imagined that the