Alone in the Ashes Read Online Free PDF

was solid. His legs were like the trunks of small trees. His feet were curiously small for a man his size.
    â€œNo, bitch,” Campo said, towering over the frightened woman. “You worship Jake Campo.”
    She shook her head.
    He squatted down beside her with a grunt and squeezed one soft breast. He clamped down hard, bruising the flesh. He laughed as the woman screamed in pain.
    Her husband broke free of the hands that held him, and ran to Campo. He hit the man on the bald head with his clenched fist and the sound of the knuckles breaking was loud.
    Campo stood up and roared with laughter.
    â€œYou do have balls, mister,” Campo said. “But nobody hits Jake Campo and gets away with it. Let’s see, what shall your punishment be? Should I cut off your balls? Naw! Rip out your tongue and feed it to the hogs? Naw!” Campo’s big face brightened. “I know.” He looked to his men. “Strip the broad, boys. And tie her husband to that tree yonder.”
    The man was forced to watch while Campo’s men took turns raping the woman.
    Campo pulled out a long-bladed hunting knife. He grinned at the man. “You seen Ben Raines’ fancy pickup truck, didn’t you, pig farmer?”
    â€œNo, sir, Mister Campo.”
    Campo cut the man’s worn belt and let his patched trousers fall around his ankles. He cut the man’s long-handled underwear and lay the cold steel of the knife against the man’s testicles. “You want your balls cut off and stuck up your wife’s ass?”
    â€œNo, sir.”
    â€œBen Raines.”
    â€œI seen this fancy truck go by just a-sailin’. Two men in the cab and a woman in the back, under a camper. She had a rifle stuck out the open camper winder.”
    â€œYou done good, boy,” Campo told the man, cutting the ropes that held him. “I’m gonna let you and your big-pussied woman live. This time around.”
    He waved for his men to follow him. The hungry-looking truck farmer jerked up his pants and ran to his wife’s side.
    â€œRadio headquarters,” Campo told a man. “I want half the men to come with me, the other half stay in this area and collect our booty. Tell the boys to gear up for a long hard run. Lots of food and warm clothing and winter gear. I’m gonna foller Ben Raines until I catch that prissy, law-and-order son of a bitch. And I don’t care if I have to foller him, and that snooty cunt with him, all the way to the Pacific Ocean.”
    Jake Campo looked to the west. “I’m gonna git you, Raines. And that there’s a promise.”
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    Even though the going would be much slower and would sometimes involve backtracking, Ben decided to stay on the secondary roads. They would afford him so many more ways to twist and turn in case Campo and his men were chasing them.
    And Ben felt sure they would be.
    Ben and Judy pulled out just after dawn, angling more west than north. At a small town in West Tennessee, Ben stopped at the public library—or what was left of it—and found some books for Judy. A book on creative writing, a good dictionary, and Fowler’s Modern English Usage.
    On the road again, Judy opened the dictionary at random. “Ga-vo-tit,” she said.
    â€œI beg your pardon?”
    She repeated her pronunciation.
    â€œSpell it, Judy.”
    â€œG-a-v-o-t-t-e.”
    Ben hated to admit he didn’t have the foggiest idea what the word meant. “What does it mean, Judy?”
    â€œWell, hell! I don’t know. I’m askin’ you.”
    â€œSee all the smaller words to the right of the bold-type word?”
    â€œHuh?”
    Ben slowed the truck and took a quick look at the word. “An old French dance,” he read. “Since I never wrote the types of books where that word would be used, I am not familiar with it.”
    â€œSo you don’t know everything after all?”
    â€œWho in the world ever said I