William W. Johnstone - Ashes 15 - Terror In The Ashes

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Terror in the Ashes

Ashes 15

William W. Johnstone

We are so outnumbered there is only one thing to do.

We must attack.

Sir Andrew Browne Cunningham

Prologue

Beginning in the last few years of the past

millennium, a few months after the entire world was

shaken and very nearly destroyed by germ warfare and

limited nuclear war, one man rose out of the ashes

of despair andwitha few others of like mind began

building a new society. This man was a walking

contradiction. He was a visionary, a warrior, a

philosopher, a teacher. He was so controversial that

his own brother tried to kill him.

When a new government of the United

States was hastily thrown together, the leaders declared this

man an enemy and put a bounty on his head. The

government destroyed the society he had built and

thought they had killed him.

They were wrong.

Again this man rose out of the ashes and again he started

building his army to fight the central government of the

United States, now so corrupt and

dictatorial some were comparing it to Hitler's reign

of terror decades past.

The central government called the freedom

fighters scum and traitors and malcontents. Those

who supported

the efforts of the breakaways called them Rebels.

The Rebels wrested the power from those who had

turned what had once been the greatest country in the

world into no more than a prison camp. Then the

sickness struck the land. No one knew where it came

from or how to fight it. The sickness spread

world-wide, and that was the last blow for an already reeling

earth. When the tide of death had run its course,

there was not one stable government left on earth.

Chaos was the order of the day. Robbery and rape and

murder and enslavement and assault became

commonplace. Outlaws and warlords took

control. The world was suddenly plunged back

into medieval thinking.

Except for a few hundred men and women called

Rebels who had kept their heads down and their wits

about them and who followed the teachings of one man.

The Rebels then began the job of clearing the nation

of human crud and crap and restoring order. It would

take them years to accomplish that. But accomplish it

they did. They fought the Russian Striganov

until he joined the Rebels. They fought the

mercenary forces of a man called West until he,

too, realized he was on the wrong side and joined the

Rebels. The Rebels fought mutants and

wackos, religious nuts and gangs that numbered in

the thousands. Still the Rebels grew and conquered, taking

back the land from the thugs and returning it to men and

women who wanted to live in peace.

The Rebels fought Sister Voleta and her forces

of evil and destroyed them all. They fought the

international terrorist Khamsin and ground him and his

thousands of troops under the heel of democracy. The

Rebels fought the cannibalistic sect

known as the Night People and wiped them from the face of

America.

The Rebels cleared the countryside, then

turned their massive war machine toward the great

cities that still remained in the land of the free and the home

of the brave that had once been calledAmerica .

Slowly but surely, in one bloody battle after

another, the Rebels reclaimed the land. They

systematically destroyed the decaying cities and the

lawless gangs that occupied them. The greatest

terrorist and mercenary the world had ever known, Lan

Vilar, joined in the efforts to kill the dream of the

Rebels. The Rebels hunted him down, along with

Kenny Parr and Ashley and Khamsin, and destroyed

them inAlaska .

The leader of the Rebels-which now numbered fifteen

battalions strong-established outposts around the

battered and bloody nation. Bastions of hope and

freedom. There were a half a dozen outposts in every

state, towns that had running water and sewerage

systems that worked and street lights and schools and

churches and libraries. Places where crime was

nonexistent. The Rebels did not allow crime.

It was not tolerated. Neither was bigotry. But

acceptance in the Rebel way was not a right. It had

to be earned. If you contributed nothing, nothing was

what you got.

If you were able to work, you worked. There was no

free ride in the Rebel system. No police

officer had to read anyone his rights; an

individual's rights were taught in public schools.

From kindergarten on up. Public schools taught

much more than readin", writin', and "rithmetic.

Young people were taught to respect the rights of others, they

were taught to respect the land and the critters that lived

in the woods and forests. Kids were taught the

basics-such as, when one encountered a No

Trespassing sign, you stopped.

Right there. What few written laws the Rebels

had on the books were not there to be broken, they were there

to be obeyed.

The Rebels took the complications out of society

and brought it all back to the basics. It did not

take a newcomer long to understand that life in any

Rebel-held town was easy and fulfilling and good

... as long as you obeyed the rules. Disobeying the

rules could get a person quickly hurt or

seriously dead. And there was no legal recourse.

Lawsuits were practically unheard of. The

Rebels frowned on lawsuits.

From the outset, way back before the central

government put a bounty on the leader's head, way

back when the Tri-States were formed and

running smoothly, the Rebels" system of

government was called a commonsense form of living

together. Right away, a lot of people knew they could never

live under Rebel rule.

Any Rebel society was based on order and

justice. Not law and order-order and justice.

Take a life through carelessness, contempt, disregard

for the basic rights of others, lawlessness, or

drunkenness, and you paid for it with a life. Yours.

Medical care was free in a Rebel society.

So was education from kindergarten through college.

Kindergarten through high school was mandatory.

College was not. The Rebels understood that some people

are just not mentally cut out for college. So vo-tech

training was offered for them.

Physical education was stressed in any Rebel

society. Every student received ten hours of

supervised exercise a week. All sorts of

games were allowed, but with this warning: "It is only a

game. Play it, do your best, then forget about it.

Anybody who would fight over the outcome of a game

is a fool."

Life in the outposts settled down once the

states

were, for the most part, cleared of any who

had even the slightest leanings toward lawlessness. The

man who was in charge of the Rebels and who wrote the

laws the Rebels lived by was a hard man. That was

quickly learned by the criminal element.

The Rebels lived in a society that had almost

totally eradicated crime within their towns and

communities. Criminals either stopped their lawless

ways, allowing themselves to be educated and retrained,

or the Rebels killed them. It was just that simple.

Strict, but extremely effective.

The Rebel army was made up of everybody who

lived in a Rebel society. Everybody over the

age of sixteen was in the Army. Period. You either

joined the Army, or were kicked out from under the

umbrella of Rebel protection and put out on your

own, your I.d. cards destroyed. And with that action,

you could not receive medical aid or buy supplies from

any outpost. When the towns came under attack, and

they occasionally did, every person living there was

expected to take part in the defense of that outpost.

There were many thousands of people who lived in what used

to be calledAmerica and refused to be a part of the

Rebel system of government. No one was forced

to join. More people lived outside the Rebel-controlled

towns than in them. But that was slowly changing

as those outside received absolutely no help

whatsoever from the Rebels. Life was difficult enough

inside the Rebel-held zones; outside the cleared

zones it was dangerous and extremely chancy.

So in dribbles and handfuls and sometimes entire

communities, citizens would contact the Rebels,

saying, "Okay. We can't make it out here without you

people. What do we do?"

And the answer was always the same. "Obey the rules

and understand that they are there for everybody.

When it comes to the administration of justice, the

mayor receives no better treatment than the shoe

repair person. You'll find it's really very

simple."

And they usually did.

The members of the regular Rebel army were, to a

person, a bold and daring bunch of men and women.

They were trained to the cutting edge, honed down to hard

muscle, gristle, and bone. And they liked a good

fight. They went out of their way to hunt one.

There was General Ike McGowan, an

ex-Navy SEAL. General Georgi

Striganov, a former Spetsnaz commander. General

Cecil Jefferys, now in charge of all Rebel

zones inNorth America . There was

Colonel West and his battalion of mercenaries.

Colonels Rebet and Danjou and their Russian

and French-Canadian and Canadian

battalions. Colonel Dan Gray, a former

British SAS leader and his battalion. Tina

Raines and her battalion. The

hippie-turned-warrior who was called

Thermopolis and his battalion. There was Buddy

Raines and his wild bunch called the Rat Pack.

There were the outlaw motorcyclists called the Wolf

Pack. People from all walks of life made up the

many fighting battalions of the Rebels. The

Rebels were the most feared fighters in all the world.

They gave an enemy one chance to surrender. Only

one. After that they rarely took prisoners.

The commanding general's orders.

And the man who had seen his dreams turn

into reality, the man who had pulled a battered nation

out of the ashes and set it once more on the road

to productivity, the man who had drawn up the

plans to clear the nearly ruined nation of gangs and

warlords and lawlessness?

His name is Ben Raines.

When the country known as theUnited States was

finally declared effectively clear of human

crud, Ben

took his Rebels and sailed forEurope .

Might as well see what mischief they could get

into over there. First stop:Ireland .

Chapter One

It was late spring when the Rebels pushed inland from

Galway,Ireland. General Jack Hunt had

shifted his mercenary army around and also made a pact

with the creepies. The Rebels would save the cities

for last.

The Rebels had also learned that approximately

ten battalions of European mercenaries had

sailed across the Irish Sea fromEngland to link up with

Hunt and his people. And other warlords and gang leaders were

sending troops. The lawless element meant to destroy

Ben Raines and his Rebels once and for all.

But Ben and his people had been fighting unbelievable

odds ever since the day the Rebels were formed. Being

outnumbered fifty-to-one was something they had grown

to expect.

"Big deal," the tinyJersey said, when she

heard the news.Jersey was one of Ben's personal

team and his self-appointed bodyguard. "When ain't

we been outnumbered?"

"We have nine full battalions and one

short battalion," Cooper, Ben's driver,

reminded her. "Hunt now has thirty-three

battalions. And they're at least

semi-professional fighters."

"Yeah,"Jersey agreed, reassembling her

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TerrorintheAshes Ashes15 WilliamW.Johnstone Wearesooutnumberedthereisonlyonethingtodo.Wemustattack.SirAndrewBrowneCunningham Prologue Beginninginthelastfewyearsofthepastmillennium,afewmonthsaftertheentireworldwasshakenandverynearlydestroyedbygermwarfareandlimitednuclearwar,onemanroseoutoftheash...

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William W. Johnstone - Ashes 15 - Terror In The Ashes

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