William W. Johnstone - Ashes 03 - Anarchy in the Ashes

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To Charles and Rosemary

The enemy say that Americans are good at a long

shot, but cannot stand the cold iron. I call upon you

instantly to give a lie to this slander. Charge!

-Winfield Scott

This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters,

places and incidents are either the product of the

author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

Any resemblance to actual persons,

living or dead, events, or locales is

entirely coincidental.

PROLOGUE: A NEW BEGINNING

It looked good.

Yes, Ben Raines thought as he drove the area

of the nation known to a few as the new Tri-States, it

did look good. As he drove he gazed out at the

fertile land that would soon bring forth beans and cotton

and corn and the many hundreds of small gardens that would

feed the people.

Ben smiled.

For the first time since the arrival of Ben and his

Rebels in portions of Arkansas, Louisiana,

and Mississippi, Ben felt some degree of

optimism for the future of those who chose to follow his

dream.

The spring of 2001 was, Ben felt, a long

way from what most science fiction writers of his

generation had envisioned. Those writers envisioned

robots doing much of the tasks formally relegated to the

unskilled. They imagined numerous space

shuttles to faraway worlds, an easing of the world's

hunger, great strides and breakthroughs in the field of

medicine-and so very much more.

Instead, the world now hung by a slender

thread: on one side a chance for civilization

to flourish; on the other, anarchy, barbarism, a

return to the caves.

We've got to make it, Ben mused as he

drove. Some group of people must show the rest of the world that

civilization and order can once more prevail over

chaos.

We've got to make it.

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It's up to us, and I know it. But I don't have

to like the heavy yoke of responsibility that hangs like

that stinking albatross about my neck.

But, he sighed, we almost made it. We came so

close, so very close to crawling out of the ashes of

nuclear war. 1988 was not the end. It could have been a

glorious new beginning. But 1988 blew up in our

faces and very nearly destroyed the entire world.

His thoughts drifted back to the beginning of his dream:

Tri-States, a section of America in the west,

after the horror of germ and nuclear war; a society

of free men and women of like mind, like dreams, like

hopes. A society where people of all races could

live and work and be content. And live free of

crime. And Ben Raines and his Rebels did it.

Social scientists and social anthropologists

and assorted liberals and bleeding hearts had

always maintained it could not be done, but Ben and his people had

proved them incorrect. Grossly incorrect.

Those men and women who were the founders and the foundation of

Tri-States had succeeded against all odds. They

had made their dream work.

And for almost a decade they had lived in peace and

harmony and contentment, in a land where good

schools-free of nit-picking and government

interference

and unions and leniency-had done what schools were

meant to do: educate the young, mold their minds, teach

them reading and writing and math and science and discipline

and respect.

Tri-States had shown the world-that world which

remained-that a government does not need to be

top-heavy with bureaucracy and dead weight and

hundreds of unfair and unworkable laws and

pork-barrel projects and scheming politicians

and massive overspending and dead-heads.

But the Central Government-then located in

Richmond, Virginia because D. C. had taken a

nuke dead-on back in '88-witha lunatic at the

helm of state, could not bear the success of Ben

Raines and his people. President Hilton Logan

had ordered the destruction of

Tri-States-and all its inhabitants.

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Only three years ago, Ben thought, waving to a

Rebel standing by a fence, talking with a neighbor. The

men returned the wave.

"Hi, General!" they called. Both men wore

side arms belted around their waists. And they would have

automatic weapons close by, not just because they were

citizen soldiers, regulars in the Rebel army,

but because the world was still tumbling about in fear and chaos and

violence and near-anarchy.

Citizen soldiers, Ben thought, driving past the

talking men. That is why we survived and so many

others did not. I insisted that

all

my people be a part of the armed forces, with all the training and

discipline contained therein. And we survived the

holocaust, came through it, due in no small part

to the fact the people were armed and trained and disciplined.

That should tell the world something.

But what world is left to hear it?

So much has happened in only three years.

Ben wondered, if history were ever written abut

this tragic period of the world, if anyone would believe

that one man, Ben Raines, could go from novelist

to guerrilla leader to the founder of a separate

nation within a nation back to guerrilla leader, and from there

move on to the office of the president of the United

States, and once more back to guerrilla leader-all

in the short span of only twelve years?

Unbelievable.

Ben smiled. It would have made a hell of a

book, he thought, the writer in him once more

surfacing. He missed writing, missed the long

hours of solitude, missed the exercising of his mind

as he grappled with plot and dialogue, missed the

deadlines he used to curse.

Reading, he thought, the smile still on his lips.

That's the key. That is what we have to stress with the young

people. The nation, Ben knew, had begun slipping in the

reading department-really took a beating from 1960 to the

big blow-up of '88. Can't let that happen again.

Got to stress reading and math and science. For those will

be the keys to picking up the pieces of civilization

and putting them back together once more.

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Thank God the mindless inanity of much of

prime-time TV was gone. His smile turned

grim. The only good thing to come out of being nuked.

Ben lost his smile as his eyes picked up the

reflection of his constant shadow in the rear-view

mirror of his pickup: his bodyguards.

Sgt. Buck Osgood would be at the wheel of the

rear

vehicle. With another Rebel riding shotgun,

armed with an automatic weapon, and a third Rebel

in the rear of the vehicle, ready to grab the big

.50-caliber machine gun.

By nature a loner, Ben could never become

accustomed to the idea of having a babysitter wherever

he went-not even after all these years.

And ranging a half mile ahead of him, always

trying to stay out of his sight, for his bodyguards knew

how Ben felt, would be another Jeep or APC,

with more Rebels in it, all heavily armed.

What price fame? Ben silently mused, the

mental question laced with sarcasm.

But Ben knew the precautions were necessary, for there had

been sightings of mutants. However, the mutants

for the most part left humans alone as long as they were

not provoked. In addition, there was the need to guard

against roaming gangs of thugs and paramilitary

groups. At least several times a month they would

attempt to slip into the new Tri-States, to steal

or rape or burn or kill, or all of those

things.

They would be put down hard; if not killed

on the spot, they would be hanged the next day.

For that was the order of day now-around the battered

globe. Nowhere else that the Rebels knew of was

there social order-only the new Tri-States, which

set rules and behavior and morals.

In this late spring of 2001, worldwide, it had

come down to the survival of the fittest. Humankind

had reverted very nearly back to the caves. And in some

cases, had indeed returned to the caves, although Ben

and his people would not learn of that for months to come.

For now, in the new Tri-States, Ben Raines

and his six thousand survivors, men, women, and children,

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were attempting to rebuild some sort of workable

society out of the ruins of war and anarchy and a worldwide

plague. Hopefully, they could fan a spark from the

ashes.

Ben thought that just maybe they could pull it off.

Maybe.

God knew they had to try.

Ben didn't think humankind would have another

chance.

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

May, 2001

The men and women of the IPF, International

Peace Force, had landed quietly on Canadian

soil, on their way to the United States. Their

route had been long and often tedious. They had

waited and trained and studied for ten years before making

their move. They had planned well.

They had sailed from home port in March-not the

easiest month to leave-and skirted south of Cape

Farewell, into the Labrador Sea. They sailed

into the Hudson Strait, passed around Mansel

Island, keeping to the east, then angled south

by southwest until the mouth of the River was in sight.

There, they offloaded boats and equipment for the river

trip.

They followed the Nelson into Lake Winnipeg,

then began a tortuous trek overland. But most were

young and strong and the trip was nothing compared to the training

they had been undergoing for the past decade.

All came through. Anything for the Motherland and for the

development of a

meister rasse.

The IPF picked up Highway 10 in

Canada and procured vehicles from the abandoned

cars and trucks. They headed for the United States

border, dropping off small contingents of IPF

personnel along the way. They saw very few

people alive in Canada. Those they saw seemed more

curious than hostile.

Had the people in Canada known what type of monster

mentality they were facing, they would have turned hostile

in a hurry.

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William W. Johnstone - Ashes 03 - Anarchy in the Ashes

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