A DISTANT THUNDER

by H. A. Covington

  “You know darned well I’d shoot anyone who tried to hurt Rooney in a heartbeat,” I told him with a sullen scowl. “And the rest of you too, of course,” I added hastily.

  Carter grinned at me. “I know it,” he said. “But I figured you at least deserved to be asked.”

  So I spent the rest of that incredible day, the first day of the revolution, sitting on a battered swivel chair with torn padding from behind the shipping and receiving desk, looking out over a half-deserted parking lot towards the rising hills of Douglas firs interspersed with golden and silver maples and aspens that whispered in the wind, sipping canned soda and chewing on cold pizza, alone with my thoughts. I was filled with pride not only in my comrades of Coeur d’Alene, but in the trust Carter had placed in me. And I don’t mean that he relied on me to shoot at a cop if I had to. I think he told the truth when he said he knew quite well I was capable of that. He didn’t come out once to check on me, to see if I’d suddenly come to my senses, realized what the hell I was getting involved in and beat feet out of there, jumped in my car and headed for California. He knew I wouldn’t do that, and he trusted me with the lives of himself, his family, and all our comrades. That was a greater and better honor than any medal I ever got from the Party.

  He trusted me not to walk away.

  Around sunset the door opened and Rooney came out into the loading dock. “Hey there, long, tall and evildoing,” I said to her with a smile. “Pull up a pew.” Rooney pulled up an empty computer shipping box that stood beside the dumpster and she sat down on it. It was reinforced inside with Styrofoam and so it took her weight. “Any news? What’s going on in Coeur d’Alene?” I asked her.

  “Looks like we ran the ZOG bastards clean out of town. There’s Tricolors flying over the downtown and from church steeples. They did make one announcement. We are now officially the Northwest Volunteer Army and we will be commanded by an as yet to be named Army Council and General Officer Commanding, most likely Winston Wayne since he started the ball rolling. The Old Man is supposed to go on TV and lay it all on the waiting world sometime soon. They may not even let us see him or hear what he has to say. Daddy figures ZOG will pull the plug on CNN and all the other media soon and embed all the reporters with the FBI and army or something so they can’t report anything they ain’t supposed to, and from then on all we’ll get is official bullshit, like every time they invade some little country somewhere. Seen anything out here?” she asked.

  “Couple of deer, but they were too far away for me to hit ‘em with this Tek-9. What did your daddy give you?”

  “I got the Beretta.” Rooney flicked back her sweater; she had on a shoulder holster rig. “China got a .380 automatic but no holster, so she’s got to carry it in her school bag.”

  “Have they decided who’s going to CDA yet?” I asked casually.

  “Adam,” she said. “I think Daddy too, although he hasn’t said as much. I told Daddy if you went I was coming too. He told me I’m a soldier now, and I’ll take orders, but he wasn’t mad about it. I think he knows.”

  “Yeah, he does,” I said. She took my hand and I held hers in both of mine against my chest while I looked out over the parking lot, not daring to look at her. “Roon, there’s something I need to tell you,” I said to her after a while. “I was going to ask you to marry me today, before all this other came up. I know that’s not possible now, but I figure you’d like to know.”

  “I’m glad,” she whispered.

  “What would your answer have been?” I asked.

  “You know what it would have been.” There was more silence for a while. “The Bible says it’s sinful, but Shane, if this was a better time and place, and we had someplace to go, I’d make love with you now. But it’s too crowded in there, and it’s too cold out here.”

  “Dern!” I laughed. “And besides, we’re both on duty. But I appreciate the thought, Roon.” I held up her hand and kissed it, and she settled her head on my shoulder, and we stayed that way for a bit. Then the door opened and Carter stuck his head out. “Both of you come inside,” he said. “As risky as it is to have no sentries, I don’t want you to miss this. The Old Man is coming on TV.” ZOG’s hand on the media plug was a bit slow in the pulling, and so the Old Man’s speech from the Coeur d’Alene television station slipped out just under the wire before the United States Attorney General in D.C. invoked the Patriot Act and shut down all news coming out of Idaho. There in that darkening, chilly, dusty warehouse, surrounded by cardboard cartons of mostly cheap plastic shoes made in Taiwan and Brazil, littered with half-open pizza boxes containing only crusts and plastic soda jugs with a few fingers of drink left in the bottom, and with two sleeping dogs, our little band of brothers and sisters heard the declaration of our nationhood before the world.

  Since that evening, the Old Man’s address has been printed in thousands of books and newspapers and on posters and in pamphlets. It has been carved on walls and monuments and memorized by millions of school children in the Northwest American Republic, so I will not repeat it all here. I can only give you the high points that stick in my memory from that very night itself, over seventy years ago. What was it like to hear those words for the first time, with the cold metal of guns pressing against our hips and weighing down our belts? With me gripping Rooney Wingfield’s hand in mine? I cannot begin to explain or describe it. It was something that happens only once in.well, it doesn’t happen very often. After the war we all remembered two events more than anything else from that time. The Old Man’s declaration of the night of October 22nd, and Cathy Frost raising the Tricolor into the bright afternoon sunshine at Longview, five years to the very day after that. Everything between is kind of one long mass of memory, not much of it good, but it’s anchored at both ends by the twenty-second day of October. I’m sorry, ma’am, that’s about as much sense as I can make out of it for someone who wasn’t there. A lot of us who were there for that first October 22nd weren’t there five years later for the second. Including some who stood with me in the warehouse that night.

  * * *

  “In the name of Almighty God, in the name of a thousand generations past and a thousand more yet to come, the white men and women of America today resume control of our own racial destiny, seizing it back by force of arms from the tyranny of an alien race and their shameful hirelings of a corrupt and wicked government, who have cruelly and viciously abused our people, our laws, our culture, and our civilization. Trusting in divine aid and in the truth and justice of our cause, we proclaim the lands of the Pacific Northwest to be no longer subject to the authority or rule of the government of the United States. We declare that henceforth these lands shall be a sovereign and independent Aryan Republic, a Homeland and a refuge for all of the Aryan peoples of the earth, wherein all of the Children of the Sun, from every one of our scattered nations across the globe, shall live in peace and prosperity and dignity, free of all oppression and contamination of both the body and the spirit. In these lands we shall at long last secure the existence of our people and a future for white children...

  “To our fellow white men and women, many of whom shall hate us and persecute us because you have been so cruelly deceived, we open our arms in love and forgiveness. Brothers and sisters, I implore you, in this wonderful moment let the scales at last fall from your eyes and let yourselves see the truth to which you have been so long blinded. It is for you that we fight, it is for your children and your posterity that we soldiers of the Northwest Republic will lay down our very lives without a moment’s hesitation or regret. In even the most degraded and weakened among you, you will find that the ancient fire of our racial spirit burns, however low the spark. Open your minds, open your hearts, open your very souls and let that spark of ancient pride and glory burn bright once again, as for countless centuries it burned so bright that it illuminated all the world...

  “To the white soldiers and police of the American military forces who will be sent to crush us by the frightened, weak and corrupt being
s who rule in Washington D.C., we say: there is more to life than a signed paycheck. There is more to honor. There is more to justice. Look into your hearts and you will know what is right. Many of you know already, but it is not enough merely to know what is right. Now you must DO what is right, however hard and terrible that decision will prove. Come to our sides, my brothers in arms, and bring with you the weapons and ammunition that ZOG has given you, that they might be used to redeem not only yourselves but all of our Folk from an unspeakable tyranny...

  “To the people of color who now inhabit the Pacific Northwest, we say this: we do not blame you for coming into this land to take what is ours. Time and again, over more than one generation, we demonstrated clearly that we were not willing to fight for our land, nor for the wealth that we created, nor for the homes that we built, nor for the industries and things of beauty that we had made. Why should you not follow Nature’s immutable law and come in your strength to pillage from a nation so weak and supine? In that, you have lived far closer to cosmic truth than we. We do not even blame you for seeking our white daughters, for they are the most beautiful of all God’s creation, and who would not want them for his own? But that time is over now. Let me put this as bluntly as I can: the boss man has come home. He has been long away, and while he has been away you have gained much from your looting of our land. Take it, be glad of what you were able to get, and leave! Leave now! Leave while the way is still open, before white men with weapons in their hands find you and take vengeance for the evil that you have done to us. There is nothing for you any more in this land. It is time for you to return to the many places whence you came. Leave while you still can...

  “To the Jewish people, we say nothing. There is nothing to say. For you there shall be only endless night.

  “To the governments and nations of the world, and especially to the government of Canada that borders on our own Northwest Republic, I will tell you flat out that this is a private fight. Do not make the mistake of helping the Americans in any way to oppress us or do harm to the Northwest Republic. If you do, you will be surprised at how long an arm we have...

  “To my comrades in arms who now stand at my side, who have brought this day into being and who from tomorrow’s dawn will resume the battle for our people’s freedom, and to all of you who over the coming days will be joining the forces of the Northwest Volunteer Army to secure the existence of our people and a future for white children, I say this: the hard part is now over. We have once more found in our hearts the ancient courage and hardihood of our race, and against the soul of the Aryan warrior no mercenary hireling can prevail. The lion has at long last awakened, and the only conceivable outcome to this battle is our total and final victory, and those now hearing my words in Washington D.C. know this. The United States will bluster and bully like it always does, the United States will swagger and boast, the United States will beat and bomb and butcher and torture the helpless, as it always does. But the United States has already lost, and they know it. Our hearts are no longer in chains, and now no evil empire with a hundred times the power of the United States can keep our bodies chained to their rotten, tottering tower of wickedness and corruption...

  “Among our ranks there are some who practice the Christian faith, some who follow the old Nordic, gods of our race, some such as myself who believe in the new dispensation of Adolf Hitler and National Socialism which was given to the world in the middle part of the last century, and some who follow no god or gods at all but who feel in their hearts our people’s destiny and role in the universe, and who will play their part in this struggle purely in the knowledge that it is right. I know that no one among you will take offense if in this historic moment I acknowledge the Christian faith of the Founding Fathers of the true America, and of the brave men of the Southern Confederacy who rose in rebellion in 1861 to defend that true American vision. For all of us, I therefore close my address on this night of nights with lines from the Forty-Sixth Psalm: ‘He breaketh the bow; He snappeth the spear in sunder. I will be exalted among the heathen; I will be exalted in the earth, for the Lord of Hosts is with us.’

  “My friends, my comrades, my soldiers, my brothers and sisters, on this the first night of Northwest freedom, I bid you all good night.”

  There was no cheering or excitement; the whole warehouse seemed stunned and silent. Rooney’s head was on my shoulder again, and she was crying softly. I put my arms around her, and it was a while before I noticed that I was crying too. After a time Red wiped his own eyes, stepped forward and spoke. “All right,” he said in a normal, conversational tone. “You heard the boss man. Let’s get this show on the road.”

  The Feds were getting their show on the road as well. That night they hit the Wingfield place with a full SWAT raid. They came in screaming and cursing and threatening and waving their weapons in the air like they were real bad-asses. It was called dynamic entry, and it always worked great on doped-up crack houses and mosques in Baghdad and houses full of women and children who could be terrorized. This time their exit was even more dynamic than their entry. Two FBI sons of bitches were raptured and half a dozen more ended up in a badly dismantled condition. Washington’s Rebel County inflicted its first enemy casualties that night.

  Last of an Ancient Breed

  Last Of An Ancient Breed

  There is so little glory in a white man’s life.

  He works hard for his money, and he takes a wife,

  But a white man’s son can be a hero in the night,

  With a heart full of anger and a will to fight.

  Seize this moment in your hand! Take it and run!

  There is freedom in your mind, and you’re loaded like a gun!

  Volunteers! Living out the fantasy!

  NVA is the best that we can be!

  Gonna make our stand, in this Northwest land,

  Like the last of an ancient breed...

  Like the last of an ancient breed.

  -Underground rock song, circa early 21st century

  So in an exalted and inspired ecstasy of revolutionary fervor, we all went charging out with guns blazing and brought the mighty United States of America to its knees, right?

  Actually, no. In that first confused year while we struggled to survive as a movement, the Army Council picked Lewis County clean of everybody they thought could pull a trigger, shipped them off to various active service units around the Northwest where the action was hotter, and the rest of us were organized as a support unit. We ended up with all of the danger and very little of the fun. War tends to be like that. There’s always a shitty end of the stick and somebody has to grasp it. Later on it heated up for us, of course. Lewis County doesn’t get to make that boast about being Washington’s Rebel County for nothing. But at first we were very much a backwater. The action was mostly in Idaho and in the cities, Seattle and Spokane and Portland and

  Boise, where our actives would strike at ZOG and then melt into the mountainous regions and wilderness which surrounded most Northwest metropolitan areas. That’s where we came in. Lewis County was conveniently placed and it was a very large stretch of turf. It was where active service units fled to after popping off a few rounds at ZOG in Seattle, Olympia, Tacoma, and sometimes Portland.

  The first thing Red and Carter did after the Old Man’s speech that night was to sort out the six Volunteers who were to go out to Idaho and join the rebellion in CDA. They were Adam Wingfield as team leader along with his wife Leah, a Christian Identity girl he’d married only a few months before. Leah was actually from that part of the world, the daughter of some early Aryan settlers who had come to Hayden Lake under Pastor Butler, and so she knew the Coeur d’Alene area well. Another one selected was a Canadian kid named Danny Bondurant who was supposed to be good with explosives, as well as an older man named Sam Maxwell who was a former police officer from North Carolina and still pretty fit for a geezer, a guy named Bob Parsons who had served in Iraq and gotten a Purple Heart, and another guy named Willis who ha
d been in the Marines but was kicked out for evil racism like Adam had been booted out of the army. Carter Wingfield was to stay behind and help us get organized in Lewis County, which I was very glad to hear. The revolution wouldn’t have seemed the same without him, and I knew Rooney and China and Ma were worried they might lose three family members instead of two if it went bad.

  The six Volunteers who were to march to the sound of guns were given one longarm each, M-16s and a Ruger Mini-14 and our one Steyr .50-caliber rifle with the armor-piercing bullets, plus their handguns and as much ammunition as they could get into the three vehicles they took, a case of grenades, and most of the money we had on us. I overheard Red and Carter briefing Adam. “On the interstate you could be in CDA by dawn, easy, but stay off the interstate,” Morehouse told him. “There will be ZOG roadblocks as sure as God made little green apples. Once you get about fifty miles from Spokane, move off the main highways. It will slow you down, but given the general ZOG inefficiency I think you should make it through. This thing appears to be completely spontaneous and it seems to have caught Yehudi with his pants down, and it’s going to take them a couple of days to get their act together, get enough bodies up there and clamp down a blockade on the Coeur d’Alene area. According to what I have been told by our people on that end, the plan is to try and keep old U.S. 95 both north and south out of Coeur d’Alene open, and they recommend you try and swing wide on the cat roads either up towards Sandpoint or else to the south. Incoming Volunteers will be met by NVA forces, processed in and assigned their units and military duties as quickly as possible.” The six Volunteers left soon after, Adam giving his family a parting bear hug, including me. My ribs were sore the next day.