“How’s it feel to be the most hated man in all America, Ben Raines?” a woman screamed out of the thick smoke.
“Hate me all you like, lady,” Ben muttered. “You’re at the end of a long line.”
FOURTEEN
The badly shaken survivors of the attack were gathered up and placed under guard. A man was brought to see Ben. Ben sat on a camp stool on the front lawn of an old home, under the shade of a huge tree. The home had been a nice one, made of native stone. Ben looked at the man with a bloody bandage around his head.
“What in the hell is the matter with you people?” Ben asked. “Why would anybody in their right mind want to join the Nazi party?”
“I really didn’t. Believe that, or not. It’s the truth. Roy and his bunch convinced us to come along. That was me you heard holler for Roy to hear you out.”
“But you went along with him.”
“Yes, I did. We did. I wanted to see this Hoffman. See if he was as bad as you people made him out to be.”
“He is,” Ben said. “Believe me. Ask some of the Spanish people I have in my battalion. Ask them what he did to their people. That is, if you have no objection to speaking with people of different backgrounds.”
“I’m not a racist, General. Never have been. But I’m old enough to remember quotas and giveaway programs for minorities, and I’m dead set against them.”
“So am I. So why are you opposed to joining us?”
“I don’t like what you teach in your Rebel schools and your laws are too damn harsh. You have too many rules and regulations for a man to have to follow.” Ben studied the man. “What is your name?”
“Tom Riley. I was born in Kentucky, thirty years ago. I have never been in trouble with the law in my life. I was raised to respect the law.”
“The law is what we represent, Tom. Yet you refuse to join us. Tell me, why are you so afraid of your children being educated?”
Tom Riley looked around him. He saw Rebel doctors and medics taking care of the wounded. Other medical personnel were seeing to the needs of the mover children. “Nice of y’all,” he said, a wistful note in his voice. “We had us a doctor once. Outlaws came and took him to care for some wounded they had. Then they killed him. I found the body. He’d been tortured. You folks are well-organized,” he added, almost as an afterthought.
“You’re welcome to join the movement, Tom.”
Tom Riley sighed heavily. “Maybe it’s time. I guess it is. We’ve been on our own for years. Me, and those seventy odd families who sort of follow my direction. Even though we don’t agree with a lot of what you do, General Raines, you folks put others in a hard bind.” He tried a smile. “Sure, you’ll leave us alone to live the way we choose. But when you say alone, you really mean alone. No help of any kind. Our kids subject to being taken from us. That’s blackmail, General.”
“It sure is,” Ben agreed cheerfully. “Tom, let me try to explain something to you: this old planet has taken quite a beating over the last few centuries. Now, what is left of the population has a chance to give something back. You can either be a part of that, or you can sit back and do nothing except complain. The Rebels have set aside hundreds of thousands of acres for the animals to live free and wild, as God intended them to do. We will never cut timber or build homes in those areas. We will allow no hunting in those areas.
“We still don’t have a clear idea how much of the population we’ve lost. We’re constantly having to revise figures. But we believe there is room for all of God’s creatures. There was before the Great War, but Americans were just too shallow and greedy to give much thought to God’s lesser creatures—and there is still a lot of spirited debate among the Rebels as to just who is the lesser of the creatures—us or the animals.
“You say you don’t like what we teach in our schools. Do you even know what we teach? Probably not. So I’ll tell you. We teach reading, writing, math, and keeping one’s body in good shape. Every child who is capable of engaging in physical training gets eight to ten hours of that per week. But we really don’t give a damn who can throw a baseball or football the farthest, or dribble a basketball better than others. What is put into a child’s mind is what we’re concerned about. It’s senseless and useless to have a highly motivated teacher put something in a child’s head during the day only to have it removed by stupid parents when the child gets home. Our children are taught respect for the land, the animals on it, and the people who are trying to rise out of the ashes of war. For those who choose not to take part in the rebuilding, they can, quite frankly, go straight to hell. Do I make myself clear, Mr. Riley?”
Tom Riley looked back at the twisted carnage on the highway, still burning and smoking. He looked at the rows of dead laid out in the fields, ready for mass burial. He looked at the Rebels, tough and capable and well-fed and in the peak of physical conditioning. He nodded his head. “Oh, yes, General. You’re quite clear on that matter.”
“Fine, Tom. You and your people can join us and be a part of that rebuilding, or you can fight us, and most of you will die. It’s all up to you.”
“Can I take your offer up with those who sort of look to me as their leader?”
“Certainly. I want you to do that.”
Tom Riley and his people agreed to return to Kentucky, and after being resupplied by the Rebels, they pulled out. Teams of Rebels would meet them back east, to assist in the setting up of an outpost. Most of the outposts of the Rebels had been destroyed by Hoffman’s terrorist teams, with all of the Rebels having lost good friends to Hoffman’s vicious and twisted philosophy, so it was all back to square one for Ben and the Rebels. Nearly everything they had physically accomplished over the long bloody years, Hoffman and his people had destroyed.
But starting over was nothing new for the Rebels. They’d been doing that for years. The Rebels just resigned themselves to do it and did it.
The Rebels pulled out the following morning and linked up with the battalions of Buddy, Dan Gray, and Jackie Malone. The Rebels began stretching out, south to north, and setting up roadblocks on every highway leading west. They were fully aware that they could not possibly stop all western movement, but they could block a large percentage of it. Ben ordered helicopter gunships to join them and had light fixed-wing aircraft up as eyes in the skies.
Recon was reporting a massive movement from the east, many of the groups well-armed and spoiling for a fight with anybody who stood in their way of joining the new Nazi movement.
“I guess we now know what all the people we couldn’t account for were doing all these years,” Dr. Chase said to Ben at a staff meeting. “Practicing Nazism.”
“And now their great savior is calling on them to rise up and fight,” Dan Gray added. “Hoffman,” he spat out the last.
“Yes,” Ben agreed, and then smiled. “But they’ve got one hell of a mountain to climb before they can join Field Marshal Hoffman. And that mountain is us.”
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1993 by William W. Johnstone
Cover design by Open Road Integrated Media
ISBN 978-1-4976-1236-5
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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Battle in the Ashes Page 25
