From The Ashes: America Reborn

by William W. Johnstone

  Ben Raines: Where to now?

  WWJ: Let’s sit a while over there in the shade. I only have a few more questions.

  Ben Raines: And then you still plan to take a driving tour of the SUSA?

  WWJ: Yes.

  Ben Raines: You think this interview will ever see the light of day? You know if you praise the SUSA, you might never get published.

  I slowly nodded. But there was no way I could write about the SUSA without heaping praise where it was deserved and criticizing those few areas where I felt the SUSA was too extreme.

  I looked down at the few notes I had left and slowly closed the notebook. There really was nothing left to ask.

  General Raines was watching as I clicked off the small tape recorder.

  Ben Raines: Think you have enough?

  WWJ: Plenty.

  Ben Raines: I am sorry you didn’t get to interview my team. But they’re still on leave and scattered all over.

  WWJ: I’ll get a chance to meet them when I move into the SUSA. Maybe sooner. I might get run out of the upper states when the interview hits the streets.

  Ben Raines laughed and handed me the keys to a vehicle. He said, that’s for your use as long as you like. You won’t be bothered by anyone in the SUSA as long as you’re driving that Hummer. It’s parked right over there.”

  He pointed, and said, “See you around, reporter.”

  And with that, General Ben Raines turned and walked away.

  I walked over to the military HumVee and got in and drove back to my quarters. I had quite a story to write.

  BOOK #24

  JUDGMENT IN THE ASHES

  Duty is the sublimest word in our language. Do your duty in all things. . . . You should never wish to do less.

  –Robert E. Lee

  Many religious people are deeply suspicious. They seem—for purely religious purposes, of course—to know more about iniquity that the unregenerate.

  –Kipling

  At his headquarters in Tucson, Ben feels relief that the back of the punk uprising has been broken, but he is not looking forward to the coming religious war with Simon Border and his fanatic followers. Ben is prepared for an attack at any time, but it doesn’t come. Border, it seems, has a new strategy—he will not go head-on with the Rebels, but will instead wage a guerrilla-style war. Ben guesses that perhaps he is facing internal problems from dissident factions at home as well.

  Meanwhile a mysterious robed figure nicknamed the Prophet is appearing around base camp. One night Ben decides to confront him. He makes himself comfortable in a camp chair and waits. The man appears with a warning about Simon Border; Ben begins to question him but they are interrupted by a guard, and the Prophet fades away into the night.

  Ben decides to take the offensive and begins to move his army north toward Border territory. From a captured enemy officer Ben learns that Border is holding back to beef up his forces with paid soldiers. Ben figures that the source of fresh troops will be Bruno Bottger. News arrives from SUSA that Border has released terrorists, who are committing horrible acts, and that there are serious internal political problems in NUSA.

  Ben moves north to Los Angeles, where he expects the first confrontation with Border’s troops. Along the way he learns that Border is not only a religious fanatic, but he’s also a sick man—he’s molesting children and encouraging his followers to do the same. The uneventful convoy north is interrupted by an ambush from a band of Creepies in Los Angeles and a battle with a band of thugs in an old national forest.

  When Ben reaches the battle line he begins a heavy bombardment of Border’s troops. For three days and nights the shelling is merciless, and by the end of the third day there’s no fight in the enemy front line. Ben exacts swift justice on the gangs that are raping and molesting in the name of God. Border’s forces drop back quickly, and Ben realizes that Border intends to consolidate his power in the old states of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. He attempts to contact Border and offer him a truce if he promises to stay in those states and stop fighting the Rebels. But the religious nut does not respond.

  Ben decides to let Border settle in and then attack with a massive airdrop of thousands of Rebels into the heart of his empire. Ben and his team, of course, will join them. When the weather breaks the night sky is filled with Rebel chutes and once on the ground the units start raising havoc, destroying towns and supply dumps as they move. Once inside the Border territory it becomes clear that the size of his army has been greatly overestimated—all the troops are at the front line and there’s no one home to protect the center. That won’t be lasting long, however, as Ben learns that Bottger is sending in a massive number of troops to shore up Border and destroy the Rebels—especially Ben.

  Itching for action, Ben takes his unit on a little head-hunting expedition. They back up the motor-home CP and head east into Montana. But one of Bottger’s men, a Colonel Runkel along with his platoon, tracks them easily and ambushes them high in the mountains. Ben is alone in the CP when the attack begins and when a mortar shell blows the vehicle off the edge of the cliff, Ben goes with it. But the CP hangs up on an outcrop of rock before tumbling into the abyss, and Ben escapes. He is injured, alone and deep in the wilderness with enemies all around—Ben’s happier than he’s been in years.

  While he is inflicting great damage on Runkel in a dangerous game of cat and mouse, he runs into Jenny Marlowe, the last member of the Montana Militia, who is living alone deep in the forest. They join forces and continue to harass Runkel and his men. Finally, in a head-to-head battle, Runkel and his men are defeated. Ben will return to the Rebels. He asks Jenny to come with him, but sadly she elects to stay in her wilderness home—Ben vows he will return when the war is finally over. Ben radios Ike and waits for his pickup.

  On his return, Ben learns that Simon Border is no longer a threat and that his army has collapsed. He makes the only decision he can to ensure a safe and secure world—he will take the Rebel army into Africa to deal with Bruno Bottger once and for all.

  PART TWO

  The Wit and Wisdom of Ben Raines

  ON BEN RAINES

  • Ben Raines was much more than just a military man. He was a planner and a thinker and a doer.

  • Salina always knew that he was in love with Jerre; had been for years and would always be in love with her. But he was never unfaithful to Salina. Ben had a very rigid moral code about marriage.

  • Ben had never been much of a possessions lover. He could have lived much more extravagantly than he had, back when things were more or less normal, but Ben had chosen to keep his life as simple as possible. He lived well, but rather simply.

  • I never knew exactly what the general had in mind, only that I trusted the general to do something completely off the wall and totally unexpected. I knew that firsthand, during the years we battled each other, Ben Raines had boxed me around every time we met on the field of battle (Georgi Striganov)

  • No, Ben Raines was not a god. Ben was just as human as any other moral being. He occasionally cut himself shaving. Stubbed his toe now and then. Sometimes drank too much. Every once in a while allowed himself the luxury of sinking into a morass of self-pity.

  • To say that Ben was opinionated was like saying an elephant was heavy; no need to dwell on the obvious.

  ON CRIME AND CRIMINALS

  • There was absolutely no crime in the Tri-States. It was not tolerated. Walk on someone else’s property with less than friendly intent and you could pay the price.

  • Criminals know the American public is easy prey because of all the liberal and legalistic claptrap the law-abiding citizens have been bombarded with for two generations. The average citizen will not shoot first because he’s seen what happened to those that did.

  • The selling of drugs called for the death penalty.

  • My position was that anyone who kills another while drinking and driving should be put to death.

  • I have neither the time, facilities, no
r inclination for attempted rehabilitation.

  • For the most part, it didn’t work back when we had a civilization, and could spend millions of taxpayer dollars fucking around with criminals, when the biggest part of them should have been put up against a wall and shot to begin with.

  • Abuse a child in a Rebel zone, and the offending party or parties faced the real possibility of that child being taken from them and placed with couples who would care for it.

  • I have never believed in pampering kids. If a teenager commits an adult crime, they should be punished like an adult.

  • Ben knew that kids are kids and are going to break the rules from time to time. Loud mufflers and loud music of any type—rock to classical—was tolerated, to a point.

  • Poachers should be imprisoned.

  • The one thing the government never did try in their so-called war on crime is to completely eradicate it. To me, it’s very simple: If a country has no criminals, that country will have no crime. I proved that in Tri-States.

  ON EDUCATION

  • The key to racial acceptance is education on both sides. And conformity on both sides. Root Cause.

  • Education is the key to wiping out savagery and barbarism, and it’s the only way to bring this nation back from the ashes.

  • 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.

  • . . . if we don’t get a grip on the handle of this thing and start twisting it around, we will have nothing to leave our children. Nothing except savagery, barbarism, and years of ignorance. Education is the only way we’re going to pull out of this mess.

  • His schools did what schools were supposed to do: they taught young minds.

  • Rebel children had a book placed in their hands practically at the moment of birth.

  • Even the most intelligent of persons will, after a reasonable length of time, begin to believe it if that person is told fifty times a day that they are stupid.

  • There was no illiteracy in any area controlled by the Rebels. Ben would not tolerate it.

  ON FIREARMS AND GUN CONTROL

  • Every person over the age of eighteen—if they so desired and most did—was armed. With those weapons, the people were making their first start in a hundred years in establishing some control over their lives.

  • When it comes to firearms, the American public is conditioned to react in a measurable way. There are people who will tell you, quite honestly, that a .22 caliber bullet will not kill a person. Those people are not very bright.

  • An M-1 rifle will bring this reaction: “Oh, yes. My Uncle Harry has one of those. Uses it to hunt deer.”

  • Many people still think of the M-16 as a toy. A BAR is not well-known. A 155 howitzer just sits there. But lay the old Chicago Piano on a table, the .45 caliber Thompson submachine gun, and there is a visible sucking-in-of-the-gut reaction.

  • It was bullshit when a hunter killed another hunter by shooting him out of a tree and said he was so sorry but he thought it was a deer or a squirrel. What it was was an irresponsible act by an asshole with a gun. And it wasn’t the fault of the gun; someone has to be behind the trigger.

  • There were people who said it was wrong to defend oneself and one’s possessions with a gun; they placed the rights of the law-abiding and taxpaying citizens.

  • More people died from accidentally inhaling poisonous gas than from accidental shootings. As a matter of fact, more people died from almost anything other than accidental shootings.

  • I was never anti-hunting. Hell, I belonged to the NRA right up to the end . . . I was quite simply, adamantly opposed to animal cruelty

  • Trapping and hunting for sport were forbidden in any zone the Rebels controlled. The laying out of any type of ground poison was not allowed. Deer herds were controlled by careful reintroduction of the animals’ natural predators.

  • How people who dared stand up for their rights and use a gun to defend self, home, or loved ones would sometimes go to prison and the crud who broke into their homes or cars or attacked them on the streets could sue for damages . . . Many of the media people would immediately brand us bigots, or gun nuts, or crazies.

  • The right to bear arms is not only a necessity, it is one of the cornerstones of the Constitution. Gun control has only placed weapons in the hands of criminals and made it easier for them to prey on the weak.

  ON GOVERNMENT

  • Tri-States had shown the world—that world that remained—that a government does not need to be top-heavy with bureaucracy and deadweight and hundreds of unfair and unworkable laws and pork-barrel projects and scheming politicians and massive overspending and deadheads.

  • Anytime a government takes away the basic liberties of its citizens, it will inevitably lead to war.

  • Most governments are based on fear: fear of the IRS, fear of the FBI, fear of the Treasury Department, fear of the state police, fear of the tax collector—fear of everything. That is the only way a massive bureaucracy can function.

  • There were some in our government who wanted a classless society. Unfortunately, while it looks good on paper, it’s a lie. Anyone who doesn’t believe there are classes of people is either very naive or a damned fool!

  • There had been too much government intervention into the operation of privately owned businesses, too much interference in the personal lives of citizens from big government, too many lawyers and too many judges and too many lawsuits.

  • Most judges have shit for brains.

  • You couldn’t be a lawyer and be honest.

  • There were very few lawyers in any Rebel-controlled zone; or it should be said that there were very few practicing attorneys. Many who were lawyers back when civilization was the norm—more or less—before the Great War, were now farmers and soldiers and mechanics and so forth. And those who did maintain some sort of legal practice—just to keep their hand in it, for their certainly wasn’t much call for them—soon learned that in Rebel-controlled zones there were very few legal niceties.

  • The United States was surrounded by nations who called themselves our friends but not so secretly hated us.

  • Criminal justice, back then, had been on the side of the punks and thugs and scum and to hell with the victim’s rights and the overwhelming vocal cries of the majority of law-abiding citizens.

  ON HIPPIES

  • But your true hippies, they weren’t bad people . . . your true hippies, and I stress true, simply liked the laid-back lifestyle. They worked regular jobs like anybody else. If anybody would hire them.

  • Relax, son. Back when the world was whole—more or less—I knew a lot of hard-assed combat vets who joined the hippie movement. If they hadn’t made up their minds to fight, they wouldn’t be coming up here.

  ON HIS PERSONAL PHILOSOPHY

  • Freeing a people is right and just, and that’s all that matters.

  • I’m not ruthless, pardner. I’m just a man who has a job to do and will do it in the most expedient manner possible.

  • I won’t put up with criminals. If my people bleed and die, my rules apply.

  • The older I got, the less patience I had with those who would not help themselves. And it was “would not.” Not “could not.”

  • 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.

  • I was never a joiner. Never belonged to a country club; never cared much what people thought of me. Like I said, I guess I marched to the beat of a different drummer.

  • Honky-tonks should be burned to the ground.

  • I am a conservative in most of my thinking, but I don’t like to see innocent people suffer needlessly.

  • One cannot blame the young for their lack of judgment because they never knew any type of civilized society. And those now in their late twenties and thirties knew only a
permissive, liberal type of government as teenagers, before the bombings . . . Blame the mothers and the fathers and lawmakers and judges and record producers and TV programmers, beginning in the mid-sixties and continuing right up to the bombings for the lack of understanding of discipline and a work ethic and moral codes and rules of order . . .

  ON HUMAN NATURE- IGNORANCE

  • Ignorance is the father and mother of superstition, the breeder of far-fetched legends, the sperm of ghostly tales, the lover and creator of myth.

  ON LIBERALISM, LIBERALS. LOSERS, AND LUNATICS

  • . . . while Ben Raines sometimes leaned so far to the conservative right some wondered how he managed to walk upright, figuratively speaking, Ben shared many of the liberal views. The difference was, Ben backed up his views with gunpowder.

  • Liberalism had failed miserably. If there was to be, ever again, a workable society built out of the ashes, it had to be something other than the unworkable flights of fancy the liberals had forced upon the taxpayers of America.

  • Those types have been around for as long as we’ve stood upright. They began crawling out holes in the ground, so to speak, back in the sixties, when the nation’s courts became liberal. Liberal means permissive, and that’s exactly what happened.

  • How would I have changed history? Ben silently mused. He hid a smile, thinking: I would have shot every goddamn liberal . . .

  • They’re losers. These people we’ve found so far are, I suspect, the very types who pissed and moaned and sobbed about criminal rights a decade or so ago. They blubbered and snorted about all the bad ol’ guns in the hands of citizens, and were oh so happy when the assholes in Congress finally disarmed Americans . . .