From The Ashes: America Reborn (5 page)

WWJ: Would it be safe to say you’ve slowed the pace down in the SUSA?

Ben Raines: To a very great extent, yes. I don’t think we’ve had a single incident of a business executive dropping dead of a heart attack in an airport or train station while hurrying to keep an appointment on the other side of the nation . . . just to use that as an example of how we’ve managed to cut the stress factor here.

WWJ: But would your way of life work for everybody? Outside of your borders?

Ben Raines: It would for a great many people, if they would let it. If the leaders of business and industry would allow their employees to slow down and smell the flowers, so to speak. We don’t move at a snail’s pace here. We get things done much faster than you might think. How’d we get off on this subject?

Both of us enjoyed a laugh at that, and General Raines went inside his house, returning with full mugs of coffee on a tray. We sugared and creamed and sat back to relax in silence for a bit, the tape recorder still running. I had brought lots of cassettes.

BOOK #3

ANARCHY IN THE ASHES

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

Ben Raines and about six thousand survivors have arrived and settled in the area of the nation once known as the South and known as the new Tri-States (Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi). Ben remembers the first time he and his rebels established the Tri-States in the Northwest, after the Great War. For a few years they had lived their dream of a fair society, until President Hilton Logan and his central government ordered the settlement’s destruction. . . . Now they have finally begun to rebuild in a new location in peace.

But this peace does not last long. Ike, ex-Navy SEAL, and Ben’s closest friend since, warns Ben that they have been picking up radio signals transmitted from Iceland to a base in northern Minnesota. Raines asks Ike to organize a full platoon (with enough artillery for a sustained operation) to investigate.

Since their arrival in Canada from Iceland ten years earlier, the members of IPF (International Peace Force) had been colonizing, rebuilding, and indoctrinating survivors they encountered. They are now moving southward into America. The people they initiate welcome the IPF’s organization and discipline, but fail to recognize their more sinister intentions, at least at first.

Sam Hartline, the despicable mercenary who now controls the territory once known as Wisconsin, presents himself to the leader of the IPF forces, General Georgi Striganov, a former agent of the KGB. Hartline and Striganov find they have much in common, and Hartline agrees to join the IPF in their creation of a new communist society that relies not simply on a strict class system, but also on the revival of Hitler’s ideals for the fostering of a pure, white master race.

Ben and his troops encounter a handful of survivors in Poplar Bluff, Missouri (along their route to Minnesota). Among them is Gale Roth, a feisty and attractive young Jewish woman whose will to survive deeply impresses Ben Raines. Gale agrees to travel with the Rebels, and soon becomes Ben’s closest companion.

Rebel scouts are sent ahead to an IPF outpost, the campus of the University of Missouri at Rolla, where it is learned that not only is the IPF actively recruiting followers, but that white supremacism lies at the core of their philosophy. The convoy pulls out of Rolla and goes to Jefferson City’s Westminster College.

Ben meets with General Striganov at Waterloo and personally condemns the Russian’s plans. After he returns to the Rebels, he contacts Striganov by radio and informs him that the IPF will not be allowed to cross Interstate 70 without suffering the consequences. Meanwhile, Raines meets with Al Maiden and Juan Solis, leaders of independent minority groups, and asks that they unite to fight against the IPF.

While Ben and these other leaders plan their three-column frontal attack on the IPF—Ben with personnel from Saint Peter’s, Missouri, west to Warrenton—intelligence reveals that Hartline and Striganov are not simply preventing the procreation of the other races, but force-breeding their prisoners with monstrous mutant sub-humans. Tortured and terrorized survivors tell of the horrors they have suffered at the hands of Hartline and his men.

A battle rages for six days on both sides of the 140-mile front along I-70. The rebels are outnumbered by the IPF, but are more heavily armed. The first two days of intense shelling are followed by four more of hand-to-hand combat, and Ben’s well-trained troops take heavy losses. Maiden’s and Solis’s civilian troops suffer plenty of casualties as well, but are holding up better than expected. In a final devious gesture to undermine the strength of the coalition’s attack, Hartline puts prisoners in the front of the cross fire. The Rebel forces are overwhelmed and forced to retreat.

Stories of the battle being waged by Raines and his Rebels have spread to the remotest corners of the country and are reaching settlements of survivors. Ben Raines has become not simply a folk hero but a deity, especially among the legions of uneducated orphaned youths. In extreme northern regions of Michigan, and southern South Dakota, these groups heed the call to participate in this war for freedom and order.

As Raines and his outnumbered Rebels prepare one final guerrilla assault on the IPF in Indiana, they receive word that they will be joined from the north by unexpected reinforcements in the form of some retired soldiers and from the east and west by groups of orphans all prepared to fight to the death for the cause. A surprised General Striganov orders the surrounded IPF to retreat west to Oregon, Washington, and northern California.

Raines’s people move toward Tennessee, Georgia, and North Carolina, where they will regroup until they are strong enough to face the IPF again.

FOUR

Ben Raines: Want to try to stay with our judicial system again?

WWJ: We can start off with it. But it’s much more interesting when you start digressing and touching unexpectedly on subjects.

Ben Raines (after a good laugh): Shall we begin with our courts or the citizen’s right to protect his or her own self? Your choice.

WWJ: Let’s go with self-protection. I’ve heard it’s quite different here.

Ben Raines: We believe it pretty much stays with the original meaning of the Constitution.

WWJ: The United States Constitution?

Ben Raines: Yes. Jefferson’s Constitution. A lot of our laws and rules and regulations are based on his interpretation of how a government should function.

WWJ: Many outside the SUSA say that isn’t so.

Ben Raines: They’re wrong. You know that Jefferson was Lincoln’s intellectual mentor?

WWJ: No, I didn’t.

Ben Raines: He was. But we can’t just stop with the writings of Jefferson when we discuss the rights of the law-abiding. We have to look at the backgrounds of all the men who signed the Declaration of Independence. All fifty-six of them. Right here in the SUSA we have as complete a written history on their lives and thoughts as can be found anywhere in the world.

I sat back, the tape recorder running. General Raines would get to the subject in his own time. Besides, it was much more fun and enlightening doing it this way.

Ben Raines: All fifty-six of those men suffered because of their beliefs. All of them signed that document knowing they faced death by doing so. Five of them were captured by the British and tortured before they died . . . tortured in hideous ways. Twelve had their homes looted and burned. Nine of them died from wounds suffered in the first Revolutionary War. One wealthy signer from Virginia was stripped of all his wealth and died a beggar, in rags. The British used confiscation of personal property as a means of attempting to silence dissent. Just before the second American Revolution the United States government was using the same sort of tactics. It didn’t work the first time around, and it damn sure didn’t work the second time around.

I suspected, then, that General Raines was probably going to discuss Jefferson for a time. I had read somewhere that the general considered Thomas Jefferson to be one of the greatest men ever to walk on American soil. I decided to prompt him.

WWJ: Was Jefferson always a rebel?

Ben Raines: Hardly. He was in his late twenties before rebel fever seized him. It was during his tenure as a county lieutenant and burgess in the House of Burgesses when the fever struck him. Second term there, I think. Some historians say Jefferson really became a rebel in 1774.

WWJ: You admire him greatly, don’t you?

Ben Raines: I can’t imagine anyone who wouldn’t. Jefferson was a man of great vision and also of great contradictions. But let’s save him for later. Right now, let’s see if I can unravel our system of justice for you.

WWJ: The tape recorder is running.

Ben Raines: Isn’t it always? All right, what is it you don’t understand?

WWJ: I’m not sure those living outside the borders of the SUSA understand anything about your system of justice.

Ben Raines: Well, let’s tackle it from this angle: A punk takes a gun and holds up a convenience store. During the course of the robbery the store clerk is killed. Now then, if that occurs outside our borders, the charge will range from second-degree murder to manslaughter; rarely will it be murder in the first. In the SUSA, when a person takes a life during the commission of a crime, it’s murder one. Because no matter how many excuses for criminal behavior the sobbing sisters and bleeding hearts come up with—in your society, not here—an innocent, law-abiding, taxpaying person is still dead.

WWJ: And the punishment for that crime here in the SUSA is . . . ?

Ben Raines: Death. A decent human being’s life is too precious here in the SUSA for us to play word games with.

WWJ: They are put to death in a humane manner?

Ben Raines: They are either shot or hanged. The choice is theirs.

WWJ: That’s not much of a choice.

Ben Raines: The criminal didn’t give the murder victim that much choice.

WWJ: Let me play devil’s advocate for a moment. During the course of your investigation, your people discover that the criminal really didn’t mean to kill; he didn’t go in the store to commit murder. Isn’t that taken into consideration?

Ben Raines: No. Because the clerk is still dead. His or her life is over. He or she is in the grave. His or her family had to witness the burial of a loved one who had harmed no one. Here in the SUSA we have proven that harsh and swift punishment is a great deterrent to violent crime. Statistics do not lie. They present cold and irrefutable facts. Outside the SUSA, they spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year on prison construction, so-called prison reform, clothing, medical care, law libraries, lawyers, and God only knows what else. But probably less than a nickel out of every dollar goes for rehabilitation of the incarcerated. I’ve already told you that here a prisoner can return to society with a Ph.D. and walk right into a high-paying job and be an accepted member of any community.

WWJ: And there have been no mistakes made with any individual?

Ben Raines: No. At least not yet. Not to my knowledge. But we’re a young nation. And there are any number of very smart criminals out there.

WWJ: Who makes up the parole boards?

Ben Raines: Who sits on them? Not a bunch of liberal, out-of-touch-with-reality eggheads, I can tell you that. Ordinary citizens make up the various parole boards throughout the SUSA.

WWJ: I will agree that your method of incarceration and rehabilitation sounds good. But would it be practical for the rest of the nation?

Ben Raines: I don’t see why not. But I will admit we haven’t had much success with the more violent types of criminals. Some people are just born bad.

WWJ: Do you really believe that, General?

Ben Raines: Oh, yes. Certainly. The bad-seed theory is really not a theory anymore. Scientists were on the verge of proving that even before the revolution.

WWJ: There are many outside the SUSA who would not agree with you.

Ben Raines: There are many outside the SUSA who wouldn’t agree with me if I stated the sun came up in the east.

I could not argue with the general on that point. Ben Raines was one of the most hated men in North America. But I also knew that a lot of that hatred sprang from jealousy. General Raines and his followers had carved a successful nation out of the ashes of war in a relatively short time. He had proven that his system of government—something he had preached for years prior to the revolution—would work. And he was hated for it.

WWJ: How about the constitutional rights of a criminal? Do they really have any rights here?

Ben Raines: Sure they do. Basically the same constitutional rights that are guaranteed to everyone. In many areas of the criminal-justice system, criminals have more rights here than outside our borders.