A DISTANT THUNDER

by H. A. Covington

  “What about wedding rings? I don’t have any.”

  “Best not to use ‘em,” said Noble. “They’re potentially identifying markers that The Beast might use against you someday. Don’t worry, young man, the Lord and your family will know you’re married, and you’ll know it. That’s all that counts. All the rest of it is nice to have, but superfluous to requirement. After the war is over and The Beast is slain you two can renew your vows in a proper church with all the trimmings. If you make it.”

  So we went inside the main cabin, and in the paneled walls of what used to be the logging company manager’s office, with everyone gathered around who wasn’t on guard, the old man pulled a rat-eared and now completely illegal King James Bible out of his coat pocket and held it out. “Kneel down and put your right hand on the book, both of yez,” he commanded. We did so, holding each other’s hands with our left. “This being a time of war for our Folk, we gone make this quick. Dearly beloved, we are gathered here in the sight of God and all you here assembled to unite this man and this woman in the bonds of holy etcetera, etcetera. Shane Ryan, do you take Rooney Wingfield here to be your lawful wedded wife, to have and to hold, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, to honor and respect, to protect and succor in her every need, never to renounce nor shame her, until death do you part?”

  “I do,” I said with all my heart and soul.

  “Rooney Wingfield, do you take Shane Ryan here to be your lawful wedded husband, to have and to hold, to love and to cherish, to honor and obey, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, to be the staff of life upon which he shall lean in his time of trouble, and never to renounce or to shame him, until death do you part?”

  “I do,” she said. God forgive me, even after all the years we had known one another I tried to read her voice, to imagine what she was really thinking.

  “I now pronounce you man and wife.” I got kiss number five and we had our wedding feast, which consisted of a two family buckets of fried chicken, coleslaw, and microwaved mashed potatoes with gravy that looked and tasted like diesel oil, washed down with several large plastic jugs of diet cola served out in Styrofoam cups with no ice. Rooney got hugs from her mother and sister and I got my hand shaken by all the men, and before they left Carter and Ma gave us our wedding present—Caprice, the family Doberman, would be going with our little trio. After they were gone I turned to Martin Morehouse and said, “Uh, Red, under the circumstances, would you mind taking the first watch? I’ll relieve you at midnight.”

  “See you then,” he said with a somber nod, hefting his shotgun and pulling on his coat to go up onto the hill. At the door Red turned. “I guess you both know that I think the world of you two. Dear God, I hope this works out and you have a wonderful and happy future life together!”

  “That’s what we want too, Red. Why do you think we’re out here in the woods with all these guns?” asked Rooney with a smile. Then I took her hand and led her out to the trailer.

  The next morning Rooney and I watched the dawn come up together, sitting on the ground beneath a Douglas fir, arms around one another and rifles on our knees, watching for the evil men from an evil empire who wanted to kill us. It was freezing, but neither of us felt it, and we had Caprice between us as a hot water bottle anyway. The sun burned through the fog and by the time we pulled out of camp in ournice roomy SUV, the sky above us was the deepest and purest blue.

  * * *

  For the next few months Rooney and I stuck close to Red Morehouse. We carried messages he didn’t want transmitted over a phone or a computer even in code, and we ran assorted errands. We went on some minor tickles involving not too much in the way of mayhem, and we spent as much time together as we could. It was almost an extended honeymoon, except at any given time it could all have been blown to hell when ZOG came through the door. It was the most relatively sedate period I had during the war. We did a fair amount of traveling, driving by night from safe house to safe house, mostly up to Oly and Seattle but once or twice as far down as northern California and once out to Idaho, where we were able to fit in a quick reunion visit with Adam Wingfield. This was in the days before FATPO landed and the checkpoints weren’t anywhere near as numerous, mostly being thrown up in the vicinity of a recent NVA tickle after the fact, and so we were usually warned what locales to avoid. Most of our job consisted of providing transport and cover while Red met with a succession of small groups and individuals in private homes and apartments, in the back rooms of restaurants and bars, on park benches, in motel rooms, at scenic overlooks, in churches, once on a train and once in a tanning salon, of all places. Rooney and I didn’t sit in on that end of it much. That wasn’t our job; we stood by and kept watch. But in later years I would sometimes see some high functionary or politician’s picture in the paper or on the screen, and I’d recall a much younger version of that face in some back room of a greasy spoon, or looming out of the rain under a street light. Red moved in some important circles.

  What was happening was that the Party was quietly setting up the mechanics and logistics of a long-haul strategy to free our Homeland. We now had one advantage over the pre-10/22 period, in that at least now we knew how “it” was going to happen. We knew we wouldn’t be dealing with some kind of bizarre post-apocalyptic road warrior science fiction scenario, nor would we be dealing with any kind of nationwide mass uprising against the régime. No space aliens, no biological warfare plagues, no post-apocalyptic world. Straight colonial war of a small nation for independence against a larger occupying power, just like the Old Man had predicted, and for that there were plenty of encouraging historical precedents. A unified strategic plan had to be formulated on the assumption that the Zionist régime in America would remain more or less intact, although that was by no means certain, and that our task was to persuade that régime that letting the Northwest go was the lesser of two evils. “They’re thinking in terms of a thirty year war,” Red told us grimly once, referring to the Party leadership. “We hope it doesn’t last that long, but we have to assume worst case scenario and plan for it, and then if it doesn’t take that long we can be pleasantly surprised.”

  The term sedate doesn’t mean I got no action at all. I did some driving on a few hits for Carter in Lewis County and Terry Jackson down in Longview, plus one in Portland that got hairy. At that time Portland had a high-yellow city councilman named Toodles Taliaferro—no, look it up, I swear ma’am, I am not making this up! That was his name. It’s in all the history books. Anyway, Toodles was not only high-yellow and as politically correct and lefty on every issue as it was possible to be, he was a sodomite and actually “married” to his “partner,” a white doctor who was—need I say it?—a proctologist. Okay, ma’am, you can laugh all you want. But you wouldn’t laugh if you actually had blobs of worthless protoplasm like that governing you and teaching their perversions to your children. Toodles had been on the Portland Brigade’s to do list for a while and they were about to take care of it when they were hit with really heavy police and FBI raids, some arrested and a lot more having to go on the bounce, and they were so short handed they asked Carter for my services as a wheel man. It was the policy of the NVA that every time we took a major hit, we always hit back equally heavy in the same area and we did so immediately, even if there was only one Volunteer left in a unit and we had to import a hundred others from elsewhere. ZOG must never be left with any pretension to crow about in the media that they had destroyed or eliminated us, anywhere. Like that time Calvin Freeman was the only member of C Company in Spokane who escaped a dragnet, and he eased his body on into the local television station the next night when the local TV news personality was cackling about it on the air. Volunteer Freeman walked onto the set and dropped anchor right on the six o’clock news with a .45 slug in the asshole’s perfectly coiffured and blow-dried head. Now that’s entertainment!

  Anyway, that night Toodles makes this big speech in the council chambers, televised, of cour
se, praising the cops and FBI for their actions against the NVA and denouncing evil racism and domestic terrorism in general. Then he calls his “husband” up onto the stage and gives him a big hug and a slurpy French kiss and he shouts, “I have a message for every racist and homophobic bigot in Portland’s fair city! Our love will conquer your hate!” For this, those two pervs got a thunderous standing ovation from the crowd which played well on the eleven o’clock news. Until the lovefest was interrupted to announce that they had been both been shot dead as they strolled hand in hand up to their pretty little gentrified house in a Victorian historic section of north Portland. The damned idiots had made this big ranting, raving public attack on the Northwest Volunteer Army, the entire white race, and every basic concept of decency for the past two thousand years, they knew we were out and about, and they went home with no police protection. To this day the breathtaking contempt that those two faggots displayed for us frosts my cookies. They deserved to die for that insult alone. Did they think it was all a joke? Did they think we were some drunken skinheads who could be safely defied? Did they think this was the radical Sixties when words didn’t mean anything? Well, those candy-ass fools found out differently. They screamed and blubbered like babies when Big Jim McCann from Portland A Company and a kid named Ace from B Company (who were admittedly just about the only shooters Portland had left that night) cut their foul perverted bodies in half with double-ought buckshot at close range.

  I don’t know who was driving for Big Jim, but I was behind the wheel for Ace. Somebody must have seen the Toyota Camry I wasdriving and snitched on us, because we hit the bubble gum machine as I headed back to the drop-off and we ended up in a car chase with me roaring down Lombard Street at midnight with half a dozen squad cars after me. The Portland cops never did accept a Lewis-style arrangement, at least not the force as a whole. Too many non-whites and political appointees. I figured I’d better do something before they set up a roadblock or called in a chopper on us—the longer a pursuit lasts, the less chance the pursued has. So I did a U-turn and rammed the car into one of the police cars and Ace and I had to bail and bop our way out. Fortunately Carter had lent me the Tek-9 and some magazines, and we had enough firepower to make it. I shot another cop that night, but I only wounded him. Portland didn’t know how many of our safe houses were still safe and which ones had been compromised, and so I walked the streets for the next day like a wino, with the city in a hippy-dippy politically correct lefty uproar over two dead bugger boys, and the whole damned police force looking for evildoing me. Carter had to come and pick me up on a street downtown the next night and take me back to Dundee.

  There was nothing on the scale of the Rothstein hit, just enough evildoing to make sure ZOG never forgot we were around. Largely we kept our heads down and played everything in a fairly low key. “If we can survive this first year we can make it the whole way,” said Carter grimly. ZOG never quite seemed to know what to make of us during that first year after 10/22. They appeared genuinely stunned that the white peasantry could revolt. They were used to hearing dem gentle honkies singin’ Old Pink Joe on their way back from the fields at night while massa and de rabbi sat on the veranda with mint juleps in their hand, but now Old Pink Joe done broke de plantation, the drums were beating in the deep swamp and there was the smoke of burning and blood in the air. The authorities tried everything they’d been doing before, only more of the same. More anti-terrorism and hatecrime laws by the bushel, of course. The prison nickel went up to a dime, ten years for possession of “printed matter likely to be of use to terrorists” with a full twenty years for possession of the Protocols, an unlicensed King James Bible (certain libraries were allowed to have strictly controlled copies of both) or a video of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. They even introduced a Federal statute that went beyond thoughtcrime and embraced the old 1984 Orwellian offense offacecrime, by prohibiting “silent communication through body language and facial expression of support for domestic terrorism, of silent contempt for the government of the United States or the President of the United States, silent contempt expressed through body language or facial expression directed against racial, religious, or sexual minorities in such a manner as to inflict mental anguish,” etc. They actually had a television campaign about this new law to the music of “Put On A Happy Face,” although that one was so ridiculous even by ZOG standards that I don’t know if anyone was ever prosecuted for it.

  The media’s spin was alternately syrupy sentimental patriotic and thunderously raging and threatening. The NVA’s imminent demise was always just around the corner, if you believed the talking heads on the tube. Every couple of months there would be a spate of spectacular FBI and police raids, and some of our people would be caught or killed, more often than not along with a number of completely innocent bystanders since the Feds were notoriously trigger-happy. Afterward there would always be a big press conference with unctuous-looking suits looking like the cat who’d got the cream, reading proud boastful statements about how they were about to squash the NVA and the Party like bugs. There would be long tables of allegedly captured guns and ammunition and explosives laid out for display for the benefit of the cameras, along with Tricolors and assorted “hate literature” spangled with swastikas. There was a bit of a contretemps when an inquisitive reporter who had attended several of these conferences became suspicious, and he took a close look at several of the weapons. He then pointed out to the FBI master of ceremonies, on live camera, that they had the same serial numbers as weapons displayed in previous such dog and pony shows as having been captured from the NVA in different raids. The United States Attorney general was properly outraged at such deception and took immediate corrective action to rectify the situation: the insolent reporter was indicted and arrested under the Patriot Act.

  Then one warm day in June Red told us to drive him out to the old logging camp. It was the first time we had been back there since Rooney and I were married, but I understood that other crews were using it from time to time. “There’s a pow-wow tonight, more of our people than I like to see in one place, but there’s somebody we need to meet,” Red told us. Sure enough, when we started to pull in off the fire road we were stopped by a couple of salty-looking Volunteers I’d never seen before with M-16s. They knew Red and waved him on through. There were about fifty Volunteers in the camp, more than had been together in Lewis County since 10/22.

  We gathered in one of the hangars that had served the logging company as a warehouse. The guy we had come to meet was a thirty-something man, short and powerful with ice-blue eyes. What hair he had left on the right side of his skull was red and cut short. He has a very bad burn scar that covered the left side of his face and the back of his head. It made him look like a cave man. There was a kind of platform at one end of the hangar made from plywood. No idea what the logging company used it for. Red got up and addressed us. “Comrades, I have some important news. It’s showtime. Lewis County has been upgraded by the Army Council into an operational area and Company E is now officially an active service unit.” This was greeted with enthusiastic cheers and applause. “Carter Wingfield will be moving up to assume quartermaster duties for the South Sound Brigade, so he’ll be spending more time in Olympia and Tacoma. He will also be promoted to the rank of lieutenant. His replacement as company quartermaster will be the gentleman sitting back there who looks like the evil Santa Claus with the tattoos. His Volunteer name is Smackwater Jack.”

  “Just call me Smack,” called out Smack. “I ain’t no lieutenant or sergeant of nothing. I’m just the Smack.” There were a lot of guys like Smack who refused any formal rank. I was one of them, when I was offered it on occasion. Volunteer was always good enough for me.

  “I myself will be assuming the duties of brigade Political Officer, so you will be seeing somewhat less of me as well down here, although as far as I am concerned Lewis is my home and my home base,” Red went on. “You have been called here in order to meet our new commander for
Echo Company, Lieutenant Dorsey Thompson. He was a lieutenant in the United States army as well, is Ranger trained and he has extensive combat experience, he has carried out a number of successful missions for the NVA, and he has now been given the assignment of creating and implementing a combat strategy for the liberation of Lewis County from the occupation forces. Lewis and the odd point north and south as may become practical. As I said, from now on E Company is to be classified as an active service unit, although we will still have a large support contingent which should actually grow with time.”

  “Are we going to get one of those Flying Columns in Lewis County that we keep hearing about on the grapevine?” asked Teddy the Bear.

  “Not right away, troop,” replied Thompson, stepping forward with confidence and ease. “That may well be on the cards for the future, though. Captain Morehouse introduced me as Dorsey Thompson, but you comrades can call me Tank. I picked up that handle because I was a tank commander in Egypt and the Gaza Strip a few years ago, back when I was stupid enough to fight for The Beast. One day my vehicle ran over a home-made mine of about a thousand pounds of homemade napalm. I was the only one of the crew who survived, and that’s where this comes from,” he said, pointing at his face. “I might have something of a face left if Uncle Sam hadn’t been trying to cut back on expensive medical care for wounded Crusaders and decided that a full rebuild constituted ‘cosmetic surgery inessential to the well being and performance of the soldier.’ I believe was the term they used. Needless to say, I haven’t been too hepped on Amurrica since then, and my wife even less so.

  “As the captain informed you, from this point on Lewis County is a designated operational theater for the NVA. Strategically, our objective is simple,” Tank went on. “Interstate 5 is the main artery for this part of the world between California and the Canadian border. Since the United States so foolishly destroyed its rail system in the last century in favor of these big eighteen-wheeled monsters that burn tons of oil and put mega-billions into the pockets of the Bush family and their cronies, the overwhelming majority of all freight and all passenger traffic on the west coast goes up and down I-5 at one point or another. We are going to choke off that artery. We are going to cut off enemy movement and supply on the ground between Portland and the Seattle metroplex areas. We are going to make it as difficult as possible for ZOG to move men and material through here. We are going to turn this part of western Washington into flyover country for them. When we are through, every member of the United States military and anyone affiliated with the United States government will go miles out of their way to avoid Lewis County. We may not be able to accomplish this completely at first, but we will eventually create a solid block of support and a safe refuge for the Republic’s forces in this county. The people of the county will support us, for the simple reason that those who do not will no longer be resident here, one way or another. We will also use Lewis County as a staging area from which the NVA can mount major operations both northwards towards the enemy concentrations in Olympia and Tacoma, and southward against Portland and the Columbia river basin with its power plants and medium-level towns such as The Dalles. This is part of the Army Council’s overall strategy of isolating ZOG in the large metroplexes and rendering movement and control of the white population by the Americans difficult at first, and then impossible. Our effort here in Lewis is a kind of pilot project, a laboratory in which we will experiment with methods for clearing away American rule from a largely rural area, and replacing it with our own.