We got out of the vehicle and walked up to the house. A very attractive but very capable-looking woman met us at the door. She had a pistol tucked in her waistband. She smiled and greeted the general.
Ben Raines: Helen. Everybody OK here?
Helen: The family’s all right. The punks didn’t do so well.
Ben Raines: Know them?
The woman shook her head and said: “They’re not from around here, General. I never saw any of them before. I was fixing lunch when ol’ Cookie started barking. Then we heard a yelp of pain. Cookie stopped barking. Turned out the sons of bitches killed her with a club. By that time, Pen and me had grabbed guns and were ready. . . .
A very large man suddenly appeared behind the woman. He smiled at General Raines and stepped outside. I noticed he had several fingers missing from his left hand. He said: “General. Good to see you. Even under these circumstances.”
Ben Raines: Pen. The kids OK?
Pen Wilson: They’re fine. They were out horseback riding down along the creek. The youngest is pretty shook up about ol’ Cookie.
Helen: Neighbor from down the road came over soon as they heard the shots. She’s with Martha out by the barn. Her husband is digging the grave for Cookie.
A paramedic I had met back at the aid station came around the side of the house. He said: “Two dead and two alive. The wounded aren’t serious. They’ll live to spend the rest of their lives in prison.”
Ben Raines: Or hang.
Paramedic: True, General.
Pen Wilson: Preferably hang.
WWJ: Was any member of the family killed?
Ben Raines: Doesn’t make any difference here. Armed criminals invaded a home and threatened innocent people with bodily harm. If the jury calls for the death penalty, the judge has no choice in the matter. The judge can’t override a jury’s decision if they demand the death penalty.
WWJ: You think the jury will call for the death penalty? That takes a long time. The memory of the home invasion won’t be so fresh then.
Ben Raines: The trial will be held within thirty days. That’s the law. We don’t screw around in the SUSA. But if I had to guess, I’d say the two remaining punks will spend the rest of their lives in prison.
WWJ: They might get paroled.
Ben Raines: Not a chance. Shots were fired. That nails the lid on it right there. If you threaten people with a gun during the commission of a crime, or even say you have a gun, or behave as though you do, the judge will start you out at twenty-five years behind bars. Discharge a weapon during the commission of a crime, the jury can order the death penalty.
WWJ: I can see why the crime rate is so low in the SUSA.
Ben Raines: I didn’t think it would take long!
BOOK #11
DEATH IN THE ASHES
“I slept and dreamed that life was beauty. I woke—and found that life was duty.”
- Ellen Sturgis Hooper
The Rebels set out westward from Base Camp One on Interstate 20. Their mission is to clear as many cities as they can of the Night People in an effort to ensure the stability of their outpost system.
They don’t travel too far before they encounter a hostile Aryan Nation group who don’t seem to notice that their motto “Help Americans live, fight, and stay strong” can be shortened to spell out HALFASS. This initial confrontation reveals information about an established network of biker-outlaw groups who now control much of the Southwest and Northwest.
The Rebels rescue Meg Callahan, a prisoner of the bikers, who tells the Rebels about Matt Callahan (aka the Rattlesnake Kid)—her insane father—and his ally Satan, who control territory in Wyoming and Montana. Ben remembers Matt Callahan as a writer of fiction before the war who was obsessed with Western history. Soon Ben begins to suspect that Meg has ulterior motives for joining the Rebels, although she doesn’t appear to be in cahoots with her father.
The Rebels move up through New Mexico and Colorado setting up outposts with friendly survivors and investigating the cities for signs of the Night People. Wherever they encounter establishments of the Creepies (as in Cheyenne, Wyoming and Helena, Montana) they demolish the entire city.
General Striganov calls for Ben’s help farther north to fight the armies of Malone, another white supremacist who controls northern Montana. Meg escapes to return to Malone just before the battle. Ben and his armies join the fight just as Ashley and Sister Voleta reappear to support Malone against the Rebels.
The Rebels are able to defeat the combined forces and then swing south to confront Callahan in his version of Custer’s last stand. After the battle, Raines and the Rebels adopt some bikers who had abandoned the outlaws, including Leadfoot, Wanda, and the Sisters of Lesbos, all of whom are affectionately dubbed the Wolfpack. Led by the Wolfpack, the Rebel forces move east toward Saint Louis, where they prepare to confront more Night People and a new burgeoning threat from the east—the armies of Lan Villar.
TWELVE
The general seemed to put the incident at the Wilson house out of his mind as soon as we got back on the road. We continued to drive deeper into the countryside. The houses became fewer. The fields of soybeans, milo, corn, cotton, and vegetables seemed to stretch forever.
WWJ: Who harvests these hundreds of acres of vegetables, General?
Ben Raines: Migrant workers. We have an agreement with Mexico. The workers are paid a decent wage, and their quarters are clean, well maintained, and very livable. They have full use of our medical facilities, and their younger children are tutored by students from a local college. The kids of the workers at least get some education, and our students who are going into the teaching profession get actual hands-on classroom training. It works out well for all concerned.
WWJ: It still isn’t completely clear in my mind where all the money for this comes from, General.
Ben Raines: Look, before the Great War, the USA—all states combined—was spending about half a trillion dollars a year on criminal justice and paying judges to hear the most trivial of civil lawsuits. The major cities of America employed hundreds of attorneys. Back then the cost of seeing a capital murder case through arrest, investigation, trial, appeals, and a decade later, finally, maybe, the death sentence carried out, cost millions of taxpayer dollars. The simplest of criminal investigations cost several thousand taxpayer dollars and God only knows how many manpower hours. Not here. That case back at Pen’s farm is, except for a very quick trial, over. The trial itself won’t last two days. Hell, it might not last two hours! I doubt if the jury will deliberate more than ten minutes. There is nothing to deliberate about. Down here, all the billions of dollars the states spent on that crap before the Great War is used for more worthwhile purposes.
WWJ: How can a trial last two hours?
Ben Raines: Because here a courtroom is not a playground for attorneys. The cold, basic facts are presented. We don’t care if the criminal was drunk, on drugs, had a tragic childhood, was depressed, had an ingrown toenail, or was constipated before or during the commission of the crime. The crime was committed, the accused is convicted, five minutes after the jury returns, the criminal is sentenced, good-bye, it’s over.
WWJ: But not all trials can be that simple.
Ben Raines: You’re right. Some could be quite complicated. They would be quite complicated and very lengthy outside the SUSA. But in the SUSA we cut through the superfluous bullshit and get to the heart of the matter very quickly. Judges here won’t tolerate courtroom theatrics . . . they won’t tolerate it for one minute. Judges here will put a lawyer in jail for contempt faster than you can blink. And the attorneys are well aware of that. There is nothing complicated about our judicial system.
WWJ: But isn’t it true there are very few open-and-shut cases?
Ben Raines: Maybe outside the SUSA. But you’d be surprised how many there were here.
WWJ: Were?
Ben Raines: As I said, we don’t have that many cases to try here. At first we did, and those who work in the lega
l system found that a large percentage of cases really were open-and-shut. It’s always been the lawyers who complicate the system. It just isn’t that way here. I believe the most difficult thing for those living outside our borders to understand is our commonsense approach to everything. The United States of America has not had anything resembling a commonsense approach to government, the administration of justice, and day-to-day living in generations. To use a political term, there is no “pork” in our political system. If a bridge is needed somewhere, we’ll build it. If a road is needed, we’ll build it. But we won’t build something just to create jobs.
General Raines drove on for a few miles, then pointed off to the right and said: “That’s the maximum-security prison for this area. Behind the prison complex are the fields where the vegetables are grown and the pastures and pens for cattle, hogs, chickens.
WWJ: So the prison is self-sufficient?
Ben Raines: As far as food goes, yes. The surplus is sold. It’s your medium and minimum prisons where the real industry goes on and something useful is learned to help them on the outside and degrees are earned. The prison we just passed is the one where the really dangerous and violent prisoners are held.
WWJ: For how long, usually?
Ben Raines: Until they die a natural death, are executed, or are shot trying to escape.
WWJ: Does that occur often? Escape attempts, I mean?
Ben Raines: Occasionally. No one has ever escaped from that prison.
WWJ: It looks grim.
Ben Raines: It is grim.
WWJ: You say everybody works?
Ben Raines: Everybody has a job?
WWJ: What happens if someone refuses to work?
Ben Raines: They don’t eat.
WWJ: But you have to feed them!
Ben Raines: No, we don’t. And we won’t.
WWJ: Has anyone ever gone on a hunger strike and died from it?
Ben Raines: Not lately. Not since the inmates learned that we won’t lift a finger to help. If a prisoner wishes to die, that is his choice. We will neither assist in the individual’s carrying out of the death wish, nor will we prevent it from happening.
WWJ: Inmates actually died? Starved themselves to death?
Ben Raines: They sure did. Three, I believe. We haven’t had any real trouble since the last one died.
WWJ: He died in the prison hospital?
Ben Raines: He died in his cell.
WWJ: What are the odds of an innocent person being held in that prison, or in any prison here in the SUSA?
Ben Raines: Probably too high to calculate. I don’t believe our justice system has ever sent an innocent person to prison or to his or her death. We’ve got too many safeguards built in.
WWJ: Explain, please.
Ben Raines: In most areas outside the SUSA, anybody can swear out an arrest warrant against somebody, but that’s not the way it works here. Here, before anything happens, the investigators interview both parties. First separately, then together. Another team of investigators is quietly interviewing neighbors, friends, relatives . . .
WWJ: May I interrupt here?
Ben Raines: Of course.
WWJ: Doesn’t that cost a lot of money?
Ben Raines: The investigators are military personnel. They’re going to get paid whether they’re investigating a complaint or playing cards in the barracks or whatever. However, if the charge proves to be completely bogus, the person who originally lodged the complaint and wanted the arrest warrant—which, by the way, has still not been issued—will pay for the time the investigators spent checking out his or her complaint.
WWJ: I see. That sort of takes all the fun out of it, doesn’t it?
Ben Raines: You’d better believe it. And there is something else too: The people who are constantly calling the authorities to break up a domestic disturbance, or bitching about their neighbors, or just being a general pain the ass, they won’t make it in the SUSA. And while we’re on this subject, let me tell you something else you can write about: perjury laws are very strictly enforced in our courts. Lying under oath can get a person up to five years in prison. And the judges don’t hesitate to hand down those sentences. We’ve got men and women serving time right now for lying under oath to protect a son or daughter, or brother or sister. It’s hard sometimes for a judge to send a mother or father to prison for lying to protect a child of theirs, but once the general public sees that the laws are going to be enforced, regardless of wealth or social standing, they understand the need for such laws.
WWJ: What surprises me the most, I think, is that with everybody able to carry a gun, so few do, and there aren’t more shoot-outs between citizens.
Ben Raines: Few people carry guns here because there isn’t any need to do so; our crime rate is so low. The lowest anywhere in the world. There aren’t any “shoot-outs,” as you put it, because the majority of people are of like mind on so many issues.
WWJ: Then your prediction was right on the money even before the nation fell apart before the Great War. When you wrote about this type of society, you said that only two or three out of every ten Americans could live in such an open society.
Ben Raines: Very true. And that’s the way it’s worked out. I suppose I’ve been a student of human nature practically all my life . . . and I was storing those statistics in my mind without realizing it until adulthood. I was still a relatively young man when I suddenly realized our society wasn’t going to make it. It was going to collapse under the weight of bad government. That’s when I began writing about militias and survivalist groups, people breaking away to become, for all intents and purposes, nonpeople, without social security numbers, working only for cash and barter. I wrote about how liberals were destroying this nation, and I began dreaming of the type of society I would like to live in. Then I came up with the idea.
WWJ: It worked. It must be a good idea.
Ben Raines (smiling): We think so.
BOOK #12
SURVIVAL IN THE ASHES
“Over the Mountains
Of the Moon,
Down the Valley of the Shadow,
Ride, boldly ride,”
the shade replied,
“if you seek for Eldorado”
–Edgar Allan Poe
Raines and the Rebels are moving east to Saint Louis along I-55 to rid yet another city of the Night People. The cannibalistic Creepies will not be their only problem there as several armies of familiar enemies to the Rebel cause (including Kenny Parr and his mercenary forces from Florida, Khamsin (“the Hot Wind”) and his Libyan terrorist armies, and Lan Villar) have gathered together east of that city. Sister Voleta and Ashley are still seeking revenge from Raines and are reported to be on the move to the west of the Rebels.
As usual, Raines and the Rebels are grossly outnumbered, but they lure Villar’s troops into the city and destroy more than half of the enemy army instantly using poisonous gas. The change in policy toward chemical warfare is a decision that Ben wishes that he had made before he had lost any Rebel lives in their mission to destroy the Night People.
The demolition teams of the Rebels’ armies work at destroying cities in Missouri that are inhabited by Night People. Ben deliberately waits in Jefferson City and lays a trap there for Sister Voleta, the crazy leader of the Ninth Order and the mother of Ben’s son, Buddy. Finally, Raines and Voleta meet face-to-face. Ben throws a grenade at her, wounding her severely, but at the end of the battle, her body remains unfound.
The alliance of enemies has joined up with Malone at his compound in northern Montana, while the Rebels continue their crusade west—General Striganov and his men through South Dakota, Ike through Kansas, and Cecil, Ben, and West along I-70.
Several cities in Idaho and thousands of Night People are destroyed before one of the Judges, the leaders of the so-called Night People, calls a meeting with Ben. The cannibal tells Ben that the Night People are actually a cult group called the Believers that was formed in America of the sixties, and
included within its ranks were U.S. senators, representatives, and military leaders. Ben asks the “Believer” if he would ever reform, and by his response he signs his own death warrant.
The Rebels continue to the Northwest coast taking cities throughout the state of Washington. Jerre is shot and dies from her wounds, and Ben is forced to accept her death and the frustration of his unrequited love.
THIRTEEN
That evening, after dinner, I went back to my quarters and listened to my tapes, while I made dubs of them. The Tri-States philosophy of government was beginning to come together in my mind, and I was certain now that I was going to move into the SUSA. It all boiled down, for the most part, to living together and respecting the rights of others. I made a few quick notes of questions to ask General Raines the next day and went to bed.
WWJ: I’ve never heard a car radio being played too loudly in the SUSA, General. Surely there is a kid somewhere who has the volume turned up past the point of toleration.
Ben Raines: I’m sure there must be. But they won’t do it in any town. Not because of any type of severe punishment, but because they’ve been taught it’s not polite, and it infringes on the rights of others.
WWJ: General . . . you probably won’t answer this question, but I’ve got to ask it: Do you jam the signal of radio stations outside the SUSA?
Ben Raines: No reason for me not to answer it. Yes, we jam some of them. Depends on their format. Same with a few TV stations outside our borders. Our radio and TV stations don’t preach hate against those outside our borders. Why should we allow hate and misinformation in?
WWJ: And music that you personally don’t like?
From The Ashes: America Reborn Page 9