"William W. Johnstone - Ashes 03 - Anarchy in the Ashes" - читать интересную книгу автора (Johnstone William W)

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.
But, he sighed, we almost made it. We came so
close, so very close to crawling out of the ashes of
nuclear war. 1988 was not the end. It could have been a
glorious new beginning. But 1988 blew up in our
faces and very nearly destroyed the entire world.
His thoughts drifted back to the beginning of his dream:
Tri-States, a section of America in the west,
after the horror of germ and nuclear war; a society
of free men and women of like mind, like dreams, like
hopes. A society where people of all races could
live and work and be content. And live free of
crime. And Ben Raines and his Rebels did it.
Social scientists and social anthropologists
and assorted liberals and bleeding hearts had
always maintained it could not be done, but Ben and his people had
proved them incorrect. Grossly incorrect.
Those men and women who were the founders and the foundation of
Tri-States had succeeded against all odds. They
had made their dream work.
And for almost a decade they had lived in peace and
harmony and contentment, in a land where good
schools-free of nit-picking and government
interference
and unions and leniency-had done what schools were
meant to do: educate the young, mold their minds, teach
them reading and writing and math and science and discipline
and respect.
Tri-States had shown the world-that world which
remained-that a government does not need to be
top-heavy with bureaucracy and dead weight and
hundreds of unfair and unworkable laws and
pork-barrel projects and scheming politicians
and massive overspending and dead-heads.
But the Central Government-then located in
Richmond, Virginia because D. C. had taken a
nuke dead-on back in '88-witha lunatic at the
helm of state, could not bear the success of Ben
Raines and his people. President Hilton Logan
had ordered the destruction of
Tri-States-and all its inhabitants.

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Only three years ago, Ben thought, waving to a
Rebel standing by a fence, talking with a neighbor. The