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

men returned the wave.
"Hi, General!" they called. Both men wore
side arms belted around their waists. And they would have
automatic weapons close by, not just because they were
citizen soldiers, regulars in the Rebel army,
but because the world was still tumbling about in fear and chaos and
violence and near-anarchy.
Citizen soldiers, Ben thought, driving past the
talking men. That is why we survived and so many
others did not. I insisted that
all
my people be a part of the armed forces, with all the training and
discipline contained therein. And we survived the
holocaust, came through it, due in no small part
to the fact the people were armed and trained and disciplined.
That should tell the world something.
But what world is left to hear it?
So much has happened in only three years.
Ben wondered, if history were ever written abut
this tragic period of the world, if anyone would believe
that one man, Ben Raines, could go from novelist
to guerrilla leader to the founder of a separate
nation within a nation back to guerrilla leader, and from there
move on to the office of the president of the United
States, and once more back to guerrilla leader-all
in the short span of only twelve years?
Unbelievable.
Ben smiled. It would have made a hell of a
book, he thought, the writer in him once more
surfacing. He missed writing, missed the long
hours of solitude, missed the exercising of his mind
as he grappled with plot and dialogue, missed the
deadlines he used to curse.
Reading, he thought, the smile still on his lips.
That's the key. That is what we have to stress with the young
people. The nation, Ben knew, had begun slipping in the
reading department-really took a beating from 1960 to the
big blow-up of '88. Can't let that happen again.
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.

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Thank God the mindless inanity of much of
prime-time TV was gone. His smile turned
grim. The only good thing to come out of being nuked.
Ben lost his smile as his eyes picked up the
reflection of his constant shadow in the rear-view