"William W. Johnstone - Ashes 07 - Smoke from the Ashes" - читать интересную книгу автора (Johnstone William W)

to west, and eventually, from north to south, each outpost
about a hundred miles apart. The outposts would be
staffed by civilians, with a small contingent of
Rebels to beef them up. Maybe then, yes,
only
then, could the nation begin the slow, painful process of
pulling itself out of the ashes of ruin and war and desperation.
It damn sure was worth a try. The people
certainly had nothing to lose and everything to gain.
Since the Great World War, no country had been
able to pull itself out of the rubble and form even a semblance
of workable government.
No one except Ben Raines and his Rebels.
Tri-States had worked. It had not worked to the
satisfaction of all, but it had worked to the
satisfaction of all those who lived within its
borders. But then the struggling government of the United
States, with all the fury and intolerance of a
government toward any type of change, had smashed
the Rebels' dreams.
Shortly after that, Ben Raines and his Rebels
had taken over the government of the United States,
and Ben had been installed as president. It was to be
a
short tenure, for after the horror of germ and
nuclear warfare, there followed the plague that
threatened to completely wipe out humankind worldwide.
But the human spirit is difficult, if not
impossible to crush, and many more people than Ben and his
Rebels first thought survived through the disease-carrying
rats and fleas.
But there was not a stable government anywhere in the
entire world. The world, the countries of the world, the
government of those countries, large to tiny, from
Russian to Monaco, were no more.
Ben had not traveled outside the boundaries of the
United States since the Great War, but he had
no reason to doubt the stories that had drifted to him.
The stories were appalling. Many people around the world had
reverted back, in such an amazingly short time,
to barbarism. Even in what remained of the
United States, warlords had risen out of the rubble and
ruin, to claim all sorts of territory,
to enslave the people, to rob and rape and loot. There were people
within the borders of the United States who had
reverted back to the caves, calling themselves the
Underground People, rarely venturing out during the daylight
hours. All sorts of cults and so-called
religions had sprung out of the ashes, preaching all
sorts of semi-religious bullshit. Most of it