Out of the Ashes Part 5, or Comparisons, Stereotypes, and a Profound Lack of Editors

Referencing Part 4 for a moment, I’d like to take another look at the Raines-Logan meeting for a moment. It consists, as I said, entirely of Raines needling Logan, actively trying to provoke the man trying to return order to the country. Because he’s a liberal. And banned guns. Both of which have him roasting in the pits of Hell in Johnstone’s way of thinking.

When I write these, I tend to listen to the soundtrack to Les Miserables, and wouldn't you know that I was listening to "The Confrontation" while I was writing that section.

For those of you unfamiliar with the musical, "The Confrontation" is, of course, the first real confrontation between Jean Valjean (the protagonist) and Javert (the semi-antagonist) of the show following the musical's prologue. Valjean once stole a loaf of bread to save his sister's starving child. Javert, an ardent devotee of the law, believes that this makes him an evil criminal for life, and through a combination of Javert's persistence and Valjean's bad luck, the two meet up several times in the story. "The Confrontation" is definitely my favorite of these meetings, because it examines both characters in surprising detail, provides more backstory for Javert, and is actually a very good number, especially the 10th Anniversary version

You can listen to it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WdoAnlQ30U

This is, in my mind, the most perfect confrontation scene ever written. Both the protagonist and the antagonist are clearly defined, both set out their motivations and, best of all, you can see both sides of the argument. Valjean is a good man trying to do good deeds...as well as a wanted criminal who is often quite willing to break the law to do above-mentioned deeds. In addition, if you watch the entire play, you find that Valjean jumped his parole, and tried several times to escape from his jail sentence. Javert, by contrast, is sentencing a young girl to suffer. But, at the same time, he's doing his duty, following his personal convictions, and honestly believes he's making the world a better place. Maybe it's just my rather unique vantage point, but I actually have a liking and respect for both characters.

Needless to say, Johnstone’s meeting isn’t handled half as well. Raines comes off as some kind of arrogant sociopath, while Logan comes off as an overworked man in a bad position who’s being insulted because of something he did before civilization essentially collapsed. Since then, he has been gradually using his influence and the manpower under him to reclaim part of the country, and restore peace and order. Despite this, it’s clear that we’re supposed to cheer for Raines when he finally forces Logan to break. There is no ambiguity as to who is right or wrong; Raines is always right, in everything he does. In addition, there’s no drama to the piece, and it only serves to introduce Logan; compared to the song, where you can almost feel the buildup to the (admittedly brief) fight about 2/3 of the way in, it’s almost pathetic.

Yes, I know I'm comparing one of the best musicals ever written with a piece of trashy pulp, but I think it's obvious that this is supposed to be Johnstone's magnum opus, so I hold it to very high standards. When and if I ever review Stephen King's Dark Tower series, I plan on comparing them to the creme de la creme as well.

But let's get back to the plot. It's been three days since I actually posted one of these things, and I want to get this done sooner rather than later.

When we last left Ben Raines, he’d abandoned a pocket of humanity (after an apocalypse, mind) because they had the GALL to have a former Democrat as their leader, and found out that he’s been appointed the leader of the Rebels. So, given that we’ve spent the better part of a week following his character, what do we expect him to do? I’ll even give you a few choices.

A) Realize he’s a moron, go back to Logan’s stronghold, and help him rebuild the US, hoping to curb his evl librul tendencies?

B) Take control of the Rebels, form his own country, and offer an alternative to Logan’s evl librul nation?

C) Ignore both factions, return to his home (which is probably a doom fortress), and wait to see what happens?

D) Continue his rather stupid idea that he’s the only writer left in America and travel through the increasingly dangerous territory to write down survivor stories. Which, if the country survives, will probably come out anyway.

If you chose anything but option D, you clearly haven’t been reading these reviews at all. Go back and read them, you lazy fellow. Or, better yet, stop reading them and go find something decent.

Anyway, let’s get back to our increasingly villainous protagonist, ja? So, after murdering two men and abandoning a group of men trying to reform the country to their fate, where’s Raines headed next? Well, he heads north, towards Cairo. He spends a little time in some little no-name town and encounters a couple of zombies (see previous posts for my ranting on said zombies) shuffling around. So how does Raines react to these poor people? He says “to Hell with it” and leaves them to starve. He continues north, finally reaching Cairo, where he’s attacked by bandits. After establishing that there’re no women with him, they decide to capture him anyway, assuming he’s “a kid and pretty enough.”

…

This is something of a central theme with Ashes villains. Aside from the ones who later join the forces of light (with one notable exception), almost every Ashes villain is a racist, bisexual child rapist, at best. And gleeful about it, may I add. Although, a problem presents itself in this particular case; why do they not notice that the guy behind the wheel of this large truck in his mid-40’s? I mean, they’re obviously watching him; is the glass tinted or something? Off course, at the end of this little section, Raines kills them. It’s about now that you start having to root for Raines. Why? Because, as I said above, almost every single Ashes villain is far worse than he is.

So, Raines travels the nation and witness how mostly the only ones who aren’t zombies are “scum and slime”. Finally, he heads to Chicago, where he comes across an honest-to-God race war. I recently read a Conservative Republican manifesto; apparently, one of their “chief beliefs” is that racism is dead. And that women are all most happy in the home, but that’s a whole ‘nother can of worms. Point being, despite Johnstone defining himself and his heroes Conservative Republicans more often than anything else, Raines himself barely fits the modern definition. Which I find positively hilarious for some reason.

Okay, so apparently a race war is building in Chicago between the blacks and the whites, and there’s 15-20k people left alive in the city…huh? You mean to tell me that Chicago wasn’t considered important enough to warrant a nuke, or a germ warhead at least? And why, for the love of all things good and well-written, does nearly the entire remaining population of Chicago suddenly want to kill each other? In a situation like this, why oh why does Chicago become the racism capital of the US? Apparently, it’s every man, woman, and child in the city, divided along race lines, ready to kill each other immediately. No one even trying to sue for peace.

For once, Ben does the rational thing and leaves the city be. He stops at a motel just before dark to bed down for the night, and there meets a black party. It turns out, though, that these are good black people. How can we tell? Because their leader, Cecil Jeffries, actually speaks proper English! Yep; nearly every non-Rebel African American in the series speaks Ebonics, and only Ebonics, and THAT is usually how you can tell the good guys from the bad guys. It gets irritating, trust me.

So, despite knowing each other for all of a minute, Jeffries offers Raines some supper, which Raines accepts. It’s also here that Raines and Jeffries come together to reminisce about Vietnam. Raines reveals that he’s a Hellhound, who as we may recall are supposed to be so secret that only about five percent of the US government are even vaguely aware of its existence. Despite this, Jeffries seems to know all about it, and the two men hit it off famously.

When we finally get to the dinner scene, we’re introduced to a few minor characters that will appear later in the book. Cecil’s wife, who only exists to give him something to angst about when she dies later, Ben’s Future Wife (a bit part who I’m not even going to name) who he later admits to not really loving, and Kasim. Who is Kasim? Well, he’s a stereotyped radical Black Muslim/Black Nationalist. He played a bit more of an important part in the complete book, but really, he’s just here to fill up space and give Ben someone to beat hate in the absence of anyone else more worthy of it.

So, after some plot exposition about radiation levels in the nuked cities…wait a second here. Weren’t these clean nukes? Didn’t Johnstone himself explain that they gave off such small amount of radiation as to not matter? Was this man so bad at his job that a minor 17-year-old curmudgeon like me with the writing skills of a rabid badger is better able to keep track of his continuity than he was? And this wasn’t even that far back in the story; each section lasts about fifteen minutes, so at maximum, he mentioned this an hour ago. Where was his editor? Did he even have one?

…ah, who am I complaining about? I haven’t got one either; I’m sure I’ve got plenty problems of my own. But my God, man, you could at least TRY.

Anyway, after we get that startling bit of plot discontinuity/exposition, Kasim begins being…well, his stereotype. He asks why Ben didn’t stay in Chicago and help the whites kill the blacks. This results in a rather strained scene where Kasim plays the above-mentioned stereotype to the hilt. He doesn’t trust Ben, which, if Johnstone has decided to explore the young man’s backstory even the tiniest bit, might have made an interesting conflict.

Were I writing it, I would have forced the pair together, shown what happened to bring Kasim to his present state of mind (beyond a pair of explanations about his sister being raped), and shown him gradually working himself past it as he’s forced to work with Ben to survive in this dangerous new world. Sadly, I’m not writing it. Maybe I could create the first ever piece of Ashes fanfiction and rewrite the whole epic to make the most basic amount of sense, but...maybe later.

Back to the story, Kasim calls Future Wife “zebra” (did people still talk like that in ’88?), resulting in Kasim getting slapped by Future Wife, then threatened with a magnum to the face by Cecil. Here, we actually get the barest bit of backstory of Kasim; apparently, his sister was raped by white men, which is what resulted in his hatred of the race. And I’m okay with that; it’s an interesting idea, and if played right, could make for some truly awesome drama. Instead of going down that road, however, Johnstone simply has Kasim scream about how Ben is white, with no attempt to humanize him. Again, we seem him being there just to be there.

Ben offers to leave, and Cecil agrees that it’s probably for the best. Here, we also get a bit of plot exposition; there’s an all-black nation in the former US, named, of course, New Africa. In the course of half a week, this new nation now encompasses the entirety of Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana, apparently sticking precisely to the old state boarders. Why? Because.

Here, Raines shows another part of his true nature. He tells Kasim that he’ll leave tomorrow, and that if he ever sees Kasim again, he’ll kill the young man. Why? Because, despite not being an evl librul, he represents racism. While I agree that racism is an evil that could stand to be purged from the Earth, isn’t that taking it a bit too far? Half a week ago, you were apparently a mostly lawful citizen. Now, you’re randomly threatening to kill people for expressing their beliefs in a mostly non-physical manner.

I wonder, what’s it like in the Raines household when he finishes the orange juice?

Raines: I tell you, I did not finish the orange juice!

Stereotype Family Member: Yes you did, dear/dad/uncle/whatever! I just saw you swigging the last of it!

*Raines blows family member away*

Raines: So, who really finished the orange juice?

After this, we get a meeting (again rather strained, though I think it's supposed to sound natural) between Ben and Future Wife, where they discuss the differences between the races. It really serves no purpose, so I’ll leave it alone. Here, we reiterate Ben’s plan to travel and write a book about WW3. They kiss. Which I suppose is plausible. I mean, they DID only meet hours ago, but they’re at what could well be the end of the world as they know it forever. People are trying to rebuild the country, but hey, they’re just stupid liberals, what can they honestly do?

The next day, Ben departs. As is usual for Ashes villains, Kasim rants at him for their entire meeting. Ben handles it coolly and drives away. Thankfully, we will never see Kasim again.

We get some more scenes of Ben interacting with the zombies. Here’s one of their responses to Raines pointing out that there’s probably not a stable government anywhere in the world: “You’re wrong, mister. If the government wasn’t going to help us, they wouldn’t have made everybody so dependent on them. You’re wrong!” Stupid lines aside, is this how much respect this man has for the average American? I thought we Americans were supposed to be the greatest thing since sliced bread! According to my own Conservative Republican family member, it’s another core belief of the entire freakin’ ideology!

Maybe I should just ignore the "good Republican" line of reasoning and just assume Johnstone's creating his own ideology.

Ah, why do I bother? As we approach the end of this section, we watch as Ben discovers a freaking billboard from the Rebels to him, asking him to call them and publicly telling him which radio frequency to use. Isn’t that just mildly stupid? Not only could such things be easily vandalized or torn down or painted over or what have you, but it also gives whoever feels the need to fight you a way to pinpoint your location. I don’t know if the technology to do that actually exists, but Johnstone makes mention of it in later books, so let’s assume it does.

As the section ends, Ben refuses the call to lead the Rebels and moves on. Why? In the very first section, he said the only reason he wouldn’t join up with the Rebels in the first place is because he’d become content with his way of life. His way of life is now shattered, and he’s got the military power, apparently, to recreate the US in his image, as he no doubt wishes to do. So why doesn’t he do it?

He must have a really good book in the works.

Out of the Ashes Part 4, or The Happy-Go-Lucky Adventures of Ben Raines

We left Ben last time as he was entering the Sheriff’s office, looking for…something. I’m guessing it was guns, because that’s what he goes for first. A small question though: Raines has been out for about half a week or so since WW3. Even assuming his little town took a hit from the plague, are you telling me that nobody would ever raid this community? According to Johnstone’s worldview, we might remember, those who aren’t either A) Setting up evl librul dictatorships, B) Future Rebels, or C) So mentally dependent on government that they can’t do anything by themselves (i.e. most of the rest of the population) are rioting and looting. Were I the looters (who, unfortunately, did not have the opportunity to read the script before getting into this garbage), I would not stick to the bigger cities. The bigger cities are guaranteed to have more people than you do remaining, and are much more likely to put up a proper resistance. I, personally, would invade the smaller towns, which apparently include Raines’ home, and loot everything that I could, most particularly guns.

Maybe they were turned off by the plague? Who knows. Anyway, we get about a minute of description on Ben’s Tommy gun, which is probably fairly important given that he’s an action hero. Then, he goes to a sporting goods store to stock up on survival gear. Here, we find that the town HAS been looted. So…why didn’t they steal the guns? Including the (rather impressive looking and mint condition) Thompson, which would be one of my first targets? Ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies. And, of course, the looters took almost nothing of value from the above-mentioned sporting goods store, as Ben makes out like a king off of what he loots. Because, you know, a civilian would NEVER be smart enough to grab portable stoves, lanterns, sleeping bags, axes, decent knives, tents, tarps, ropes, and miscellaneous other items that’d aid one in survival. Because we’re all mentally retarded and require a good Republican militant like Ben Raines to hold our hands if we want to survive anything worse than a strong breeze.

Then he drives to a…local supermarket? Wha? It’s apparently already been looted, but with about the same thoroughness as the sporting goods store…my God, I’ve got it! The Ashes universe is populated by morons! Oh wait…we’ve already established that. Raines gets one rather stupid thought, if I do say so myself: “if everyone’s dead, who did the looting?” Maybe the panicky/sickening/dying inhabitants before they kicked the bucket? Ah well; let’s get back to the plot now, yes? At least we can be thankful that he doesn’t force himself to explain why the looters didn’t steal all the canned food. Instead, the narrator cuts back to Ben going home. If this was one of the abridged bits, God bless you gentlemen.

Back at home, Ben starts a fire an…oh come on, this guy’s a survival expert? Honestly? He retains enough presence of mind to loot a sporting goods store of survival gear, then he starts. A fire. An easily trackable fire. In his front yard. After acknowledging that there are probably looters out there.

…

So, Ben comes up with a plan to find one of those “world-wide radios” and track down other humans. A decent plan, I suppose. So he waits until the next day (again, a good plan, best not to go after dark), then heads back into town. He gets the radio, and finally hears an indication of life. In French. Then German. Then to English, finally, which is a blessing, because Lord knows a man who apparently widely traveled in Africa wouldn’t speak at least basic French. Here Raines learns the full story about what happens. Apparently, the Russians have a virus that only kills now-living humans, and not animals or plant life, and does not infect the water. They were apparently going to use it on us in the fall of ’88. Here, Johnstone himself admits how stupid his characters have been, admitting that if only SOMEONE had tried to talk with someone else, it could all have been prevented. Or maybe not. Who knows?

Here we learn that, at most, the casualties are a little over a billion. And, given the dullness of the scene, it’s no big loss for Raines/Johnstone. We also learn here that this whole thing was a tape recording, as it repeats in about four languages. So, we get a little bit of Raines trying to figure out just why someone would want to depopulate a land of humans, but not anything else. Hmm…MAYBE they wanted to take over our nation without a fight. And it takes him a while to figure this out. I thought this dude was supposed to be the ideal man…

And why were the Russians planning to invade us in ’88? I suppose that, in the mid 80’s, the threat of WW3 was still there for old hands like Johnstone, but looking back, it’s kind of ridiculous. Three years later, the Soviet Union finally collapsed. By this point, COULD they even pull off something like a massive invasion, even of empty land? And did they never consider that someone would find out? Committing one of the worst war crimes in all of history won’t exactly ensure that people’d leave you alone. And, assuming that nobody ever found out, it’s not like you could just waltz in and claim the entirety of the continental US. Not only might there be other interested parties snatching up former American territory, not only might the rest of the world object to you just claiming the entire US, not only would you stretch yourselves massively thin in the attempt to control both the vast expanses of Russia AND the vast expanses of the US, BUT you also run the risk of the plague somehow mutating or not dying as fast as you thought it would and wiping out the globe.

The so-called plan here is laughable, but in Johnstone’s world, I think it’s probably plausible. I can imagine he was massively disappointed when the USSR collapsed without even a little mass murder.

Oh, and to make it even better, apparently, McCarthy was right, and the Commies have a small army of loyalists in America, waiting to help take the place over. Which smells to me like bad strategy when your main weapon is biological, but hey, I’m not military. After we leave this rather stupid line of reasoning, Ben gets attacked by a pack of feral dogs. While I don’t claim to be an expert here, would German Shepherds automatically go feral within a few days of an apocalypse, with an abundance of food around? I’d personally expect them to still be housepets, with perhaps a little bit of a wild side. But let’s just cover it with suspension of disbelief and move on.

After killing one of them and searching for people, Raines decides to do the obvious, what with his probably easily defendable home which would be filled with supplies, as well as military training that puts him a cut above anyone who’d try to attack his remote home: Ben Raines decides to travel the US, and write a book about what’s happened. Yeah, makes perfect sense to me. Raines, in his searches, clearly found a copy of Out of the Ashes and has read the blurb on the back cover.

So, he leaves town, and in his travels, miraculously finds the perfect vehicle for himself at an auto dealer. It’s got CB, a winch for moving things, and probably a variety of other handy functions. Before he steals it, though, Raines signs papers of ownership. So, in addition to looting, he’s now committing fraud. Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the paragon of all things American.

On the way through the state, he enters the city of Jackson, where he finds a killing ground and gets shot at. Sadly, the bullet only breaks a windshield, and Raines again takes the obvious course of action and, flashing back to Vietnam, he tries to negotiate while planning on how best to rip these guys a new one. One of them demands Raines leave their turf. So, what does Raines decide to do with this fairly peaceful offer to retreat and avoid casualties with these people who were, quite sensibly, defending themselves from what might well have been an invader? Well, he takes it as an opportunity to slaughter them. Don’t we feel proud of our hero?

After calmly murdering two men, Raines calmly heads towards the nearest armory and equips himself well enough to take on a small army. A grenade launcher, high explosive cartridges for his previous acquisitions, three boxes of White Phosphorous grenades (which are one of the most powerful incendiaries we have, apparently, and are usually used to eat burning holes in anyone unlucky enough to get hit with one), High Explosive grenades, and smoke grenades. God help any poor sap this guy comes across.

So, Ben spends a night outside Memphis, monitoring transmissions from within the city. He hits upon one group who “speaks intelligently”, and is the only group which does not use profanity. This, of course, nominally marks them as the good guys in Raines’ mind. Turns out that this group essentially belongs to Hilton Logan, meaning that, of course, they are in fact NOT the good guys, despite their efforts to clean up the city and fight against the looters and “criminal element”. Were I Raines, I would help them. Surely, with the end of the world as we know it having gone down, past partisan ideas could be thrown aside in favor of mutual survival. Ben has a lot of experience, supplies, is heavily armed, and is alone. Logan’s faction has manpower, even more supplies, and could certainly use Raines’ expertise and supplies to expand their own territory and provide a larger safe haven from the chaos that has apparently taken hold of the country.

But no. Instead, Raines curses the fact that Logan survived, and only just agrees to the Logan faction’s generous offer of shelter. Logan, for the brief time we see him, seems like nothing but an overworked politician who has been thrust into a position he doesn’t want to be in. I already sympathize with the man. I sympathize much less with Ben Raines, who spends the entire meeting trying to provoke Logan. They don’t discuss what exactly happened, or what the other knows, or how they can help each other. No, they spend it entirely discussing Logan’s improbable anti-gun bill. Why? Because Ben Raines is not interested in helping anyone who isn’t almost his clone survive.

Logan, of course, cracks, as anyone would do in the situation. His country has been destroyed, he’s fighting a desperate battle for both survival and to reclaim even a tiny piece of it from the forces of chaos, and he’s being needled for his personal beliefs in a time gone by. I’d expect anyone with any self-respect to get at least mildly angry in this situation. Raines calls Logan a coward (which I don’t think applies at all to Logan, given what he’s doing right now) and leaves. The people there beg him to stay, but of course, he refuses, unwilling to put aside his own petty dislike of their leader in order to serve the greater good.

Here, we get a bit more information from an Army colonel from the Logan faction; eight US cities get nuked, with many more suspected, and most other major cities took germ warheads. Ben, graciously, directs the colonel to the recorded message he heard earlier, and the colonel informs Ben that the remains of the military plan to install Logan as acting President of the United States. Makes sense to me, give his obvious success in Memphis, but it’s treated as a terrible sin, because Logan is, of course, an evl librul.

It’s here we also get this section’s twist ending: just before Bull Dean died, he gave command of the entire Rebel army to Ben Raines, all five thousand of them remaining.

…wait, five thousand? Out of, what was it, five or six million? Okay, does this strike anyone else as mildly ridiculous? The Rebels knew that they were starting WW3, they knew that this would probably result in the destruction of most major cities. Why not move as much of your force out into the countryside as possible? It’s not like anyone could do anything before the balloon goes up. Even an hour or two’s warning should have saved a bigger portion. A million survivors, I could probably deal with; 1/6 isn’t THAT ridiculous. But no, the faction’s more like 1/1000. Did they intentionally kill their own people? If so, why? If not, why was there no warning? And, as my last rant of this post, might I also ask why the number is such a nice, round 5,000?

Ah, forget it. That’s the end of the section, and by this point I’m fairly sure I could write a more compelling and logical post-apocalypse story. And there are fourteen more sections to go. Yippee.

Out of the Ashes Part 3, or The Half a Week or so After

So, we pick up with…a continuation of the aforementioned Grocery List of WW3. Warsaw, Paris, Berlin, Brussels, London (another continuity error, they retake that city later in the series), China and Russia get half blown to hell. For some reason, the land armies get launched, but nobody explains where. Did the Russkies invade Europe or China? The reverse? Come on, book, tell me!

It’s about now that we can cement one of Johnstone’s biggest problems with this series. In my high school English class, I was always taught to show, not tell. I don’t want to hear a clinical-sounding list of cities destroyed; I want to see it happen! I don’t want vague information about land wars; I want a viewpoint character on the front lines! I don’t remember Johnstone having this problem in his Westerns; why’s it suddenly affecting him so strongly now? I say it’s just a side effect of him jumping genres. He’s just so out of his depth that he’s losing the skill that made me love him in the first place.

And still we continue the list. Now we’re up to South America…why? This makes even less sense to me than nuking Mexico City. Buenos Aires, Rio, Santiago, the Panama Canal Zone…wha?

As Johnstone explains it, the men with their fingers on the Buttons “have no place to return to”, and so they decide “why not destroy the world just because we don’t have a home anymore?” I’ve known military men. These are some of the most well-disciplined men I’ve ever met, for the most part, physically, philosophically, and mentally. While I don’t think that’s all necessarily a good thing (a little flexibility is a positive trait in my book), I doubt my mom’s boyfriend, who at one point did work on a sub, would up and decide “Those Russian bastards killed my wife and kids! Let’s nuke the Panama Canal!” No, if anything, he’d lob another missile at Russia then head back to the US to try and rebuild.

And how does Johnstone treat these sociopathic/incompetent seamen? Well, he kind of doesn’t; to my knowledge, we never meet a single person who served in this area. I don’t see why we don’t, but I’m also not a professional pulp author.

So here we learn that, despite all those major capitals and various large cities that were nuked, the world got off “largely unscathed” by the first wave of missiles, with only three quarters of a billion people killed. I’m not going to bother checking to see if that’s anywhere near correct, as I don’t want to listen to that freaking list again, but somehow I doubt it. Not only were they supposed to have nuked some of the most populous cities in the world (taking in discontinuity, New York City alone holds, what, six or seven million?), but we launched those germ warheads that kill everyone within a certain radius of the blast site. I find the number rather suspect, but let’s move on before I spend the whole day tallying up fictional deaths.

But, as Johnstone says, “all governments, no matter how noble they may be, are vindictive”. Here, I actually agree with the guy. After the first wave, there’s not much you can do. So, I’ll skip the second wave and just give you the results:

…

They don’t give us results yet. All they say is “and the doomsday tapes were silently rolling.” Which would indicate, to me, that the entire world was destroyed. Sadly, this is not the case.

And, instead of actually giving us something interesting and worthwhile, we switch back to Ben Raines, who as we might remember was injected with a probably deadly amount of venom from a swarm of yellow jackets. Somehow, he slept through the apocalypse. That’ll be something to tell your future grandkids, eh?

Grandkid #1: Grandpa, where were you when World War Three happened?

Raines: Well, nameless stereotype, I was passed out on the floor because I got stung by wasps.

Grandkid #2: …jeez, Grandpa, you kind of suck.

So, Raines sleeps through the apocalypse. The worst he’s got is a badly swollen hand and the temporary lose of sight in one eye. Whoopee; drama. So, he spends several days trying to get better, regularly passing out on his way to get Benadryl. I’m so interested.

Thankfully, we leave the sick man and get back to the shopping list…and how often has anyone ever said that? So, the Air Force lost 75% of it’s total strength (what’re the odds that such a nice, round number would really result? Once, just once, I want someone to report, “Sir, we’ve lost 46.3% of our total strength”. The Marine Corps is almost totally wiped out (how and why? You mean to tell me there were no Marines outside of publicly-known and a few less-than-publicly known bases?). The Army’s reduced by more than 60% (round numbers kill kittens). The Navy loses more than 50% (…). The government of the US is destroyed. Whether this last bit is a good or bad thing, I don’t know.

So, Johnstone finally tells us what the American people are doing in the aftermath of WW3. They are still largely confused, which I can completely understand. In 24 hours, their entire world was destroyed; I’d be confused as well. The problem is that, for this broad mass of humanity, this confusion becomes their defining feature. The only people we see actually get a hold of themselves, in this book at least, and do something are A) The Rebels (the good guys), B) The evl librul government and their henchmen (the bad guys), and C) Looters. Aside from that, the American people just kind of sit there and wait for the government to do their work for them.

The American people are not entirely such extreme examples of sheeple-hood. If you looked at any given community, you could probably find at least one or two people that could take the role of shepherds to this flock of humanity, and once people have a leader, they naturally tend to form a cohesive group. Said group might be torn apart after a while by dissent and dissatisfaction, but in the wake of a nuclear apocalypse, I’d imagine that such things would be left for later and, for a while at least, people would band together to survive. Johnstone, however, disagrees; like Rand, he insists that only people like him and/or power-grubbing lunatics are the only ones with the willpower to get their act together, while the rest of us wander around like zombies, waiting for government handouts, completely incapable of doing...well, anything. As this is already patently absurd, I’m not going to waste my time and brainpower on refuting it.

Here, we also see one of Johnstone’s great loves. Gorn. For those of you who do not know the term, it means, essentially, “to describe in near-pornographic detail gory happenings”. The man describes, in said graphic detail, the melting of the eyeballs of the people who looked at the nuclear blasts. He spends long sentences describing exactly how a woman is raped (and, in the Ashes universe, there’s not a woman who hasn’t, apparently). Yep; exactly what I want to spend my off-time reading about. I think he was trying for realism, but there’s one slight problem here; this is NOT REALISTIC! It’s sickening! And, to top it all off, he also includes the same bits…about children. In fact, one of the sections they thankfully cut from this audiobook (if I’m not mixing the first and second Ashes books up) follows the travels of one group of kids, including a 12-year-old girl who is ridiculously well-endowed, as they try to find a place to hide from all this. And one of the (pre-teen, if I recall right) boys ends up as the sex toy of a recurring villain. Yeah.

I’m only three minutes into this section, and already I’ve got an entry about as large as the others on this book, so let’s buckle down, skip the gorn, and get back to the plot, shall we?

We get back to Ben, who is somehow still alive and able to care for his own wounds. How has this man not starved or dehydrated? Anyway, he gets better, staying safely inside his home, slowly recovering. He’s finally all better, and, after some minutia, he realizes that it’s his birthday! Yay! This prompts his realization that none of his friends or family called, giving him something to be sad about. Aww. He then decides to go into town to get a paper, and so discovers, roughly, what happened.

This was one of my most favorite parts in the book, as well as one of the only good bits in the entire series. Why? Because, when Raines gets to town, he finds it almost completely wiped out by plague. In his urge to insert more gorn, the narrator actually manages to capture the horror of arriving to such a sight. It was so effective that, when I’ve attempted to write my own apocalypse tales, I always include a similar scene. It really affected me. And that may be the only praise of this book you ever read come out of my fingers.

Then he ruins it with a flashback explaining just why the military shall rule after the Bomb goes off; because civilians are morons. According to this flashback, we don’t know diddly about staying alive, and we don’t want to know. Oh, and also in this flashback, we get a description of these much-hated civilians. “They’re content. They’ve got their pretty little houses, two cars in the garage, membership in the country club, and they think ‘being tough’ means ‘playing football”. You know what’s interesting about that? It perfectly describes one of the longest-lasting villains in the series, a man called Ashley, a Southern gentleman type who not only manages to last from his first appearance to the end of the first North American arc of the story, but also manages to come closer than most anyone to defeating Raines, mainly due to his frequent uniting with various other powerful warlords and being a very good strategist. In the end, of course, he’s defeated, but by that point, he’s outnumbered, outgunned, and has been forced into a box by Raines and his men. And, as his fortress is being shelled, he calmly sits at a typewriter and types up his memoirs. Not only did he stick out in my mind as something of a badass when I read his bits, but he remains one of my favorite characters in this entire series.

Anyway, back to our protagonist. Ben checks his CB radio, looking for anyone who survived. Nobody answers. While in town, he also picks up a Thompson machine gun. This becomes something like his signature weapon. Here we also get more information of Hilton Logan, and what exactly Ben/Johnstone hates about him. Logan’s a dove, and a librul. The author evidently cannot think of greater crimes, so he leaves it at that.

He fills his car and collects all the gas he could. Very good move, Raines. It’s here that he learns some more about the problem, from a note written by a dead man. A dead man who, despite going fast, remembered how to correctly spell “atomic”. Were I dying, I doubt I’d write a freakin’ diary entry. It’d be more along the lines of a last message to my loved ones. It’s also here that we’re introduced to the cannon fodder of the Ashes universe, at least for the first three-fourths of the series or so; common criminals who, in the wake of the worst war ever fought, have decided to become warlords. Aside from a few notable exceptions (such as the above-mentioned Ashley), none of them last more than a single campaign, much less entire books. There’s just a lot of them.

This section ends with a remark from Ben that, in these kinds of situations, “human scum survived, while those more deserving did not”.

And so we end this less-than-marvelous section. This was so tedious for me that I actually screwed up the order of events, going off memory a couple of times when the narrator got into talking in detail about the really, really obvious. And there are still 15 more. This is Nitpicker’s Hell, friends; listening to Ashes for all eternity.

Sadly, Johnstone is now dead, so I don’t wish to speak too badly of him. But my God, man, you should have just stuck to Westerns!