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.
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