“In a tragic way, it should come as no shock, given what we faced at the Old Fort pass with the Posse who murdered thousands in a single day. But there is one key difference in our time of crisis. We had at least some time to train and prepare for their arrival and fought as a coordinated team as a citizen army. Those of you with prewar military service, or maybe some of you who studied military history, know that the total annihilation of a battalion of eight hundred or more of our troops on the field of battle has not happened in more than fifty years—and even then, it occurred when faced by well-trained and disciplined troops, such as the enemy faced in the Ia Drang Valley in 1965, the Chosin Reservoir in 1950, and the Bulge in 1944.
“I found that report profoundly disturbing. It tells me that this so-called ANR is being thrown into combat without proper training or leadership. I refuse to participate in a system that treats the young survivors of the Day as if they are cannon fodder. If anything, after all we have lost, each and every life of our young men and women should be held in even higher value—and if sent in harm’s way, it should only be done out of most dire necessity and when they are properly trained and equipped to do so.”
He paused.
“I was suspicious from the start that an entity other than our branch of arms with centuries of tradition behind it was being formed. It reminds me too much of some other paramilitary organizations from the past, and the type of results witnessed here and reported by the BBC prove it.
“Second, it was also announced that the secretary of National Reorganization has received an executive order from the president releasing the use of nuclear weapons, so-called neutron bombs, for use on our own soil. The diplomatic threat is clear to our neighbors in Mexico and to the Chinese occupying our West Coast. Whether we buy their line that their presence is strictly humanitarian or not, the threat is clear—and with it the threat of an escalation to a second use of nuclear weapons in the wake of the bitter retaliations and counterretaliations after the first EMP attack.
“I cannot condone the use of nuclear weapons by our government on our own soil unless some other entity uses such weapons against us first. That convention on our part has existed for over half a century, the same way we have never used gas since the end of the First World War. With those factors in mind, I shall inform the administrator in Asheville that I will not accept my draft notice and refuse to report.”
He forced a smile. “Since, in the eyes of this so-called federal government,” he said, and there was a stirring in the room as to his choice of describing the government in Bluemont as so-called, “I am now, by their definition, an outlaw, the same as Forrest Burnett. Therefore, as of this moment, I am resigning as a member of the town council, resigning as military head of our self-defense force. I am retiring to private life and there shall await the results of my decision. It has been an honor to serve my community these last two years. I have tried my best for all of you.”
He lowered his voice, struggling for control. “I ask forgiveness for any of the mistakes I made and for your prayers for guidance in the days to come. I thank you for all that you have done, the way you rallied together in the time of darkness, and I pray, as a hero of mine, Winston Churchill, once promised in the darkest days of his time, that ‘broad sunlit uplands’ are ahead for all of you. God bless you all.”
He stepped away from the podium and walked off the stage to where his family waited in the front pew, the three most important women in his life up on their feet to embrace him, and together, with Elizabeth carrying a now sleeping Ben, they walked down the main aisle.
And together with his family, he walked out of the church. In silence, all got into the car for the short drive back to their home in the valley of Montreat.
He helped Elizabeth tuck Ben into bed while Makala helped Jen, the two of them whispering behind a closed door. John went out to his usual place to sit, pray, and meditate, picking up Rabs on the way out. He gazed down at Jennifer’s grave. “I hope I did the right thing, pumpkin. I hope you approve.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
This is BBC News. It is 3:00 a.m., Greenwich War Time.
It was announced today by the American federal government based in Bluemont, Virginia, that a single neutron bomb was detonated over Chicago. The extent of physical damage to that already largely destroyed city is unknown, and there are no reports of casualties. The administration spokesperson stated that after the murder of several hundred prisoners taken from an ANR battalion sent there to suppress lawlessness and other depravations by the alleged leader of the city, who calls himself Samuel the Great, there was no choice left to the government other than to employ a tactical nuclear weapon.
There has been global condemnation. A spokesperson for the People’s Republic of China forcefully declared that the Chinese presence on the West Coast of the United States is for humanitarian reasons only, and it sees the use of a neutron bomb against one’s own people as a direct threat to China. The spokesperson in Beijing further declared that any use of such weapons in proximity to Chinese personnel within the continental United States will be construed as an attack upon all of China and result in a full retaliation. The Mexican government appealed to the Chinese government for support if such a weapon is used anywhere within, and I quote, “the former states of Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico,” end quote.
A message now for our friends in Ottawa and Montreaclass="underline" “By the waters of Babylon.” I repeat, “By the waters of Babylon.”
A general town meeting had been called for down in the park the day after the meeting at the chapel, a meeting that John had not attended. It was one aspect of his former duties of which he was definitely glad to be relieved. No more meetings!
He had come to dread them even as a junior officer, and though he truly loved his job as a professor, he dreaded just as much the interminably long faculty meetings and other committee meetings. An old mentor of his had wisely told him long ago that the more trivial the issue, the more it would be fought out in a meeting.
Makala, still part of the town council, had attended, along with Elizabeth, while John actually luxuriated in pulling down a copy of William Manchester’s masterful biography of Winston Churchill, The Wilderness Years. The choice was a comforting one for guidance, and he had enjoyed the nearly four hours of solitude. For the first time since the beginning of spring planting, he had been able to relax. Jen had tiptoed out quietly several times, asking if he wanted some tea or a salad from the first greens of spring, though the salad was heavy with the pungent scent of ramps, and for the sake of politeness, he had accepted, picking at the salad while Jen settled into a chair to catch the early evening warmth and dozed off.
He looked at her lovingly. Makala was not her daughter; Mary, his first wife, had been her only child. In a way, Ben and Elizabeth were her only real blood kin in this world now, but even as Makala had come into the family, she had embraced the “intruder” with a warm, loving heart, the same way she had once embraced an uncouth New Jersey Yankee as her son-in-law.
John could sense that she did not have much longer with them.
She had always lived as a graceful, elegant Southern woman from something of a different age of genteel society. She was a bit of a paradox in that she had run the family business, the local Ford agency, with a hard-nosed, brilliant edge, and as for the culture she’d lived in long ago, she was proud to say that as a young woman, she and her husband had helped finance a bus from Asheville to participate in the famed March on Washington back in 1963. Their business had been boycotted, falling nearly to half of what it had been the year before, and when recounting it to John years later, she laughed that those who had boycotted her then were the loudest to proclaim they had supported her all along not long afterward.