From The Ashes: America Reborn Read Online Free Page A

Ben recovers from wounds at a camp near Hell Creek (not far from the southern shores of the Fort Peck Recreation Area), US federal agents are sent to retrieve his body for public display—proof of their ultimate victory over Tri-States and the Rebel insurrection. Armed Rebels are waiting for the agents with an ambush and a message for the government back in Richmond: “General Raines is alive and well! Tri-States will rise again!”
    What is left of America has now become a police state. Back in Richmond, Virginia, the weak government of the liberal figurehead, President Aston Addison, is actually under the control of the sinister vice president, Weston Lowry, and the corrupt Federal Agency headed by Al Cody. The government is bent on a fanatic mission to finish Ben and his Rebels once and for all. Ben soon realizes that they will have to fight the government again if they are ever going to have a chance to rebuild Tri-States. Overcoming incredible odds the Rebels gradually take over territories in the Southeast (Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina) arming citizens as they go. Raines and the Rebels plan their offensive attack on the government for midsummer.
    As the time for the confrontation approaches, Ben heads east for the Great Smokies National Park, leaving his longtime girlfriend Jerre behind in Wyoming. Her affections for him have cooled, she seems distant. He decides that maybe she needs someone her own age. He doesn’t yet know that she is pregnant with his twins.
    In the Southeast, suspected Rebel sympathizers are singled out and tortured by Sam Hartline, a mercenary hired by Lowry to terrorize the Rebels in order to extract information. This plan fails, as it is revealed that the tortured Rebels either are too strong or have no real information to give. Lowry is further frustrated by the military’s reluctance to engage in any action against its own American citizens. The federal agents themselves aren’t above inflicting this kind of harassment, and popular support for the Rebels increases among victims of their oppressive presence. In a desperate attempt to control negative publicity, Lowry sends Hartline to NBC headquarters to censor the press.
    Ben gives brilliant and moving speeches and rallies the people in Virginia to the Rebel cause. While there he meets Dawn Believer, a photojournalist from Virginia and former Penthouse Pet, who had shot a federal cop during a riot and was forced to flee. She joins a local cell of Rebels and soon becomes Ben Raines’s lover.
    Ben’s officers and their troops, including General Hector Ramos from the west; General Hazen’s men, spread from Maryville to Newport; General Krigel from Greenville, Tennessee, with Colonel Dan Gray and his elite Scouts set up their assault on the federal agents. While Ben is busy preparing to fight the federal agents, Hartline sends his people to northern California, where Jerre has been living with her boyfriend, Matt, to kidnap her. They succeed.
    Intelligence reveals to Ben and his Rebels not only the atrocities that are being committed by Hartline and his people but also sightings of extremely large rats and monstrously mutated human beings—more evidence of the horrible effects of postwar nuclear radiation.
    The attack begins. After the fourth day of heavy combat, the federal agents surrender to the Rebels. Ben arranges a private meeting with President Addison in an abandoned motel. One of Addison’s own secret service men fires at the president, triggering a shoot-out that leaves everyone but Raines dead and Raines wounded. Just as total anarchy seem inevitable, the military swiftly seizes the government and makes Ben Raines the new president of what’s left of the United States!
    Back in Virginia, while Lowry and Hartline are planning their escape, Al Cody comes in wielding a pistol. He and Lowry shoot each other and Hartline takes off for Illinois, where some of his men have been holding Jerre. Days later, Ike, Dan, and