7 Prologue

In the waning days of the last four years of the administration of the most liberal president in the history of the union, the once greatest nation in the world collapsed. The United States could have shrugged off and emerged stronger after the limited nuclear and germ warfare that very briefly engulfed Planet Earth; could have, but didn’t.

America just fell apart. As the clouds of smoke began drifting away, a large percentage of its citizens looked around them and cried, “But where is the government? Why doesn’t the government send people in to help us? We need food. We need clothing. Above all, we need someone to tell us what to do. We just don’t know what to do. Big Brother promised to care of us. What are we going to do now?”

Around the battered nation that was once called America, certain men and women who had refused to bow down and kiss the socialistic ass of the liberal Democrats in Congress viewed it all with dark humor.

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These men and women didn’t fall down in a hanky-stomping snit after the collapse. They just dug up the guns they’d been forced to bury-rather than turn them in-during the frenzied gun grab. For a dozen years, these much maligned groups of men and women had been forced to endure the barbs and blather of half-truths and sometimes outright lies from the liberal-controlled press, left-wing extremists in elected and appointed positions of government power, and hanky-waving, blubbering, snot-slinging stiffs who wouldn’t recognize reality, or know how to cope with it if it reared up and bit them on the ass. (One must remember that these are the people who believed that if you left the keys in your car and a thief stole it, it wasn’t the fault of the thief, it was your fault for leaving the keys in the ignition). No one with a modicum of common sense could ever find any logic in that statement.

Left-wing extremists openly belittled and ridiculed those who practiced the art of surviving in any type of emergency. The government sent infiltrators in to spy on the survivalists and the militias that sprang up during the final years before the collapse. Many in the news media were openly scornful of those who quietly stockpiled weapons and ammunition and food and water and emergency gear, calling them conspiracy freaks.

“Gun nuts!” others ridiculed.

“Right-wing kooks!” still others jeered at them.

But when the end came, those who had taken the time to prepare and had endured the hostility of the biased press, the spying and snooping from government agents, and the derision of often well-intentioned but badly misinformed liberal groups, fared the best. They were able to fend off the rampaging hordes of punks and thugs and human vermin that always seem to lurk on the fringes of society, waiting for some type of disaster to befall the law-9

abiding public before they slither in to rape and assault and loot.

One of those who believed in speaking his mind (most of the time very bluntly) and being prepared as much as possible was a man called Ben Raines.

For years, Ben Raines had spoken out against the growing socialistic movement of big government in America. And, as so many thousands of other heretofore law-abiding Americans had done when Congress finally pushed through the infamous gun-grab bill, Ben hid his few guns rather than turn them in.

But in the end, the disarming of American citizens came to naught, for anarchy became the king of America. And as has been predicted by many, when the United States fells, so goes the world. Within days, there was not one single stable government anywhere on earth.

After months of roaming around the battered nation, and seeing no real effort being made toward rebuilding, Ben and a few others linked up and started talking about a dream they shared: the formation of a government that would be based truly by the people and for the people.

The Tri-States philosophy of government was born, and since it was based on a commonsense form of rule and law, the liberals could not understand it. When it comes to common sense, denned simply as sound practical judgment, liberals as a rule, are left out in the hinterlands, wondering what in the hell is going on.

A commonsense form of government, with its laws and rules, is really quite simple to understand: it means that each citizen is responsible for his or her own actions, deeds, and destiny.

Liberals will usually respond to that with an expression of utter confusion and by saying, “Huh?”

Attempting to explain common sense to a liberal is much

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like trying to teach a pig to fly. It is a waste of time for all concerned and is quite annoying to the pig.

Liberals believe that big government should be involved in every aspect of a citizen’s life. Tri-Staters believe that the primary responsibility of government is to protect our shores, make sure trains and planes and buses leave and arrive on time, and deliver the mail. That is, of course, an over-simplification, but not by much. Tri-Staters must be a special breed of person. They must respect the rights of others, regardless of race, religion, or creed. They must accept full responsibility for their own actions and deeds and by doing so understand that honor and truth must play a large part in day-to-day living. Con artists, slick-talking flim-flam operators, and people who misrepresent the truth in any type of business dealing don’t last long in any Tri-State society. Bullies and people with abrasive and argumentative personalities quickly learn to back off and temper their emotions. In any community embracing the Tri-States philosophy, citizens have the right to protect their lives, the lives of their loved ones, and their personal property without fear of arrest, prosecution, and/or civil lawsuit.

Right and wrong and morality is taught in public schools, and if parents don’t like that, they can take their children and leave. And don’t come back. Right and wrong is not up for debate.

Living in any Tri-States society is not a right, it is a privilege. And for many people it proves to be not just difficult, but impossible. Ben Raines correcdy calculated diat only three out of every ten people could live in such an open society. It took a special person to live where they controlled their own destiny.

Nearly everything in the Tri-States is low-key. High-pressure salespeople and boiler-room operators quickly

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learn that the Tri-States is not for them. In the Tri-States, no means no, not maybe.

Eventually, the United States government outside die Tri-States staggered to its feet and began whipping its citizens into line. Then it threw all its might against the Tri-States and those who had chosen to live as free people.

After days of fierce fighting, die Tri-States was overwhelmed and die government of die United States (once again in the pretty little hands of left-wing liberals) declared victory against Ben Raines and his followers.

That declaration was a tad premature, for while die president was patting himself on die back and proclaiming victory, Ben Raines was busy putting togedier a guerrilla army. Widiin weeks he declared war on die government of the United States.

It did not take long for diose in power to offer die olive branch of peace to Ben and his Rebels. For a full-scale, all-out guerrilla war had never really been fought on American soil… at least not in anyone’s memory, and certainly not against forces who fought as savagely as Ben Raines’s Rebels.

After a handshake and a promise of cooperation between die two nations widiin a nation, and as die Tri-States was rebuilding and hopefully setding down into a peaceful period, die government of die United States once more collapsed and die world again followed suit.

Brush wars spread like wildfire and governments diat were attempting to stabiuze disintegrated into bloody civil war. The United States was no different.

That collapse could have been expected, especially in what had once been called die United States. For in what had once been called die United States, millions of people had been conditioned to expect die government to do everydiing for diem: house diem, clodie them, feed diem,

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provide them with free medical care, and give them money for doing nothing except laying up on their lazy asses.

These types joined with other malcontents and went on a rioting, looting, burning, killing rampage.

When the smoke cleared, punks and other more or less human street shit controlled the cities, self-proclaimed warlords and their gangs of worthless human vermin prowled the countryside, preying on the innocent, and only one man and his small army stood between order and anarchy: Ben Raines and the Rebels.