The Living Will Envy The Dead (42 page)

And we had lost the battle.  It did not, I decided, bode well for the future.

A few more battles like that and we would be ruined.

And when we got to the next set of defensive lines, we discovered that Mac wasn't with us any longer.  He’d remained behind until the end.

The only thing worse than a battle won is a battle lost.

-Duke of Wellington

“Not Christians,” Reverend Thomas McNab said.  His voice had absolutely no give in it at all.  “They’re nothing like us.”

I gave him a reproving look.  The half-wrecked warehouse had once belonged to a packing company and had contained a surprising amount of useful equipment.  We had stripped it of everything that could be useful; now, it was packed with dozens of wounded men, receiving what medical care we could give them under the firelight.  Outside, the remainder of the force I’d led to the FOB waited, some huddling around fires, others watching for advancing enemy forces.  It looked, to my eyes, like a scene from another world.

“They think they’re Christians,” I said, bitterly.  I felt numb deep inside my heart, as if the events of the day hadn’t quite caught up with me.  I was one of the lucky ones.  There were several soldiers who had started to sob as soon as they were out of danger and had gone completely to pieces, despite everything we could do for them.  They’d been shell-shocked during the battle and would take time to recover.  I’d been forced to send them back to Ingalls and hope that they recovered.  “How do they do it?”

I remembered, chillingly, the vast waves of human fodder coming on and on, their faces twisted with a fanatical determination to destroy us, to wipe us out as if we had never existed.  How could they be Americans?  What had they been in the years before the Final War?  How could this nightmare have come to our soil?

“You don’t like organised religion very much, do you?”  Thomas said.  “Don’t you have any faith of your own?”

“There are no atheists in foxholes,” I said, absently.  “I believe in God, but not so much in those who claim to dictate policy in his name.”

Thomas snorted.  “And yet you must understand that those who think that they serve as his representatives on Earth are human and can therefore err,” he said, dryly.  I hadn’t realised just how involved he was in the argument, which was, in hindsight, foolish of me.  “If you can take the words of the bible to support any argument you like, why shouldn’t they be wrong from time to time?”

I shrugged, too tired to even move.  “But they claim to know what’s right?”

“Name me a religion,” Thomas challenged, “that doesn’t claim to have the ultimate keys to the Kingdom of the Lord in its holy book, or in the words of its priests, or in miracles witnessed by the believers.  Years ago, the Pope was believed to have an absolute monopoly on truth; he was not only the guiding light for Catholics, but he had the power to indulge any sinner who confessed…”

“And made a vast donation to the Church,” I said.  I’d read about that while I’d still been in school.  “How could paying a vast sum of money remove the weight of so many sins?”

“Interesting point,” Thomas said.  “Perhaps one could argue that paying so much and making a sacrifice is a way of recognising that you’ve been a bad boy and done wrong, and therefore setting you back on the road to redemption.  Perhaps one could also argue that the weight of the sin is transferred to the Pope, as the man who indulged you, and you no longer have to carry it because the Pope accepted it freely.  Perhaps…”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said, softly.  “Why did the Warriors have so much success in converting everyone to their point of view?”

“Politics,” Thomas said.  I blinked at him, surprised for the first time since the end of the battle and the realisation that we’d lost Mac somewhere along the way.  I’d scattered pickets and search parties back southwards towards the enemy lines, but I had no illusions about our inability to stand off another attack.  We couldn’t stay here for much longer.  Once dawn broke, we’d have to start moving back to the defence lines and Ingalls itself.  “I blame the politicians myself.”

“Because they didn’t crush all other religions?”  I asked, sardonically.  My experience with religions, mainly in Iraq, had led me to believe that tolerance was only a religious virtue when the religion was in the minority and vulnerable to being crushed by its enemies.  Those who were superior in numbers, or firepower, tended to be far more aggressive about pushing their faith into the lead.  “Perhaps we should have banned religion completely from the public sphere.”

“Perhaps,” Thomas said.  “I have long believed that religion has no place in politics, but that wasn't what I meant.  Think about the last election campaign.  Did you ever see one of the candidates speaking to a crowd?”

I shook my head.  “I just saw one of them speaking on the television and debating their opponent by proxy,” I said, rolling my eyes at the memory.  It hardly mattered now, but I’d been a loose Republican, although I had disagreements with some parts of the party’s agenda.  The two-party system ensured that no one was ever completely happy with election results.  We might have ended up with a Republican President who was very different from myself.  “I can’t say it left a great impression on me.”

“That’s probably because it didn’t,” Thomas said.  “I went to New Orleans once to hear the Reverend Brannon speaking to an interfaith conference.  Now
that
was an impressive bit of oratory.  He was very – very – convincing when he spoke.”

He paused.  “You see, political leaders these days – I mean, before the war – didn’t actually
speak
to their audiences,” he continued.  “Yes, some candidates held mass rallies and spoke to the voters, but others didn’t; after all, America is really too large to hold a proper tour and speak to everyone.  You might start it when the last President is elected and you’d still be at it when the next one was elected.”

“Having discovered that you didn’t win the nomination because you weren’t sucking the right people off in Washington,” I said, bitterly.  “I don’t understand your point.”

“People didn’t have any particular respect for their leaders,” Thomas said.  “The President and his advisors spoke in soundbites, or read out carefully-scripted speeches that managed to sound artificial.  Washington – political Washington – was another world.  You’ve been here long enough to know just how clumsy Washington was when interacting with farmers, Ed; you know how determined the Constitutional Convention is to prevent a repeat of that particular series of events.  The people of America were becoming increasingly divorced from their political leaders.  There was no…intimacy between the government and the people.”

I nodded slowly.  “Take Hitler,” Thomas continued.  “The man was a loser at pretty much everything he did.  His program should have been a complete flop.  Instead, he managed to take the gifts he does have, including the ability to speak to a crowd and make them believe in him, and turn it into a power base.  The man was a natural politician and, when given the chance to take power, does it in a manner that has half of Germany loving him, rather than fearing him.  He told them what they wanted to hear.  He told them that Germany was the victim, not the victimiser, and gave them targets for their rage.  The Jews, the Slavs, the British, the Russians, us…he worked them, played them like a harp.  They would die for him.”

“And far too many did,” I agreed.

“But Hitler wouldn’t have gotten anywhere without the economic problems and the general lack of faith in the government,” Thomas said.  “That gave him an opportunity to bring the people onto his side.  That doesn’t happen here, not in America.  The President couldn’t convince people to follow him, to trust him; after all, he was just another scheming politician.  People have – had – very little respect or trust in their government.  Every issue of the day, from abortion, to affirmative action, to the demand that slaveholder descendents pay compensation, to Weapons of Mass Destruction, only served to isolate the government from the people further.  There was no accountability and so there was no trust.  There was a growing void in people’s souls.

“Hell, why do you think the spread of radical religions was growing all over the world?” He asked.  “People didn’t have anything to believe in.”

I nodded, slowly.  He was right, in a sense.  The spread of radical Islam though the Middle East had been aided by economic problems and a complete lack of government accountability.  We tend to think of Saudi Arabia as rich – and indeed the Government has enough money to bankroll thousands upon thousands of parasite princes, let alone buy the latest in American military hardware – but the wealth comes from oil.  When the oil runs out, so will the wealth - and the people loathe the government.  The spread of radical Islam should have been expected.  It had even spread into Europe…and hell, we’d had all kinds of fringe groups, just like the Warriors of the Lord. 

“And think about how it was just after the bombs fell,” Thomas pressed.  “We had Ingalls – and you – and we were able to cling together.  Think what it must have been like for the people in the cities; wounded, helpless, fleeing into the countryside desperate to reach shelter before it was too late and they died.  They had nothing left, not even their faith, and the Warriors would have taken advantage of that.  Their destitution would have bred acceptance of the Warrior Creed very quickly and convinced them to follow them anywhere.  I bet you that the Prophet – the false Prophet – holds mass rallies for them, exploiting them into believing that he is the true leader of the faith.  You can’t overthrow a man like that, Ed.  You just have to remove him.”

I lifted an eyebrow.  “Are you advocating violence, Reverend?”

“Many of the young men here are from Ingalls,” Thomas said, angrily.  He wasn’t angry at me, but at the Warriors.  “I knew them personally.  Some of them were very good, some of them stole from time to time, but none of them deserved to be wounded, or to risk death in such a battle.  I wonder, now, if the false Prophet is the antichrist, sent her to tempt us into falling into the hands of Satan.  He is certainly diabolical in his actions.

“If you can kill him, Ed, take the shot,” he concluded.  “He must not be allowed to remain alive.  He’s a genuine leader-type, with a genius for building a false religion that has him at the top, and removing him is the only way to break them.  They have to be shown, in no uncertain terms, that he was a liar who led them to destruction.  The only way to do that is to kill him.”

“True, I guess,” I said.  I wasn't that willing to think about it, not now, but he was right.  It had to be done.  Fanatics couldn’t be beaten, only killed, as long as they believed in their cause and certain victory.  The key to beating them was either to wipe them out, root and branch, or break their faith in victory, forcing them to come to terms.  It wouldn’t be easy.  We didn’t know
that
much about the Warriors of the Lord.  If I sent someone south to assassinate the Prophet, how long would it be before they found him…and could they get through his guards without being detected? 

I felt a wave of surprisingly hot anger.  “How could this have happened in America?”

“This isn’t America,” Thomas said.  My head jerked up in surprise.  “America died when the first bombs started to explode and society disintegrated.  The Government is gone, the army is gone, and the police and all the other emergency services are gone.  Whatever comes out, rising from the ashes, will be very different to what went before.  It might be called America, but it won’t be
our
America, not the one you and I grew up in and served during our adult lives.  What happens here, Ed, will determine whose vision will dominate the land we once called America in the future.  Ours, one of democracy and local government, or that of the Warriors of the Lord and their false Prophet.  We have no choice, but to fight them.”

“Yeah,” I said, pulling myself to my feet.  It took an awesome amount of effort to move myself, but I had the feeling that if I stayed sitting on the ground, soon enough I wouldn’t even be able to move.  Sleep called to me with all the temptation of a naked and waiting lover, but I couldn’t allow myself to sleep.  Was this how General Franks had felt, or all the other commanding officers I had known during my career; had they all cursed themselves when the dead and dying started to come back to the field hospitals?  I’d lost, in one day, more people than they had lost during the opening days of the war.  “We have to fight, don’t we?”

“Yes,” Thomas said, firmly.  “You know the alternative.”