William Johnstone - Phoenix Rising

Well-known conservative talk show host Royal Peabody spoke at the rally in Houston.

The picture moved from the rally in Chicago to the one in Houston. There were several signs on display:

Impeach The Foreign Imposter

We Need Fuel

Fuel Now

Royal Peabody was standing behind a podium on a flatbed trailer as he addressed the crowd.

We are the heart and soul of America; we are the voice of the people. Some are mocking us, saying that we are in the pocket of a political party, but I say no, a thousand times no! We are beholden to no political party or ideology other than the principle of freedom, common sense, and the right to pursue happiness.

You know what would make us happy now? Fuel!

Peabody shouted the word, and it came roaring back on two hundred thousand voices. “Fuel!”

There are literally hundreds of billions of barrels of recoverable oil in the Bakken range, and nearly that much oil in Anwar. In addition we have more usable coal than the rest of the world combined, to say nothing of our huge gas reserves.

Ladies and gentlemen, our nation is collapsing around us, while our salvation is before our very eyes. We have enough energy to last for one thousand years without importing so much as one drop of oil. We have forty trillion in pre-Ohmshidi dollars worth of energy.

We were at the beginning of a monetary windfall that would put to shame anything we have ever experienced before—then we elected Ohmshidi. My friends, Ohmshidi promised us change, and he has delivered on that promise. We have changed from boom to bust. Ohmshidi’s misguided policies, his insane order to halt all drilling and refining, even the importation of fossil fuel, has snatched financial disaster from the jaws of economic boom.

“Supper’s ready,” Ellen said, and Bob muted the sound as he and Charley went into the kitchen. Though they had a dining room, they ate there only when they had company. When it was just the two of them, they ate across from each other at a small table in the kitchen.

“Bob, what’s going to happen to us?” Ellen asked.

“Nothing. Except we will probably spend the summer here, instead of going up to St. Louis as we normally do. With the cost of fuel it would be foolish to go up there for no reason. Besides, if it actually comes down to a condition of survival, I think we could survive better here, than in St. Louis.”

“It is going to come down to that, isn’t it?” Ellen asked. “A condition of survival.”

“I wouldn’t have said this six months ago, but yes, I believe it is.”

“Are you afraid?” Ellen asked.

“No.”

Ellen smiled wanly, then reached across the table to put her hand over his.

“Good,” she said. “As long as you are not afraid, then neither am I.”

“I think we need to start getting ready, though.”

“Getting ready, how?”

“You know how. Just like we do when we are getting ready for a hurricane. The only difference is, this time we are going to have to be prepared for a much longer time than we ever had to with any hurricane.”

“We’ve got the freezer nearly full now.”

Bob shook his head. “The freezer won’t do it,” he said. “When it goes, everything is going, including the electricity.”

“But we’ve got our own generator, and one hundred-pound propane tank.”

“Which, if we run it full time, will last us for about two weeks. I believe we are looking at a year of being totally on our own.”

“A year?” Ellen gasped.

“Or longer,” Bob said.

In the living room they could hear the TV still going.

A suicide bomber blew himself up today in Grand Central Station in New York. Nineteen were killed and at least thirty more were injured. That is the fourth terrorist attack in the continental United States in the last twenty days, bringing the death toll total to eighty-six.

President Ohmshidi lodged a strong protest with the government of Yazikistan, but President Rafeek Syed dismissed the protest as the meaningless whining of a nation of kafirs, or unbelievers.

CHAPTER NINE

Base Hospital, Fort Rucker—Friday, June 15

“Hello, Colonel Chambers,” Karin said, putting on as cheerful a front as she could. The patient, Colonel Garrison J. Chambers, a veteran of World War II, was ninety years old. One week earlier he had cut his leg on a piece of rusty, corrugated tin. That cut had gotten infected and the infection was spreading. He should have been given penicillin, but there was no penicillin available.

Karin once read that honey had been used for hundreds of years to treat infected wounds and though the doctor told her she was being foolish when she suggested they try it, he had finally come around. Chambers’s wound was being treated with honey.

Karin removed the bandage and looked at the wound. It might have been her imagination, but she believed she was seeing some improvement. She began cleansing the area around the wound.

“How does it look?” Colonel Chambers asked.

“It’s looking good,” Karin said.

Chambers lifted his head and looked down at his leg. “Captain, if you think that looks good, you are definitely a woman who isn’t turned off by ugly. And that, my dear”—he pointed to the purple, puffy wound—“has a serious case of ugly.”

“Oh, it’s all in the eyes of the beholder,” Karin said.

“Hmm, where were you seventy years ago when I needed a woman who could overlook ugly?”

Karin laughed. “I’ll bet you were a fine-looking young officer,” she said. “I read in your records that you spent some time in Paris immediately after the war.”

Karin knew that Colonel Chambers, as a company commander in the 101st Airborne, had also jumped into France on D-Day, and had been at Bastogne during the siege, where he was awarded the Silver Star and a Purple Heart.

“I was in Paris, yes.”

“Now, be truthful, Colonel,” she said, as she used peroxide-soaked cotton balls to dab gently around his wound. “Did you, or did you not have your share of beautiful young French ladies?”

“Ahh, you do bring up memories, my dear,” Colonel Chambers said. “I seem to recall that there is one particularly pretty young lady who always sits down at the end of the bar at the Parisian Pony. Lovely thing she is, high-lifted breasts, long, smooth legs. I hope I’m not embarrassing you.”

“Not at all, I’m enjoying the description,” Karin replied.

Colonel Chambers was quiet for a moment. “I can see her now. She is so beautiful. Or was, I should say. My Lord, Chantal would be in her late eighties now. All of them. Every young woman I knew there. The soldiers too, the men who served with me, and under me. They were all so young then, and when I think of them, I remember them as they were, not as they must be now.” He grew pensive.

“All memories are like that, Colonel.”

“I suppose they are. If nobody has told you before, Captain, getting old—what is the term the young people use? Oh, yes, sucks. Getting old sucks.”

“Yes, but consider the alternative,” Karin said.

Colonel Chambers laughed out loud. “Good point, Captain, good point,” he said.

“Tell me, my dear, when I get out of here, would you be too terribly embarrassed to have dinner with an old man?”

“Embarrassed? Not at all,” Karin said. “I would love to have dinner with you.”

“That is, assuming there is a restaurant still open somewhere by then. I’ve lived under eighteen presidents ; none have frightened me as much as this one does.” He reached up to take Karin’s hand in his. “On the one hand, I am glad I am so old because I don’t believe living under this president is going to be very pleasant. On the other hand, I defended this country for many years, and I almost feel as if it would be an act of betrayal on my part if I were to die now, and leave this mess behind me.”