The Thunder Drums of Heaven

     He rubbed the remnants of sleep from his eyes and glanced up at the gray overcast dawn. It had snowed during the night and the raw wind that now raced through the narrow valley chilled him. He pulled the collar up on his field jacket in a vain attempt to shut it out and then stepped off the porch of the small ramshackle farm house. Gathering the strength of will that had kept him going for the past two years, he hurried away through ankle deep snow.

     A short walk later, he returned the salute of the ever present young guard and entered the old metal machine shed building that had been rapidly converted into his field headquarters. He went quickly to the situation board and scanned it for any changes that had occurred during the night. Seeing nothing of significance he walked to the large pot-bellied stove at the end of the graveled floor room. As he pulled off his jacket, his mind wandered back to those weeks of madness that had at first fragmented and then ground into dust, the great constitutional republic of the United States.

     Few people seemed to fully understand how it had happened. He had heard all of the theories; everyone seemed to have one at the time. He could well remember the day that started the beginning of the end. It was the day that the full faith and credit of the United States government crashed.

     Seventy years of massive overspending had built up a national debt that was hard to even comprehend. The interest alone exceeded sixty percent of the national budget. Adding to it the massive cost of countless social welfare programs, and the normal costs of running the over-staffed federal establishment, made the tax burden overwhelming.

     Widespread tax avoidance evolved into a blatant refusal to pay. Denied insufficient tax revenues to cover its commitments the federal government cranked up the presses and printed the money it needed. This ultimately drove the inflation rate to a four digit level.

     Within weeks sky rocketing inflation destroyed the value of the dollar and reduced the purchasing power of a lifetime of savings to the price of a small loaf of bread. Federal government checks were worthless, and the banks that still remained open would not honor them.

     Faced with the reality of financial disaster a population that had never known hunger, and had been raised on a philosophy of more, bolted. Violent crime reached epidemic proportions as the supply of nearly everything was wiped out in a mad frenzy of looting and hoarding.

     With police organizations demoralized and then torn apart by the unparalleled lawlessness, the President called on the federal military to restore order. The order was politely refused on the grounds that the military would not bear arms against their own people. The President immediately declared that a state of marshal law existed, and then suspended constitutional guarantees.

     With no military to back up his demands, and with none of the states willing to obey a nationalization