Join the new world

I was headed down to Frankfort, Kentucky to work in my raw weapons materials plants, which are impressively labyrinthine, thanks to the SFP Co-op.

Been visitin' Wilhelm somewhere near Muscatatuck, right?
Almost there, I'm thumbin' my way down MLK, towards Trumbo Bottom and the Tumble Inn,
Starin' up the road and pray to Zuul
I won't see anyone from the Unemployment Commission.

Cause cuz, I mean I might've worked out a small stimulus package of my own.
If'cha know what I mean.


Made it down the road to where it turns into Glens Creeks, nearly to the plant now
and the whole trip'd only took, oh, about seventeen hours.
Maybe. Who knows. Who cares. Wilhelm serves up the strong stuff. Heh!
Been tumbling along like a tumbling tumbleweed if you catch my drift.

When I was passing by the regional jail and police academy,
about when I realized they were flying the wrong flag,
an excited angry voice commences a-yellin' and I see a fella gesticulatin'
in my general direction.

Carrying on in Croatian no less.
All belligerent like, "Stop! Pokaži mi svoju identifikaciju!"

Nowadays, my Balkanese is just so-so.
But I knew he weren't offerin' me no bouquet of dogwood flowers.
I hightailed it across the Bottom hoping to make it to I-64,
zig-zagging here and there.



As I ran through the stone pits of the Red Star Rising Co-op,
It was a scene of level-3 chrysis. Also distress and mayhem.

Croat inspectors or some such were everywhere,
putting their paws on everything,
harassing my cartoon workers and my manager avatars,
asking everybody in broken English,
"Why no Q-Fives? Where Q-Five you lazy shits?"

As I was runnin' from the Croats and starting to wonder
If I shoulda' just stuck with bein' a fiddler in an old time string band,
I started making desperate calls to a few Bear Cav heavy hitters
who might know what the heck was going on.



Finally got through to one.

"HC! You madman! What the clucking-chuck-fruck?!,
Now how'm I gonna pay for mama's new rocking chair?", I babbled.

He mumbled something about the price of saltpeter in Rhineland-Palatinate and hung up on me.



Then hiding behind a giant outcropping of fine Q4 Amurkin saltpeter,
I got through to Commander Shiloh.

Could barely hear him with all the explosions and large-caliber gunfire going on.
Not to mention he was blasting Rammstein's "Reise, Reise" at full volume.
Of all things. I mean. Heavy metal-ish German sea shanties.
Whatever. Sure, why not?
Makes as much sense as anything else at this point.

"Dude. Are we gonna lose Kentucky to the goldurned Croats?"

A great deal of swearing at the other end.
Swear .. swear... something about "war is swell"... not sure ...
More bad words ... "feckless effing Feds" maybe ...
Ha-ha! Had to giggle at that one. If only for the use of consonance under duress.

Then he goes, "OK R.F., hold on just a second. Putting in a call."

I waited.
Then he says, "Dude, you'll like this." He laughs. Inna kinda cruel way. But wicked funny.



A little team of what appeared to be a group of teens wearing red berets

popped up from behind one of our WRM smelting pits, screamed...

"WOLVERINES!!"

Then they each steadied up a personal rocket launcher and promptly sent some mighty pretty hellfire raining down on that little crowd of Croats who'd
been stamping "Approval of CODE" on our equipment.


LOL-ka-boom! Yeah. Rock me!



"Yeah," he said, "It's hopeless. You should get out of there. Now.
Hey, I gotta go. Ursa Fi!"



I didn't need to be told twice. Made it to I-64 where I caught a ride
with a friendly Gypsy caravan
far enough to where I could catch a south-bound freight train.

Hopped off in Harlan, where I had some contacts from back in the day.
Well-armed folks too.
As I'd expected, they'd built 'em a safe space. For now anyway.
They'd been fighting off company goons for longer than you could say
"Ain't turnin' back to livin' that old life no more."
A few Croats a long way from home weren't going to dislodge them overnight.

That gave me enough time to gather my resolve, learn some news and make some plans.




I called in a few favors that'll result in some of our equipment
getting surreptitiously relocated to West Viriginia.




Walking south out of Harlan, I caught a trucker out of Philly.
What he was doing on State Highway 421 I couldn't say
but we had a nice long toke
as he headed east through Pennington Gap,
on his way to Johnson City, Tennessee.

Once we arrived in JC, I told him I gotta get a move on.
Hopped out and hailed my partner's grandparents who'd emerged
from the Cherokee Forest to meet me,
like a reincarnation of ancient times,
like those wise old warriors we all need,
like a miracle,
and right on time.

To save me.



They knew all the back roads -- straight north pretty much,
through alot of hills and forests --
to Blair Mountain, where the Miners Rebel HQ was, once again,
being set up.



I'd been able to chat up them old folks during my ride with the trucker.
And there they stood. Older'n spit. Like spirits from another era.

Wearing red kerchiefs and grinning from ear to ear.
Gramps with a huge old mountaineer beard. Sporting a string
of, well, what looked like freshly-cut-off human ears hanging from his belt.
I didn't ask.

And Gammy, holy crap. Gammy.
A full-blooded Cherokee whose folks'd taken to the hills
a few generations back
rather than getting run off during the Trail of Tears.
She knew every back-country-rebel cornbread-communist
between Pigeon Forge and Snowshoe. And they knew her.



The first husband's dad had been one of those WWI vet rebel miners during
the Great Rebellion on Blair Mountain, about a hundred years ago.


She still laughs like a banshee when people make
the mistake of saying something around her that would imply "red neck"
means
"stupid southerner"
rather than
"armed insurgent for the working class".

She still makes killer hoe cakes too.



We hustled off the main road towards their camp deep in the Cherokee forest.

I asked her as we hiked,
"Aren't you afraid that helping us move our factories like this and then joining
the rebel HQ in West Virginia will be kind of hard on you..."

I hesitated.

I was going to say "...at your age?"
But she'd given me a look.


"Robbie," she said, she always called me Robbie,
"If I die on Blair Mountain at least I will die free."