“We spread out in two rows and sat down. I don’t know what they must have thought, us just sitting there. Our instructor had a bullhorn and was calmly telling everyone there would be no violence today. We simply wouldn’t allow it.
“I sat facing the police. I was still a novice and felt scared. Our instructor had planned it that way; all the novices faced the police. She thought they wouldn’t move against us. She was wrong.
“First, they shot mace at us. It stung fiercely, and I could barely see through the tears, but I stayed where I was. When that failed to move us, they advanced. They came slowly with their clubs held high. I was so sure I was going to die. My heart was racing. I remember thinking, ‘There are so many dying for no good reason. At least I’ll die for a cause.’
“When the line reached me and the first policeman swung, I almost laughed. Compared to what I had seen in practice, this was a simple and sloppy attack. I didn’t stand; I just moved sideways. He stumbled, and I pulled him down and pinned him easily.
“Another cop came up, this one a grizzled veteran. He had his club held up, and again I was sure I was going to die. An advanced practitioner of Aikido, or Aikikai, as we call ourselves, can easily handle many attackers. I was a novice. I was afraid that if I let the first cop up to take on the second, I would be killed. I was stuck and didn’t know what to do.
“That second lasted a painfully long time, for both us, I think. Then the marshal sounded the retreat, and he pulled back. I let the first cop go as well. I saw that veteran a week later. He sat beside me at another action.
“The rioters sensed weakness as the cops pulled back, and they rushed in. They were met by our most experienced and skilled Aikikai. As the rioters rushed forward, they leaped to their feet and met them. Using graceful spinning throws, they sent the first wave back into the crowd. Each of our warriors became a spinning maelstrom. No rioters got through.
“It wasn’t just us either. Dojos around the country had started doing the same thing. Everywhere, people had sat back and wrung their hands and worried. Now we had a chance to actually do something.
“The next day, I was in despair. There had already been another riot and several people had been killed. I thought we hadn’t done anything at all. Then, I rounded the corner.” She paused and smiled.
“There were hundreds there, all wanting in; they all wanted to join us. My instructor eyed them one moment and then nodded. She led the whole crowd to a nearby park. From then on, the lessons were free. Those with experience helped teach. It was incredible to teach so many at once.
“From that point on, the whole thing took on its own momentum. Often, our mere presence was enough to calm situations. We often could negotiate some sort of compromise.”
“Compromise?” Patrick asked. “With rioters?”
“They were just people, scared desperate people,” Ruth replied. “Once we got a reputation for being fair, our word that an aid station was doing its best was sometimes enough. That wasn’t the only situations we went into, however. We kept the police from harassing the homeless and refugees as well.
Roger nodded. “That they did. More than once, they let us into aid stations when the locals didn’t want us there. I’d have starved if not for the warriors. They did a lot of good, if you ask me.”
“Our experienced members did a lot of negotiating,” Ruth continued, “but they were few and far between. The new recruits often had limited understanding of Aikido and resorted to violence at times. But still, we did much better than anyone else.”
“Yeah, but what good are those neat moves against a gun? Will Aikido stop a bullet?” Patrick demanded. “Peaceful intentions can’t stop everything.”
“We faced bullets twice, once at the beginning and again at the end,” Ruth replied. “At the outset, the press gave us the name ‘A Thousand Warriors for Peace.’ Then there was Dallas. Twenty or so of our experienced members were trying to keep the police out of a shantytown on the edge of Dallas, Texas.”
“You were trying to keep them out?” Shawn asked. “Didn’t you want law and order?”
“No, we wanted peace and justice,” Ruth replied. “Not the same things at all. That shantytown was all those people had, and the police wanted it torn down because the rich thought it was an eyesore. An eyesore. We sided with the protesters.
“The police fired shots over the heads in the crowd. It was soon obvious our people would not move. They knew clubs would be a disaster. Their marshal gave the order to shoot. Most of the police, to their credit, refused to obey. But some did.”
“What happened?” Amy breathed.
“That day, the police won.” Ruth replied. “Eight of the twenty warriors were killed and many more times that of the protesters. The rest fled. Twelve of the warriors were arrested and taken to jail. The next day, as news spread, the police chief came to work to find thousands of protesters outside the jail. They didn’t shout or chant or anything. They just sat there, row upon row of them. Unnerved, he let the survivors go. For him and for the police, it was too late to undo the damage.
“Several major martial arts organizations officially joined the cause. Thousands of police abandoned their jobs for us. Even more individuals joined. From then on we were the ‘Ten Thousand Warriors for Peace.’
“What? Just because a bunch of you showed up, he caved in?” Mark demanded. “That don’t make no sense.”
“Can you imagine thousands of people just watching you?” Kurt shuddered.
“It was the discipline,” Roger said. “People yelling and shouting and breaking things was one thing. These were warriors; it must have been quite a sight.”
Amy tried to imagine it but failed. Her whole life at the ranch had a grand total of forty some people. Thousands were beyond her.
“You said you faced guns at the end too?” Luke said. “What end?”
Ruth sighed. “Our movement was strong for another year. We did much good, or so I thought at the time.”
“You did,” Roger said.
“I think so too, but for a long time when I looked back, I thought we failed.”
“Failed? How?” Amy asked.
“We held back the tide of violence, but we didn’t stop it. Officially, martial law was in effect most of that time. Our practice was forbidden, but the military looked the other way. They had too much on their hands, and we were valuable peacekeepers. If we occasionally disagreed with them, well that was just the price they paid.
“As the states began to splinter off and civil war erupted, things changed. The local militias tried to shut us down. The real showdown came in Boston. The state militia was trying to keep a band of several thousand refugees out of the city. Most of the refugees came from New York and had been wandering the coast homeless for the better part of two years. Over a hundred of our warriors were there. They were trying to avoid a violent conflict as usual. They asked that a share of the Red Cross food within the city be brought out for the refugees. In return, they would march elsewhere.
“While the leaders were negotiating, several of the militia took matters into their own hands. They opened fire with semi-automatics. They killed most of the warriors and hundreds of innocent civilians as well.”
“No way!” Daniel exclaimed. “Our government wouldn’t do that.”
“It wasn’t the government anymore,” Roger replied. “The military had been in charge for close to a year by that point. Their control was slipping. The local militias ran wild and looked after their own interests.”
“My husband is correct,” Ruth said. “It was local militia, not the government. Who can say they were wrong? People were starving in Boston too. They thought that sharing food meant that their friends or family might starve. What would you have done?”
“They should have shared,” Roger growled. “Like we did. No, I have no problem saying it, they did wrong in Boston. Wrong.”
Amy looked around. She knew Luke would share, or even Kurt and Daniel. But what would Shawn, Patrick, or Mark? She thought of the expedition in two factions now. She could easily see Mark opening fire on innocent people.
What if Elisabeth was going to starve or Dad? What would Amy do? She squirmed uncomfortably.
“That was pretty much how it ended,” Ruth said. “We knew the military would not respect our rights anymore. They would use lethal force again and again until we were all dead.”
“Most of our leaders were already in hiding. They were wanted for terrorism and other trumped up charges against the state. The movement was disbanded. We were given a choice. We could stay in the cities and continue our work under the very real threat of death, or we could bend our ethics and join the Quiet Earth Society out in the countryside.”
“What do you mean, bend your ethics?” Amy asked.
“We were committed to nonviolence,” Ruth answered. “And many of us followed that quite rigorously. The Quiet Earth Society wanted peace and freedom, but they were no pacifists. When push came to shove they fought to win, even if that meant killing.
“For many of our newer members, especially those who came from other martial arts that had a kill-or-be-killed philosophy, there was no debate. They headed for the proverbial and very real hills. The older members, those who had trained in Aikido for a long time, as well as many who had been attracted by the nonviolent philosophy, would not be party to violent revolution. Many opted to stay.
“I was torn. Many of my oldest and dearest friends were staying. I knew they would be killed eventually. I finally decided I couldn’t stay. It wasn’t that I was afraid of death; I had seen it dozens of times while working with them. But I felt that I could still make a difference alive. If I died, the evil men who were in power and making the bad things happen would win. They would go on doing horrible things. Alive, I might be able to help stop them.
“I had this friend . . . well, acquaintance, really. She led a women’s spirituality course I had taken, and we remained in touch. She was still in town, though I was not sure why . . .”
“Had so many fled the towns by then?” Amy asked.
“No, that wasn’t until the next winter,” Ruth replied. “It was just that she was pagan.”
“Pagan?”
“Yeah, you know the whole earth-worshiping group,” Roger said.
They all shook their heads in confusion.
“I don’t suppose the survivalists that raised you lot spent much time educating you on alternative religions,” Ruth said with a soft chuckle.
“What sort of religion?” Mark asked blankly.
“Alternative,” Patrick said, though the look on his face showed he didn’t understand either.
“What, like Pentecostals?” Kurt asked.
Roger rolled his eyes. “Not even close. They believe in the Goddess, the mother earth.”
“Never heard of that,” Shawn said derisively. “Sounds like some sort of hippie freaks.”
“Dad told me there were these hippie freaks living just below us on the mountains before the collapse,” Mark leered. “He remembered one young girl being particularly friendly.” He sniggered.
Roger looked at him perplexed. “Actually, they are very friendly,” he said, “and it turned out they were good people to know.”
“How so?” Luke asked.
“About ten years before the collapse, they had a group of visionaries appear in their ranks. They spoke of a coming apocalypse. They said that the mother earth was about to shake off human desecration, as they described the environmental problems, with a violent upheaval.
“They began to travel around their festivals teaching. They taught survival skills, gathering food from the wild, organic farming, herbal medicine, everything they would need to survive. By the time it all started—the plague and Chicago—they had mostly dropped out of society quietly, going off to live on homesteads and communities far from the cities.
“I remember it being a bit of a joke even. One conservative radio host I listened to use to go on about, ‘Where have all the hippies gone?’ Funny, they seemed like such a small group until they were gone.
“We even had one in our office; a young gay guy. I thought he was nuts. He left about six months before the plague hit. Sold his half-million-dollar home in the burbs, left a successful career, and went to live in the woods somewhere.
“Well, he wasn’t the one who was crazy, and it was no joke. When I was traveling, it was well known that if you could find a pagan homestead, they would almost always have something to spare.
“I can recall at the time,” he went on, “thinking how weird their food was. They ate lots of drought-resistant crops like Amaranth, and easy-to grow vegetables like sunchokes. That’s about all we eat anymore.”
“So,” Luke said to Ruth. “You went to join the Quiet Earth Society and met Roger. You two came out here, built this, and lived happily ever after.”
“Yes, happily ever after,” Ruth agreed with a smile. “But it was not quite so direct. I spent a year as a soldier for the society . . .”
“They let women fight!?” Mark roared.
Roger’s face crinkled in confusion. “Haven’t you been listening? She was already a second-degree black belt in Aikido and a veteran Warrior. Why wouldn’t they let her fight?”
“Women can’t fight,” Shawn said. “Everyone knows that!”
“She beat Patrick,” Amy said defending Ruth.
Patrick blushed and looked away. “I wouldn’t want anything to do with a woman who fights,” he muttered.
There was a tense moment, which was broken by Roger saying, “Good, then I don’t have to worry about Ruth running off with one of you strapping young lads and leaving me alone.”
Nervous laughter followed.
“While
fighting,”
Ruth went on, “I was assigned to guard one of our renewal projects, one that Roger commanded. He was a great leader, and I fell in love with him immediately.”
“Baa,” Roger returned. “I had to woo her for months. Besides, I was no leader. We in the renewal projects were mere number crunchers anyway.”
“What was the renewal project?” Luke asked.
“We computed the number of trees, acres of wetlands, and whatnot it would take to return the world to normal.”
“How many?” Luke asked.
“A lot more than we have now,” was Roger’s reply. “That’s ultimately what drove us out here. The battle for what remained of the old civilization was winding down. It seemed a lot less important than saving the earth.”