299 Days: The Stronghold 2d-4

by Glen Tate

  Grant checked in with Chip and got a report that not much was happening. Things were quiet. He found out that the beach patrol was on full alert last night and into the morning. No one tried to come in that way. Grant had nearly forgotten about the beach.

  Mark was there. “Wanna a ride back home?” he asked.

  “Yep.” That was all Grant had the energy to muster. That couple pounds of food he’d just eaten was putting him to sleep. Bobby, Scotty, Wes, and Pow piled in the back of the truck. They were lying down in the bed of the truck. They were beat.

  On the way back, Mark told Grant about how he and John were doing on hunting. “Scouted out some pretty decent spots. Saw some signs of deer. We should have some fresh meat soon.”

  Good. Grant wondered if the deer would get hunted out quickly given that everyone was out hunting now. The electricity was still on so they could freeze the meat. They’d have to keep moving farther back into the woods to find game. At least they had hunting grounds, even if they would get thinner and thinner.

  This got Grant thinking. They needed to start a crash gardening program. He suspected that people were already doing this, but he’d bring it up at the meeting that night in case any community-wide coordination was needed. Like a seed bank. He chuckled to himself. The money banks were closed, but people were starting seed and ammo banks. How appropriate.

  The next thing he knew, he was waking up as they pulled onto the gravel of Over Road. He was surprised that he fell asleep so quickly. There was Paul guarding. He looked tired, too. He must have been on beach patrol all night and now was on guard duty. They needed an extra guard for Over Road. Grant had an idea, but it could wait, he couldn’t stay awake. He walked into the cabin and saw the kids there. They were so happy to see him. They had known that something was happening last night, but they had also heard that their dad would be coming home.

  “What did you guys do yesterday?” Grant asked.

  Manda said, “Our chores.”

  That sounded so weird. Two weeks ago, Manda had no “chores.” Suburban kids simply didn’t do chores. It was hard enough to get her to put her dishes in the dishwasher. Now she was cheerfully doing “chores.”

  “Like what?” Grant asked, already knowing the answer.

  “Cleaning up the kitchen,” Manda said. “I’m watching Missy, too. She’s a nice kid. Let’s see. I’m helping Grandma with whatever she needs. We folded laundry with her when she was doing laundry over at the Morrells. Helped with dinner. I read stories to Cole last night for bed time.” Manda was a busy kid out there. Good.

  “Stories? Where’d you get the books?” Grant asked.

  “Oh, Mrs. Morrell has some,” Manda said. “She’s a teacher, you know. Her grandkids used to come out here so she had things for them to do.”

  “Cole, are you having fun out at the cabin?” Grant asked.

  “Yes. I play with Sissy lots.” That was Cole’s nickname for his sister. It was a term of endearment. He loved his Sissy so much.

  Then Cole made Grant’s entire day. Cole asked, “What did you do today, Dad?” Cole didn’t talk a lot, so when he asked a question like that, it was a big deal.

  “Oh, thanks for asking little buddy,” Grant said. “Well, Dad helped the neighbors with things. I went down and,” Grant was about to say “was a soldier” but that would scare Cole. So he said, “helped the police keep bad people out. We did a good job. No bad people came. I had to do that all night so I couldn’t tuck you in last night. Sorry, little buddy.”

  “That’s OK, Dad,” Cole said. “You had to keep the bad people out. That was a good thing for you to do.” That was one of his longer sentences in quite some time. He was doing better with his talking out there. Grant wondered if all the stress of suburban life—going to school, running around on errands all over town, distractions like video games and other things—had been tiring him out. He seemed more rested and relaxed out there. It was weird: a cabin in the middle of the Collapse might actually be less stressful and tiring than modern suburban life, at least for Cole. He was shielded from the stress of the Collapse. He didn’t know about the gangs. He didn’t worry about how they would get food. He was on a summer vacation with his family.

  Grant realized that Manda was alone with Cole and Missy most of the day. They were partially safe on Over Road, but sometimes there probably wasn’t a guard at the shack. And anyone could come along the beach and up the stairs to the cabin. Plus, the kids were roaming all over playing and delivering messages for people. They were unarmed.

  Arming kids? Really? Grant thought. Yes. Really, he answered himself.

  “Hey Manda,” Grant said as he motioned for her to come over to him. He whispered, “Don’t tell your Mom.” This always meant something cool was about to happen. “You remember my Glock 27?”

  Manda’s eyes got big. “Oh, yeah. The little Glock in .40 caliber?” Grant let her shoot a lot before the Collapse. She was pretty good with it. Most people would say her small hands couldn’t handle the recoil of a .40 in a subcompact pistol. They would be wrong. She handled it very well.

  “I want you to carry it when you’re outside,” Grant said. “I have a pocket holster for you. Don’t carry it without a pocket holster. I don’t want anything to get in the trigger guard, like keys, and have it go off. Carry it in your pocket, maybe like a cargo pocket on some shorts. It probably won’t fit in your pants pocket,” Grant noted this because kids’ clothes usually had small pockets, “but it will fit in a cargo pocket.”

  He didn’t tell Manda, but he had started to carry his little tiny LCP in .380 auto in his pocket at all times. So if someone disarmed him of his carbine and pistol in his holster, he’d still have a gun. Hidden, which was why he didn’t tell a soul about it. The only thing to make up for the mild power of a .380 auto was the element of surprise.

  “How do I keep it away from Mom?” Manda asked.

  “She’ll be working most of the time,” Grant said. “I’ll keep it in my nightstand. She’ll think it’s for me. You can grab it in the morning and put it in the nightstand at night. There’ll be an extra magazine there, too. Take it with you. You can put it in your pants pocket. This will be the good self-defense ammo so don’t do any target shooting with those rounds. Get some .40 ball from me for that.” “Ball” referred to basic full metal jacket ammunition, which was nothing special; just a copper-coated hunk of lead that flew through the air.

  Grant thought of one more thing; an important thing. “Oh, and don’t let Grandma know either,” Grant said. “In fact, don’t let anyone know. You never tell people you’re carrying concealed. You need that element of surprise to take down a bad guy.”

  “No warning shots,” Manda said, very plainly. “That’s what you told me a while ago.”

  Grant was proud. He didn’t want his nice, bubbly sixteen year-old daughter to kill anyone, but he wanted her to be the one to come home from the fight, not the other guy. Or guys. That’s why she had two ten-round magazines. Bad guys usually travel in packs.

  “That’s right,” Grant said. “Warning shots are only on TV. Only amateurs give warning shots. There’s not exactly any prosecutions going on now so there’s no reason to show people—like the person attacking you or a prosecutor—how reasonable and nice you are. Show the guy attacking you how deadly you are. How much of a mistake it was to pick on you. And if anyone tries to hurt your brother, kill them for me. Kill them dead.” Manda could tell her dad was serious. “Kill them dead,” Grant repeated.

  Manda nodded. “Two to the chest and one to the head,” she said, repeating what Grant had told her on the range. She was a combination of sweet girl and a well-trained potential killer. Just what she needed to be in times like this.

  “Daddy, what’s it like to shoot people?” she asked quietly. Grant could tell she was scared about having to shoot someone.

  Horrible. That was the answer. But Grant couldn’t say that because it might scare her into not acting when her life depended on it.
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  “What’s it like to shoot someone?” Grant said. “A relief. A relief that they didn’t kill me or Ron back home. Those men,” or boys, Grant couldn’t really see them that night, “wanted to kill me and Ron and who knows how many others. You know, I have two main thoughts about what I had to do that night. First, those men shouldn’t have been there, coming at me and Ron with guns. They should have been at home not trying to hurt people. Second, I saved lives that night. That’s a good thing, even if you have to do nasty things to get it done.”

  Grant paused. He had another thought. “You know something else about that night? I didn’t even hear my gun going off. Before that night, I had thought that it would be loud without hearing protection, but I don’t even remember hearing a thing. I was so focused on stopping those guys.” Grant thought it would be good for Manda to not worry about hearing loss at a time when someone was trying to kill her.

  She nodded, relieved.

  Grant needed to get some sleep. “Honey, can you make sure things are quiet in the cabin while I sleep?” He pointed to the master bedroom, the one bedroom with a door that closed.

  “Sure,” Manda said. “Can we talk some more about stuff?”

  “Of course,” Grant said, happy that his teenager wanted to talk to him. “Anytime. In fact, I want to try to take tomorrow off. What about then?”

  “Sure. Nighty night, Daddy,” Manda said, just like she did when she was little.

  That reminded Grant of the old days. He remembered taking Manda’s favorite stuffed animal—a pink bear—to her at kindergarten when she’d forgotten it. He remembered her seventh birthday at Chuck E. Cheese. What a dump that place was. All the kids who ate the pizza there ended up throwing up. He remembered going for ice cream in the summer and that Manda always ordered mint chocolate chip, just like her mom.

  Grant looked at the bed. It seemed so inviting. As he took off his pistol belt, he started thinking about how his old life seemed a million miles away. An entire lifetime ago; someone else’s life. Remembering things from his old life seemed like he was watching a movie. It wasn’t his life, but he could see the events. He couldn’t believe that the guy who he remembered dropping off the bear, taking kids to a birthday party, and getting ice cream was the same guy who had been up all night with an AR-15, had basically stolen a semi load of food, was wanted by the government, and… had killed three people. That guy. Was he really the same guy as the one who dropped off the pink teddy bear at Chuck E. Cheese?

  Chapter 124

  Paras

  (May 13)

  Jeanie woke up feeling lucky. She felt lucky to be in a protected place like Camp Murray with the walls, barbed wire, and troops. The power was always on and the internet always worked. They had medics and a full hospital there. She felt especially lucky to be able to eat all the fabulous food she wanted in the cafeteria, and she had a great meal every time, complete with linen napkins and real silverware. Her boyfriend, Jim, was pretty safe, too, in his National Guard unit. They had security and plenty to eat. Given what she knew from the briefings they were getting, they were very fortunate to be so well taken care of.

  Jeanie had been struggling with guilt for the past few days. She was bothered by the guilt of knowing that she had scrumptious meals and was totally safe while the rest of the people were…she couldn’t really finish that sentence in her mind. The regular people were suffering in varying degrees. Some were doing OK, especially in Seattle, at least the nice neighborhoods that didn’t have looting. Others were struggling with periodic empty shelves in the stores and worrying about feeding their kids. Others, especially out in the sticks, were on their own. God only knew how they were doing. The economy was destroyed. No one was working, at least in the private sector, but with the government nationalizing everything there really wasn’t a “private sector” anymore. Crime was out of control.

  The second reason why Jeanie had been feeling guilty was that some of her friends were now wanted by the government. Especially Grant Matson. He was on the POI list, as were all the Washington Association of Business guys she knew. She’d been to their houses, drank beer with them, knew their kids. Now those guys were wanted. She used to think like they did, believing in limited government, and now she was a government employee actively working to keep the government in operation. She had become one of “them”: a government insider who had it way better than regular people.

  Last night she had thought about the guilt, slept on it, and woke up realizing she was lucky. She was taken care of and she wasn’t about to be arrested. Survival is all about taking care of yourself, she thought. She also thought that she was doing a damned good job of it. It wasn’t her fault that she was in such good shape compared to the rest of the people. Lucky. She was lucky, she kept telling herself.

  She checked the headlines on her laptop before the 7:00 a.m. briefing. Two of the stories she worked on were on the news. The first had her quoted as a “high level state official” and was about how the rumors of the federal government sending even more help to Washington State were true. Well, that’s what Jeanie had been told, so she told the reporter it was true. The second story featured video of her explaining how the strict federal anti-fraud measures in place for the FCards worked and how people were cooperating to make sure their neighbors got enough. She doubted that was true, but, hey, this was her job.

  She loved being on camera. She was beautiful, energetic, and enthusiastic. And, since she worked for the “Republican” State Auditor Rick Menlow, the Governor’s Office loved to put her on camera. It reinforced their message that the Crisis was “no time for politics” and “we’re all in this together.”

  The Democrats running Washington State were already getting ready to let Menlow win the next gubernatorial election. (If they could even administer an election given the Crisis; whether to have the election was still being debated.) The Democrats knew that Menlow would govern exactly as they had and they could still blame everything that went wrong on the Republicans. Perfect. Jeanie knew she, and especially Menlow, were being used, but given the alternative of trying to live outside Camp Murray with the shortages, crime, and fear, it was a good trade.

  The briefing started on time, as usual. Camp Murray was full of military people and after about a day, there was a military atmosphere. Things were on time. Everyone said “sir” or “ma’am” to each other. People stood at attention when the Governor walked in the room. That kind of thing.

  Menlow came to this briefing. He usually didn’t attend these morning meetings. In fact, Jeanie had no idea what her boss did all day long. She just did her job and assumed he was doing his. Although, there really wasn’t much auditing happening these days. Almost all the staff of the State Auditor’s Office were either laid off or had just stopped showing up to work. Jeanie figured that Menlow was basically being the Governor’s understudy. He would attend the meetings with the Governor, see what she did, and meet people he would be working with when he was the Governor. He probably was meeting with senior National Guard brass to learn the most important part of the job of being Governor during the Crisis: Commander in Chief of the Guard. Of course, almost all the Guard units had been federalized, and therefore were under federal command. But, the public expected the Governor to appear to be tirelessly working to coordinate the relief efforts. So the “Commander in Chief” thing was constantly pitched to the media. They ate it up and faithfully regurgitated it back to the public.

  Her boss looked tired, but otherwise OK. He was carrying himself like the next Governor, not the fifth-in-line-of-succession State Auditor. He had his own security detail. He loved it.

  “Good morning, Jeanie,” Menlow said to her when he came into the conference room. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”

  “How are you, sir?” she asked, finding it odd that she just called her boss “sir” but it seemed to fit in perfectly under the circumstances.

  “Fine, but we have lots of work to do,” he said and sat down for his briefing. H
e seemed to be distant from her. Like he was above her. Not arrogant, but above her. She chalked it up to him being wrapped up in everything; preoccupied, perhaps. Jeanie didn’t care much. She was safe at Camp Murray so her boss could be a little distant to her. Whatever.

  Jason started the briefing with a wrap-up of the overnight news. The President would be making a speech tonight about “unity.” This was because several of the southern and mountain western states had announced that they would “opt out” of the federal government. The opt-out didn’t surprise anyone because the southern states had been talking about it for a while. Overnight, the Feds said that even more power outages had hit the Northeast. They had gone down in frequency the past two weeks, but were back. The Feds were getting a handle on it, but the problem wasn’t over. The attacks were still coming from China, but now also out of Russia and Brazil, of all places.

  A few high-ranking generals had publicly announced that they fully supported the President and would start to court martial Oath Keepers who did not take a new oath. The new oath military people were being required to swear to was to the President and not to the Constitution like with the old oath. The old oath was the one spelled out in the Constitution and had been used since then.