299 Days: The Change of Seasons

by Glen Tate

  “Sir, do you know what’s out there?” One of the guards asked in a very concerned voice. “It’s rough. Things get bad in about a mile. From there to the city limits is really bad, especially in the dark like it is now. And it’s extremely bad farther out.”

  Todd had heard rumors of this but hadn’t wanted to verify them before he left. Things felt so right making a plan and getting Chloe on board that he didn’t want bad news to burst his bubble.

  “Like what?” Todd said. “Some robberies or what?”

  The guards looked at each other and tried to not roll their eyes.

  “No, sir,” one of them said. “It’s way worse.”

  “Like what?” Todd asked. He was starting to realize that he should have done his due diligence, as they say in the corporate world. Maybe he was being too hopeful with the easy drive he planned out.

  “Well, car jackings, especially of nice vehicles like yours,” one of the guards said. “Sir, this is a delicate topic, but needs to be said: your wife and even your little girls are in extreme danger in a carjacking.” He waited to see if Todd understood what he was talking about.

  Todd stood there looking at them. He had an inkling of what they were suggesting, but didn’t want to think it or say it out loud.

  “Rape,” a guard said. “And your girls, in addition to being raped, will be sold.”

  Todd felt blood pulse through his veins and he was suddenly boiling hot. He was starting to get dizzy.

  “What?” he asked. “C’mon.”

  “A beautiful woman, pretty girls, and a Ranger Rover?” The third guard said. He held his hands up to gesture, “Figure it out.”

  “Are you guys serious?” Todd asked, realizing now what a fool he was to think things would be fine.

  All three guards nodded slowly. They didn’t enjoy breaking this to people.

  “Are you armed, sir?” The second guard asked.

  “No,” Todd said. “That’s illegal, right?”

  Once again the guards tried not to roll their eyes. “There’s illegal and then there’s ‘illegal,’” the first guard said. “No one cares if you’re armed. So are you?”

  “No,” Todd said, sheepishly, realizing what an idiot he was.

  The second guard shook his head and said, “I cannot recommend you leave the neighborhood, sir. I simply cannot.”

  Todd stood there. He felt like all the air had left his lungs but he was gasping for air. He was deflated.

  Finally, the third guard said, “We can arrange for you to get where you need to go.”

  Todd jumped at the suggestion. “Yes!” he said, remembering from his business experience to not seem too anxious about any potential deal.

  “Okay,” the first guard said. “But it won’t be cheap.”

  Oh, that’s what’s going on, the businessman in Todd realized. At first he was furious, but then he thought about it. He needed what was for sale. Kind of like the huge markups his company used to charge on auto parts when people really needed them, he thought with a chuckle. Supply and demand.

  Chapter 238

  The Republic of Texas

  November 30

  “Friday afternoon traffic sucks,” Maj. Bill Owens muttered as he saw the red brake lights coming on ahead of him on the packed interstate outside San Antonio, Texas. Then he laughed at himself. He was extremely fortunate to be stuck in traffic.

  That was because traffic meant people had gas and felt safe enough to drive. He was in some of the only traffic in the United States – or whatever the country was called these days.

  Man, I am lucky, he thought. He started thinking about how he was living compared to other people, like his friend from law school, Grant Matson in Washington State. He wondered how Grant was doing. He’d seen some Intel reports showing that Seattle and its surrounding areas were firmly in Lima hands. Well, as “firm” as the Limas could control things, which was actually closer to “soft.”

  Bill was a military lawyer in the Texas State Guard and based at Joint Base San Antonio. The state of Texas had “requisitioned” the base from the FUSA, the Former United States of America. In fact, the last MPs at the base who hadn’t gone AWOL in early May had pretty much handed it over to the Patriot army, the Texas Guard, and then promptly asked to enlist in the Guard. Bill would never forget the first time he saw the Texas flag flying on the base instead of the stars and stripes. It was scary, yet gratifying at the same time. Just like so many of the changes that took place over the last few months.

  Texas, and the rest of the states bordering Mexico, had it the worst in the first phase of the Collapse. Millions of refugees streamed across the border to escape the Mexican civil war – more accurately, a gigantic drug war – right before the U.S. collapsed. Refugees, most of them totally innocent women and children, were doing whatever they could to survive. The feds came in to provide relief and completely botched it. This led some of the Mexicans to resent the feds and they took it out on them. And on civilian native Texans, many of whom were Hispanic. It was a bloody mess.

  Along with the refugee crisis came all the other crises. Highways jammed, no gasoline, food shortages, crime waves, authoritarian government, and medical facilities shut down. The rest of the country experienced this, too, but Texas got the first taste of it because of the refugees.

  Eventually, many of the refugees went back to Mexico because the gangs were too weak to keep going after the drug lords killed several hundred thousand of each other’s followers. So, to many people’s surprise, after a few weeks, Mexico actually calmed down and became somewhat more stable than Texas.

  But Bill and his wife, Sandy, were well prepared. They saw this coming years ago, as did many in their neighborhood. They actually had a little extra food to give out to refugees. They also had a very strong neighborhood protection system – everyone had guns, lots of guns, in Texas – so they only had isolated instances of crime, at least in their area.

  After a while, though, they went through their stored food. Luckily, Texas was known for its farmland, oil reserves, ocean access, and manufacturing facilities. It even controlled its own electrical grid. It took months of adjustment and hard work, but Texas was pulling together to keep people fed and even put some gas in the tanks of key employees, like Bill. He stayed on base during the week, but got to go home on the weekends, which was why he was in Friday afternoon traffic.

  Patriot delegations from other states would come to Joint Base San Antonio and Bill would answer their questions. The delegation would ask him why Texas was relatively well off now. “’Cause we’re Texans!” Bill would say. Then he would give the real answer.

  “We got rid of the feds right off the bat.” He described how, on the very first day of the Collapse, Texas state and local officials refused to assist the feds. Some, like the San Antonio police department, went further and started to repossess the state and local vehicles FEMA had commandeered during the refugee crisis.

  “The feds couldn’t do anything without state and local help,” Bill would tell the delegations. “Oh, sure, they’d go to federal courts and get court orders and waive them around, but…” Bill would say with a shrug, “we weren’t afraid of court orders. That’s what saved us.” Most other states agonized over their supposed legal obligation to follow federal laws and orders from federal bureaucrats, losing critical days and weeks while their states disintegrated into chaos and violence. By then it was too late. In those parts of the country, things had become so broken that the only entity powerful enough to step in and take control was a coalition of FUSA military, Department of Homeland Security thugs, and a few allied state and local police units: the Limas.

  Except in Texas. Being a fed or Loyalist was unpopular, at best, and dangerous, at worst. Quite simply, the majority of Texas, led by many of their elected officials, would not tolerate it anymore. They were sick of taxes, mandates, regulations, and ineptitude. And Texas had what other states lacked: a history of, and respect for, being an independent state. Sch
ool kids in Texas knew that their state was a Republic, not just a state. Decades of the “Don’t Mess With Texas” sentiment took hold and actually gave otherwise-scared citizens the courage to tell the feds, “No.” Bill would never forget the meeting he was in with a federal military officer when the general in charge of the Texas Guard told the Lima officer, “You may leave now, Colonel.” That summed up the Texas spirit: no yelling or screaming, no waving of rifles. Just, “You may leave now.” Backed up by millions of rifles.

  There was one exception: Houston. The greater Houston area was the only place controlled by the Limas. It was the only part of the state where the stars and stripes still flew. It became the refuge for all the Loyalists and most of the recent Mexican refugees who stayed in the U.S.

  However, as predicted by many, including Bill, now Houston was facing a new refugee problem: people trying to leave the gangs in Houston. The Texas Guard did its best to let decent people return to the free areas of Texas, but criminals, or those who seemed like criminals, were dealt with harshly on the border of the Republic and Houston.

  “How come there wasn’t a big civil war?” was a common question Bill would get from the delegations. The visitors knew the answer, but couldn’t really believe it; they wanted to hear some secret “inside” scoop that explained it. There was no inside scoop.

  “The Limas didn’t, and still don’t, have the troops and supplies,” Bill would answer. That was true, but unbelievable. Everyone, even Patriots, had assumed the massive U.S. military could crush anything in its path. They were right – if it were the old U.S. military. But it wasn’t. Most of the troops went AWOL and the just-in-time inventory system for crucial parts went down like it did for civilians. So, without technicians and spare parts, the mighty U.S. military wasn’t very mighty anymore.

  That didn’t mean the FUSA was powerless. It still had thousands of loyal troops with low-tech weapons, like rifles, machine guns, grenades, and rocket launchers. The Patriots had the same thing, and in similar numbers, from defecting troops. There were numerous intense firefights on the borders of free states and within states divided between free and Loyalist areas. Bill had personal knowledge of this from his time at the Oklahoma front.

  About a month after the May Day collapse, the Limas massed in Oklahoma and tried to push into Texas. Thousands of troops on both sides were engaged in vicious small arms fighting. The Limas had to retreat when they couldn’t be resupplied. The supplies were coming, but were being stolen by corrupt Limas. And the Texans had a steady stream of volunteers and supplies coming up to the front.

  Perhaps most importantly, the Limas did not have the support of the general population in Oklahoma. Most Oklahomans would not supply the Limas or give them vital intelligence. Instead, most Oklahomans gave supplies and intelligence to the Patriots behind the lines. These Oklahoma Patriots, well supplied and having excellent intelligence, conducted devastating guerilla raids on the Limas. At the same time, the well supplied and much more motivated Texans pushed up from the south to cross the Red River and liberate Oklahoma.

  Oklahoma was an example of how the Limas operated. They used the Department of Homeland Security as their main force. Most of the Lima military units were young kids in the National Guard who were poorly trained and equipped and, most of all, didn’t want to be there.

  DHS was different. It sought out people who enjoyed hurting others. Bullies, sociopaths, and psychopaths were welcomed. “Think of a power-tripping TSA agent driving a tank,” Bill would say to the delegations. DHS was above the law – the perfect place for people who wanted to abuse people and get away with it.

  Another feature of DHS that made it such a nasty thug force was the culture in the agency. DHS viewed everyone as a “terrorist” out to get them. They protected their own. They even created secure DHS compounds for their families to live in. To do this, they had to evict the residents in an area and take their homes.

  Hiding family members in compounds was unsustainable, however. The Patriots, who were generally humane and honorable, were forced to target DHS family members. The Patriots tried, whenever possible, to hold the family members hostage instead of killing them, but sometimes they couldn’t take them alive. This hardened the resolve of the DHS troops.

  Adding to the “us versus them” mentality of the agency, DHS troops knew that they could not leave their units. They would be shot by the internal security forces in the agency or, if they made it outside of the DHS compounds and into the general population, they would be killed by the residents. DHS was hated. There was no forgiveness for them. So almost all DHS troops, despite their family members being kidnapped or killed, had to stick with their units. They made a decision to join DHS – the money, the cool gear, the glory, being above the law – and now they had to suffer the consequences. They picked sides and had to live, or die, with it.

  In Oklahoma, the Lima push started by massing DHS forces in Oklahoma City and Tulsa and fanning out from there. DHS, aided by the remaining Lima elements of local police forces who had been receiving free DHS equipment, training, and indoctrination, started rounding up Patriots. They intimidated National Guard units and local elected officials. DHS also stole everything they could find. Citing “emergency powers,” they took all the food and gasoline they could.

  At this point in the Collapse, DHS was the strongest force in most areas. They got what they wanted – for about two weeks. Then the Patriots organized and fought back. DHS got cocky from their two weeks of running roughshod over the population. They forgot that they needed the support of the people if they were to be an effective occupying army.

  The Patriot counterattack culminated in the spectacular raid on the Tulsa DHS compound. Over a thousand DHS troops and, unfortunately, their family members, died. So did a roughly equal number of Patriots.

  With DHS’s back broken in Oklahoma, the Limas could no longer control the general population. The people turned on the few remaining federal military, DHS troops, and Loyalist police. Now the Limas in Oklahoma were fighting for their lives and couldn’t mount an assault on Texas.

  “So, while there wasn’t a ‘big’ civil war,” Bill would tell the delegations, “there were plenty of brave men and women who fought hard and died.” Bill had been at the front and was pressed into service guarding Lima prisoners. He was currently working on the details of a prisoner exchange with the federal forces.

  “Name one thing we don’t make in Texas,” Bill would ask the delegations. Due to geography and a little foresight, Texas had its own energy and food, among other things. The free market took off and products started to trickle out to people.

  But it wasn’t a truly free market, especially at first, because the Texas Patriot officials knew that the people would shoot any company or politician ripping people off. It had happened in Abilene and Corpus Christi. So the Patriot government got out of the way and let private enterprise take off, but reminded businesses that they could not guarantee their protection if people were being cheated. That was very effective.

  Texas was by no means a paradise; it was just much better off than most of the country. Most people in Texas were completely unprepared for the Collapse. Even the Lone Star State had plenty of Dorito-eating, EBT-card, couch-sitting dirt bags. It also had quite a few “drug store cowboys” who thought they were invincible because of the boots and big truck. They quickly learned otherwise.

  Just-in-time inventory was a problem for Texas, like it was for the rest of the country. Almost a million people, out of almost thirty million, died from disruptions in prescription medications. About the same number died from crime, lack of proper medical treatment, and isolated cases of starvation.

  Everyone in Texas realized that the life they’d lived – plenty of food, hospitals, and air-conditioning – had been an anomaly.

  At this point in his commute, Bill was pulling up to the first of many neighborhood checkpoints. The Sheriff’s Department, assisted by numerous volunteers for the posse, operated the
first one, which was at a major intersection that led into several neighborhoods.

  “Howdy,” Bill said to the posse volunteer. Bill was in uniform, which always made things go more smoothly at checkpoints. “Heading here,” he said as he handed his driver’s license to a man with an AR-15. The man could see that he lived in one of the neighborhoods down the boulevard.

  “Have a nice weekend, sir,” the man said and tipped his hat at Bill. Bill saluted him to return the courtesy. Bill drove on to the next checkpoint and did the same thing.

  The last checkpoint was at Bill’s neighborhood. They waved him through because they recognized his truck.

  As he drove up to his house, he saw his dog, Bucky, come out and bark with delight that he was home. He pulled in the garage and smelled the smell. The smell of his garage. It smelled like home.

  Sandy, his wife, opened the door and smiled. She hadn’t seen her man in five days. She missed him and had something nice in store for him.

  “Hey, baby,” she said to him as he was getting out of his truck. “Welcome home.”

  “So glad to be home, baby,” he said as he kissed her. Let the weekend begin.

  Bill had a thing: he had to get out of his uniform right when he got home and then he could talk. Sandy understood this from years of marriage and no longer wondered if he was mad when he came home and didn’t talk to her.

  Bill got into his “Friday clothes,” at least the ones he wore in the winter: a Texas A&M t-shirt, a Texas A&M sweatshirt, and Texas A&M sweatpants. He went downstairs and smelled something delicious.

  “Enchiladas, baby,” Sandy said. She had started making something special for them on Fridays. Most of the time, she ate “regular Collapse food,” like pancakes and oatmeal. Texas wasn’t on the FCard system, of course, but money was very, very tight so people ate cheaper food.