by Glen Tate
In the cities teeming with the Loyalists, gangs ran everything. These cities had populations—of all races—who were used to things being handed to them. They still were: a little cornbread mix was handed out by a corrupt and oppressive government, and the people in the big cities were grateful for the handout.
The Mountain West was doing very well. Denver and Phoenix were Loyalist strongholds, but other than that, the West was prospering. The federal government was no longer holding them back. They started refining their own oil. In short order, the West was selling gasoline at enormous profits. The feds tried to prevent these shipments because it interfered with their control of vital commodities, like gas. But there was no holding back the free market. Corrupt Limas would let the gas get through—for a cut. That cut wasn’t so small, but the gas was getting through.
The Midwest was a mixed bag. The cities were a mess with dependent populations and Loyalists flocking in. The government concentrated its resources on the cities, of course. Some cities were doing okay because they had the first pick of government food and gas. Crime was out of control everywhere, but some of the cities had a decent handle on the gangs. This was because, for whatever reason, some of the local governments in the Midwest did not go into business with the gangs. Some government officials were more honest than others, and there were still decent government officials out there, it was just rare.
Rural areas in the Midwest were doing pretty well. They grew most of the food, which gave them a lot of leverage. The government treated them well. There was no need to kill the goose laying the golden eggs. Large organized gangs were essentially unheard of in the rural Midwest, although there were also isolated small gangs and corrupt police forces, but the gangs in the rural areas were nothing at all like the ones in the major cities.
The thing that continually amazed everyone was that the electricity and water stayed on, for the most part. The United States was not experiencing the full-on breakdown that most survivalists expected. They expected TEOTWAWKI (the end of the world as we know it) with no electricity or water and a total breakdown of society complete with cannibalism and anarchy. Survivalist books and movies reinforced this view of a total breakdown. It made sense: expect things to be the absolute worst they could be. That was a reasonable prediction.
But the United States experienced only a partial collapse. Places like Los Angeles were totally broken down, but places like Pierce Point were only partially broken down and, on balance, doing pretty well. Nowhere in the United States was life “normal” like it had been. In some places, a “new normal” took over. It was worse than the ways things had been, but tolerable, like in Pierce Point.
Grant could identify three reasons why a total breakdown was avoided.
First, the electricity and water stayed on. It wasn’t because the government was compassionate or competent. Rather, the government kept the utilities running only because they knew that if they didn’t, people would rise up and throw them out of power. Keeping the utilities running was a matter of survival—survival for the government keeping their power.
The second reason was that many military officers refused to carry out unconstitutional orders. The Utility Treaty was the federal government’s promise to leave the utilities on. This treaty was possible because most of the military would not follow unconstitutional orders to turn them off. Some military personnel and some police did follow unconstitutional orders, but the majority didn’t. Many would simply go AWOL, but an absent soldier or cop is not a threat. A decent chunk of the military, and some cops, joined the Patriots and actively fought. It didn’t take too many of them to outnumber the small number of Lima military and cops.
Why did the military largely refuse to follow unconstitutional orders? It was the culture of the military, which insisted on an oath to the Constitution, not to the commander in chief. This was drilled into the military for over two hundred years and it paid off. While many of the younger recruits had no concept of the Constitution, their NCOs and officers did. They led. At the most critical time in the country’s history.
A third reason a total breakdown was averted was the vast number of guns and trained shooters in the United States. The Second Amendment functioned perfectly as intended: making a dictatorship impossible as a practical matter. Americans, seeing what was coming as the Collapse approached, bought guns and ammunition like crazy. There were tens of millions of guns out there.
Having lots of guns when the Collapse started was great, but having a long history of owning and using guns was critical, too. The fact that the Second Amendment gave America over two hundred years of active gun ownership meant that people knew how to use guns. Millions of guns, but only a handful of people who knew how to use them, would be useless. The Second Amendment allowed an armed culture in the United States. It meant that people could own guns for generations and teach their children and grandchildren how to use them. The guards at Pierce Point were a perfect example. In an instant, dozens of well-armed and fairly well-trained civilians were available for duty. Some were even extremely good snipers hiding in the woods two hundred yards from the gate. Those skills came from years of hunting and shooting, which would have been impossible if there hadn’t been generations of shooting in America. And these generations of shooters would have been impossible without the Second Amendment.
If any one of these three things—utilities staying on, most military not following unconstitutional orders, and the Second Amendment—had not happened, America would have suffered a total breakdown instead of just the partial one. All three were critical.
Of these three things, the Second Amendment was slightly more important. This was because common ownership of guns and the knowledge of how to use them bolstered each of the other two factors. The utilities stayed on because the government feared what would happen if they turned them off—they feared an armed population rising up. They weren’t afraid of people with golf clubs.
Similarly, the military and law enforcement knew that they couldn’t take over an armed population. The proof of this was the Northeast where civilians were almost totally unarmed; the military and police had no trouble whatsoever taking over in that part of the country.
It was now winter. With the change of seasons, people focused on different things. During the spring and summer, people had reacted to the new conditions they were suddenly facing; they were focused on surviving. Their time and energy was devoted to getting food, arranging for medical care, and defending their communities. They were dealing with the immediate situation at hand and getting through that day or that week. Most people thought it was just temporary, like a big Hurricane that managed to affect the whole nation. It was something America would bounce back from. This is America: nothing really bad ever happens here. Not for long, at least. Most people didn’t expect the Collapse to last very long, so they didn’t bothering focusing on the long term.
But, by fall and now the winter, it was obvious that the situation wasn’t a temporary thing. The country had broken down and wasn’t getting fixed anytime soon. People were thinking more about a longer-term solution.
The mood in America had changed to that of a more military one. Food, medical care, and local defenses were in decent shape, at least out in the rural areas, but even this was only a temporary solution; maybe it would just get them through the winter. What about next year? The current conditions could not be sustained and everyone knew it, especially the Limas.
They knew that the Patriots would rally in the spring – insurgencies always did – and maybe as early as the winter. The Limas needed to crush the Patriots now, before they gained more strength—and before conditions got so much worse that average people would side with the Patriots because they had nothing left to lose.
Sensing something big was coming, people were increasingly taking sides. It was easy to be an Undecided throughout the summer when there was food. Not so in the fall and winter. Many were finally forced to take sides: the Patriots for a long-term s
olution, or the Loyalists, to keep getting food in the short term.
Many gravitated toward the Patriots, but some in the North rallied around the government. Each side gathered more followers and became more strident.
It was obvious to most that the two sides could not co-exist; one had to defeat the other. It wasn’t like the old days when there was a hard-fought election and then the next day everyone shook hands and went about their lives. The current problems in America could not be fixed by elections. Everyone knew it. They’d seen it with their own eyes.
A civil war seemed inevitable, though most citizens couldn’t wrap their heads around that concept. A “civil war”? No way. A civil war had seemed preposterous in the spring and summer at the beginning of the Collapse. Those don’t happen anymore in America. Other countries might, but … certainly not America. However, as summer changed to fall, everyday survival activities evolved into something that felt more military. People were joining together for mutual aid. It was a practical measure for survival. Joining together was like growing your own food. It was just a way to avoid dying, not a political or military statement.
Surviving at the beginning of the Collapse meant defending your local area against criminals. The Pierce Point gate guards were a perfect example. As time went on, the gate guards got more sophisticated. They had observation points, Sniper Mike, and radio communications. The local defenses started to expand outward. It was now necessary to secure the area around your community to create a buffer from threats. In many communities, this meant joining with neighboring areas to have a strong, joint, integrated, numerically superior common defense force. It started looking and feeling a lot like a military force.
This was happening in most communities in the free areas. Almost all of them were little Patriot communities, which resembled Pierce Point to varying degrees. The Patriots planned for this and took maximum advantage of these homegrown, spontaneous little defense forces springing up. The Patriots were prepared to take in these defense forces and turn them into small military units. They had a command structure for them and offered training and some supplies. Pretty soon, the community guards were part of a State Guard. The community guards elected their own officers and sergeants and joined the State Guard, but they could leave whenever they wanted. While they still didn’t wear military uniforms and didn’t have standardized weapons, they were a military force, right there in people’s communities. Gradually, the neighborhood guards had turned into military units. They were irregular units, but they were military units nonetheless.
People could see what was happening. They could feel that a war was coming. A civil war, as crazy as that had sounded just a few months ago. People could feel it.
They were right.
After Grant spoke at the Sunday dinner, Ted pulled him aside. “You smell that?” Ted asked.
“Smell what?” Grant asked, sniffing to see what Ted was talking about.
“I always smell it a few days before I deploy,” Ted said. “It’s when the fires are burning and shit’s about to break look loose.”
“Smell what?” Grant asked again.
“A faint whiff of smoke,” Ted said.
Chapter 246
Mementos
(December 10)
Morale in the 17th Irregulars was sky high and it wasn’t just because the troops were glad to be better off than most of the country and that they were on the side that was growing in strength. It was personal. They had become a family.
Grant, while no battlefield commander, was a great motivator and leader. He knew the power of traditions, mementos, and camaraderie. The Thanksgiving dinner was proof of that. He knew how to create a family out of 104 former strangers.
He turned Sundays into something special at Marion Farm. They took the day off and rested. Grant, who was no longer a young guy, understood that people needed a day to rest physically, mentally, and emotionally. Sunday was that day. Guard and KP duty still needed to be done, but people took turns. Everyone else kicked back.
The troops could sleep in on Sundays. Initially, this was hard for most to do in a barn with ninety people, some of whom snored. But after a few weeks of sixteen-hour days of hard physical work, people could sleep through almost anything.
Those few extra hours of sleep on Sunday morning were golden. Grant, Ted, and Sap noticed the effects of the rest. On Mondays, there were fewer mental mistakes in training and people had a little more energy. By Saturday, they had been worn back down.
Sunday also meant an optional—truly optional—church service. Pastor Pete came out to Marion Farm for a non-denominational 9:00 a.m. service. He and Grant and the Team would then leave the Marion Farm service and go straight to the Grange service at Pierce Point.
Pastor Pete’s services at Marion Farm were fairly well attended, although some guys preferred to sleep in even more. Some came one week and slept in another. As time went on, more and more soldiers came to the service. They were concluding that there was a spiritual aspect to what they were doing. For many, there were way too many “coincidences” that put them out there and with these people. They felt that a higher power had brought them together.
Pastor Pete volunteered to be the battlefield chaplain for the unit. Grant and Ted encouraged him to get to know the troops as much as possible before their mission.
The centerpiece of Sundays, though, was the Sunday dinner. They would eat a later breakfast and then have a dinner at about 2:00 p.m., which would be large and leisurely with plenty of time to relax and talk. Franny, the spectacular Navy cook, made sure there was at least one special food at each Sunday dinner. One time, it was homemade ice cream that a big KP crew made with a hand crank. That was a huge hit.
After Sunday dinner, if it wasn’t pouring rain, they would play a football game. They didn’t hit each other too hard because they didn’t want to injure themselves and diminish combat effectiveness. But there was something about tackling their squad leader that was very satisfying.
Much of the bonding from the Sunday dinners came from the conversations over the meals. The squad leaders made sure that the troops rotated around different tables each Sunday so they got to know people outside of their squads.
“Where you from?” Would be the start of a long conversation at a Sunday dinner. It often ended with, “When the war’s over, let’s stay in touch. Write your contact info in my book.”
A soldier’s “book” was the little pocket notebook each one had been issued. On one of the FCard runs into Frederickson, Rich had come across a case of little pocket notebooks that had been looted. Someone was selling them. The case of notebooks cost one package of cornbread mix. Rich asked Grant if he had a use for them and Grant smiled. Grant had never thought of a use for little notebooks but the idea hit him when he saw the case of them.
Grant gave a notebook to each member of the unit for them to write down their memories and have their buddies put down their contact info for post-war reunions. Grant wrote a personalized note on the first page of each notebook thanking the soldier for his or her service. They were sincere messages.
A simple little $0.89 notebook—each of which ended up costing a half a teaspoon of cornbread mix—made a huge morale difference. It reinforced that the troops were making lifetime memories and friends during their few months at Marion Farm.
The 17th had their informal symbol, their “gang sign,” which was the hand sign DeShante Anderson came up with.
In contrast to the unofficial gang sign, there was one very official morale item: the 17th Irregulars’ unit patch.
With encouragement from Boston Harbor, Ted and Grant were always trying to make the irregular unit feel like a “real” military unit, which was hard without uniforms and the fact that a sizable chunk of the troops were civilians. Boston Harbor came up with an idea: a unit patch for each of the irregular units. Ted wasn’t thrilled with the idea; in Special Forces, patches and insignia were for the “big Army,” the regular units, not the elite units that
tried to blend into the shadows.
But Ted realized the 17th Irregulars were not a Special Forces unit. They were a ragtag collection of military people from various branches—most with no combat experience—and a bunch of civilians. They were exactly the “big Army” kind of people who needed a patch, so Ted changed his usual position and thought a patch was okay.
The design of the 17th’s patch was born from practicality. One day, the Team, Grant, Sap, and a few of the infantrymen were out at the makeshift shooting range at Marion Farm showing the troops how to shoot. They were using dry firing to teach the troops basic marksmanship, how to move from cover, fire, and keep moving as a unit. It was like a choreographed dance where they broke it down into little steps and moved through it slow, then faster and finally at real speed. This took days.
For the training exercise, they used targets crudely shaped like a human silhouette. The targets had a little square for the head and a big rectangle for the body.
Grant looked at the target. It was the perfect shape for a patch; a simple shape that was easy to cut out of cloth. There were no tricky corners or curves since they didn’t have machines to make fancy patches out there. He looked at his tactical vest. It was black with light brown ammo pouches. Those would be the colors for the patch: a square on top of a rectangle in light brown with a black “17th Irregs” on it. That was it. The patch was invented right then and there.
The troops liked the design. They found some light brown cloth and black paint. Someone made a stencil. Another person cut out the shapes from some cloth they found. Pretty soon, “17th Irregs.” patches were on everyone in the unit. Crude patches, but patches nonetheless. Grant and the Team, who still spent much of their time in Pierce Point working their “day jobs,” didn’t put a patch on their clothes. No one outside of Marion Farm could see the patch, obviously. Except the enemy, when the time was right. They’d see plenty of those patches. About 104 of them.
