by Glen Tate
Pierce Point’s self-help community services were functioning; it was amazing how a small and truly necessary level of “government” was doable even when everything had pretty much ceased to operate. That was because these things were necessary so people made them happen. All the extra stuff government used to do wasn’t necessary, and therefore didn’t get done when conditions didn’t allow. Plus, unlike the FUSA, Pierce Point couldn’t print money, so the community only did the things it could do with available resources.
As expected, there were problems and conflicts, but nothing they couldn’t handle. The diminishing number of people who still wanted handouts was quieting down for the most part. They mainly sat around their houses and complained to each other about how unfair it was that no one was feeding them. Once in a while, they stole something and were thrown in jail after a quick trial. On one occasion, a thief was shot by a homeowner. The community threw a party for the homeowner.
Conversations about opening up the semi and distributing the food had subsided. The “ants” won the argument over the “grasshoppers.”
Grant focused on training. They had perfected marksmanship and small unit movements a while ago. The trainees moved between cover flawlessly and used hand signals to communicate with their squad, which was pretty impressive, actually. They were finishing up on large unit movements and radio communications now. They were getting familiarized with explosives. First aid classes were constantly going on.
At this point, the Team was fully integrated into the 17th. They were functioning as the MP SWAT team Ted had suggested at the very beginning. The Team, while proud of their skills, were very humble and encouraged the infantrymen and others to teach them things. The Team, while they knew how to work with each other extremely well, needed to learn small and large unit movements. They also needed to learn the unit’s communication system, both the hand signals for small-unit movements, and the radios for larger-unit movements. They were socially and tactically integrated into the unit, but were still their own group, which was fine. They had a specialized job to do.
Everyone could feel the changes in tempo and intensity out at Marion Farm. Things were getting serious. All that training on the simple things was building into complicated, military strategies. The people who, just a few weeks ago felt that they were at summer camp were now realizing they were a fairly skilled soldier in a unit with a serious job to do.
They felt like soldiers. They looked like soldiers. They talked like soldiers. They smelled like soldiers.
Ted was feeling that familiar feeling again; the feeling of knowing that he was going off to combat soon – the “faint whiff of smoke.” He’d done it several times in his career with Special Forces. When he was in the Army and deployed overseas, he would train a local unit for months and then go out on their first combat mission. It was always scary—not just the combat, but scary seeing if the men and women he trained would perform under combat conditions.
Ted felt very good about the 17th Irregulars. First of all, they were fighting for their homes and families. Many had experienced, or at least witnessed, Lima atrocities, so they were committed to this fight. To fixing things.
Second, a large portion of the unit was military or ex-military, with a few ex-law enforcement sprinkled in, too. While most of them had not been in combat before, at least they thought of themselves as military or law enforcement people which meant they were used to following orders. By watching how the military and law enforcement people acted, the civilians had plenty of examples of what to do and how to do it.
Ted tried to create a “military” atmosphere at Marion Farm. Not ridiculous ticky-tacky military things—like shining their boots or arranging their pillows in a particular way—but practical, military things. Creating a military atmosphere had one goal: create warriors. That was what he wanted out of his soldiers.
To aid with this, Ted started playing a song for the unit’s morning runs. He would blare it out of speakers around the running track they built among the outbuildings and farmhouse. The song, called the “Warrior Song” by Sean Householder went:
I’ve got the reach and the teeth of a killin’ machine, with a need to bleed you when the light goes green.
Best believe, I’m in a zone to be, from my Yin to my Yang to my Yang Tze.
Put a grin on my chin when you come to me, ‘cuz I’ll win.
I’m a one-of-a-kind and I’ll bring death to the place you’re about to be: another river of blood runnin’ under my feet.
Forged in a fire lit long ago, stand next to me, you’ll never stand alone.
I’m last to leave, but the first to go, Lord, make me dead before you make me old.
I feed on the fear of the devil inside of the enemy faces in my sights: aim with the hand, shoot with the mind, kill with a heart like arctic ice.
I am a soldier and I’m marching on, I am a warrior and this is my song.
I bask in the glow of the rising war.
Lay waste to the ground of an enemy shore, wade through the blood spilled on the floor, and if another one stands I’ll kill some more.
Bullet in the breech and a fire in me, like a cigarette thrown to gasoline.
If death don’t bring you fear, I swear, you’ll fear these marchin’ feet.
Come to the nightmare, come to me.
Deep down in the dark where the devil be, in the maw with the jaws and the razor teeth, where the brimstone burns and the angel weeps.
Call to the gods if I cross your path and my silhouette hangs like a body bag; hope is a moment now long past, the shadow of death is the one I cast.
I am a soldier and I’m marching on, I am a warrior and this is my song.
My eyes are steel and my gaze is long, I am a warrior and this is my song.
Now I live lean and I mean to inflict the grief, and the least of me's still out of your reach.
The killing machine’s gonna do the deed, until the river runs dry and my last breath leaves.
Chin in the air with a head held high, I’ll stand in the path of the enemy line.
Feel no fear, know my pride: for God and country I’ll end your life.
I am a soldier and I’m marching on, I am a warrior and this is my song.
My eyes are steel and my gaze is long, I am a warrior and this is my song.
The troops loved it. The military guys loved it the first time they heard it. The civilians were warming up to it. It was not the kind of song civilians were used to.
The Warrior Song played over and over again each morning. Pretty soon, the unit memorized it and sang along. They bonded by singing it together.
One morning, Dan Morgan was at Marion Farm visiting with his former gate guards who were now in the unit. He heard the song and saw the troops running to it. When the run was over, he pulled Ted aside.
“I understand why you’re playing that song, Ted,” Dan said. “But I hate to hear it. ‘A killin’ machine’? You’re turning decent people into a ‘killin’ machine’? Is that what we want?”
“Yes,” Ted said. He was a little pissed. What was wrong with Dan? Of course they wanted the troops to think of themselves as killing machines. It was better to have them get through the mental process about this now rather than on the battlefield when they might decide that killing isn’t for them and then run away—getting themselves and their buddies killed.
“Hey, listen, I’m no pacifist,” Dan said. “But I’ve been in the shit. I know what combat is. I spent three days without sleep defending the Bagram Air Base. I lost a lot of friends. People got maimed. A friend went blind. You ever heard your buddy scream, ‘I can’t see!’? Have you?”
“I’ve been in the shit, too, Dan,” Ted said. He wasn’t going to brag about all his combat experience, but it was extensive. Ted had snuck up on a man and slit his throat from behind. That still gave Ted nightmares.
“Here’s the thing,” Dan said, “I don’t want these guys to come out of this war hating fellow Americans and loving to ki
ll. Like Jennings, there,” Dan pointed to one of the Pierce Point gate guards standing several yards away who had come into the unit. “Great kid. Wants to go to seminary and become a pastor. A nice kid like that is singing that he’s a ‘killin’ machine’? We have to live together when this war is over. I don’t want them to like what they’re about to do.”
“Fair enough,” Ted said. He was annoyed at Dan, but needed to treat him with respect. “Don’t worry, though,” Ted replied. “I guarantee they won’t like what they’re about to do.”
Ted thought some more and then said, “This song is just to get them to the mental place where they can do their jobs. Trust me: they’ll look back on the lyrics to this song and say, ‘Real combat sure wasn’t fun.’ But it’s our job to get them confident on the battlefield.”
Dan thought about it. “Yeah, I know, Ted.” He looked off in the distance. “I hate war.”
“Me, too,” Ted said. “The more you know about it, the more you hate it. And we both know about it.”
Ted looked Dan in the eye and said, “But you know what I hate more? What those Lima bastards are doing to my country. It’s the only thing worse than war.”
Dan nodded. He realized that Ted was right. At least Ted understood that war was the second worst thing.
Chapter 249
“Standin’ on My Head”
December 17
“It’s no big deal, honey,” Matt Collins reassured his wife and daughters, as they sat in the Olympia High School cafeteria, which was now being used for “trials” by the Loyalists. “It’s just TDF time,” referring to the thirty-day sentence he just received in a Temporary Detention Facility, which were the makeshift jails the Loyalists used to house those convicted of petty political crimes. The Loyalists didn’t have enough jails or guards to put political prisoners into real jails, as much as they would have liked to. And they knew they couldn’t just shoot them because there would be a backlash. The Loyalists were just trying to control the population; they didn’t want to cause an uprising.
“I can do TDF time standing on my head,” he said with a shrug. “TDFs are a Club Fed. Minimum security. Three meals a day. No biggie.” He waved his hand in a gesture that conveyed, “It’s nothing.”
His wife was silent and then started softly crying. She knew he’d probably be OK, but there were rumors that TDF prisoners were getting communicable diseases and weren’t fed very well, but all of them seemed to return after their short sentences. A little thinner, maybe with a cough that wouldn’t go away for a few weeks, but they were alive.
“The worst part about this,” Matt said, “Is that we lose the FCard. Sorry about that, ladies.” He felt terrible about the loss of the FCard, but it was a calculated risk when he started working part-time as a Patriot helper. He smuggled political contraband to people, like when he got Ron Spencer that yellow spray paint for his “I Miss America” graffiti. He did similar little jobs for the Patriots, like the “FEMA Lima” thing. He wasn’t a soldier and hadn’t killed anyone. Just little stuff.
“Let’s go,” the guard said as she came over to the family huddled in the corner of the cafeteria.
“See you in a few days,” Matt said as he was led away. He turned to his family and, with a big smile he wanted the guard to see, said, “Standin’ on my head, ladies. Standin’ on my head.” His wife and daughters smiled back and waved. Before the trial, his wife and daughters had talked about how they would smile and be strong for him. It would make it much easier for him to do his time and come back home.
Matt felt surprisingly good about his “conviction” and impending time in jail. He had always said before the Collapse, “I’ll end up in jail when this thing falls apart.” When he said that, back in peacetime, his friends thought he was kidding. But he was serious. He figured that the pathetic government would try to act tough by putting people in “jail” for lots of things, but they couldn’t really incarcerate all the people who broke one of the thousands of new laws and regulations in “real” jails – people who couldn’t pay the new skyrocketing taxes, gun owners they caught in traffic stops, and political opponents. The bankrupt government couldn’t even afford to lock up real criminals.
The whole process of his arrest and “trial” had reinforced his thoughts on how broken the government was. He had performed dozens of missions for the Patriots before he got caught. He marveled at how lax the Limas’ security was. On two occasions he made it through checkpoints with obviously forged documents because the “guards” were half-asleep furloughed state workers who were just doing their new FCorps job to get their FCards filled; they had no desire to actually catch any of their fellow citizens. The Patriot agent giving Matt assignments, who went by the name “Mr. Smith,” once said, “You cannot overstate what an advantage our opponents’ lack of caring is giving us.” Matt saw that every day when he was out running missions in Olympia.
Matt got caught the old fashioned way: sold out by someone who had a petty dispute with him. His neighbor, Terry, had been a decent guy before the Collapse. He was a real estate appraiser who worked churning out appraisals for all the home mortgage programs the government was trying. They seemed to believe that constantly refinancing homes was “economic activity” that would sustain massive consumption and deficit spending. Every refinance needed an appraisal so Terry had plenty of work.
All economic activity essentially stopped when D2, which is what the Second Great Depression was called, kicked off. Not even zero-percent home loans could be sustained when no one had jobs paying anything close to a living wage. Rampant inflation also made zero-percent loans impossible – even for the mighty Federal Reserve and its magic money-printing presses – because a loan with no interest paid back in currency that was nose-diving in value could not be sustained. Not even for this government, which was the king of unsustainable economic schemes.
Terry, now unemployed, was bitter. He resented Matt, who was making a decent living in his various black-market endeavors. Matt wasn’t a gangster, but he bought and sold FCards and silver, and he arranged to transport people who were trying to get around the checkpoints and get out of town. Terry had played by the rules and now Matt was prospering by breaking them. That made Terry mad.
Terry decided to befriend Matt so he could keep an eye on him and eventually report him – and get a nice bump in his FCard for his efforts. Terry started off slow with Matt and gained his confidence.
“So what did you do last night?” Terry once asked when Matt had been out on a mission.
“Nothin’,” Matt said, “just stayed at home.” Terry nodded and smiled to himself. He had a cell-phone photo of Matt leaving his house after the dusk-to-dawn official curfew. Now he had Matt lying about it, which meant Matt was up to no good. Now Terry had enough to go to the neighborhood FCorps captain.
It took the authorities weeks after Terry’s report on Matt to start to do anything. Only when Terry kept coming to them with additional reports of suspicious activity did they finally do anything.
Matt was woken up in the middle of the night by a loud knocking on his front door. He grabbed his shotgun and ran to the door. There had been numerous home invasions lately and he was prepared for the worst.
He stood in front of the door and racked a twelve-gauge round, the universally understood sound of “don’t come through that door.” The knocking stopped.
“FCorps!” a man yelled. “Open the door immediately.”
Matt thought this was a trick used by home invaders, so he looked through the peep hole. Sure enough, there were three people in those stupid yellow hard hats. They looked like state workers – not hardened criminals. Matt figured it was safe to open the door. He’d bluffed his way past these morons in the past, so tonight should be no different.
“Coming,” he said as he ran into the bathroom to hide his shotgun, which was illegal to possess. He wondered if the sound of the racked round alerted the FCorps people that he had a shotgun. Probably not. They were pretty clu
eless and had probably never, in their world of cubicles and conformity, even seen or heard anything illegal like a shotgun.
“Hurry up!” an FCorps woman yelled as Matt was coming back to the front door. Matt opened the door and the woman barged her way in, followed by two FCorps men.
“Are you Matt Collins?” she asked sharply. By now his family was up and stirring.
No use denying anything, he thought. At least not verifiable things like his name. “Yes,” he said. “What can I do for you this evening?”
“We’re here to inspect your home,” she said.
“Why?” he asked. No one answered him.
The FCorps people turned on the lights and started tossing things around his house. They were vandals in yellow helmets. Matt heard his wife and daughters crying; that was the worst part of this whole ordeal.
Matt was very careful to hide all the evidence of his activities, but he had slacked lately. He had several items not hidden well.
They went into the garage, which is where the incriminating stuff was.
They went right past the cans of yellow spray paint. One of them looked at the coffee can – containing dozens of hacked FCards, which were the fake FCards the Patriots created with artificial balances. They used these hacked FCards to feed their operatives, troops, and supporters.
The FCorps man tried to open the coffee can but, for some reason, couldn’t. So he moved on. Matt felt his face turning red so he tried to leave the room so they wouldn’t see him.
“Stop,” the woman said loudly. “What’s this?” she said as she pointed to a pair of bolt cutters.
“Oh,” Matt said, “Those are my pruning shears. You know, for landscaping.” Who would believe that? But that’s the best he could do.
“Where is the registration?” she asked. One of the thousands of new regulations was the registration of every conceivable tool of sabotage, including, apparently, bolt cutters.
“It would take me a while to find it,” Matt said. Registrations were still on paper because the government couldn’t get all the various databases to work together. For example, the City of Olympia kept its bolt-cutter registrations in one database that was not compatible with another city’s, which was not compatible with the state, let alone the federal databases. So everything remained on paper.
