299 Days VIII: The War

by Glen Tate

  Ron thought about how most of the people around him had slowly morphed into what they had become, how they were dependent and disarmed. He had been seeing it going on the whole time. At first, he said something and tried to persuade people, but they looked at him like he was crazy, and a little dangerous. At first they were polite. Then they weren’t. Then they refused to talk to him. He was lucky he wasn’t hauled off. The only reason that he wasn’t was that the government had too few prisons. And Ron could bribe his way out of it with the silver he had stashed away.

  He realized how close he could have been to being one of them. He could have bought into the “way it is,” that big government was necessary, and even a compassionate way to make sure the poor were fed. He could have been dependent if it weren’t for that silver. He could have listened to his neighbors and not owned a gun.

  So Ron couldn’t really hate all his neighbors. He could have been just like them; he was just a few decisions away from being one of them. That didn’t excuse what they had done; they had hurt people and ruined lives. They had to be stopped. Ron wanted them to pay for what they’d done; it was just that revenge wasn’t his strongest urge. What he really wanted was for all of this to stop. For all his neighbors to admit they had made a mistake and start a new way of life. One that didn’t depend on taking things from other people.

  Ron wasn’t just going to sit around and dream about how to make it stop. He was doing something about it, concrete and dangerous things. At least he could die knowing he tried.

  Ron thought back on everything he had done. He had tagged numerous Patriot slogans all over town. On Christmas Eve, he tagged the Lima “Carlos cabal” members in his neighborhood with big “L” on their doors. That freaked them out. They were terrified and angry. They had actually believed that they were popular in the neighborhood. Their sense of popularity and security had been shaken to the core. They suspected Ron and even came to his house on Christmas morning. But Ron’s wife, and even his adorable little kids, lied for him and said he was with them that night. They looked throughout the house but never found any spray paint. They looked on Ron’s hands and didn’t find any traces of paint. Duh. He used disposable latex gloves.

  Ron had to quit patting himself on the back about his Christmas Eve tagging and focus on what he would be doing in the next few hours and days. He was on standby for a big mission. He had to let the Patriot forces coming through know who the Limas and Patriots were in the neighborhood. Ron knew. He had a list of addresses and a handwritten map, but it was unknown if Patriot forces would come through Ron’s specific area, so he may never be activated for that mission.

  But Ron would still be the Patriot’s liaison for this neighborhood. He would handle any problems that came up before the city was finally taken. If Limas in the neighborhood went on a rampage against him or his Patriot and ULP neighbors, Ron would lead the effort to fight back, which could be house-to-house fighting. That would mean shooting his neighbors at close range. Ron had a shotgun and a few pistols. He made sure his wife, Sherri, was ready to use them, if needed.

  Ron was on his own for this phase. Free styling, as the Patriots called it. Ron had been getting instructions from Joel Edwards, but that required face-to-face discussions. Joel would be hunkered down in his own neighborhood during the attack on the city. Cell phones would be down, of course, and they weren’t secure enough to talk on, anyway. Besides, there wasn’t much that needed to be communicated. Just make your neighborhood as helpful to the Patriots as possible and take out any Limas coming after you. Other than that, just wait for the Patriots to establish order throughout the city. Then, when the Patriots get to your neighborhood, tell them who the Limas are. No detailed plan was necessary.

  “It’s finally happening,” Ron said to himself. Finally, all the corruption would be over. All the stealing. All the violence they did, or allowed to be done. All the gangs. All the FCorps thugs, their FCards to politically connected people. All the neighbors spying on neighbors just to get extra FCard credits. Finally, it would be over.

  Ron’s wife was up and came into the kitchen that morning. “Happy New Year’s,” he said, giving her a big kiss.

  Chapter 286

  Mr. Shipley

  (January 1)

  “Kill him,” Mr. Shipley told Freddy, handing him a lead pipe. “They did it to us. Remember what they did to us.”

  Freddy was shaking under the street light in a really crappy part of Olympia. Garbage was blowing around and the whole place smelled like piss and people who hadn’t taken a bath in months. It was loud out on the street. There was gunfire and explosions about a mile away. People were running around screaming. Some were screaming in pain and others were screaming with joy at hunting people down to kill them.

  “Remember what they did, Freddy,” Mr. Shipley said again. Mr. Shipley was in his sixties, and with a long beard, he looked like one of the ZZ Top guys. He was like a father figure to Freddy, who was a mildly developmentally disabled homeless man in his thirties.

  Freddy nodded. Mr. Shipley was right. He was always right. But Freddy had never killed anyone. He had never actually hurt anyone.

  “Go ahead,” Mr. Shipley said. “Go ahead, Freddy. Remember what they’ve done.”

  Horrible and sickening visions passed through Freddy’s head. They were vivid memories. He remembered what the yellow helmets had done. Freddy felt a surge of adrenaline. Of hateful adrenaline. He gripped the pipe. He looked the terrified FCorps man in the eyes. The FCorps man was trying to scream, but the duct tape on his mouth prevented that. The man communicated his horror with his eyes. Those eyes.

  That man wasn’t a human being, Freddy told himself. That man was one of them. One of them, who hurt people. Just for fun. Then, Freddy started to remember what the FCorps men had done to Freddy and his friends. Freddy was fighting this feeling. He was trying not to hate, but he couldn’t resist it anymore.

  Freddy sensed that someone had hit the FCorps man in the head with a pipe. The man’s head exploded with blood spurting everywhere. Freddy looked. The pipe was in his hand. He was the one who hit the man.

  He kept hitting the man in the head. The man’s eyes were crossed. He was trying to scream, but no sound was coming out. Freddy looked as the pipe just kept hitting the man’s head.

  Pretty soon, the man’s eyes closed and he slumped to the concrete.

  “Nice, Freddy, very nice,” Mr. Shipley said. “He had it coming. You know he did, right?”

  Freddy nodded. He didn’t feel bad about killing this man. He thought he would, but he wanted to fit in and please Mr. Shipley who had done so much for him and all the guys. Mr. Shipley would never ask him to do something wrong.

  “OK, Freddy, go back to the line and we’ll try to get into that building,” Mr. Shipley said, pointing to a storage unit warehouse. “There might be some of them in there.”

  Freddy nodded and put the now bloody lead pipe in his back pocket. He might need it again.

  “Oh,” Mr. Shipley said. “Don’t forget the helmet. Take that and give it to one of the guys. We can use it to trick them into thinking we’re one of them.”

  Freddy nodded, picked up the helmet, and started heading back to his guys.

  Holding the helmet felt weird. Freddy hated those helmets, but now he was holding one. He couldn’t believe how strange it felt to actually hold one. The helmet terrified him, but he was in control. He had the helmet, and the guy wearing it was now dead.

  “I did good, Mr. Shipley,” Freddy said.

  “Yes you did, Freddy,” Mr. Shipley said with a big smile. “Yes, you did. Very good.”

  Freddy smiled, too. That was rare. Shipley had never seen Freddy smile before. Freddy had been through a lot, more than most people would ever know. Times ten.

  Allen Shipley looked at the dead man. He walked over and kicked his head with his boot. “Bastard. That’s for Larry.”

  What has happened to me? Shipley asked himself. He grew up in a nice family. His
dad was a preacher and his mom was a nurse. He had the most loving family imaginable. He had rebelled against their apple pie and goodness but, in hindsight, they were fine people.

  It was hard being a preacher’s kid. Everyone expects you to be a goodie-goodie, but Allen Shipley was no goodie-goodie. He was a tough guy. With a twist: he protected the weak.

  Allen was bigger than most kids and instinctively knew how to fight. He ruled the playground in school. He ruled it by beating up bullies. He had protected the weak since he was a little kid, when he started protecting his younger sister and brother. He would just walk up to a situation, see if someone weaker was getting abused, and start fighting the bully or bullies doing it. He couldn’t control it. His instincts took over and he went into ass-kicking mode, even if it left him with split knuckles and bruises.

  Allen was an excellent student, but he hated school. He was very intelligent, but he thought just about everything they were teaching him in school was stupid. He was bored. All day in class he would think about the flag pole after school, which was where the fights were. He was either fighting someone that day or figuring out who to support or which bullies to get the next day.

  The geeks and losers loved Allen. There was Allen, with a black leather jacket, looking like a junior criminal, checking in with them to make sure no one was picking on them. That never happened to geeks and losers. Guys in black leather jackets weren’t nice to the weaklings.

  Allen got kicked out of school all the time. He would get so frustrated with how stupid the teachers were. He was solving their bullying problem, but he was the one who got in trouble, which was when he started to hate corruption. Those bureaucrat teachers just wanted to get rid of trouble makers, even when the “troublemaker” was doing the right thing that the teachers were too weak or lazy to deal with themselves. They should have given him a medal for all the wrongs he was righting at that school.

  Allen remembered the day he got kicked out of high school for the last time. It was a permanent suspension. His mom was in the principal’s office crying. Allen looked at the principal, a hateful little man who loved to boss people around, especially little kids who couldn’t fight back, and said, “Well, sir, no good deed goes unpunished.” Allen got up and walked out. He wouldn’t see his family again for thirty years.

  Allen stayed for the next several months at the homes of the geeks and losers he’d helped. Everyone wanted to support him. He was constantly amazed how much respect and thanks he received. He loved the losers. He felt at home with them. He realized that he, too, was a loser, just not in the traditional sense. He was a loser because he couldn’t manage to stay in school and fit in with everyone else – well, he couldn’t fit in with all the stupid people and bullies. Fitting in was overrated, anyway.

  Allen needed to leave his town of Cupertino, California. His parents were there and they constantly carped on him to cut his hair, dress different, and go back to school. He loved and respected them, but he couldn’t live in the same house with them. He needed to do his own thing, so he spent his late teens and early twenties in Los Angeles. It was the 1970s, when there were actually jobs for a young hard-working person. He did all kinds of jobs, from fast food to construction. He’d rent an apartment with a bunch of friends and have a good time.

  When he turned twenty one, he got a job as a bouncer at a bar. Then he got offers at better and better bars. Pretty soon it was clubs, very fancy ones with A-list stars. This was LA, after all.

  Allen earned tons of money, but he wasn’t happy. There were no losers around. Allen missed them. He missed fighting bullies. He couldn’t shake the strong feeling that he was supposed to fight bullies. So he got on a Greyhound bus one day and rode north. He’d just get off in some town and start over. That was the extent of his plan.

  The bus stopped in Olympia, Washington. Allen looked around. It seemed like a nice town. The dome of the state capitol was visible from the Greyhound station. That was different. Maybe this would be a good place to be.

  “Stop it!” Allen heard a man scream. Two big guys were grabbing a retarded man and taking his little cassette player with headphones. Allen ran over and beat the living hell out of them, quickly and thoroughly. In the process, the retarded man’s cassette player fell to the ground and broke. He was crying. That cassette player was everything to him. With it, he was cool like everyone else.

  Allen came over to the man. “Don’t worry. I’ll get you a new one.” The man couldn’t believe it. Allen took out a $50 bill and said, “Let’s go get you another one.”

  They walked a few blocks to an electronics store downtown. He told the man to pick out whichever cassette player he wanted.

  “My name is Monte,” the man said.

  “I’m Mr. Shipley,” Allen said. He didn’t want to use his first name. He didn’t know why. He just didn’t. Maybe because Allen was his dad’s name, too.

  “Thank you, Mr. Shipley,” Monte said. “Why are you doing this?” Monte was used to people trying to take advantage of him. His mom was always telling him to be careful of strangers, but for some reason Monte felt safe around Mr. Shipley.

  “Because people did something wrong and I can fix it,” Allen said. “That’s why. It’s a good enough reason, don’t you think, Monte?”

  “Yes, I do, Mr. Shipley,” Monte said. “Yes I do.” Monte smiled. That was why he was doing this, Allen thought to himself. That smile. Monte’s self-respect and dignity. That’s why he was doing this.

  They got a really good cassette player with headphones, a Sony Walkman. It was an upgrade from the one Monte had back at the bus station. Monte was so happy he couldn’t believe it.

  When it was time to leave, Monte wondered if this Mr. Shipley man would want to take naked pictures of him like one of the other men who had helped him before. Monte had said no to that other man. Monte knew that naked things were wrong. That man eventually left him alone.

  “Stay safe, Monte,” Allen said as he shook Monte’s hand. “And remember that God has never made an insignificant person.”

  Monte swelled up with pride. No one had ever said anything like that to him.

  “Are you a preacher?” Monte asked.

  Allen laughed. “No, not even close.”

  “You should be,” Monte said. “You help people and, just now, you made me believe in God. Thank you, Mr. Shipley.”

  Allen cried for the first time in his life. That was it. He would be a preacher. But, a preacher with long hair and a leather jacket. Not like his dad. He’d help people on his terms, not by some rule book.

  “There are some God people I know,” Monte said. “Let’s go see them.” Monte knew he shouldn’t do that. He told his mom that he’d be home by 3:30 and it was already 4:10, but he needed to show Mr. Shipley the God people.

  They walked a few blocks in downtown Olympia from the retail area north to an industrial area. The neighborhood got progressively worse as they went north. Not dangerous, just sketchy.

  “Union Gospel Mission,” said the sign. The place was a dump. There were various homeless men and some women standing around in the parking lot. Losers. Allen’s kind of people.

  Allen felt at home the second he saw the place. Monte introduced him to people and pretty soon, Big Reggie, the “deacon,” greeted Allen.

  “I want to be a preacher here,” Allen blurted out.

  Big Reggie didn’t pay any attention. People came in high or drunk all the time. They said all kinds of crazy things.

  “No, seriously,” Allen said. “I want to be a preacher here.” Allen spent the next twenty plus years of his life there at the Union Gospel Mission. He ministered. He protected people. He called his parents one day to tell them that he was a preacher. On his terms. They cried and took the first plane to come and see him. They were not judgmental at all; they were so proud of their son. He was proud to be their son.

  As time went on, things got rougher and rougher in the industrial area, which was near the port of Olympia. More gang
graffiti, more dangerous and deranged street people, not the decent ones that Allen could work with. Most street people were harmless and gentle. They got picked on by the mean ones. There were more and more mean ones.

  Soon, constant crime became a fixture of activity down by the port. On occasion, Allen would have to go out and knock some heads. Pretty soon, the word got out that Mr. Shipley was not the guy to screw with. People left him and his mission people alone.

  When the economy tanked, things got even worse. There were tons more people coming to the mission. Allen had never seen so many. They were different: lots and lots of “normal” people, not drunks and crazies. All these decent people who lost their jobs were now at the mission, trying to find a place to stay and some food to eat.

  The economy continued to spiral downward. More and more people became increasingly desperate. There were no jobs. None. Not for these people. And the cops were getting meaner and meaner. They had no tolerance for the “bums” and would do anything, including beat them, to keep them in “their areas.” That was “Bum Town,” which was the area around the mission and the port.

  Not all cops were bad, but a couple definitely were. And the good cops didn’t stop it. Allen would see that and get furious. Here were people who could stop bullying, but did nothing, just like the teachers who kicked him out of school.

  One night, two of the bad cops—the two worst—were beating one of Allen’s homeless guys. Allen charged at them and beat the crap out of them. They were shocked. All those stun guns and batons were useless against an experienced street fighter like Allen.

  “Stay the hell out of my area,” Allen said. “This is Mr. Shipley’s territory. Cops are dead here.”

  The cops stayed away from Bum Town after that. It became a police “no go” area. Right about this time, the Olympia Police Department was having massive layoffs due to the dropping tax receipts. The city would double taxes, but get less revenue.