299 Days: The Stronghold

by Glen Tate

  Rich said to the guys in the back, “Rendezvous. Keep your eyes open for more than one guy, though.” Rich didn’t want his cargo to get stolen. He basically trusted Bennington, but he couldn’t be too sure in this climate. In many ways, this rendezvous was the most dangerous part of the trip into town.

  Pow and Ryan scanned. There was no one around, unless the bad guys had snipers on the roof of the gas station, and the shot angle wouldn’t work too well if they did. Rich saw that there was apparently only one cop in the car. Good.

  He pulled up alongside the police car. The cop waved. Rich said, “Mornin’ John.” Rich tapped on the back window.

  Pow and Ryan jumped out and started sweeping the area with their ARs. They looked extremely professional and intimidating. Good.

  This startled Bennington, but he realized that they had every right to be taking security precautions. He acted like it was no big deal even though it was jarring.

  Rich said to Cindy, “Stay in here. We’ll be back in a minute.” She nodded. She had the feeling that this was actually all well planned. She didn’t know exactly what was going to happen, but she knew it was well planned. That alone was comforting.

  Rich got out of his truck and came over to the cop car door and Bennington got out.

  Rich shook his hand and smiled. “Nice to see you again, John.”

  “Nice to see you, too,” Bennington said.

  Rich walked to the back of the truck and lifted up the towels. “Well, John, just like we talked about on the radio last night,” Rich smiled, “it seems that I have two AR-15s, ten magazines, and a full case of 5.56 to ‘turn in’ to the authorities. All those items being illegal and all, I wanted to do my civic duty and get them to you for safekeeping.”

  Bennington wasn’t thinking this was as funny as Rich was. Bennington was actually ashamed of what he was doing. It wasn’t funny to Bennington.

  Bennington said curtly, “Yeah, thanks.” He opened the AR boxes and looked at the guns. He counted the magazines and tested one of them by pushing in on the follower. It seemed to work. Everything seemed to be in order.

  “OK,” Bennington said to Rich, “help me put these in my trunk.” Bennington was looking around, not for attackers, but for anyone to see him doing something so dirty. Taking a bribe. Kind of. And doing his job. Kind of.

  Rich started to help Bennington put the cargo into the trunk. Pow and Ryan were scanning the area from cover. Bennington looked over at them and said to Rich, “How many of these kind of guys you got in Pierce Point?”

  Rich would be an idiot to give an accurate answer. So, instead, he said, “Oh, several squads.” He intentionally used a military term like “squad,” implying that the fighters at Pierce Point had some military structure.

  “What?” Bennington asked, completely surprised.

  “Oh, yeah,” Rich said very convincingly, “Ryan, there,” he said pointing at Ryan, “just came back from Afghanistan. A bunch of his Marine buddies were out of work. So a couple weeks ago they came to live with him. I don’t even know how many, but there’s dozens. They talk about a ‘Squad Five’ so I guess there’s five squads and that’s, what, fifty men?” Rich was loving this. He made a mental note to do some CB chatter back when he was at Pierce Point saying things like “Squad Three Leader, this is Squad Five Leader” to make the charade a little more real. They would assign a person to be a specific “squad leader” so there would be a consistent voice associated with that title. There was a good chance he didn’t need to do that because the cops probably weren’t listening to the CBs, but it was easy enough to throw a few of those “squad” references in every once in a while. They would also use fake squad references on the ham frequencies since the FC might be listening to that.

  Rich continued, “And another guy living in Pierce Point was a military contractor in Iraq and Afghanistan with Blackwater or whatever they’re called now. He had about a dozen of his contractor buddies come live with him like this guy,” Rich said pointing to Pow, who was scanning the area with his AR from behind the cover of the pickup bed. Bennington remembered seeing a six-foot Korean guy with full kit and some other contractor-looking guys when he came to the gate. So that explained who they were, Bennington thought.

  “I guess we’re lucky to have them,” Rich said with a shrug. “All nice young guys. ‘Sir’ and ‘ma’am’ to everyone. They follow orders and, when they’re not guarding or patrolling, they are working hard on gardens and things like that. Real nice to have them,” Rich said matter of factly as he was loading the last box into Bennington’s trunk.

  Bennington asked, “So do all these guys have ARs?” It was pretty obvious that Bennington was gathering intelligence, so Rich thought he’d fully load him up with false information to take back to Commissioner Winters and the FC.

  Rich hadn’t thought of the answer to the AR question because he was making up the fifty Marines and dozen contractors story.

  “Oh, yeah,” Rich said, “they all have personal weapons. ARs, mostly, of varying kinds. Dunno where they got them. Never really asked.” Rich remembered seeing photos of contractors with AKs so he said, “Some of the contractors run AKs. I guess they learned to like them over there.”

  Rich added, “You know, John, I never knew how many vets we had out at Pierce Point until they all started volunteering. You saw some of them at the gate. Every branch is represented. And those good ole’ boys and girls out at Pierce Point have guns galore. ARs, AKs, M1As, mini-14s, you name it. We have stacks, literally stacks,” Rich motioned with his hand to show a waist-high stack “of hunting rifles and shotguns. And pistols. It seems like everyone has a pistol. Those guns came out of the woodwork. You know how gun sales have been the past couple of years. Well, people in Pierce Point were the ones buying them off the shelves and now they’re being put to good use. Yep, lots of good ol’ boys and girls out at Pierce Point. We’re much better off than city people. Most everyone is self-reliant, to one degree or another, out here.”

  This wasn’t entirely true, but Rich wanted to create the impression with the authorities that Pierce Point was on its own. Not a threat and not needing anything. Just there, but not to be messed with.

  Bennington had already determined that if Rich was telling the truth then Pierce Point would take a much larger force than the police had. Taking down Pierce Point would be impossible. But, anticipating his boss Commissioner Witners’ next question, Bennington wanted to find out if there was enough loot in Pierce Point to justify asking for some military help to go get it. So Bennington pointed to an AR in a box and asked Rich, “How many more of these do you got?”

  “This is it,” Rich said, knowing that he didn’t want to say there was a treasure chest out at Pierce Point to be taken. Besides, for all Rich knew, these were all the extra ARs Grant had out there. “These were a couple extras one of the hunter guys had. He bought them for an investment in the run up to the Crisis,” Rich was using the politically correct term with Bennington. “So this is it as far as extra ARs go out there.”

  Rich realized that he could oversell the (false) capabilities of the Pierce Point “troops.” He didn’t want to create the impression with the authorities that Pierce Point was a powerful and rogue force that would threaten them. He wanted the rumor to be that Pierce Point would be a good trading partner, but not a threat.

  So Rich added, “John, I’m really proud of how the troops out at Pierce Point are conducting themselves. They listen to me. For example, I told them that we need to trade some guns for medical supplies with you guys in town and they were all for it.” Rich winked at Bennington said, “It’s kinda cool to be in command of all these guys.”

  Rich decided to emphasize this next point so he looked Bennington right in the eye and said, “We’ll just do our own thing out there until this calms down. You won’t have any trouble from us.”

  Bennington nodded. That’s what he wanted to know. He wasn’t sure he believed Rich, but at least he could report this back to C
ommissioner Winters.

  Rich could tell Bennington was mentally preparing bullet points for his intel report to Commissioner Winters. Fifty fully equipped Marines, a dozen contractors, and lots of well-armed vets and hunters, but no treasure trove of extra ARs. Controllable troops under the leadership of someone they knew, like Rich. Pierce Point was pretty much self-sufficient, wanted to be left alone, and had plenty of force to repel a raid. That was the perfect impression to leave with Bennington.

  Now that Rich had delivered his end of the bargain, it was time for Bennington to deliver on his end. Rich said to Bennington, “So, just to be clear, I have safe passage into and around town now, right?”

  Bennington nodded. He really hated acknowledging the bribe, but it was how things were. “Yes. I’ve briefed my people that you and the people with you have safe passage when you come to town. That’s what one of the ARs was for. You’re Rich, the ex-cop, so people know you and recognize you. I’ll be with you this morning and make introductions. They will give you a safe-passage ID.”

  “I won’t always be making the runs,” Rich said. “I’m running Pierce Point. Can my ID be transferrable to others?”

  “Sure,” Bennington said. “The IDs are a piece of cloth in a particular pattern that can’t be duplicated. So the holder of the cloth has safe passage.”

  “Can I start getting my people into town and registering for FCards?” Rich asked.

  “Sure,” Bennington said. “Commissioner Winters encourages it.”

  Rich was still amazed that there was at least some food in the stores. After the first two weeks with bare shelves, he assumed there would never be any again. It was a logical assumption.

  But, somehow the government managed to get a trickle of food out to the stores. Forcibly taking over the trucking system and all the diesel fuel was what it took. And, as inept as they were, once the United States government decided to do one thing, they had enormous resources to pull it off.

  The government learned some lessons from the Mexican refugee crisis. It no longer worried about environmental approvals; it just took food and shipped it. The trickle of food to the rural areas started to pick up. It would never be like before the Collapse, but it picked up. It was a “pretty much enough” level.

  Rich knew that the FCards were just a supplement—a pretty big supplement—to the food that they were getting on their own out at Pierce Point via stored food, hunting and fishing, and gardening. So, Pierce Point wouldn’t be dependent on the FCards like the people in the cities, but the FCards would help.

  Rich was a Patriot and despised the FCard system, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t use it to feed his people. As long as they weren’t dependent on the FCards, they were fine. That’s what it was all about: dependence. If you’re not dependent, you don’t have to do the other things the government wanted in return.

  Rich realized that he couldn’t have all his residents come into town to register for FCards. They would be asked about the fifty Marines and say, “What Marines?” He needed to have only a small group of trusted people who knew the story to go into town.

  “Hey, John,” Rich said to Bennington, “I can’t be hauling hundreds of people into town to register for FCards. I don’t have the gas to bring all of them in. And they’re doing work like gardening and hunting. The logistics of getting everyone organized and into town is too much for us. Could we…”

  Bennington knew what he was going to ask and interrupted him with the answer. “Yep, we can give you applications to take back. Just bring them back. We don’t need to see the people applying,” Bennington said. There were a couple reasons for this.

  First, the government didn’t have the resources to process all these in person. They just issued “basic” cards when they didn’t know the person. That is, a normal person got the basic card which had a smaller amount on it. People who were “critical,” which meant politically connected, got increased amounts which took more processing. Commissioner Winters’ people would just take all the applications and give out generic basic FCards. They weren’t tied to a particular person. They were like a $1,000 dollar bill: each person got one. Simple to administer.

  Second, there was quickly massive corruption in the FCard program. Winters was creating false applications and selling those extra FCards, so the whole thing was riddled with imprecision, and that’s how Winters liked it. It would be no big deal to send hundreds of applications home with Rich and give him hundreds of basic FCards. Who cares if the people really existed or if they qualified. It was like voter registration in the run up to the Collapse. The more the merrier, and no one really knew who signed up. And no one had an incentive to care.

  Rich was surprised that getting FCards was this easy. What a scam. FCards would be a huge boost to their food situation, he thought. They could have a daily run into town and get things. Not too much stuff, and not enough to live on, but some.

  The FCard discussion brought up the topic of paying for things. Bennington paused. He really hated saying these things, but he had to.

  “When you want to buy things that aren’t in the grocery store you make deals with me on those. I tell you the prices. You can get me on CB channel 9 and then we’ll switch over to channel 34,” he picked that number because that’s how old he was, “and I take your order, tell you if we have it, and we agree on a price. You come here to this gas station and we do the deal like we are now.”

  “Besides guns and ammo,” Rich said, “what else works to buy things?” Rich asked.

  “Gold and silver,” Bennington said. “Some people still take cash, but the amounts are so high it’s kind of impractical. Things like tools and machinery are valuable. You can let me know what you guys have to sell and we can get you FCards or whatever for them.”

  “What about gas?” Rich asked.

  “To buy or to sell?” Bennington asked.

  “To buy,” Rich said.

  “We have the only operating gas stations around here. You can buy gas with FCards or other things. But,” Bennington said very seriously, “we control the gas, alright? You don’t buy from anyone else.”

  “OK,” Rich said. Message received.

  “So what else works for payment of things we need,” Rich asked.

  “.22 ammo, especially for small things,” Bennington said. “A box of fifty rounds is like change: fifty little pieces almost like pennies.” That made sense. Rich noticed that .22 rifles and pistols were coming out of the woodwork. Everyone seemed to have one that had been in an attic somewhere.

  “Of course, booze and cigarettes,” Bennington continued. “We sell those, but you can also use them to buy other things.”

  Bennington paused. He was embarrassed about the next part. “Drugs and young ladies. That works, too. Buy or sell.” Rich knew how hard the “young ladies” thing was on Bennington, who had always been a decent guy.

  This was no time for loose ends, so Rich thought he’d clarify one more point. So he looked at Bennington in the eye and said, “Along with safe passage comes being left alone. I mean, Pierce Point won’t be causing Commissioner Winters any trouble. We don’t give a shit about politics. Patriot, Loyalist, whatever. We don’t care. We just want to get through this.” While it was true that they wanted to get through this; the part about not caring about Patriots was basically a lie, but Rich needed Bennington to report back that Pierce Point didn’t care about politics.

  “And,” Rich said, “We don’t need anything from the government, really. So we’re not a drain on your resources. We’ll be our own little kingdom and come into town to trade. We want to be left alone. We have some assets that make any unwelcome visit a suicide mission. Understand?”

  “Understood,” Bennington said. “I understood perfectly the other day when I saw that gate and all your guys. And those dogs. And now Marines and contractors. Oh, I’ll put out the word that you don’t fuck with Pierce Point,” Bennington said with a smile. The first one he’d cracked all morning.

&nbs
p; That got Bennington thinking. Maybe Pierce Point would be a good ally in what he was considering doing.

  Chapter 134

  Like a Drug Deal

  (May 14)

  Pow and Ryan heard Bennington’s trunk door close and knew it was time to go. They did a final scan of the area and looked at Rich for a signal. Rich waved for them to get back in the truck. They did.

  Cindy was glad this part of the trip had gone off without a hitch. Rich got back in his truck and said, “Time to go get some medical supplies.”

  Rich followed Bennington’s police car. Pow and Ryan didn’t say anything in the back. They were busy scanning for threats. This was not the time for chatting. For all they knew, Bennington was stealing the ARs and driving them into an ambush to dispose of the witnesses.

  There were almost no other cars on the road; they only saw one that morning. It was weird driving this formerly busy road now that they were basically the only ones on it.

  It was dangerous to be on the roads. The police—what were left of them—and deputized civilians patrolled near the outskirts of town. Outside of town, which would include the route from Pierce Point to Frederickson, there were rumors of private roadblocks run by various local gangs. They would take whatever someone had. Except for government vehicles, which tended to be well guarded. Tammy, who still went to work every day toward town to her job at the electric company, had never reported any problems. The private roadblocks may have just been rumors or exaggerations of occasional incidents.

  Rumors were running rampant during the Collapse. It seemed like people with time on their hands, because they didn’t have normal jobs to go to, just sat around and said to each other, “Well, I heard…” People loved to outdo each other by telling an even greater tale of how bad things were. Rich had learned that things were rarely as bad as the rumors said they were.