by Glen Tate
“When all that’s done,” Grant said, “let’s get people in here to reclaim their stuff. Anything not claimed will be used by the community. Kind of a free garage sale. But, we’ll have to burn lots of stuff. They cooked meth here. This house is not habitable.”
“Hey,” Bobby said, “we can use the house for training. Getting our communications down. Getting that rhythm down where we know what each other will do next.” That was a good idea. The house was too toxic to live in, but probably OK to be in for a few hours a week.
There was nothing else for them to talk about. Besides, it was starting to get dark. It was time to go home. All the killing, violence, and horror was over for today. But Grant still had the worst part of the day ahead of him. Grant thought about how Lisa would react to the news of this operation. He had just risked his life to protect everyone. He was pretty sure he knew what he could expect from her. He was afraid he would be going back to a pissed off Lisa. Great. A pissed off wife. Nothing was easy anymore.
Chapter 143
Enough of the “Could Have Lost Hims”
(May 14)
Lisa was in the clinic after the Grange meeting and during the raid. She was afraid for Grant. Why did he have to go do this? He was in his forties and was the judge, after all. He had a job out there. Being a judge and organizing things. That was important. Weren’t there some young guys who could do the gun stuff?
She had almost lost him once when he left for the cabin without her and the kids. She could lose him at any time because he was wanted by the authorities. She could have lost him when the Team rushed the parked semi-truck. She could have lost him when the big attack was supposed to come, but didn’t. And this had all been in the past few days. She’d had enough of the “could have lost” hims.
Why did he have to go and do all this? She couldn’t stop this question from running through her mind. No one else was volunteering to be shot at like her adrenaline-junkie husband. Everyone else had normal husbands who were trying to survive and take care of their families; they were not running around playing Army.
Lisa could hear the CBs in the clinic. Around dinnertime, the report came in on the radio that there was one dead male at the Richardson house. She knew it was Grant. He was dead. It had finally caught up with him. All this running around with guns.
She was so scared of living without him, out there, in the sticks with hillbillies. Without any stores open. It would be hell without him. At least the kids were old enough to have known him. They’d be heartbroken.
But it wasn’t just the kids she was thinking of; she was thinking of herself. She wanted him around for…well, until they got old together. Just like she’d always imagined. They’d have a normal – and long – life. They’d share all their ups and downs together and have grandkids and maybe even great-grandkids, and enjoy them together. She’d been thinking about this since college. It was how her life was supposed to be. And it required Grant to be part of it. Her life wouldn’t work without him.
Grant was putting all of that at risk with this gun fighting stuff. Why was he doing that? He didn’t need to be a gunfighter with his little buddies. He needed to be a father to his kids and a husband who Lisa could grow old with.
Everyone was glued to the CBs for news. After about a half hour—the longest half hour ever for Lisa—came the news that the dead and wounded were all occupants of the drug house.
What a relief, Lisa thought. She had been prepared for the worst and it didn’t happen…this time. Now her fear and dread turned to anger. Damn you, Grant. What kind of asshole runs into a house full of criminals?
It took about two hours for the constables to come back to the Grange. It was a long two hours. Lisa rehearsed over and over what she’d say to him. She’d had it with this running around with guns shit. No more. It was the guns or her. That should be an easy choice. She would never have another few hours like this, waiting to see if the dead man was her husband. No more.
Grant came into the Grange. She was going to let him have it.
He saw Lisa and knew what was coming. Oh well. Part of the price of being a sheepdog is that some of the sheep don’t understand that you’re protecting them. But this sheepdog stuff was hurting his marriage. Maybe it was time to hang this up and let the young—and single—guys do it.
When Lisa saw Grant, she was overwhelmed with relief. Despite her best intentions, she couldn’t be mad at him any longer. She was just so glad to see him. She realized she was simultaneously furious at him and so glad to see him. She ran up to him, hugged him, and started crying right in front of everyone. She whispered to him in a shaking voice, “Don’t do this again! I thought you were dead. Please don’t do this again!”
Grant didn’t say a word. He wanted to say, “OK, I’m done.” But he couldn’t. For all he knew, in an hour there would be an attack at the gate, or a boatload of criminals landing on the beach. Or another tweaker house. Or someone off their meds attacking a neighbor. Grant knew that this wasn’t time for a logical explanation to Lisa about why he needed to do all this gun stuff or why he was one of only a handful of semi-trained gunfighters at Pierce Point and how they needed each and every one.
“I’m home, honey,” Grant said. That’s all he could think to say. “Don’t worry,” he continued, thinking that sounded like a pretty good thing to say. “It wasn’t even close. I didn’t get a scratch. We overpowered them. It wasn’t even close. It wasn’t even close,” Grant kept repeating that to her to calm her down. She was sobbing in his arms in front of everyone. Grant felt very uncomfortable.
“Let’s go home,” he said. She nodded, her head brushing up and down on his chest. She was a foot shorter than him.
“Home” sounded so good. They could go home because he didn’t get killed. Lisa kept hugging him. She didn’t want to let him go.
People were leaving them alone. Everyone else was coming up to Rich and the rest of the Team and congratulating them. After a few minutes, someone said a truck was ready to take them back to their cabins.
The Team went out to Mark’s truck. He let Grant and Lisa ride in the rear cab together. They noticed that Grant was focusing on Lisa instead of them. This was their victory time, but Grant didn’t want to be part of it. He wanted to be with Lisa. It was like when one guy in a group gets a girlfriend. The group feels left out, like the guy will be ditching them soon for the girl.
When they first got in the truck, Mark wanted to hear the story of the raid firsthand from Grant. He could see Grant didn’t want to talk. It was hug time, so Mark didn’t say a word all the way home.
During the ride, Grant thought how good it felt to be with Lisa. It reminded him of back in college when they could finally be together on a Saturday night date after working hard at school all week. He was reminded of how holding her felt back then. It was a treat he earned and savored. The truck ride felt like that.
They drove onto Over Road. His cabin looked fabulous in the twilight. – not for any particular reason, just that he was home and safe. He wanted to hug the kids and sleep in his bed. He didn’t want to leave the house. He wanted to be a normal husband and father for a while. Let the twenty-year olds save the day. This old guy had done his duty.
When he walked into the cabin, Drew and Eileen came down from the loft and said hi. They had no idea about the raid.
Manda said casually, “Oh, hey, Dad. What’s up?” She didn’t know about the raid, either. Thank God. She could just be a kid for a while longer. Well, at sixteen, a young adult.
Cole came running up and said, “Hi, Dad. How was your day?”
“Great talkin’, little buddy,” Grant said to Cole. They had been working on getting him to say social things to people to start a conversation. Cole wanted to talk to people; it was just hard for him.
“So, how was your day?” Cole asked again. Grant had never heard him say that sentence before. It was one of the best things in the world, hearing a new sentence from Cole.
“Oh, it was fin
e,” Grant said and looked at Lisa. “A little stressful, but it turned out OK,” he said, as nonchalantly as possible.
“Good, Dad. I had a good day,” Cole said.
“What did you do today?” Grant asked. This was part of the asking social questions thing they did with Cole.
“I helped Manda clean up the house and I went down to the beach with her and Missy. We picked up some oysters. They’re a shellfish and live in the ocean. They have pearls in them. Some of them. We brought them back and Grandma cooked them on the barbeque. They tasted weird. I had spaghetti for lunch. Then we helped Mrs. Morrell with some plants and made jars of food in her kitchen. Then I read some books to Sissy. We helped Grandma with dinner. We made biscuits and brought them to the Colson’s where we had a dinner with everyone. I’m tired.”
Grant was stunned. That was the best talking he’d ever heard from Cole. Being out there without the bustle of their old suburban daily life was helping him relax and learn. He got to spend all day with his sister and grandparents, which was good for him, too.
“Awesome, little buddy,” was all Grant could say. Lisa was sniffling after hearing all of Cole’s good talking. It was happy crying.
“Are you OK, Mom?” Cole asked, as he came over to hug her.
Lisa broke down crying as all the pent up emotions from that evening came pouring out.
“Yes, honey,” Lisa said, “I’m fine. I’m fine. I’m with all of you,” she said in between sobs. She looked at Grant as if to say, “This is where you belong.” Grant looked at her and nodded.
This might be the end of my gun fighting, Grant thought. He felt like this—in the cabin and with his family—was where he belonged.
Chapter 144
Outside the Walls of Camp Murray…
(June 1, year one of the Collapse)
Jeanie Thompson was being watched. She could feel it. She was in prison. Well, a prison of sorts. Most people in the state would die to have it as good as she did there at Camp Murray; totally secure, completely supplied with luxuries, and surrounded by all the important people.
But, it was a prison for her. She couldn’t leave. Theoretically, she could resign and leave the protection of Camp Murray, which had become the acting state capitol behind the protection of a massive Army base. However, she was dead if she left. Who would want to leave Camp Murray and enter the chaos and deprivation outside the barbed wire and machine gun nests?
She had been on the state’s elite political communications team, and had been a key advisor to the State Auditor, who was apparently going to be the next governor. She had been getting briefings on the most sensitive topics and been giving interviews to the media. Jeanie was an insider.
All of this was even more amazing given that Jeanie was a Republican in this thoroughly liberal state government. But, she had told herself, she was exceptionally good at her job and the government was fair and didn’t have any political litmus test.
She was wrong. She was indeed good at her job, but the part about litmus test wasn’t true. She was friends with some people who the government didn’t like; some POIs, like Grant Matson and her other friends from the Washington Association of Business. She made the mistake of being Facebook friends with them and that’s how the police determined that she was a threat to the security of the state. She had been had been quietly reassigned jobs when they found out who her friends were.
Now she was relegated to giving tours of Camp Murray to groups of VIPs. “VIPs” was a stretch. They were mostly city council members, Freedom Corps mid-level managers, and corporate people who were working for the government. She would “brief” them on the propaganda of the day. “Everything is going great. We’re getting food out to every corner of the state. The Recovery has started. The Crisis is just temporary. Normal life will return soon.” That was the “briefing.” It was the same slop she’d been dishing up to the media, except now her audience was a handful of political hacks instead of a TV audience.
Jeanie suspected her cell phone and computer were being monitored. There always seemed to be someone around her. Her new roommate at Camp Murray’s women’s quarters seemed very interested in everything about her.
“Terrorists.” That’s what they called Grant Matson and people like him. They also called them “Teabaggers,” “militia,” and “rednecks.” She had started using those terms, too. No more. Silently, to her herself, she would start using the correct term, “Patriot” – just not out loud, as that would surely get her in trouble.
What had happened to her in the past month or so? She was a “conservative.” She was one of the few of her kind who actually could get some positive things done in state government. Her boss, the State Auditor, was a “reformer” who was going to reverse the course of the state from corruption and spending to fairness and fiscal sanity. Then, when everyone told him he could be the next governor, he started to pull back on all that “reform” talk. He quickly began talking about “governing” and running the state more efficiently. Running the mammoth government. Better. Getting more done with the same resources. And getting “more done” meant more government.
Well, her boss got his wish. It was widely known in Camp Murray, but not outside it, that the Governor had suffered a nervous breakdown and would resign soon. As the unofficial successor to the Governor, State Auditor Rick Menlow was now surrounded by guards, received top secret briefings, and held meetings where people came to beg him for food, fuel, medicine, and security. He would dispense life-saving supplies to the groveling visitors with the wave of a hand and have people kiss his hand. He had it made. What could be better for a politician?
How did Menlow go from being the brash reformer to this? Incrementally, Jeanie realized. One little compromise after another. He agreed to an expansion of government power for a “good cause,” like helping some group that would result in votes for the Republicans. When the Republicans got enough votes, they assured themselves, they could start changing things. They couldn’t change things without the votes, so they needed to expand government, just temporarily, of course, to get the votes. Then they’d swing into action and…cut all that government they just expanded? If they got votes for expanding government, how could they keep those votes if they cut it? Who had thought this could work?
The inherent inconsistency with this logic was that expanding government to get the votes meant that government was now bigger when you tried to use the power you won with those votes to then cut government. You grew the beast in order to have more power to slay the beast. Beasts didn’t work that way.
The only way to limit the size of government was not to grow it in the first place. Once it grows, it can’t be trimmed back voluntarily. It would take some big, awful event to forcibly cut it back, which is what was going on outside the walls of Camp Murray.
So, who believed that the vote-gathering method would work? Jeanie, that’s who. She was an extremely intelligent, young, energetic, and beautiful firebrand who was going to save the world. Now look at her. She was basically in a prison where her job was to lie to people all day.
She was losing sleep wondering how the country would get out of this mess. The answer scared her. Reset. Starting over. Scrapping the old system entirely and replacing it with something that would work. The new system that would work was already written up. It was called the Constitution.
The federal Constitution was great, but Washington State’s was even better. Jeanie remembered seeing a copy of the state Constitution Bill of Rights posted at Camp Murray, of all places. The first section of it said: “All political power is inherent in the people, and governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, and are established to protect and maintain individual rights.” There it was, right there. All you needed was for people to carry those words out.
That meant people would actually want to have limited government and that desire had long since passed in America. Generation after generation wanted more from government, and each generation
worked a little less. Classroom after classroom of kids were taught that the community takes care of you and that those who achieve need to give most of it back to the community. Given how indoctrinated the past few generations of students were, Jeanie was actually surprised the Collapse hadn’t happened sooner.
“Collapse,” Jeanie said to herself when no one was around her. There, she said it; to herself, at least. That term was not the one she was supposed to use; “Crisis” was. Oh well. She would start being honest…at least silently to herself. That was a start.
A collapse. That’s what was needed, she thought. It was inevitable. It was horrible and no sane person wanted it. It’s just that sane people had to acknowledge it was necessary, even if horrible.
But, Jeanie realized, if government hadn’t become so big, a mere correction would have been enough to fix things. A huge collapse would not have been necessary. However, as things got bad, the efforts to prop up the system went into overdrive. The worse things got, the more government was used to try to fix all the problems big government created. And, of course, more government actually just made things worse, which then necessitated more government to cure the effects of more government. It was a vicious cycle.
Maybe the Collapse was a good thing, Jeanie was starting to think. No. It couldn’t be. How could people starving, dying of easily treatable medical conditions, and people shooting each other be a “good thing”? There were so many innocent kids nearby who were scared of all the bad men and guns around them. There were kids who didn’t know where their parents were. There was no way this was a “good thing.”
But, it was entirely predictable. In fact, people like Jeanie had warned that it was coming. Not too loudly, though. There was no need to have people think you’re crazy. Don’t talk about “collapse” because that’s alarmist talk. You don’t want your friends to think there’s something wrong with you, so you keep those concerns to yourself. Besides, there had never been anything like a collapse in America. It hadn’t happened before, so it could never happen.
