by Glen Tate
Well, Grant concluded, he would at least keep a close eye on the Loyalists until he decided on whether to keep formal files on them. There was nothing wrong with just keeping an eye on them.
He spent the rest of the morning talking to people who came up to him. They wanted to talk about the trial, and most thanked him for it. He used these opportunities to explain to people why he was so insistent on applying the Constitution out there. Why it was important for Pierce Point to be a mini-republic where they lived like they had wanted to before the Collapse, but the government wouldn’t let them. That was a political statement. People, even the Undecideds, understood that.
Pierce Point would start over and do things the right way. That wasn’t some pie-in-the-sky utopian political theory. It was real. There were some real problems facing the people of Pierce Point and simply applying the Constitution and being decent human beings produced good results. The Constitution was just plain practical and solved problems. And people could see the good results—a fair trial, fair jail sentences, and fair hangings.
Grant was starting to slip the word “Patriot” into his discussions with people, like when they thanked him for handling the trial the way he did, he would shrug and say, “That’s the Patriot way.”
After talking to people all morning, he ate lunch. The Team had already gone to Dan’s house with Kyle to get the dog training going. Grant stayed behind and did his administrative and political things, which he was doing more and more frequently.
Grant realized he needed to talk to the Team about him transitioning from being an active member to being the judge and administrator. That didn’t mean he would never strap on his kit and go out with them, but his main job would be at the Grange. Besides, the core Team was getting diluted. Chip, a semi-member of the Team, had left to run the daytime Grange guards. Ryan, who was not an original member, had joined and Kyle was working with the Team. Tim, the EMT, was hanging out with them. After everyone realized they almost didn’t have enough guys to handle a bunch of essentially unarmed tweakers, Grant knew the Team would be growing. It had to. The old Team wouldn’t be the same. It would be bigger and better, but not the same. They’d still be the Team, just different.
Drew came up. It had been a few days since he and Grant had a chance to talk. He brought Grant up to speed on all the organizing he had done on the records showing who was contributing to the community. It was amazing. Some people were donating food to the Grange kitchen for the volunteers. They usually gave surplus food they couldn’t eat right then or it would spoil, but it was a donation, nonetheless. A few people were donating gas and equipment. Then there were all the miscellaneous things people wouldn’t realize were important until they thought about it. Like Ken’s copying machine and paper for the newspaper.
Plenty of people were donating their labor, too. Most of them were rural middle class people who had always worked. They were active country people who didn’t like to sit around. Besides, no one really had a “job” anymore. Most people had an itch to get out and do something.
They wanted to help their neighbors, and they wanted their neighbors to help them. That meant work, like helping a neighbor move a relative’s belongings to a new house within Pierce Point, cutting firewood, clearing a patch of ground for a garden, or fixing small equipment, like chainsaws.
They also needed something to take their minds off all the destruction and despair. They couldn’t count on their old crutch of TV or the internet anymore.
TV was the worst. It was full of “news” that everyone knew was fake; lots of puff pieces about how great things were. Inspiring stories of how neighbors were helping neighbors, with the help of the Freedom Corps, of course. The stories on TV made it seem like neighbors could never just help each other without the organizing wisdom of the government. Watching TV would depress a normal person, who could look outside and see how the official channels were full of lies. Most non-news channels were taken off the air. Had they been on the air, they would have been reruns of reality shows or other things showing the prosperity of the past. With gangs running gas stations, the government wasn’t keen on people watching a show from two years ago about million-dollar cars. It would be too much of a contrast between the present and the past.
The authorities started running reruns of popular sitcoms from the past few decades. Old standbys. The shows that brought people together into one common America and reminded people of better times. Grant remembered that during 9/11, viewership of old I Love Lucy episodes went through the roof.
The authorities also wanted to numb peoples’ minds. They constantly played reruns of all the trashy daytime shows where people went on and accused their boyfriends of sleeping with their sisters and that kind of thing. Celebrity shows were also all over TV. They showed celebrities doing…whatever it was that celebrities did. Some of the shows featured celebrities helping people, with the help of the government, of course. The shows would depict this movie star or that one talking to truckers about how the authorities were getting the freight moved to the cities where people needed it. But, mostly it was mindless gossip about the stars.
The dependent and unproductive—the Oblivious, as Grant called them—would just sit in their houses for hours and watch this. Then they would wonder who would be feeding them. Their way of coping was to pretend everything was like it used to be. Then again, they were so dependent on government that they wouldn’t have had the skills to cope even if they’d wanted to. The government had been taking care of them their whole lives. They didn’t know how to feed themselves or protect themselves. So they just sat around and waited for the authorities to take care of them, even though there were no longer any authorities. It made no sense, but things were so out of whack from normal that some people couldn’t process the change. They wanted “normal” back. So they pretended—contrary to everything they saw around them—that things were normal again.
This was classic “normalcy bias.” It was an epidemic in the cities. The more dependent people were, the easier it was to fall into normalcy bias because they had no way of handling the new situation. The government counted on normalcy bias. They managed normalcy bias by trying to create the illusion of normalcy and then directing people to act like they had in normal times, which was to do what the government said. Hence, the reruns and fake news on TV.
The internet was much the same. The government had acquired “emergency” powers to control it. It was hard, of course, to totally prevent Patriot websites and communications. A person might be blocked on nine out of ten attempts to find Patriot web information, but would get through on the tenth try. There weren’t really any police left, so no one cared if the authorities knew that a computer they were using was accessing a “terrorist” website. This was less true in the cities where there were more police or, more accurately, FC. They would get lists of people accessing restricted websites and go “visit” them. The FC would try to intimidate people and, on occasion, take them in. This was to cause fear among the population. The government really didn’t have the facilities to jail everyone, so they let most of them go, after taking away their FCards.
Thinking of the cities and all the government controls reminded Grant once again of how good they had it at Pierce Point. The productive people at Pierce Point were working hard to take care of themselves and their neighbors. Drew and his assistants were merely keeping track of who was helping, but they were not trying to direct it. They weren’t the government. People at Pierce Point could tell the difference. They liked the approach out there. Individuals at the Grange, like Drew, were there to help, but not control things, which was such a welcome change from what had been happening for the past few years.
People were rediscovering their own self-sufficiency. It felt good to take care of themselves and others. They had a sense of pride after spending all day canning or drying food and then having something to show for it. Many people hadn’t had that sense of pride in quite some time. They had gone to jobs in cubicle
s and come home and watched TV. Life was more…real now. More like it was supposed to be.
Grant pulled Drew aside so people couldn’t hear the conversation. “Are you getting a sense of who is on board out here and who the slackers are?” Grant asked.
“Yep,” Drew said. “I see the same names on the donation records. The same people seem to be coming up to me to ask if anyone needs to borrow their truck or if anyone needs help with a project. Most of the people are like that.”
“What about the lazy people?” Grant asked. He knew the answer.
“Well,” Drew said, “their names don’t show up in my records, so we could figure out who they are by a process of elimination.”
That was exactly what Grant had thought. In an instant, he decided to start “keeping files” on people. Not files, really, just a map. He had to. Soon, resources would be scarce and it would be unfair to start giving things away to people who weren’t contributing. That could split the community apart, and they needed the community solidly together in order to survive. Survive, Grant said again to himself. Keeping files on people is about surviving. Don’t let it turn into anything else.
“Yeah,” Grant said to Drew. “Could you get the master lot map and come up with small maps showing the helpful and unhelpful so I can have them?” Grant would add the Patriot, Loyalist, Undecided, and Oblivious labels himself after he had evidence in each case. Helpful people weren’t necessarily Patriots and unhelpful people weren’t necessarily Loyalists. The map would label both community contributions and political leanings. Grant would use the list of contributors, regardless of their politics, for the decisions on allocating resources. That would show he was being fair. This would bring many of the Undecideds, who were the majority of the population, over to the Patriot side. If a Loyalist was contributing, then great. He or she would be rewarded and the Undecideds would see that.
Creating this map would be a lot of work. Oh well. Grant needed to have a command of these important details. He couldn’t delegate this one. This was really important. He had to know, with specificity, who the good and bad guys were. This was his job now. He still would judge cases and might kick down doors on raids now and again, but his main job was political and administrative, as Pierce Point solidified from a group of people to a mini-republic. It wouldn’t just happen with luck. It would take hard work to get things formed right so Pierce Point could be a model.
Exactly. This is your job.
Grant arranged for Drew to get a set of the lot maps copied by Ken. He wouldn’t tell anyone about his political map. He didn’t want to alarm anyone about what he was doing. Grant wouldn’t even tell Rich.
He realized that he needed to get to know the people out there better. He needed to be able to personally call on the Patriots for things, and have a good sense if others were Loyalists or just Undecideds or Oblivious. He wouldn’t label someone as a Loyalist unless he had a good reason for it. He didn’t want to accuse someone of that without proof.
Grant realized he hadn’t had any time in the past to just get to know people out there. He had been so busy doing “gun things.” Now it was time to do “people things,” like talking to people, refining the lot map, judging cases, and coordinating all the self-help out there. He was the perfect person to be doing this.
Now you’re catching on.
Despite knowing this, Grant still felt like he should be grabbing his AR and kit and patrolling or something. He fought that urge, and instead talked to people at the Grange and did miscellaneous coordinating.
Pow came into the Grange and said, “Hey, man, we’re going out to Dan’s place to get briefed on the new dogs with Kyle. You comin’?”
“Nah, ‘fraid not,” Grant said. “I need to do a bunch of stuff here. I’d love to, man. You know that.” He wanted to ride in the back of a truck with his guys. He felt so comfortable with an AR and standing with these guys.
“Totally understand,” Pow said. “Kinda figured.” Pow smiled. He wasn’t offended at all. “Besides, it’s probably best not to have the judge going out on all the raids to catch bad guys.”
Grant nodded. “Hey,” Grant said, “the Team is in great hands with you in the lead. Seriously. I’m proud of you guys. You don’t know how many people talk to me and say they appreciate what you guys are doing.” It felt weird to talk about the Team by saying “you guys” instead of “us.”
“Of course,” Pow said with his big smile. “We’re good.” He straightened up his back, did a press check of his AR, and said, “Gotta run, man. Take care here.”
“Adios,” Grant said. “Stay safe, brother.”
As Pow was leaving, Grant yelled, “Oh, and this never gets old.” Pow laughed. He knew Grant wanted to come out with them, but things were changing out there at Pierce Point. The first few weeks were done. Now it was time to settle in for the long haul.
Chapter 157
Pop-Tarts and Spray Paint
(June 28)
“Who wants Pop-Tarts?” Ron asked his kids.
“Me! Me!” they said. Ron hadn’t seen them this happy in quite some time. He held the box of Pop-Tarts like it was gold. The box looked so fresh, so new. Like something he hadn’t seen in weeks, because he hadn’t.
Ron had a huge grin on his face as he opened the box and handed a foil Pop-Tart package to each of his kids.
“Where did you get these, Daddy?” Ron’s oldest daughter asked.
“The store,” Ron said. “I heard they would have them today so I walked over there and got a box. That was the limit. One box. But, hey, I’m glad they had them,” he said with a big smile.
“Thank you, Daddy,” she said sweetly. Her bleak world was temporarily suspended. Things weren’t so bad. The store had Pop-Tarts.
Ron’s wife, Sherri, came in and saw the Pop-Tarts. Her eyes lit up. “This means that things must be getting better,” she said. She was a realist and had been doing really well throughout this whole ordeal. She could look at the situation objectively and decide how to proceed. She was not trapped in the good ole’ days of “normal.”
That being said, Sherri still craved for “normal” to come back. She continued looking for any little sign that things were getting better—like Pop-Tarts. This must mean the food factories were getting supplies and were producing, and were also able to get the products out to the stores. This was a good sign.
Sherri really didn’t care if Ron committed a felony to get the Pop-Tarts. Who cares if he got them at the store or from some gang? Pop-Tarts from a gang? Did she really just think that? Boy, life had changed in America.
“Yeah, it was cool,” Ron said, always trying to highlight the good news for his wife. “They had them at the grocery store. Ken Kallerman told me about it.” Ken lived in Ron’s neighborhood, the Cedars. Ken was a high-ranking fish biologist for the state fish and wildlife department before the Collapse. Now he was working on keeping drinking water systems functioning. This gave Ken inside information. And he was Mormon, like Ron, so they shared whatever they could.
“Did you use the FCard?” Sherri asked Ron.
“Yep. But they weren’t cheap,” Ron said a little concerned that Sherri would get mad. “Umm…$45.”
“You paid $45 for a box of Pop-Tarts!” Sherri whispered, out of the hearing of the kids. “Are you insane?”
Ron became defensive that his big score of Pop-Tarts was now a bad thing. He decided to reason with her.
“Honey,” he said, “How much is a gallon of gas?”
“They have some?” she answered. “I heard no one had any.”
“Precisely,” he said. “It’s not about what something costs in terms of dollars; it’s about whether there is any of it available.”
She nodded. That made sense.
“Besides, what good is $45 on our FCard account if there’s nothing to buy with it?” That made even more sense.
“They’re just FCard credits, not real dollars,” he continued. “I know, I know. It’s hard to quit thinki
ng of the cost of items in terms of pre-Collapse dollars. But things are totally different now.”
She knew he was right. “Yeah, I guess,” she said slowly. “But…”
“But we all do it,” he said. “I do it every day. It’s getting easier to quit pricing things in pre-Collapse dollars, but it’s still the starting point we all use.”
She appreciated that he was being reasonable. It was hard to conceive of a box of Pop-Tarts costing $45, no matter what was going on. She decided to salvage the joy of him going out and getting Pop-Tarts for his family.
“What flavor?” she asked.
“Strawberry,” he said.
“That works,” she said.
“Twelve Pop-Tarts in a box,” he said. “Three kids. I think we can snag a Pop-Tart a piece for us. Wanna have a Pop-Tart with me, beautiful?”
How could she resist that? “Of course,” she said with a wink. That meant something good was coming later.
Ron opened the last Pop-Tart package and gave her one.
Sherri was almost afraid to eat it. It was so perfect. She just looked at it for a while, and then she put it in her mouth. The Pop-Tart tasted so sweet; amazingly sweet. Then Sherri realized they hadn’t really had sugar for about two weeks. She could almost immediately feel the sugar rush hit her bloodstream.
In that moment, things seemed so normal again while they were eating their Pop-Tarts. Things can’t be that bad.
Ron wanted to drink some milk. He never really drank milk, but Pop-Tarts and milk went hand in hand. Unfortunately, they didn’t have any milk. Refrigerated things, like dairy and meat, were very hard to come by because they had to remain refrigerated during transport and, with the potential for weeks of delays to get a semi load of products across the country, hauling these products was an extremely low priority for the government. And the power was still going off intermittently. It was too hard to warehouse things that needed constant refrigeration. The government had switched to supplying only easily storable foods, like Pop-Tarts.
