299 Days: The 17th Irregulars

Chapter 186 Co-Opting Pierce Point

Fax machines, long forgotten as a communication device, were much more popular during the Collapse. The internet would go off and on. The phone lines still worked, most of the time. But old 1990s era phone-line faxes didn’t require the internet. People were actually using them again.

Several weeks ago, Winters was given a fax that showed a picture of someone hung out at Pierce Point. He ignored it at first; he had a gang truce to broker. But now, in the middle of the night when he couldn’t sleep, he started thinking about it. He found the fax on his desk. He got scared.

Winters was concerned with the picture of the hanging because that meant Pierce Point was running things themselves, and Winters didn’t like that. Worse yet, it was in a newspaper called the “Pierce Point Patriot.” Oh, great. Some redneck “Patriots” out there had their own little newspaper, Winters thought when he re-read the fax. This little newspaper of theirs showed a level of boldness—calling themselves a “Patriot” was daring the police (if any were around) to arrest them as a terrorists—that made Winters nervous.

Then Winters remembered that right after he got the fax a few weeks ago, Winters got a call from Olympia. They got the fax, too. They wanted to know what was going on out in Winter’s county. They sounded pissed and said they thought some POI who did some right-wing podcast might be out there. Winters didn’t need that.

Olympia had leverage over Winters and he didn’t want to screw up his rackets. Olympia sent semis of food to him. They controlled the FCards. Winters needed that food. It was his biggest profit center, more than the Mexican gas or bootleg medical supplies. He needed that food so he could get a cut of it. Oh, and the townspeople needed the food, too. Winters didn’t need them hungry and starting to notice how much food had been stockpiled in the courthouse.

Stapled on the back of the newspaper article was a new fax from a few days ago that Winters must have missed. It was Olympia telling him that they would be sending some FCorps investigators out to look into Pierce Point.

Winters knew what the FCorps asshole would say: “Take down Pierce Point. Arrest the teabaggers out there.” He had his hands full with the Mexican gangs and the Blue Ribbon Boys and didn’t need this. He didn’t need Olympia to withhold the food.

But, if Winters sent his guys out to Pierce Point to haul in those hillbillies, his cops and Blue Ribbon Boys wouldn’t be in Frederickson to protect Winters’ investments. Winters was the most powerful man in Frederickson, but he didn’t have the resources to go several miles out to Pierce Point and arrest some teabaggers. Winters was amazed that the stupid townspeople didn’t realize how stretched thin the “authorities” were. Besides, Bennington told Winters a few weeks before that Pierce Point had some amazing defenses and a gate. They even had attack dogs. The last thing Winters wanted was to fight some whackos out there when, instead, those people could be loyal customers.

He thought of the perfect solution. Rich Gentry, who used to work for Winters as a Sheriff’s deputy, was running Pierce Point. Rich had come in a few weeks earlier and signed up everyone at Pierce Point for FCards. Rich was a guy Winters could work with. He was a guy Winters could make a deal with.

Rich wouldn’t be part of this Patriot nonsense, Winters thought. Rich had a good head on his shoulders. Winters stumbled—it was almost 4:00 a.m.—into the “Incident Command Center” in the courthouse, which was where they had all the radios.

“Get me Bennington,” Winters said to the dispatcher, who was half asleep. It took about a minute for Bennington to come on. Winters had woken Bennington from a nap.

“What can I do for you, boss?” Bennington asked on the radio.

“Go out to Pierce Point and get me Rich Gentry,” Winters said. “I need to talk to him. He’s not under arrest or anything, I just need to talk to him.” Winters paused. Should he tell Bennington what was going on? It was a secure radio and, besides, if Winters had been handed this fax, then everyone else in the courthouse had seen it. There was no way to keep this thing a secret.

“Pierce Point has some ‘Patriot’ thing going on,” Winters continued. “They hung some dopers and have a newspaper called the ‘Patriot.’ Olympia wants to shut that down. Rich Gentry needs to understand that we can’t have that militia stuff in this county.”

Bennington realized that just talking to Rich wouldn’t solve the “Patriot problem” at Pierce Point. He had been out there and seen how organized and serious they were. Winters was a delusional politician holed up in a bunker who thought he could make deals and intimidate people, like this was the old days.

But, whatever. Taking Rich into town to see Winters wasn’t a big deal, Bennington thought. Bennington was curious to go back to Pierce Point. He envied their independence and wished he could be out there instead of being Winters’ errand boy.

Bennington looked at the clock. It was 4:01 a.m. He would get another couple hours of sleep and then go get Rich.