299 Days: The 17th Irregulars

Chapter 202 “Take it back! Take it back!”

“Why are you doing this?” Hammond asked the audience. Everyone was silent.

“Why?” He let that question sink in for a few seconds.

“Why not just sit back and let the government take care of you?” he asked without any sarcasm. It was a sincere question.

“Seriously,” he said. “Each of you is smarter than average. You all have very valuable skills. Quite a few of you are military and could be in command of some hollowed-out FUSA unit and livin’ large on some base where you have plenty of everything you want. People calling you ‘sir’ or ‘ma’am’ all day long and kissing your ass,” he said.

“Why are you here, starting the mission that you’re starting?” Hammond asked. “I want every one of you to think about that question. Why are you here?”

It was silent.

“What did you come up with?” Hammond asked the audience. “I bet I know.”

Hammond started to get animated. He had been like a very controlled CEO running a meeting up until this point. Now it was time to get fired up.

“You’re doing this to make things right,” Hammond said emphatically. “You’re doing this to protect the innocent. To save your families from what’s ahead, if these bastards keep screwing things up.”

Hammond looked into the audience. He seemed to make eye contact with every single person in the room. “You know you’re supposed to do this. You know it. You are supposed to do this. Consider me standing here saying this to be your official sign. You are supposed to do this.”

Grant wondered if his statement to Hammond a few minutes earlier about how they were both supposed to do this had made its way into Hammond’s speech.

“You have skills,” Hammond said. “Every single one of you,” he said holding up a file. “Each and every one of you has some skill that got our attention. We looked into each one of you. We chose you…you,” he said looking at the whole audience. It felt like Hammond was speaking to each person personally. Grant certainly felt like Hammond was speaking directly to him.

“But, us choosing you is only half of it,” Hammond said. “The other half is that you chose us. You agreed to do this. Again, I ask: why?”

Hammond looked at Ashur. “You want to restore the ‘land of the free.’ You want to avenge an injustice to your family that never should have happened.”

Hammond looked at one of the new lieutenants in the front row. “Or, like Tadman here, those bastards killed your family. Trying to get you. But they settled for your family.”

“They are animals wasting our oxygen!” Hammond yelled out of the blue. For the first time, he was showing his real emotions.

“Animals,” Hammond thundered. “Animals that need to be put down. Animals that need to no longer hurt us. Animals that need to be dealt with, so they’re just a memory. So you can tell your kids and grandkids about how, way back when, there were some animals that hurt people, but you and a group of very decent people made the animals go away. Now they’re gone and everyone can live their lives. In peace.”

“Peace,” Hammond said nodding his head. “Peace is what a soldier wants. Trust me, with what I’ve seen and done, and what many of you have seen and done, too, no one wants peace more than us.”

“You know what I want?” Hammond asked in a very conversational, not military commander, tone. “I want to retire. I want to get an RV and travel around with my wife and kids. I barely know my kids.” Saying that hurt Hammond. He had sacrificed a lot to do all those deployments.

“And my lovely wife,” Hammond said. “Who I really haven’t seen for several years. Who I wonder sometimes if she really still is my wife. I mean, is someone your wife when you’ve seen them two weeks in two years? I want my wife back. I want to get her and the kids in that RV and go sit under the stars talking about nothing in particular. I want that.” Hammond was bearing his soul.

“But guess what?” Hammond said, back in his military commander tone. “Life ain’t sunshine and lollipops. I am supposed to be here, doing this. I know I am supposed to be doing this—just like each of you know you’re supposed to be doing this. Each of you has made similar sacrifices, and,” he said looking at Tadman, “some of you have made bigger ones. Much bigger than the RV.”

Hammond let that sink in. Tadman looked eerily forward without any emotion.

“So,” Hammond said, “I asked why you’re doing this and you probably said to yourself that you’re supposed to do this. That’s a good enough reason, but…,” he paused for effect. “I have one more reason for you.”

“Because we’ll win!” Hammond yelled.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Hammond said emphatically, “we’re all brave, but this isn’t some suicide club. Remember: I want some RV time. I got somethin’ to live for.”

Hammond motioned to the whole crowd, “Most of us will be back together for a hell of a party when we beat these bastards. They’re running on fumes. You know it. You’ve seen it. They’re running out of other people’s money to steal and hand out to their buddies. The people are figuring this out. Their military units are a joke. Hollowed out paper tigers, manned by the paper-pusher boot lickers who want to boss people around and still think they’re getting some fat military retirement. The real warriors got out and joined up with us. We have the real warriors. We have you.”

“Name one thing they’re doing right that will lead to long-term success for them?” Hammond asked the crowd. “Name one. Is it treating the population fairly and getting their support? Ask Lt. Tadman about that. Ask Ashur that.”

Hammond started walking from the podium to the first row as if he were quizzing each one of them. “Are they feeding the people?” he asked the first person, who shook his head.

“Well, kind of,” Hammond said to the next person. “But not for long. Those FCards—which are easily counterfeited by us, I might add—are drawn on seized bank accounts. Those accounts are running dry, friends. The foreign countries those funds are going to are about to cut us off. Besides, they want their investments back. You know, the trillions of dollars we borrowed from them to pay for all the pre-Collapse crap we voted for ourselves. The Chinese are just softening the blow of a total collapse. They want their collateral, which is what America is to them, to stay as intact as possible, so it will be more valuable when they repo it.”

Hammond went back up to the podium and shook his head, “Ain’t gonna happen.” He looked out at the audience again and said, “Repo America? Are you kidding me? They ain’t getting’ in boats and comin’ here. So what does that mean? It means the FCards will start to go dry soon, just like the EBT cards went dry.”

“No more FCards,” Hammond said. “Soon. About six months, tops, according to our intel analysts. And, believe me, we have some highly placed sources on that.”

“What happens then?” Hammond asked the audience. “You know. You know exactly what happens then. You’ve seen what happens when the shelves go bare. You saw it on May Day, but this time there won’t be any FCards and commandeered semis to roll in and save the day.”

Hammond put up his hands for emphasis and said, “You think the May Day riots were bad? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet. You know, we’ve had semi-functioning government services up until now. And, to be very honest, this is not how the collapse scenario was expected to play out.”

“Everyone,” Hammond said, pointing to himself, “including me, assumed the ‘Mad Max’ scenario of total anarchy and chaos. Like in the book ‘Patriots.’ Well, it was a slower descent than we thought. A car wreck in slow motion, not at full speed, but a car wreck just the same. It took a matter of months, not days, but the ultimate result is the same. When the FCards dry up, everything that resembles order goes away.” Hammond snapped his fingers for emphasis. The snapping was loud enough for everyone in the whole hall to hear it.

“The utilities, which are still on, to my surprise, can’t stay on when there’s nothing to feed the utility workers,” Hammond continued. “What’s going to happen when the electricity goes off for good? How will people react when there is no water coming out of the faucet?”

Once again, Hammond let all of this sink in. “So, no food and no utilities. How many people are in this country? Three hundred million, right? Most of them will die. Two hundred million dead, and then some. I’ll say that again: 200 million dead. Rotting corpses will be everywhere. I’ve seen it elsewhere in the world. I’m going to see it here, too.”

The audience was horrified.

Hammond paused and raised his hand with his index finger pointed up, and said, “Unless.”

“Unless,” Hammond repeated. “Unless they’re stopped. Unless we push them aside and start getting this place back on its feet. You see, we know how to get people fed, how to let them grow their own food and trade. Without gangs and the government stealing from them. Unleash the private sector, actual free enterprise, not what we have now, and people will feed themselves, like they’ve done for thousands of years in places much less hospitable to growing food than here. This country has the best agricultural land and other natural resources in the history of mankind. We fed ourselves—and a big chunk of the rest of the world—up until just a few years ago. Are you telling me we can’t do that again? What the hell else are they going to do back in Iowa? Grow daisies?”

“Yeah,” Hammond said, nodding, “it’ll be a rough winter and lots of people will die. The Limas have done so much damage to this country that we can’t wave a magic wand and make things instantly right. But you know that. The fact that you’re here in this room means that you know that there is no magic wand. You would have waved that first before you committed yourself to joining a rebel army.”

“So,” Hammond said, “that’s reason number two why you’re doing this: you know that at least 200 million people will die unless the Limas are stopped. And, because you’re a decent human being, you can’t sit back and watch that. Little kids dying of starvation. Can you just watch that and not do something? I’ve seen little kids starve to death in other places. There is no way to sit there and not do something. No possible way. And, if 200 million out of 300 million will die, what makes you think you’ll be one of the minority who makes it? What makes you think your family will, too? If there is a two-thirds odds of you dying, add in a wife and the odds of you two making it go down further. Throw in a kid and you’re even lower. The sheer odds of you and your family making it are, what, ten percent? You gonna bet on that?”

Hammond scribbled something on the file in front of him. It seemed like too serious of a moment to scribble something. Then he pointed to the captain, “Quick, Morris, pick a number between one and ten.”

“Two, sir,” Captain Morris said.

Hammond held up the file folder, which had a big “eight” written on it.

“Your family is dead,” Hammond said. “You didn’t make it into the ten percent club.”

Hammond looked back at the audience and said, “Only a fool will bet on making it by just sitting back and letting other people take care of them and their family. The Limas have such a brilliant track record of taking care of people, don’t they? Anyone with any sense will take care of themselves and the ones they love.”

“Well,” Hammond said, throwing his hands up, “how you gonna do that? By voting? Elections have been cancelled, and electing the lesser of two evils is what got us where we’re at right now. Elections will not save you. It’s too late for that. If you thought elections would work anymore, you’d be in a room tonight for a new political party. You’re not. You’re in a room tonight for a rebel army.”

“Nope,” Hammond said, “you’re not going to look to elections to save us. You’re going to drive off the animals attacking you. You’re going to push and then—bam!—the tipsy government that is barely holding on will fall over and shatter into a million pieces. You’ll be amazed at how tipsy it was. You’ll look back and say, ‘It looked so solid, but fell so easily.’ And you’ll be right.”

“So we already have three good reasons why you’re doing this,” Hammond said, putting up three fingers. “One,” he said holding up one finger, “You know you’re supposed to be doing this.

“Two,” Hammond said, holding up two fingers, “we’re going to win. The Limas are weak.”

“Third,” he said, holding up three fingers, “you can’t sit back and watch most of your country starve to death, including—odds are—your own family.”

“Oh, but there’s more,” Hammond said, holding up a fourth finger. “How about this? Your place in history. Now, it’s hard for people to think about how they’ll be viewed in the future. Fair enough. So look back at how you view people in the past. You see, every couple generations or so, Americans have to do big and nasty things, but then the country, and sometimes the whole world, thanks them. I’ll give you an example. My granddaddy was in World War II. He was a war hero, actually. The rest of his life he was respected and honored. Before him, were my ancestors who fought in the Civil War or, as I’m now coming to realize, the War Between the States. There was heroism on both sides of that one. One of them saved a family from a fire started by enemy troops. Then there’s the Revolutionary War, which is the best example of what’s happening now.”

“If just a handful of men and women,” Hammond said, “had decided to take it easy during in the Revolutionary War, there never would have been an America. How many people can say they did something that made life immeasurably better for millions of people for hundreds of years? That’s no exaggeration. Think about that, people.”

Hammond let that sink in. “Well, congratulations,” he said loudly. “That’s you. That’s you,” he said pointing to the audience, “and you and you and you.”

“So,” he continued, “to summarize—for you to remember when you’re cold, hungry, scared, and wondering if we’ll really win—here are the four reasons why we’re doing this. One, you’re supposed to do this. Two, we’re going to win. Three, you and probably over 200 million Americans are dead if we don’t do this. And, four, you will be part of history. Four damned good reasons to do this. Now let’s get to work.”

The room burst into applause. People started standing and clapping. Hammond stood at the podium with extreme pride and confidence. He smiled. He was proud to be leading these people and it showed.

Hammond screamed, “Take it back! Take this country back!”

Chants of “Take it back!” started. Pretty soon, the whole room was screaming “Take it back! Take it back!”

It was intoxicating. Grant, and everyone in that room, felt invincible, which was good, because they’d need that for what was coming.