299 Days: The 17th Irregulars

Chapter 205 This Can’t Go on Much Longer

Steve Briggs got up at 4:30 a.m. as usual. He didn’t even need an alarm clock anymore. He went to bed early because there was nothing else to do in the evening. No TV. Well, there was TV on the air, but it was all propaganda and truly mindless sitcoms and reality shows, with all the “commercials” being “public service announcements” from the government containing more propaganda. Steve couldn’t watch TV anymore. Even when he would lose himself in some classic sitcom from the past, he would be jolted back to reality by the obnoxious propaganda ads that interrupted the show. That wasn’t relaxing.

“Same ole’, same ole’,” Steve said to himself as he got dressed for work. “Work” was solving problems all day in Forks.

They still hadn’t seen any semis roll into town. It was a hundred miles to the closest town and no one was surprised that the authorities hadn’t made little, isolated Forks a high priority.

People in Forks were living on fish and game, mostly elk and deer. It seemed like everyone had a garden by now. Most people were sharing and trading food.

Most people. There were still some loners who didn’t. They tried to live off of their own food, and some of them stole from others. The town’s deputized civilian police force kept that down to a minimum. Actually, the fact that almost everyone in town was armed kept it to a minimum. There had been over two dozen burglars shot by homeowners since the Collapse, out of a town of about three thousand.

But things had become “normal” in Forks. It was a new normal, granted, but Steve was worried about what was coming. Winter. Summer was easy living, but that wouldn’t be true in a few short months.

Things were different, but somewhat the same, two hundred miles away in Olympia. Back in the Cedars subdivision, Ron Spencer was a “gray man,” a saboteur against the government who kept to himself. He stayed under the radar. He didn’t even tell his wife he was doing it. Ron’s contribution to the cause was to spray paint graffiti messages at night. His favorite was “I miss America.”

His “job” — the thing that put food on the table — was operating an underground taxi service running on barter, driving people around to important things. Ron had some silver he’d squirreled away before the Collapse which he used to buy gas from the “gang gas” station. He would then drive people who had no gas and, in return, would get food and other things.

And, in all this driving around, Ron would observe things that might be helpful to the Patriots. He learned when the shift changes were for the pathetic FCorps guards at the police station. Ron had made contact with Matt Collins who was a Patriot and would pass along things to him, like the shift change and other tidbits. Ron laughed at the pre-Collapse Homeland Security slogan of “See something. Say something.” He was doing that alright, but not for the side Homeland Security had been talking about.

Ron’s other “job” was volunteering as an FCorps accountant because he had been a CPA before the Collapse. His FCorps accounting job was a joke because the FCorps was corrupt as hell and didn’t exactly keep good records of its corruption. Ron didn’t care. In fact, he used the volunteer job to get his family a decent FCard allowance, although food shipments were pretty unpredictable to the “regular” stores that the little people like him could shop at. The politically connected people got to go to special stores that were always well stocked.

Ron supplemented the FCard food and the taxi service barter items with the small amount of food his family had stored. They were Mormon, after all. People assumed they had lots of stored food, but they didn’t. They had some, though. Far more than most, especially in “commieville,” as Ron called ultra-liberal—and thoroughly dependent—Olympia.

In his travels around Olympia and the surrounding areas, Ron could clearly see how this was going to end. The government was becoming more corrupt and desperate. The socialist economy was definitely not working. Ron could tell that the government was running on fumes. They had some money left in everyone’s retirement accounts that the government was using to buy food, much of it from overseas, and some diesel to get the food out to the stores. But this wouldn’t last long. More and more people were saying little things to him that let him know that they were turning from Undecideds to Patriots. They weren’t about to go out and join some Patriot guerilla band, but they were not lifting a finger to help the “legitimate authorities,” as the Loyalists preferred to be called. It seemed as though everyone was waiting for some event. Some huge, dramatic event that would be their chance to go out and finish off the Loyalists. Ron knew it was coming. He knew it, and he felt it. He just didn’t know when.

Just sixty miles north in the Loyalist stronghold of Seattle, Ed Oleo was another “gray man.” The former real estate broker who had been the target of a vicious and corrupt state regulator was now getting by with his little side business of small home repairs. Ed was, to all outward appearances, a Loyalist. He had the “We Support the Recovery!” yard sign in his front yard like everyone else. He didn’t talk about how much he hated the government. Not even to his wife. Ed would go over to his Russian neighbor, Dimitry’s, house and ask him to tell stories about how the gray men resisted the Soviets back in the day. Ed would take the wisdom from Dimitry’s experiences and think about how to apply it to undermine the American government.

Ed was doing a minor gray man mission. He was figuring out who the serious Loyalists were—the “true believers” as the Patriots called the hardcore Loyalists. The true believers were the ones who were actively helping the government. The true believers were not the majority of people in his neighborhood who were just mouthing the government slogans to keep their FCards. There was a huge difference.

Ed would go around to houses in his subdivision and a few of the surrounding ones and ask if people needed home repairs. Most didn’t. Well, probably needed some repairs but they didn’t have anything to trade for a luxury like fixing something. Ed used these visits to get to know people. He had nothing else to do all day so he figured he would chat with people and gather intelligence.

Pretty soon, Ed had a good list of the true believers in the area. He drew a map of the subdivisions and put an X on the homes of the true believers. He numbered each one and had a corresponding note with information on that household. He tried to make sure he knew which people in a household were guilty and who were innocent bystanders. He couldn’t always get to this level of detail, but he tried.

Ed noticed that the Loyalists’ hold on power was slipping. Once in a while, the semis wouldn’t make it to the local grocery store, and this began happening more frequently. Crime was getting worse. More and more people were openly complaining about how scarce everything was. Some were even talking openly about how the gangs were gaining even more control.

Ed thought to himself, “This can’t go on forever.” Just like Ron, Ed knew something was coming. He didn’t know when, but he knew he had that old shotgun in his basement and he would do his part when the time was right. He knew who in his neighborhood had it coming.

Back in Frederickson, John Bennington also knew who had it coming. His boss, Commissioner Winters, did. Bennington was growing increasingly disgusted with what was going on in his rural county. Before the Collapse, Winters had always been a politician, and that was bad enough. But now Winters was a dictator. Corrupt, power hungry, spiteful, petty and sadistic.

There was one thing in particular Winters did that Bennington couldn’t stand. Winters hurt women and girls. It started with Winters’ receptionist, Julie Mathers.

Julie was the gorgeous receptionist Bennington saw when he took Rich Gentry to see Winters. Bennington got to know her.

“Can I talk to you?” She asked one day, as she started to cry.

“Yeah, sure,” he said. Most men are incapable of ignoring a crying woman. It was hard wired into them.

“I needed a job,” she said, sobbing. She described how she needed a job before the Collapse and Winters gave her a very cushy county one. But there was a price.

“He makes me…” She couldn’t finish the sentence. But, Bennington knew exactly what it was.

“I hate doing it,” she said, trying to quiet down her crying in case anyone heard her.

“One time he said that if I didn’t do it,” she whispered, “then I’d have to ‘live outside the wire,’” referring to living outside the barbed wire-fortified courthouse.

Bennington knew that if she was outside the wire, she’d be dead in ten minutes. So many people outside the wire hated Winters and resented anyone with a big fat government job. Winters knew she couldn’t leave. She was in a prison and he was in total control of her.

Bennington figured that Winters never enjoyed sex much without having control over the person. Now that he had absolute control over her, it made sex exactly what he’d been looking for his whole life. Power and control.

Winters did more than just sleep with Julie. He humiliated her. He took pictures of her and showed them to his political buddies. He made her do things in the pictures. Bennington had been shown one by a fellow cop at the courthouse. It was terrible.

The worst part was that the men at the courthouse who saw the pictures would then see Julie every day at work and she knew they had seen the pictures. She had to sit there, knowing what all the men were thinking.

This was intentional. Winters made it known in the courthouse that anyone who saw the pictures of “his pet” could comment on them to Julie. Underlings were told that Winters viewed it as a sign of loyalty to him—and a way to get favors with him—to ask Julie to do the things they saw in the pictures and then laugh at her. She had to sit there and take it. They all knew they couldn’t touch her, but they could say anything they wanted to her. Making Julie cry got someone big points with Winters. He felt warm inside when Julie cried.

Winters didn’t stop with Julie. He had a thing for Mexican girls. Young ones; sometimes, very young ones. He would get them from the gangs as a prize. He wrecked about one life per day and loved it. He was out of control.

Bennington had a little girl of his own. She was living with her mother in the Seattle area after the divorce. He could see Winters coming after his daughter if Winters got a chance.

Bennington knew what he needed to do.