299 Days: The Collapse

Chapter 66 Bugging Out of the Cedars (May 7)

It was mid-afternoon. Pow was taking a break at his house after escorting two single moms on their trip to the grocery store. He was so tired; it was exhausting constantly being on guard. It was a different kind of tired than just staying up late. It was draining.

His cell phone vibrated. It was a text from a number he didn’t recognize. It said: “Grant’s wife here. We want to go. Can you still take us? Please. Urgent.”

Pow jumped up and yelled. Awesome. The Team could do their best deed yet: delivering Grant’s family to him. And having a great place out in the country to stay and continue their sheepdogging. And they would be out of the city where things were breaking down by the hour.

Pow tried calling Lisa. The call went through, although voice service had become more and more spotty. A woman answered.

“Mrs. Matson, this is Bill Kung here,” Pow said.

“Are you coming for us?” Lisa asked. She sounded desperate.

“Yes, ma’am,” Pow said. “That’s the plan. I need to know when you’ll be ready.”

“It will take a few hours,” Lisa said, “I have to make sure the kids have all their stuff.” Lisa had the packing list down from years of getting ready for vacations. That’s what this would be, she told herself. A week or two away from the house and then things would be normal. Except that thing about Grant being a terrorist. That would get cleared up. He was a lawyer. He’d tell a judge he wasn’t a terrorist and things would work out.

Pow looked at his watch. It was 2:45 p.m. It would be dark in six hours. It was May and sunset was very late in Washington State. He didn’t want to go out at night, which was when the bad guys were starting to come out in full force. They slept during the day.

“Could you be ready in two hours?” Pow asked. The Team was already at his house with all their stuff. In fact, they were fully packed and ready to go. Full magazines and full gas tanks. They were just waiting for this call. They could be ready to roll out in no time.

“Oh, I could,” Lisa said. “But my parents need to come, too. It will take them longer.”

Parents? What?

“Do they live around here?” Pow asked. They better, he thought. He wasn’t going into Seattle for anything.

“Yeah, they’re about two miles from me,” Lisa said. “I couldn’t go without them.”

Mission creep. That’s the term for when a mission starts to expand beyond what made sense in the first place. Pow could see this was happening to the relatively simple job of picking up Grant’s family and going out to the cabin. But he knew that things weren’t so bad that waiting a little while longer and taking more people out to the cabin was a life-and-death situation.

“Where, exactly, do they live?” he asked.

Lisa told him. It was a good neighborhood so it should be fairly safe. Probably.

“OK,” Pow said. He’d been helping people for days now. No reason to stop doing it now. “When can they be ready?”

“I’d say three hours,” she said, which was a complete guess because she hadn’t even talked to them about coming. She wanted to see if the Korean cop could still escort them out there before she brought up the topic of leaving with her parents.

“OK,” Pow said. “They need to be ready, absolutely ready, to go at 6:00. I’ll be at your house at 5:30. I’m bringing three other trucks of guys so we need to go right then. No waiting around.”

Three trucks of guys? Lisa had only met one guy, the cop who came to her door.

“Who will be in the three trucks and who are the guys?” Lisa asked.

“The Team,” Pow said proudly. “We have been training with Grant for over a year. These guys, Wes, Scotty, and Bobby, are like me. We’re very well armed. Grant told me last summer that we could come out to the cabin if the shit hit the…if things got dangerous in town. He said that having us out there was part of his plan, so that you and the kids would be ‘well taken care of.’ He said we could stay at one of the cabins out there, the yellow one owned by the guy from California.”

Lisa decided that she needed to test this claim that Grant had taken this man out to the cabin and wanted them to come out. She didn’t want to get into a truck with someone who wasn’t helping Grant. “Describe the cabin to me,” she said.

Pow described it perfectly, including the neighbors. “Their names begin with a ‘C’ and an ‘M.’” The Colsons and the Morrells, Lisa thought.

Well, his description of the place and the names of the neighbors were right, she thought. Grant had texted her from Manda’s phone and said she should go out to the cabin with the Pow guy, who was apparently a cop. Plus the Korean man used that same phrase Grant had, that they would be “well taken care of.” So these guys must be part of Grant’s plan.

Wow, Lisa thought. Grant had thought of everything and done all this behind her back. At first she was mad that he done all this secretly. Then she realized how lucky she was to have a husband who did all this. And how lucky she was to have a guy on the phone who was willing to risk his life and his friends’ to take her and her family to safety. This was all too incredible to believe. But so was having Nancy Ringman hurting Cole. And all those sirens she had been hearing for days that were now quiet. And the men with guns at the neighborhood entrance. And now getting picked up by some armed strangers Grant had been “training” with.

But this was real, Lisa thought. Yes, this was happening. They needed to get out of here. Nancy Ringman’s attack on them had made that obvious. OK, Lisa thought, it’s time to get practical and get to safety.

“I’ll be driving my Tahoe,” Lisa said. “That will work, right?”

“Sure,” Pow said. “You’ll need something to take your things in. My guys have all their stuff in their rigs so we don’t have much extra room. Besides, you’ll want to have your car when things get better in a few days and you can drive back home,” Pow said, knowing that things wouldn’t get better that quickly, but wanting to make her think otherwise. “We will put your car in the middle of the convoy. You’ll have some firepower in front of you and behind you. You’ll be very safe.”

“My parents will be in their car,” Lisa said. “That will be OK?”

“Sure,” Pow said. “Same thing. They’ll be in the middle of the convoy.”

“OK. I’ll get them ready,” Lisa said. “Come at 5:30. Thanks again… I’m sorry. What was your name?” Lisa asked.

“Pow,” he said. “You can call me Pow.”

“OK, Pow,” she said. “See you at 5:30.” Lisa hung up. She had to call her parents now. She didn’t know if they would understand. She called them. The cell lines were busy. She tried the landline. It was working. Her dad answered.

“Dad,” Lisa said, “I need you to listen to me. The kids and me, and hopefully you and Mom, are going out to the cabin. Grant is out there. He’s safe. It’s safe there. He has food out there and guns. He has been preparing for all of this for a long time. He didn’t tell me. He just did it.”

Lisa’s dad thought to himself, “Good for you Grant. That’s how you have to do it.” He kept listening.

“Things are getting bad,” Lisa said. “Really bad. Someone attacked us and hurt Cole.”

“What! Are you alright?” he asked. He was furious that someone hurt his girl and his grandson.

“We’re fine,” Lisa said. “But we need to go. Now. I’m going to come by your house with some people to take us out to the cabin. You need to be ready to go by 6:00. I mean ready to go. Everything you’ll need for a week or so out at the cabin.”

“OK. I’ll tell your mom,” Lisa’s dad said. She was glad her dad answered the phone. It seemed like it would be easier for him to understand the need to go. “Who are these people coming with you?” he asked.

“It’s a long story,” Lisa said. “But Grant goes shooting with some guys. They’re very well armed. He had a plan for them to get us out to the cabin if he couldn’t take us himself.”

“OK,” Lisa’s dad said. “We’ll be ready by 6:00.” He paused. “I am kind of looking forward to being with all of you at the cabin.”

“See you then,” Lisa said, wanting to get packing. “Bye, Dad.”

Now Lisa had to tell the kids. Manda had overheard all of this. When Lisa got off the phone, Manda came running downstairs and jumped up and down. “Yeah! We’re going out to the cabin with Dad!” At first Lisa was mad. She was reminded that Grant had left them. But then she was glad, too. “Yes, we’ll all be together out there. Now get your stuff together.”

“Way ahead of you Mom,” Manda said with obvious pride. “I’m pretty much packed. I can help with getting Cole packed.”

Cole was glad to see that they were going to the cabin. “No more mean lady? She won’t be there?”

Lisa started crying, but they were happy tears this time. “No, honey, no more mean lady. Daddy is out at the cabin and we’ll be safe there.”

Cole smiled. He wanted to go there so badly. He wanted to throw rocks in the water with his dad. He wanted all the crying and being scared of people to stop. “Dad can tuck me in.”

Lisa cried some more. “Yes, Dad can tuck you in.”

They spent the next hours feverishly packing. Deciding what to bring and leave behind. That Tahoe held a lot of stuff.

Pow rounded up the guys. Scotty was out on a milk run, so they had to wait for him to get back. “OK, gentlemen,” Pow said when Scotty returned, “we’re bugging out to Grant’s cabin. We’re taking his family and his in-laws. They’re both in town here. I have all the details.”

“What about your neighborhood here?” Wes asked.

“Clay has it under control,” Pow said, which was true. Clay and all the vets had this place doing very well; better than most neighborhoods. They wouldn’t be leaving the place to the bad guys. Pow thought about Mrs. Nguyen and those like her. She would be in good hands. The neighborhood didn’t need the Team. This made leaving much easier.

Pow wasn’t worried about his house getting trashed if they left. He rented and so did all the other guys on the Team.

Back in the Cedars, Lisa was done packing. When they had everything, she made sure the stove and faucets were off and the doors locked. It was 5:25. She heard some trucks pulling up. She looked out the front door window and couldn’t believe what she saw.

A white civilian Hummer and three pickups. The drivers got out to stand around their vehicles, seeming to be guarding them, and looked like soldiers. Actually, they looked like private military contractors that she’d seen on the news in Iraq and Afghanistan. She felt safe, for the first time in a week.

“OK, get in my car,” Lisa said to the kids. She looked around at her house. “Goodbye house,” she said. “We’ll be back soon.” She got in the SUV and hit the garage door opener. “Here we go, kids,” she said just like when they were going on a vacation.

Pow came walking up to her in the garage. He didn’t have a rifle, but had a pistol on his belt. He had that badge out, too.

“Since you know where you’re going,” Pow said to Lisa, “you take the lead. We’ll follow. We’re not in any rush, so don’t run any yellow lights with us trying to follow.”

Lisa nodded. She was nervous, but trying not to show it. Pow looked in the back seat of the Tahoe, smiled, and waved at Manda and Cole. He pointed to his badge and gave the kids a thumbs up to reassure them everything was OK. Manda and Cole felt safe for the first time in days.

“OK,” Pow said, “back out and we’ll follow. You all set?”

Lisa nodded again and smiled. She was so thankful for Pow and these other guys. She looked at the clock in the Tahoe. “5:31.” She wanted to get out of there. Now.

They slowly left the neighborhood. Len was at the entrance with a gun. Lisa rolled down her window and said, “See you later.” Len wondered why she was leaving with the cops in the Hummer and pickups; he had seen their badges.

They headed out on the short drive to Lisa’s parents. At an intersection they saw some graffiti in yellow spray paint that said, “There is no gov’t.” That seemed odd.

Pow remembered that he hadn’t told Grant the good news. He tried the voice line; it was down. He typed a text: “Lisa n kids r coming out!! Me and Team 2!! C u round 8 to 9.” He hit send. Pow was so proud of himself. He was reuniting a family. And getting the Team out to a safe and well-stocked country location.