299 Days: The Collapse

Chapter 44 Quit Whining and Start Shining (First week of May)

Everything happened so quickly in those first days of May. Each day after the May Day Dump of bonds brought some new amazing revelation that the whole system, held together with duct tape and chewing gum, was coming apart. The U.S. could no longer borrow money. There was a giant tax protest movement. Each day after the May Day Dump, millions of people were quietly deciding they would no longer pay their taxes. Arizona renamed its National Guard the State Guard and announced it would use state forces to enforce the border. Several states, led by Oklahoma, announced that they would no longer contribute to Social Security for state employees, and they would not assist federal authorities in tax collection or any other activity. Large communities in California were given orders to relocate because of all the violence. A gallon of milk was approaching $10. There were gasoline shortages.

Grant and Lisa were both home a few days after the May Day Dump. Grant was making some lunch when Lisa got a call from her boss. She couldn’t believe what he was telling her. They didn’t want her to come to work. She commuted from Olympia to Tacoma, a thirty-minute drive in normal conditions, but the interstate was jammed. It was taking two hours to get to Tacoma. Her boss also said that they couldn’t guarantee her safety in the hospital, despite all the need for doctors as a result of the increased crime. The crime was causing the ER to overflow. People were running into the hospitals—some armed, some not—to steal pain killers. Lisa’s hospital didn’t have enough guards, and the ones they did have were unarmed because long ago the hospital decided it would be a “gun free zone.” Doctors and nurses were being robbed in the parking lot and attacked for no reason.

“It’ll be like Katrina,” Lisa’s boss said. “We’re having the people who are already at work stay here. We’re on lockdown. I wouldn’t ask you to come up in all that traffic, with all the bad things happening on the roads, just to be in lockdown,” he said.

Lockdown. Wow. This seemed so unexpected.

“Is there some way I can help?” Lisa asked.

“Maybe you can go in to your local ER,” her boss said, “the one in Olympia, but I bet they’re in a similar situation. Maybe a little less serious since Olympia is a smaller city than Tacoma.”

“OK,” Lisa said. “I’ll see if I can do that.” She then asked if her co-workers were safe. Some of them were at the hospital seemingly safe and the others had called in to say they would stay at home for a few days until this blew over.

Lisa said goodbye and wished them well. Just then, the doorbell rang and Grant answered it. It was Sherrie Spencer, their neighbor.

“There’s been a break-in at the Kaczmareks’ over on Whitman Drive,” Sherrie said.

What? A home invasion in the Cedars? In their own neighborhood. One cul-de-sac down from his. He didn’t really know the people whose house was broken into, but Lisa seemed to recognize the name.

“Were they hurt?” Lisa asked.

“No,” said Sherrie. “They weren’t home. It happened during the day. Can you believe that?”

Yes, Grant thought. This was no surprise to him, but Lisa couldn’t believe it. Grant needed to find out more.

“I’m going over to see what’s going on,” Grant said. He walked over to Whitman Drive.

There were some other neighborhood people there asking the Kaczmareks the same questions. Grant vaguely recognized Mr. Kaczmarek from last Halloween’s trick or treating. He was a retired guy.

“We were at work and, in broad daylight, someone just smashed the back door down, came in, and cleaned us out,” Mr. Kaczmarek said. “Thank God we weren’t home.”

Grant decided to take a little social risk with the guy. “Do you have a way to defend yourself in case they come back?” he asked.

Kaczmarek looked at Grant like he had said something horribly inappropriate. “No,” Kaczmarek said. “Like a gun? Why would I have a gun? They’re dangerous.”

OK. That’s how this is going to go. These people are idiots. There’s no hope for them. Just play along.

“Odds are that they won’t come back,” Grant said, changing the subject a little. “We’ll keep an eye on things as best we can. If you need anything, let me know.” Grant said. If you need anything? You need a gun, you dumb shit. Grant didn’t say it. He didn’t want this guy to know that he had guns. Besides, he was done trying to tell people things like this. He had given up.

Later that day, another neighbor, who Grant recognized but didn’t know her name, came to the door.

“We’re having a neighborhood meeting this evening. It’s about the break in at the Kaczmareks’,” she said.

Grant thought a neighborhood meeting of the weenies, the term he used for all the progressives that lived in the Cedars, would be pure entertainment. He might as well go in case they tried to do something stupid that affected him.

“I’ll be there,” Grant said to the neighbor he still couldn’t remember the name of. The meeting would be at her house. He was embarrassed to ask which house she lived in. She smiled politely, a little miffed that Grant didn’t know his neighbors well enough to know where they lived. But she was running into that frequently in the door-knocking she was doing that day.

Grant told Lisa what had happened at the Kaz-something house and that he would be going to the neighborhood meeting.

“That’s good,” Lisa said. “We could probably use a crime watch here.” Grant thought, oh, a crime watch with people who don’t own guns. That ought to be effective. If someone breaks in, the crime watch can call 911 and wait an hour for a cop to maybe show up. Or just go online and report the crime. After it’s occurred, of course.

Grant needed Lisa to view him as a resource on these things. Don’t debate her, just try to reassure her, he told himself. “We should double our efforts on making sure things are locked,” he said. “We do a good job, but I’ll start checking the doors at night.”

Lisa was relieved. Thank goodness Grant was being so practical talking about sensible things like locking doors instead of talking about guns.

When Lisa was downstairs, Grant went upstairs to their bedroom and checked his shotgun. He could quickly release the small luggage combination lock on it by keeping it one number off the combination. He did so in less than a second. The lock popped open and he unzipped the gun case. He had two five-round boxes of buckshot in the case. He wouldn’t store his shotgun loaded unless things got really bad. He could load his Remington 870 blindfolded and instantly. He practiced often.

Grant saw his pistol case by the shotgun in the master bedroom closet. He kept his Glock in .40 in that case. It, too, had a small luggage combination lock set one number off for quick access. He opened the pistol case. His Glock was ready to go. He had a loaded magazine in the gun (but without a round chambered) and his small Surefire flashlight that went on the end of the gun. This way he could see what he’s shooting if they happened to have an intruder in the middle of the night.

After checking that his home-defense weapons were in order, Grant went to the neighborhood meeting. He couldn’t resist going there armed. He slipped his little 380 auto into his jeans pocket. There was no chance of the weenies seeing him carrying that, unlike if he had his full-sized Glock in a holster and his jacket got hung up on the gun and exposed it. He didn’t want the weenies to catch him carrying a gun, which would cause them to think he was a whacko and then they wouldn’t listen to his ideas about defending the neighborhood. But at least he had a gun of some sort. He was carrying them more frequently now.

Of course, Nancy Ringman took over as the leader of the neighborhood group. Grant hated looking at her. She was the one who had seized WAB’s bank account. And now she was putting herself in charge of their neighborhood’s security. Great.

Nancy was superficially nice to Grant. “Oh, hi, Grant,” she said in her sarcastically sweet voice. “Nice to see you. We can’t talk about, you know, the case.”

No shit, we can’t talk about the case, Grant thought. He wasn’t here to talk about a case. He felt like leaving. He couldn’t stand these people.

Nancy called the meeting to order. She was loving this. She was in charge, and everyone in the room needed her. Nancy had Ken Kaczmarek describe what happened. No one had seen a thing. The theory was that his place was targeted because it was near the exit from the subdivision. It had a fence around it so they could get in through the back, do their business, and drive right out. Then Nancy told everyone to lock their doors. No shit, Nancy.

Grant couldn’t live with himself if he didn’t state the obvious. He had to at least try to reason with these people. Maybe he’d get lucky. Maybe things had changed so much in the past week of mayhem that they would actually listen to a voice of reason. Grant raised his hand and Nancy called on him.

“The response times for 911 calls are over an hour now, if they can even respond at all, with all the cutbacks,” Grant said. People were nodding. That was a good sign. “Maybe we should have some of us discretely carrying guns and driving around the neighborhood.”

Gasps. Actual audible gasps. Oh great.

Not everyone gasped. Ron Spencer, Grant’s Mormon neighbor, was nodding. So was that guy on the next cul-de-sac who was a retired Navy pilot. Len. That was his name, if Grant recalled correctly.

Silence. Nancy decided she needed to save this discussion from going horribly wrong. “Um, Grant, guns are very dangerous,” she said in a condescending tone. “We don’t want them going off in our neighborhood and hurting people.”

Was she serious? Quite a few people nodded with her. Oh, God, these people were hopeless.

Grant felt a debate coming on, one he would surely lose with these people, but he opened his mouth, anyway.

“Nancy,” Grant said as politely as possible, “I don’t know how much experience you have with firearms, but they don’t just go off by themselves. Those of us who are hunters carry guns all day out in the woods and nothing bad ever happens.”

“Oh, so there aren’t any hunting accidents?” she said, very sarcastically. More nodding of heads among the sheeple.

OK, this was a lost cause. Time to prevent too much attention to himself. He didn’t need these idiots knowing he had guns, which they had probably figured out by now, anyway.

“You know, Nancy, you’re right,” Grant said. “It was a crazy idea. I’m here to listen to the neighborhood’s solution. A consensus solution,” he said, amazingly convincingly. “Consensus” was a code word he learned while working for government. It meant everyone would go along with whatever stupid idea the leader came up with.

That was it. He tried. He was out. He would defend his house. He saw Ron Spencer looking at him.

Duh, Grant thought. Forget the weenies. Just get some of the guys together who have guns and do your own secret patrols. You don’t need permission from the collective to take care of yourself.

Grant sat through the excruciating chatter about who would be the “Block Watch Captain” and, for the umpteenth time, the instruction to lock your doors and cars. Grant wondered if the “Block Watch Captains” would get special hats. He seriously wondered if they would.

When the meeting broke up, Grant, Ron, and Len stepped out together. They found a place where no one would see them together… plotting. Plotting against the will of the collective to protect themselves from obvious dangers.

Grant introduced himself to Len, who said, “I’m Len Isaacson. I know Ron from Rotary.” Good. That meant Len wasn’t a government employee.

Ron started it off. “We need to go on some ‘drives’ during the night. Packing, of course. Do you guys have concealed carry pistols?”

Grant and Len nodded.

Great. Now Grant needed to stay up all night patrolling to protect the weenies. Grant was a sheepdog, and the sheep were really stupid. He sighed. That’s what it’s like during a collapse. Pulling guard duty and trying to save dumb shits from themselves.

Don’t be selfish. Help others. This is the kind of thing you are supposed to be doing.

There was the outside thought again. Crystal clear. He hadn’t heard it in a while. He started running the patrol schedule through his mind. They needed more guys.

“You guys know anyone else who will go on ‘drives’ with us?” Grant asked.

Ron said, “Yeah, there’s a guy on Whitman, Dave Burton. He’s a gun guy. Don’t know why he wasn’t here tonight.”

Len thought. “Maybe Chris… what’s his last name? Chris someone on my cul-de-sac. He strikes me as a gun guy. I’ll check with him.”

Grant felt stupid saying this, but, “Let’s keep our ‘drives’ quiet. I don’t need Nancy on my ass about this.” He marveled at how screwed the situation was; he had to keep it secret that he as recruiting a neighborhood patrol to protect them. Most people would be thankful that a group of guys were stepping up to take care of a problem. But not these brainwashed sheeple morons.

Grant wanted out of this place. His mind flashed to all the security he had out the cabin, especially if the Team was out there. But it was too early to jump now. Lisa would never go for it.

Wait for things to get worse. You’ll know when it’s time to leave.

The outside thought was reassuring—to the extent something telling a person that things will get worse is ever reassuring. But it was.

“We’re not just going to have one guy driving around, are we?” Len asked. “What good is that? That’s not a patrol,” Len said. He was right.

Grant had a set of Motorola walkie talkies. They were the cheap low-powered kind he had Manda take with her when she went on bike rides when she was little. They worked fine in the subdivision. Grant described the walkie talkies to Ron and Len.

“We could have one man driving around radio to another designated guy if there’s trouble,” Ron said. “If we have enough guys, we could have two cars patrolling linked with the radios. They could use their horns to signal the rest of us.” A good plan.

“Since we’d be in cars,” Grant said, “the weenies couldn’t see our guns.” Ron and Len knew exactly who Grant meant by the “weenies.”

Grant continued, “We should carry pistols, concealed, so we have them at all times. But we could put a long gun in our car.” Ron and Len nodded. Having a loaded rifle or shotgun in the car within reach was, of course, against the law in Washington State. Oh well. The whole point of this exercise was that there weren’t enough cops around. The worst that would happen if they got caught is that the cop would seize their guns and car. That’s better than not having enough firepower to repel a gang of punks. Besides, they hadn’t seen a cop car within a mile of the neighborhood for weeks. The rules were changing. The old ways were going away. Grant, Ron, and Len were living the new reality.

“One-man patrols and a designated stationary guy, or, better yet, two cars patrolling,” Len said. “With just three guys, that means we need to be patrolling or on backup two out of three nights,” Len said. “I enjoy sleeping. We need more guys.”

They agreed to try to come up with more guys. They would follow up with the two leads they had and try to come up with more.

“Hey, Ron,” Grant said, “Could we meet at your place and organize things there? I’d have the meeting at my house, but I don’t think my wife would understand why I’m out playing ‘cops and robbers’.”

“No problem,” Ron said. “Sherri is cool with guns.”

Grant knew that people needed deadlines and concrete things to do or none of this volunteer stuff would ever get done. “How about we meet back at Ron’s house in a half hour and start planning.” Ron and Len nodded.

Grant walked back to his house. Now, in addition to being a “survivalist,” he had to hide being an armed neighborhood patroller from Lisa. Great. He had to keep secrets about the things he was doing to protect her. Why? Grant realized he was in a pissy, negative mood. He had been for about a month while he was helplessly watching his country being destroyed. He needed to get his head in this game. It was getting pretty serious. Quit whining and start shining. Hey, that rhymed. Pretty good little phrase, he thought. He smiled. Quit whining and start shining. That was his new plan.