299 Days: The Community

Chapter 79 Pancakes (May 8)

Morning came way too fast. After deer steaks at the Colsons, which went past midnight, Grant quietly snuck over to his cabin and collapsed into bed. He was so tired that he didn’t even remember his head hitting the pillow. He had slept most of the previous day, but the emotions of the arrival of his family and the Team had wiped him out.

Grant woke up with Lisa next to him. Wow. That felt great. He honestly thought that would never happen again.

He looked at his watch. It was 6:30. He had some pancakes to start cooking. He got up and got the pancake mix out of the storage shed; a five pound vacuum sealed bag. He would have to tell the Colsons and Morrells that he had the food because they would see the vacuum sealed bag and realize something was up.

Oh well, it was OK for them to know. Keeping the food storage a secret made sense before the Collapse and before he fully trusted them. Besides, they had shared their deer steaks the night before and would be sharing many other things until this was over. They were in this together. They would only get through it by sharing. The cabin neighborhood of the Matsons, the Team, Morrells, and Colsons were now a gang. Not the motorcycle kind of gang, but a group taking care of each other.

Grant’s favorite smell in the morning was pancakes, and the enticing scent called to the others, as well. Slowly, people started stirring in the cabin. It was magic. They were all together and Grant was getting them up with pancakes. The sun was shining into the cabin through the evergreen trees. The water was still and beautiful.

Grant wanted to make sure Cole, who needed the same routine because of his mild autism, was OK with his new surroundings. He had been to the cabin plenty of times, but never had his grandparents sleeping in the other bed in the room. Grant went up to the loft. Cole was awake in his bed talking to his sister.

“I’m happy that we’re all here,” Cole said. That melted Grant’s heart. Cole really, really needed that tucking in last night.

“Me too, little buddy,” Grant said. “I have some pancakes for you, pal. We have syrup, too.” Grant didn’t tell Cole that the syrup was a different brand; whatever they had at the Dollar Store. He was curious if Cole’s need for routine would allow him to eat a different syrup.

“Sounds delicious, Dad,” Cole said. Grant had never heard Cole say the word “delicious” before.

The new syrup would be a test for Cole. He was a growing thirteen-year old boy and constantly hungry. Grant figured Cole’s hunger would override his need for routine.

He needed to invite the Morrells, Colsons, and the Team over, and went to get his hillbilly slippers on. He felt naked, though. His pistol. He forgot his pistol. He quietly went into the bedroom where Lisa was sleeping to get his gun belt off the nightstand. She was stirring.

“Whatcha doing?” she asked, half awake.

“I need to invite the neighbors over for breakfast,” Grant whispered. “We have some things to talk about.”

“Could you not leave that gun on the nightstand right by our heads?” she asked politely.

OK, Grant thought, decades of thinking guns spontaneously combust had rooted itself pretty deep in her. She was fine with him wearing a gun and carrying an AR, so this wasn’t too bad. He had to pick his battles.

“Sure, honey,” Grant said. “By the way, your dad and I talked to Cole about guns again. We told him that it’s only OK for him or any other kid he’s around to touch a gun if a grownup is there and says it’s OK. I asked him to repeat it back to me and he did.”

“Good,” she said. “You know, I see kids in the ER with accidental gun shots.” That was a fair point.

“That won’t happen here,” Grant said. “Your parents or Manda are constantly with him. My guns will only be on me or under the bed.” Grant would put his AR under the bed. Probably his shotgun, too. At least at first, until Lisa got comfortable with his AR and shotgun being propped up on the wall by the bed.

Under the bed was not an ideal quick-reaction spot, but he was trying to ease his wife into this whole situation. He was trying to convince her that this was just a week-long vacation while the government got everything back in order. Grant realized he could try to win an argument, or have his wife on board with the most important decision they would make in their lives. It was an easy choice.

“I understand your concerns,” Grant said. “I will be ultra-careful. The good news is that with the guard shack and the Team, I don’t need to have guns out too much in the house. We are very safe here. Very safe.”

Lisa nodded. She would rather not have any guns around, but she, too, was more interested in a harmonious stay out at the cabin than trying to win an argument. Besides, with all that had happened in the past few days, her opinion of guns had changed a little bit.

Grant grabbed his pistol belt. He hid it from her. Not that she didn’t know it was there, but he thought “out of sight, out of mind.” That’s why he kept his tactical vest with magazine pouches in a suit bag in the closet. That thing would definitely scare Lisa so he kept it out of sight. For now.

When Grant was in the kitchen, he put his pistol belt on. Ahhh. He had missed the weight of the pistol and his mag holders with four full magazines. He felt naked without it. With his pistol on, he felt like things were back to normal. A new normal.

He went outside. It was gorgeous out; about seventy degrees, with a slight breeze from the water. He went to the Morrells. Chip was making them coffee. Grant told them to come over in a while.

Grant went to the Colsons. Paul volunteered to pull guard duty while the rest of them ate. Paul didn’t like people to see him eat. He was so heavy that he thought people would look at him funny for eating a meal, like he should only be eating carrots and celery or something. He usually ate alone.

Grant went over to the yellow cabin. The Team was sound asleep. They probably stayed up late telling and retelling war stories from the trip out and from their various milk runs.

He went to the guard shack and saw Scotty. God, he looked impressive. Standing in a tactical vest with his AR across his chest. He looked like a military contractor. The average criminal would see him and run away to an easier target. That was the point. Grant hoped they would get through this whole Collapse without ever firing a shot. He knew that was unlikely, but it would sure be great if it happened.

“There’s hot tasty pancakes at my cabin, Scotty,” Grant said.

“Awesome,” Scotty said. “I’m starving.” He looked down the road. “Nothing at all last night. Some dogs started barking around 2:30. Could have been a rabbit they were hearing. It could have been…” He didn’t need to say.

Dogs were great burglar alarms. The Colsons had two little dogs who yapped when someone was coming up to their house. It was annoying at first, but reassuring now.

“Paul’s coming to relieve you, then it’s pancake time,” Grant said with a smile.

Scotty nodded. He was watching the road the whole time they were talking. In most settings it would be impolite to not look at someone during a conversation, but guarding their family was more important.

This felt so right. Like it was meant to be. Grant was getting that feeling a lot, lately.

As he headed back to his cabin, Grant realized that he had a choice to make. He could continue with the story to his family that this was just a week or so of vacation and then everything would turn out OK, or, he could use this first meeting to set the tone for the whole stay out there. First impressions were everything. The breakfast meeting would be the first time the whole group was together.

This was an easy choice. He needed all these people to realize that they were in a survival situation. The most important thing—the very most important thing—in a survival situation is the will to live. Everyone needed to understand the dangers and then decide whether they’d do what it takes to make it through it.

Grant had eased his family into the “vacation” thing as much as possible. Now it was time to take the easing process up one level, from vacation to permanent stay.

Surprisingly, Lisa had already come to this conclusion. Not from Grant’s brilliant managing of the situation, but from reality.

While Grant was out rounding up people for pancakes, Lisa checked her cell phone. There were the pictures of her trashed house and Ron’s message, “Don’t come back.”

OK, it is real now, she thought. It wasn’t some big misunderstanding that would lead to a few days at the cabin because Grant overreacted and she was humoring him. This was real. She couldn’t go back. Some lunatic, probably Nancy Ringman, had decided to go after her family. All the “politics” that Lisa hated weren’t just a game anymore. The government, or at least some psycho in the neighborhood, hated Grant for some reason. He was on some terrorist list and their house had been destroyed. There was no going back there. Not until things fundamentally changed, and the Nancy Ringmans of the world were no longer able to do things like this.

Lisa felt violated. Someone had come into their beautiful home and destroyed it. Their home. Lisa had worked so hard to make it just the way she wanted it and then this happened. She kept looking at the pictures on her phone. It was ugly; both the trashed house and the reason it happened. There was something dark and almost demonic about the whole thing.

Well, at least this solved the problem of whether she and the kids really needed to be out at the cabin, she thought. OK, then. This cabin thing sucked, but at least she wasn’t in the house when the destruction happened. She and the kids were in a safe place. She took a deep breath. This was where they needed to be for a while. She would make the best of it. People were stirring and coming over. It was time for breakfast.

Pretty soon, the cabin was full of people eating and talking. Perfect, Grant thought. When he came in, they seemed to unconsciously realize that he was the leader. It was his place and he was the common thread connecting all of them. He knew he needed to lead. He’d been doing it his whole life, and he felt very comfortable leading out there at Pierce Point.

“OK, thanks for coming over this morning,” Grant said. “I wanted to go over a few business items while we’re all here. I guess it’s no secret that things are kinda going downhill back in the city. Things will be rocky for a while. We will have to count on ourselves for food and security. I hope this is temporary; it probably will be. But we can’t count on things just getting back to normal. Therefore, I propose that we treat our mutual survival as our jobs. Just like our former work jobs. We should put the time and energy we normally put into our old jobs into getting food and taking care of things here on Over Road. If things get better, this will have been a great big adventure we’ll tell our grandkids about.” Grant smiled. He wanted to be positive. “Is everyone OK with what I’m talking about here?”

Most people slowly nodded, including Lisa. He didn’t know about the text and pictures of their trashed house. Lisa wouldn’t tell Grant about that. It would be one more thing for him to worry about and she didn’t want to worry him.

Grant had to get buy-in from the group on the big picture. It was time to go into the details. He had been thinking about them for quite some time.

“OK,” he started, “sounds like we’re all on the same page. Now that we have a full picture of how many of us are out here, we can start talking about splitting up duties like guard duty and food. If it’s OK with you guys, I’d like to put Pow in charge of the guard duty.” Everyone nodded.

“Chip,” Grant continued, “I consider you part of the Team, so you’ll be doing that kind of stuff, too.” Chip grinned. He was in his early sixties and was being treated like one of the young guys. The guys on the Team nodded, too. They liked Chip. Everyone liked Chip.

“John, Mark, Paul, and I already know the drill,” Grant said. “Could one or more of you guys get with Pow and the Team and go over the guard duty details?” John and Mark nodded. Grant wanted to make the three of them feel like they had something to add to the Team. He wanted them to be integrated to the extent possible, even though they weren’t tactically trained or as well armed as the Team.

“John knows how to fix things,” Grant said. “I’m sure others do, too, but I’d like John to be in charge of things like that.”

Grant remembered Paul and his welding and machine shop skills. “Of course Paul knows welding and other heavy machining. John and Paul can be the fix-it crew.” John gave everyone the thumbs up sign.

“Speaking of Paul,” Grant said. “He’s on guard duty right now. With he and John doing all the repairs, those two probably shouldn’t be in the guard rotation,” Grant said, looking at Pow. Besides, Grant didn’t say it, but John was a little old and Paul was, well, totally out of shape. They wouldn’t be the best for guard duty.

“We’re doing OK on food,” Grant continued. “The Colsons have plenty of steaks.” He didn’t want to say “deer” because the kids wouldn’t eat them. “So I’d like Tammy to be in charge of the nightly group dinners.” She nodded. “Mark and John can work on getting plenty more dinner material out there in the forest and the beach.” More nodding.

“If my ‘job’ is hunting and fishing, I’m OK with that,” Mark said with a big grin.

Grant looked at John and said, “Yes, John, that would be hunting and fixing things for you. Double duty. But Mark will be the lead on hunting and fishing if that’s OK.”

“Hunting, fishing, and fixing things is what I’m doing during my retirement anyway,” John said. He gave the thumbs up again.

“Mary Anne is a gardener and canner,” Grant said. “So is Eileen. I bet you two can team up to make sure we have lots of good stuff.” Both ladies smiled. They were glad to be part of this. It wasn’t all about guns. There were roles for everyone. People can’t eat guns.

Grant continued, “It’s not like we need to start gathering food and preserving it right now. I have plenty of stored food and can share. Most of you do, too. But Mary Anne and Eileen should start thinking about what to grow and preserve now, and then we can do it in the summer and fall, if things go that long, which would surprise me.” That was a lie; Grant fully expected this to go a full year; and probably several years.

Mary Anne said, “Like the apple trees. We can get all the apples in the summer and can them.”

“Exactly,” Grant said. “We’re at the planning stages now. Thank goodness this thing hit in the spring. Maybe you can find out if you need some canning supplies. We’ll figure out how to get some in time for canning later. That kind of thing.” Grant had been thinking about canning apples since he came to the cabin and saw the wild apple trees. Now it was time to get those wheels in motion.

“Drew, I need someone to keep track of all the stuff we have,” Grant said. “An inventory. Who has a generator, who needs prescription medication, that kind of thing. This is more important than it might seem.” Drew was glad that there was a role for a retired accountant.

“We’ll continue to have breakfasts here for a while,” Grant said. “We have quite a bit of pancake mix. But at some point, we’ll be switching over to other things.” Grant knew that the pancake mix would be running out in a week or two. Breakfast for about fifteen every day would exhaust even the best cache of food. He didn’t want to say that because it could cause panic, but he wanted to introduce the idea that he couldn’t keep doing breakfast for fifteen every day. “We have lots of biscuit mix,” he added. Introduce the idea that things will run out, but remind them that there were substitutes. He wanted to balance lowering their expectations while also instilling hope.

“Lisa is in charge of medical things, of course,” Grant said. What Lisa didn’t know was that Grant already had a plan for her to be the Pierce Point doctor. In fact, being able to offer an ER doctor to the residents was a key part of his plan to build up Pierce Point as a solid defensible and sustaining community. But, he needed to ease her into that.

“Knowing Lisa like I do,” he smiled at her, “she will be helping with absolutely everything when she’s not doing medical things. So I guess her second job out here is ‘being Lisa.’” She smiled at him. She was glad that Grant appreciated all she did in addition to her doctor job.

“I’d like each of you to talk to her about any medical conditions you have,” Grant said. Everyone nodded.

“Manda,” Grant said, “you have a duty, too, and a very important one. You will be taking care of Cole. He doesn’t need full time attention, but you need to be around him. You will be helping with lots of miscellaneous things. So will Cole, but you’re in charge of him, OK?”

“Of course, Dad,” Manda said.

Grant looked to see if Paul’s five-year old daughter, Missy, was there. She was. “Tammy, do you think Paul would mind if Manda looked after Missy, too? I think Missy and Cole could become friends.” What Grant didn’t say is that Missy, at age five, had roughly the same language skills as Cole, at age thirteen.

“Sure,” Tammy said. “With Paul doing his job out here and me at the power company, Missy could use some looking after, especially now that there are…” she almost said, “criminals roaming around” but she didn’t. “There are more things going on,” she said.

“Tammy,” Grant said, “is a special case. In addition to the dinners at her place, she has a traditional job. At least I think you do, right?”

“As far as I know,” Tammy said, “I’m still working at the power company.”

“Well, go to your job,” Grant said. “Lord knows we need the power to stay on. Could you still coordinate the dinners? You can ask any of us, including me, to help you with that.”

“Sure,” Tammy said. Working her normal job and cooking for everyone was typical for her.

Grant said, “That’s a good point, too. I’m sure we’ll all pitch in with whatever we need to. I, for one, don’t have any specific duties. I’ll just make sure all the other stuff gets done, but I’ll be working on these things from dawn until dusk. Is everyone OK with me having that role?” Grant figured the Morrells and Colsons would be OK with him running things since he brought the Team to protect them. The Team would be OK with it because Grant brought them to Pierce Point. His family would be OK with it because they were his family.

More general nodding of heads.

“We don’t have a washing machine at my cabin,” Grant said. “Could we do laundry at the Morrells or Colsons?”

“We have fewer people using our machine so we could do it,” Mary Anne said. Tammy nodded.

“The Team’s cabin has a washer and dryer so you guys can do your own laundry,” Grant said. “Don’t be lazy bachelors.”

That brought up a good point. People feeling like others weren’t doing enough. It wasn’t a problem now, but it could be over time. Especially with so many people who didn’t really know each other.

“If anyone has a concern about their duties or other people’s, let me know,” Grant said. “No, seriously, let me know. Even if you think I’m not pulling my weight. We’ll all be helping everyone and I’d like it to be as smooth as possible.”

Grant realized he was making it sound like they were in a work camp. So he said, “Hey, we won’t be working all the time. We are out here in a beautiful place and our day jobs, except Tammy’s, have been put on hold. This is a vacation in a sense. We have to do things we normally didn’t have to, like hunt, can food, and guard our neighborhood. But we can still have lots of fun. I think this might actually be relaxing once we get into the swing of it.”

Grant looked at Lisa. She wasn’t fully going for it. She was expressionless again. Not that she disagreed with Grant, she was just waiting to see if this really would be a “vacation.”

Grant continued, “Beach walks, campfires, playing board games, getting to know each other. This could be decent.”

Grant had to close this by tying everything together. “This beats the heck out of what most people in town are having to go through.” More nodding.

He even saw a slight nod from Lisa.