299 Days: The Community

Chapter 102 This Never Gets Old (May 10)

It was time for Grant and the Team to go to work. Yeah, that’s right. Go to work. Grant thought about that. Go to work. It felt good to think that. It felt reassuring. They’d get through this. It’s a job. A damned cool one and one he was lucky to have. But, it was a job. He needed to treat it like one.

Grant wanted his guys to think of it this way, too. They were gathering by Mark’s truck getting their gear on. “OK, gentlemen, let’s go to work,” Grant said. They smiled.

Armed serenity, Grant thought. That’s what it was: armed serenity. That was how he described the feeling of being with his guys like this. Grant flashed back to his childhood when he went to sleep with the .22 rifle because he expected his dad to stab him in his sleep. That’s why, Grant thought, he felt so comforted by guns. He knew what it was like to need the protection. That’s why armed serenity made so much sense.

They would have a new guest in the truck today—Paul. He was very glad to be riding along. He had on a pistol belt; a regular belt with a cheap Uncle Mike’s holster containing a large revolver. Grant pointed to Paul’s revolver and said, “That works fine.” He wanted Paul to know that it didn’t take a Glock with a $300 Surefire light on it in a Raven Concealment holster to be equipped to defend himself. Revolvers had been defending people just fine for over 150 years.

Paul grabbed a shotgun and asked Grant, “Should I bring this, too?”

“Nah,” Grant said. “I think it will get in your way.” Paul would need his hands free for what Grant had in mind for him that day. Besides, the Team had plenty of firepower with them.

Paul and Grant walked out to Mark’s truck. Mark saw Paul going to the Grange and was proud. He was thankful that Grant was getting Paul involved. Mark was thankful for a lot of things lately.

Grant offered to let Paul ride in the cab since he’d probably have trouble getting up into the back of the truck. Paul shook his head and headed to the back. It was a few feet from the ground to the tailgate. He looked at the height he had to get up over, put his hand on the tailgate and threw himself onto the tailgate. The truck bounced up and down when he hit the tailgate. But he did it. He set a goal and did it. He smiled slightly. He had made his point: he would work his ass off to do what was necessary. Grant would rather have a guy with the right attitude than a perfect set of abs.

In fact, Grant noted to himself, it looked like Paul was losing some weight. His tee shirt seemed a little looser around the collar. Grant would pay attention to this and see if this apparent trend was continuing. It made sense, given the can-do attitude he’d just shown by getting into the back of the truck.

The ride to the Grange was spectacular, as always. Grant looked at the guys and said what was becoming another morning tradition, “This never gets old.” They smiled and nodded. They knew how lucky they were to be there instead of the city. They knew they had an important role out there, and that they looked cool doing it.

People were waving to them along the way, though it was less of a thrill for them to see the Team than the previous two days. Most had already seen them, so the novelty had worn off. But still, people were smiling and glad to see the volunteer police force protecting them. It was that gratitude that motivated Grant. That, and the fear of the bad people outside the Pierce Point gates. And probably a few within the gates.

They pulled into the Grange. There were quite a few people there, but only two vehicles. Grant assumed people must be walking to the Grange or sharing rides. Gas was short, very short. The idea of driving alone to go somewhere now seemed like a preposterous luxury.

Paul was the closest to the tailgate. He looked at the ground, put his hand on the tailgate, and jumped down, landing perfectly. It was hard for him to do, but he was going to do it. The rest of the guys jumped out of the truck effortlessly.

They went in and found Rich at a card table, looking at the plat maps. He was glad to see the Team and wondered who the fat guy was. Rich had seen him at the first Grange meeting, but didn’t know his name.

Grant made the introduction. “Rich, this is Paul Colson, Mark’s son.”

Rich shook Paul’s hand, “Pleased to meet you again.” Rich wondered why Grant decided to bring him along.

Grant said to Rich, “Paul is a metal fabricator. He has some equipment back at his house. I thought you could find a use for someone with his skill.”

Rich nodded. He and Grant thought the same way.

“Like,” Grant said, “how about a real gate for the entrance? Moving a car back and forth takes a ton of time and too much gas.”

Rich smiled. “Yeah, Dan wanted to get a swinging metal pole across there that we could open and close with just one person.” He looked at Paul, “Is that something you could build?”

“Sure,” Paul said with a smile. “Piece of cake. It’ll depend on what kind of materials we have.” Paul was thrilled about making the gate. He had a purpose now. He’d show everyone how useful he was.

“Well,” Rich said, “Dan is down at the gate and I need to get you guys coordinated with the gate guards. Let’s go down there.”

They piled back into Mark’s truck. Paul jumped up into the back. This isn’t so hard, he thought. It felt good to be outside doing things and being with these guys. It sure beat sitting around the house thinking about how much he hated his ex-wife. And eating.

Rich grabbed his handheld CB radio. He told the gate they were coming. Scotty had his CB, too. They talked about what channels they’d use.

Scotty told Rich, “I have a ham handheld, too.” Ham radios were far more potent than CBs but, before the Collapse, required an FCC license to operate. The licenses were pretty easy to get; it only involved a simple test. “Hams are way better for longer range and more secure communications,” Scotty said. “Let me know how I can help with that.”

“I keep meaning to hook you up with Curt Copeland,” Rich said. “I think we can use ham units for those kinds of communications, but use CBs for routine stuff.” Rich thought, in a perfect world, everyone would have a ham license and a ham handheld radio in their preps before the Collapse. But this wasn’t a perfect world. CBs were a decent alternative.

“I’ll get with him,” Scotty said. He wanted to show off a little. He asked Rich, “What’s his call sign and what frequency is he on?”

Rich told him. Scotty got on his ham handheld and, in a few seconds, was talking to Curt, who was two miles away and behind a slight hill from the Grange. Everyone had thought they’d have to wait until the end of the day and then drive over to Curt’s house in order for the two to talk. Nope. It took ten seconds and not a drop of gas to talk using the ham units. Grant realized that, with the distances involved, Scotty and Curt could have probably talked on the CB, but the ham was pretty cool. And secure. Well, not truly secure, but not as easy to listen in on as a CB. Sensitive communications couldn’t be blabbed on a CB when bad guys could be listening. Odds were that criminals didn’t know how to run a ham radio, or if they did, that they didn’t have the exact frequency the good guys were talking on.

Mark’s truck with the Team, Paul, and Rich came down the hill to the entrance to Pierce Point. There were several cars and trucks parked at the volunteer fire station about a hundred yards from the bridge that had the car across the road. There were about fifteen armed guys and few women there. Mostly shotguns and hunting rifles, although one guy had an AR and another had a Mini-14. They were talking, but were clearly paying attention to the gate and bridge. While people were chatting and social, it wasn’t a BS session. It was a serious job.

Grant thought about how much things had changed. Ten days ago, a group of armed people guarding a community would have seemed hugely out of place. In fact, Grant had never seen it before, except when watching footage of Hurricane Katrina. He more recently saw it on TV down in Texas and California with the Mexican refugee situation. Then one amazing day he saw it with his own eyes in his own neighborhood. He saw it again a few days ago when he came to Pierce Point. Now it was starting to seem normal.

The gate guards were happy to see the Team, who, with their ARs and gear, looked much more professional than the rag-tag gate guards. But, the gate guards looked like a badass group of good ol’ boys (and girls). What they lacked in gear, they made up for in attitude. Perfect, Grant thought. All these guys need is a basement full of ARs and they’d have a pretty decent fighting force.

Exactly. Now you see what’s going on.

Grant started getting this strange sensation that he could predict what was going to happen in the future. Seeing the guards, a prediction formed in his mind, but he didn’t want to say it out loud because it seemed outlandish.

Rich found Dan and Ryan and motioned for Paul to come over to them.

“Paul here is a metal fabricator,” Rich said to Dan. “Would you like a nice metal swing-out gate instead of that piece of shit car?”

Dan grinned. “Hell, yes.”

Rich asked Dan, “What kind of gate materials do we have?”

Dan and Paul talked about the materials they had and how to make the gate. Paul was in heaven. He was needed. This was one of the best days of his life.

While Dan and Paul were coming up with a plan for the gate, Rich was introducing the Team to the guards. Many had already met them at the Grange meetings, but some had been on guard duty and hadn’t had the chance. The guards were less wowed by the Team than the civilians were, but they were glad to have the well-armed and seemingly well trained Team around. Everyone was getting along well. The Team realized that these gate guys, with their duck hunter guns, would be the first line of defense if Pierce Point were attacked. These guys were putting their lives on the line to protect everyone, just like the Team was. They had different jobs and gear, but every one of them was equal. They were all risking their lives for others, which is all that mattered.

Scotty was talking to the woman who appeared to be in charge of communications. They were working on which CB channels to use. Grant took the rest of the Team to the gate and talked to the guys behind the car about the defenses there. They had a great field of fire into the road that fed onto the bridge. They had guards and patrols along the “river,” which was actually a large creek.

One of the gate guards pointed up the hill to the treeline and said that they had snipers up there.

“How many?” Grant asked.

“Enough,” the guard said with an evasive smile. “Some of my hunting buddies who like to sit in the forest for hours at a time and watch things. Their old ladies aren’t around to nag at them out here so this is like a vacation for them. A couple of them are older guys who can’t walk around and stand all day. They can find a comfy shady patch up there and hunt for anyone who somehow makes it past us, or who tries to get across the river. They’ve got a CB so we can talk.”

Grant asked the guard, “How far of a shot is that?”

The guard pointed to his hunting laser rangefinder. “217 yards, more or less.” He smiled.

Hunters concealed on a forested hill with a CB; low tech, but extremely effective.

Some dogs started barking. It sounded like they were in the volunteer fire department building. Bobby motioned for Grant to come into the building.

When he walked in, Grant saw Dan with his AK slung over his shoulder and something far more ferocious: three German Shepherds. Grant surmised that these must be the K9s Dan was training. They were impressive animals. Dan calmed them down quickly. He knew these dogs well and they knew him.

“Dan, tell the Team about your dogs,” Rich said. Rich was very proud of his friend, Dan, and the dogs.

“Well, I run three dogs at the gate here,” Dan said. “These are attack dogs. I have detection dogs at home that are trained to sniff for drugs and explosives, but we don’t need them here. We need attack dogs.”

Dan pointed to his three dogs. “They’re named Cairo, Boris, and Adis.” Each dog looked with approval at Dan when he said its name. “We patrol the river. These guys can pick up the scent of anyone coming, or attempting to come, across the river. If I release one and tell it to ‘fetch!’ it’ll go after whoever is unlucky enough to be hiding or running away. There is nothing more terrifying than an eighty pound snarling German Shepherd coming at you doing about twenty miles an hour. I’ve seen Taliban shit their pants, literally crap their drawers, and throw up their hands when they hear and see a dog coming. The bad guys weren’t afraid of men with guns. It was the dogs that got them to surrender.” Dan was smiling.

These dogs were a huge asset; better than a machine gun or surveillance cameras. Or both.

Grant asked Dan, “So this is what you did in the Air Force?”

“Yep. Base defense,” Dan said. “I worked with dogs the last eight years of my twenty-five years in. Now I train the Sheriff Department’s K9s on a volunteer basis. When I was in the Air Force, I did the usual stuff, which included law enforcement on base. But a lot of what we did was more like infantry, except that we were more defense-oriented than typical infantry, which is offense-oriented. We had a big ol’ air base to defend with fences and mines sometimes. That’s where the dogs come in. They can find intruders and attack them. Arabs are terrified of dogs, which came in handy…where I was a couple of times.” The U.S. used air bases in various countries that did not want it known that they were helping the Americans, so the locations of the bases were secret. Dan, out of habit, wasn’t saying where the bases were.

Dan petted a dog and said, “Dogs are perfect for defending an area. Perfect. Detect and attack. You can’t ask for anything more than that when you’re repelling bad guys.”

Dan looked out at the gate and the surrounding area and drew in a deep breath. “This is exactly what I’ve trained to do, and I’m glad to be doing it again. Not that I want any of this to be happening, but at least I can add something here for my neighbors.” Grant remembered from their earlier conversation that Rich knew Dan from Oath Keepers. That meant that Dan wasn’t just a guy with some experience and some dogs—Dan was a Patriot who was in this for all the right reasons.

Grant and the guys were afraid to pet the dogs. Dan said, “Go ahead, pet them. Let them know your scent and that you’re okay.” The dogs seemed to sense Dan’s acceptance of the guys and instinctively knew that they weren’t a threat.

They heard some activity at the gate, so Grant went outside to see what was happening. A pickup with some guys was waiting to re-enter Pierce Point. The guards waved and someone moved the car blocking the entrance. The pickup slowly drove in, and the guys got out and started to visit with the guards. They looked like good ol’ boys in work clothes with hunting rifles and various pistols.

Grant came up to the group just in time to hear one of the guys say, “It’s getting bad in town.” A crowd was gathering around him. People were starved for information about conditions out there.

“Here’s the good news,” the guy said. “As you come into town just after the city limits, right at that little park, there is a roadblock kind of like this one. Lots of men with guns,” the guy motioned with his hand toward the guards, “like this, but more guys.” He paused and then said, “They have blue strips of cloth tied around their arm.” People were organizing themselves to solve a problem; no government was needed for this. “I saw one cop in uniform there with them so I guess it’s a posse or something.”

The guy continued. “They were checking IDs. They saw that we were from here so they let us in. They told us to be armed because they couldn’t keep control of everything going on in town. We went down Strauss toward Martin’s.” Martin’s was the name of the local grocery store. “There was a pickup load of some pretty mean looking Mexicans. They didn’t bother us, but I wouldn’t want to piss them off. Lots of people are carrying guns, which looked weird. But what looked weirder was the people who didn’t have guns. Who walks around town now without a gun?” The idiots who didn’t own a gun, Grant thought. Even out there in the rural part of the state, plenty of households didn’t own one.

One of the guards asked, “How are the shelves at Martin’s?”

“Pretty bare,” the guy said. “We waited in a long line in the parking lot to go in. There were a few of these blue ribbon guys walking around the parking lot to control the crowd. People were pretty calm, but some were bitching about the line and the lack of this and that. It was pissing me off. Shut up. It’s hard enough to go through this shit, but to have some welfare queen complaining…the fatter they were, the more they bitched.” Like any other rural part of America, there were plenty of welfare recipients in Frederickson. Most were white.

“When we came up to the door at Martin’s,” the guy continued, “we had to check our weapons. We left them with Jimmy,” he said pointing to one of the guys from his truck. “I ain’t trusting those things to anyone. Hey, tell them what someone said to you while we were inside.”

Jimmy said, “Some guy, some yuppie lookin’ guy, asked how much we wanted for Derrick’s .357. He said he had $1,000 in cash. Can you believe that?”

Everyone looked over at Derrick, who had his .357 in a holster. He pointed at his .357 and said, “A week ago, I would have said, ‘sold!’ But now there’s nothing worth buyin’ for $1,000. There’s almost nothing left in Martin’s.”

The guy who had been telling this story said, “Yep. Shelves are pretty much bare. Just stuff that no one wants to eat. Health food shit. Oh, and the racks of greeting cards are untouched. No one wants to send a birthday card now,” he chuckled. “Besides health food, about the only stuff left is weird shit like Chinese food.” The guy saw Pow and said, “No offense.”

Pow shot back, “No problem, bro. I like steak and fried chicken.” That lightened up the mood.

Grant asked the guy, “What are prices like?”

“Dunno,” the guy said. “We didn’t find anything we wanted to buy. They had a sign up about the $200 limit. We left. What a big waste of time. We went around town some more just to see what was going on. I mean, I wanted to come back with something. But we got nothin’.” He thought for a second and then said, “I even heard a couple of shots. Sounded like a pistol. ‘Pop!’ ‘Pop!’”

“Well,” he continued, “the gas stations were closed. That’s when I got pissed. I had wasted all that gas to come to town and there’s nothin’ to buy.” For the first time the guy started to look concerned.

“We’re screwed if this doesn’t straighten out soon,” the guy said. It got quiet. Real quiet. People had been busy with the camaraderie of guard duty and all the excitement about defending their community. Now it was sinking in. There was nothing in town. They were on their own.