299 Days: The Collapse (3 page)

“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.

Chapter 45

“You will be well taken care of.”

(First week of May)

Grant walked into his house, still without having formulated a clear excuse for going over to Ron’s in a half hour.

Lisa asked, “Hey, how did the neighborhood meeting go? Are they going to do anything?”

Of course not, Grant wanted to say. He would just tell her that everything was fine.

“Nope,” Grant said. “They’re not going to do anything.” She looked surprised.

“So,” Grant said, “Ron Spencer and Len Isaacson want to talk about getting some guys together and taking some drives around the neighborhood at night to keep an eye on things.” He left out the part about the guns.

“I think that’s a great idea,” Lisa said. “What a relief that would be.”

Wow. It worked.

“I think I’ll do it,” Grant said. “We’ll have those radios we gave to Manda back when she rode her bike all the time. We’ll be very safe.”

“Good. Thanks for doing this,” she said. Whoa. Lisa, while she was stuck in the current world of relying on 911, was not stupid. Far from it. She knew there were problems out there, but she couldn’t come to grips that the solutions involved things like guns, bugging out to the cabin, and abandoning her home. Little things like a neighborhood watch seemed perfect to her. This allowed her very smart brain to acknowledge the problem of lurking criminals, but not have to come up with a “farfetched” solution like bugging out.

Grant kissed her. He had to try to get her to start thinking about bugging out. He knew this was risky, but these were risky times.

“Honey,” Grant said, “I’m going to give the neighborhood patrols a solid try and hope that it works. I hope all this bad news stops. But if it doesn’t, I have a very detailed plan so you will be well taken care of.” He looked at her right in the eyes and said it again, slowly: “You will be well taken care of.”

She had no idea what he was talking about. She will be “well taken care of?”

Grant continued, “You and I have an obligation to the kids and each other to be safe. That means we need to consider a plan to go out to the cabin, at least for a short period of time to let things calm down. I have… ”

“No,” Lisa said. “We’re not going out to your cabin to live,” she said. Your cabin? Wasn’t it their cabin?

“No, no, no,” she said, shaking her head. “All my stuff is here. All of Cole’s stuff is here. We can’t just go out there. Whenever we go on a trip, I always have to do all the packing.”

That was because she wouldn’t let Grant do it. It had to be done her way.

“We won’t need to pack much because there is already a lot of stuff out there,” Grant said. Then he realized that she had no idea how much stuff was actually out there. She’d never looked in the “spider shed” that had about nine months of food.

“No,” she said, getting mad. “That cabin is your little place to go on the weekends. It’s not a place to live for any period of time.” She just stared at him. That was the end of the conversation.

Grant was insulted. All his work and planning and she was just going to dismiss it like that? Grant started getting really mad. He had to control it. He couldn’t turn bugging out into an “I’m right, you’re wrong” issue with her. He struggled for a few seconds to get control of his anger.

“OK,” he said. “I hear what you’re saying. I disagree, but hope you at least think about it. If things continue to go downhill and get dangerous, I will share my concerns with you.” That was feminized speech he learned in government: “share my concerns with you.” He had to talk to her like the normal suburban wife she was, instead of the survivalist he was.

He had to act like this was no big deal. “I’m going to get ready to go over to Ron’s. Thanks for listening to my concerns,” he said as he kissed her. She smiled. She thought she had won that argument. Grant knew there would be a Round II.

He got the radios and went upstairs to where he kept his Glock. He tested the flashlight on the end of the barrel. He checked the magazine; full of self-defense rounds, the good ones that cost a $1 a piece. He wrapped the pistol in a hand towel to get it past Lisa, and went out to the garage where his gun stuff was and got his pistol belt, holster, and extra magazines. He had his holster that allowed him to put his Glock in with the flashlight on the end. He quickly loaded the extra mags, put on the belt, holstered his gun, put a light jacket over it, and got a big Maglight flashlight. He had done all of this without getting caught by Lisa.

Grant popped his head from the garage into the house and said, “See you in a little while, honey. I’ll be at the Spencer’s.”

“OK. Be safe,” she said.

He went over to the Spencer’s, two houses away. Len came by, about twenty minutes late. He came with four other guys.

“Sorry to be late,” Len said. “Us Navy guys hate to be late, but I thought you’d be OK with why,” he said motioning to the four new guys. Grant knew one of them, Dave Burton, because his daughter and Cole were in the same grade at school. The other three looked mildly familiar, but Grant wasn’t sure they lived in the Cedars. After some introductions, he found out they did.

Grant explained about the radios. They decided to go out and test them. They did that for about an hour, trying from every corner of the subdivision. The radios worked well.

These guys were pretty decent. The new guys owned guns, but weren’t hardcore “gun guys.” That was OK; at least they had concealed pistols and permits to carry. They were the kind of first-time gun buyers Grant saw all day long at Capitol City Guns. He was actually surprised that out of the fifty or so houses in the Cedars that even seven guys had guns.

“We will have our pistols on us at all times, but will also have a long gun in the car,” Grant said. “Technically, it’s illegal but I’m doing it. Who’s with me?” They all nodded. When all else fails to motivate guys, try shaming them into being a bad ass.

“I only have a pistol,” said Chris, one of the new guys.

“Me too,” said Mick, another of the guys.

Ron was a duck hunter. “You guys know how to run a pump shotgun?” They nodded. They had both hunted a little. “I’ll set you up with one of my Remington Wingmasters. I’ve…” he caught himself, but decided to trust these guys, “… got a couple.” He smiled.

Now that the two guys without long guns each had one, no one asked each other what kind of long gun they would use. While they were all on the same team, there was still something about not blabbing about all your guns. Each one said they had an adequate long gun in the car, which was all anyone needed to know. Grant realized that an hour ago these guys barely knew each other. They all were a little afraid about the government trying to take their guns away. So they didn’t talk about them.

Grant knew what long gun he would use—his AR with the EO Tech red-dot sight. It made it possible to aim in the dark. It wasn’t a night-vision scope. The target wasn’t lit up, but the place where the bullet would go had a bright red dot and a red circle around it. The street lights would provide the light necessary for identifying the target, hopefully, but they would not provide enough light to use regular sights. Grant was very glad that he had night sights, whether the glow-in-the-dark dots on his iron sights or a red-dot sight, on each of his battle guns.

“Battle guns?” Did he just use that term in his head? Yep. It seemed to fit. This was serious shit.

They came up with a schedule to provide a two-car patrol from midnight to 5:00 a.m. It was May, so the sun rose at that hour. This meant patrolling every third or fourth night and having his weapons handy when he slept in case he heard a car horn. This would suck, but it had to be done.

For the first time in a while, Grant felt like he was doing something constructive out in the open. He prepped in secret and always knew he was doing something to deal with the problems that were coming, but he had never done them in public. Now he felt like he was publicly taking some actions to deal with the problems.