299 Days: The Visitors (7 page)

She was wrong. She was indeed good at her job, but the part about litmus test wasn’t true. She was friends with some people who the government didn’t like; some POIs, like Grant Matson and her other friends from the Washington Association of Business. She made the mistake of being Facebook friends with them and that’s how the police determined that she was a threat to the security of the state. She had been had been quietly reassigned jobs when they found out who her friends were.

Now she was relegated to giving tours of Camp Murray to groups of VIPs. “VIPs” was a stretch. They were mostly city council members, Freedom Corps mid-level managers, and corporate people who were working for the government. She would “brief” them on the propaganda of the day. “Everything is going great. We’re getting food out to every corner of the state. The Recovery has started. The Crisis is just temporary. Normal life will return soon.” That was the “briefing.” It was the same slop she’d been dishing up to the media, except now her audience was a handful of political hacks instead of a TV audience.

Jeanie suspected her cell phone and computer were being monitored. There always seemed to be someone around her. Her new roommate at Camp Murray’s women’s quarters seemed very interested in everything about her.

“Terrorists.” That’s what they called Grant Matson and people like him. They also called them “Teabaggers,” “militia,” and “rednecks.” She had started using those terms, too. No more. Silently, to her herself, she would start using the correct term, “Patriot” – just not out loud, as that would surely get her in trouble.

What had happened to her in the past month or so? She was a “conservative.” She was one of the few of her kind who actually could get some positive things done in state government. Her boss, the State Auditor, was a “reformer” who was going to reverse the course of the state from corruption and spending to fairness and fiscal sanity. Then, when everyone told him he could be the next governor, he started to pull back on all that “reform” talk. He quickly began talking about “governing” and running the state more efficiently. Running the mammoth government. Better. Getting more done with the same resources. And getting “more done” meant more government.

Well, her boss got his wish. It was widely known in Camp Murray, but not outside it, that the Governor had suffered a nervous breakdown and would resign soon. As the unofficial successor to the Governor, State Auditor Rick Menlow was now surrounded by guards, received top secret briefings, and held meetings where people came to beg him for food, fuel, medicine, and security. He would dispense life-saving supplies to the groveling visitors with the wave of a hand and have people kiss his hand. He had it made. What could be better for a politician?

How did Menlow go from being the brash reformer to this? Incrementally, Jeanie realized. One little compromise after another. He agreed to an expansion of government power for a “good cause,” like helping some group that would result in votes for the Republicans. When the Republicans got enough votes, they assured themselves, they could start changing things. They couldn’t change things without the votes, so they needed to expand government, just temporarily, of course, to get the votes. Then they’d swing into action and…cut all that government they just expanded? If they got votes for expanding government, how could they keep those votes if they cut it? Who had thought this could work?

The inherent inconsistency with this logic was that expanding government to get the votes meant that government was now bigger when you tried to use the power you won with those votes to then cut government. You grew the beast in order to have more power to slay the beast. Beasts didn’t work that way.

The only way to limit the size of government was not to grow it in the first place. Once it grows, it can’t be trimmed back voluntarily. It would take some big, awful event to forcibly cut it back, which is what was going on outside the walls of Camp Murray.

So, who believed that the vote-gathering method would work? Jeanie, that’s who. She was an extremely intelligent, young, energetic, and beautiful firebrand who was going to save the world. Now look at her. She was basically in a prison where her job was to lie to people all day.

She was losing sleep wondering how the country would get out of this mess. The answer scared her. Reset. Starting over. Scrapping the old system entirely and replacing it with something that would work. The new system that would work was already written up. It was called the Constitution.

The federal Constitution was great, but Washington State’s was even better. Jeanie remembered seeing a copy of the state Constitution Bill of Rights posted at Camp Murray, of all places. The first section of it said: “All political power is inherent in the people, and governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, and are established to protect and maintain individual rights.” There it was, right there. All you needed was for people to carry those words out.

That meant people would actually want to have limited government and that desire had long since passed in America. Generation after generation wanted more from government, and each generation worked a little less. Classroom after classroom of kids were taught that the community takes care of you and that those who achieve need to give most of it back to the community. Given how indoctrinated the past few generations of students were, Jeanie was actually surprised the Collapse hadn’t happened sooner.

“Collapse,” Jeanie said to herself when no one was around her. There, she said it; to herself, at least. That term was not the one she was supposed to use; “Crisis” was. Oh well. She would start being honest…at least silently to herself. That was a start.

A collapse. That’s what was needed, she thought. It was inevitable. It was horrible and no sane person wanted it. It’s just that sane people had to acknowledge it was necessary, even if horrible.

But, Jeanie realized, if government hadn’t become so big, a mere correction would have been enough to fix things. A huge collapse would not have been necessary. However, as things got bad, the efforts to prop up the system went into overdrive. The worse things got, the more government was used to try to fix all the problems big government created. And, of course, more government actually just made things worse, which then necessitated more government to cure the effects of more government. It was a vicious cycle.

Maybe the Collapse was a good thing, Jeanie was starting to think. No. It couldn’t be. How could people starving, dying of easily treatable medical conditions, and people shooting each other be a “good thing”? There were so many innocent kids nearby who were scared of all the bad men and guns around them. There were kids who didn’t know where their parents were. There was no way this was a “good thing.”

But, it was entirely predictable. In fact, people like Jeanie had warned that it was coming. Not too loudly, though. There was no need to have people think you’re crazy. Don’t talk about “collapse” because that’s alarmist talk. You don’t want your friends to think there’s something wrong with you, so you keep those concerns to yourself. Besides, there had never been anything like a collapse in America. It hadn’t happened before, so it could never happen.

Jeanie forced herself to quit with the big thoughts and concentrate on her work. She headed off to start the tour she was giving of Camp Murray to some city officials from Seattle. They were gushing about all the good work the government was doing for them. Semi-trucks of food were rolling into the grocery store in their Seattle neighborhood. Jeanie knew which store they were talking about. It was near where she lived briefly in Seattle before getting her job in Olympia. The store was a hoity-toity high-end organic foods supermarket. Everything there cost a lot more than anywhere else. They had several hundred kinds of cheese before the Collapse. That store had all kinds of signs up about how they were doing “green” things for the environment. Five dollar lattes. At least that’s what they cost a few years ago. She could only imagine what they’d cost now, but guessed that people were still buying them – assuming that store had any lattes to sell.

Jeanie realized she was being negative about all this “collapse” and “reset” stuff. She needed to be positive to get through another day there. She thought about all the free lattes she could get at the cafeteria at Camp Murray. She had everything she needed. She was well taken care of and that was something positive.

A few seconds after trying to be positive, Jeanie realized there was plenty of scary news, too. Even though she was not receiving the daily briefings, scuttlebutt around Camp Murray described some troubling developments.

The Governor had issued a “declaration of insurrection.” This was a bigger deal than the previous “declaration of emergency,” which gave emergency powers to the civilian state government. The declaration of insurrection went further. It allowed the Governor to declare martial law and totally suspend civilian government, like the courts and the Constitution. Fortunately, Jeanie knew that the state didn’t have nearly enough troops or police to implement this outside of their two strongholds: Seattle, the biggest city, and Olympia, the state capitol. But it was frightening that they had given themselves this kind of power. Worse yet, most people, at least in the government-controlled areas, welcomed martial law. They were glad the government was “doing something.”

Another frightening development Jeanie heard at Camp Murray was that a bunch of Patriot military and police units had defected and formed the “Washington State Guard.” This was an army, but it wasn’t controlled by the state or federal governments. It was the rebel army, the army fighting the government. No one at Camp Murray called it a “civil war’ – it wasn’t like there were blue and grey uniforms and two different flags. Now there was so much chaos that a formal term like “civil war” seemed too grand. It was just that everything had broken down and now some army had apparently formed that was out to replace the current government.

The government people at Camp Murray were freaking out over the announcement of the Washington State Guard. They had back-to-back and overnight meetings about this. They talked about which units of the military and police were “loyal” and which ones had “gone over” to the other side.

Delegations of military officers came to Camp Murray to meet with the Governor, who seemed to be trying to persuade—plead with, actually—these officers to stay loyal. Most of the officers were issuing demands as the price of staying loyal. They wanted money or supplies or to stay out of combat in exchange for not “going over.” The government was giving them whatever they wanted. There was no guarantee, though, that the units promising loyalty would stay loyal. In fact, a few officers were shopping out their units to the highest bidders, who were almost always the Loyalists, since they had stuff to give away. Besides, the Patriots were not interested in mercenary units just doing it for the money.

Jeanie also heard rumblings about the gangs. Not just the street gangs that they’d all known about. The people at Camp Murray who oversaw gang activity were worried about the “super gangs,” which were large alliances of affiliated street gangs. Much like the mercenary military units, the super gangs were demanding more and more from the government to stay loyal. They wanted more food, fuel, medicine, and guns that they would then sell. They wanted more and more “territory,” which meant the government would lose control to them in a given area.

Some of the super gangs got tired of the measly pickings the government gave them and went into business for themselves. South Seattle and much of Tacoma were run by various super gangs, mostly Mexican, Asian, and Russian. The government sent some regular Army units from Ft. Lewis to stand up against the super gangs. These units wore ski masks to hide their identities just like the government troops fighting gangs in Mexico used to do. Those photographs stayed off the news. The Army units cleaned out the rebel gangs, at a terrible cost in casualties and equipment. The civilian casualties were horrendous. Another disturbing outcome of these raids was that, due to the lack of Army manpower, the gangs still loyal to the government—the competitors with the rebel gangs—had to be used to occupy the conquered parts of Seattle and Tacoma. The loyal gangs were perfectly happy to have some new territory. They went on a looting and raping spree in the new areas. The Army just watched, and some even joined in.

But, that was somewhere else, Jeanie told herself. Sure, it was only a few miles away, but it wasn’t where
she
lived. And it was only a small area of Seattle and Tacoma. That was not happening in the majority of the state, so
most
people were OK. Jeanie was trying to stay positive.

Then she had another thought. Winter was coming. It was sunny and nice out now, but wait until it got cold and rainy. It never got brutally cold in Washington State, but it did rain for months, which meant people would be huddled inside, coughing on each other. Communicable diseases would go through the roof. The people at Camp Murray had been planning for outbreaks of all kinds of third world diseases that no one thought could pop up in America. Cholera and typhoid were on the top of their lists.

One thing Jeanie did know from her work was that the government was definitely supplying the friendly urban areas much more than the rural areas. There was a rumor that the government would soon threaten to shut off utilities to rural areas to get them to comply. Jeanine didn’t know if that was true, but she did know one thing. Almost all the food and supplies were delivered to the Seattle area and Olympia. In fact, she was told to brag about this to her urban and suburban VIP tour guests. She would tell them that the government was “doing the most for as many as possible,” which meant feeding the cities. In fact, now that she thought about it, she never had VIPs from rural areas. It was as if the areas outside Seattle, the suburbs, and Olympia didn’t exist anymore.

They kind of didn’t. There was no government out there. Local government still existed in rural areas, though it was barely functioning. Local law enforcement still operated, but mostly with the help of volunteers. Some fire departments still operated out there. House fires were a problem with all the looting and crime. Criminals would set a house on fire to destroy evidence, eliminate witnesses, or intimidate residents.