299 Days: The Collapse Page 2

  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 w
oods 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.

  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 stop
s. 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.