299 Days: The Collapse Read online

  “He’s gone,” Lisa said. “Went to the cabin. Without us.” She didn’t want to admit it.

  “What cabin? Whose cabin?” Ron asked. Lisa realized that Ron didn’t know about the cabin; Grant had always been weird about not telling too many people about the cabin. She realized she shouldn’t tell people about the cabin in case they wanted to go get Grant for the shooting.

  “Oh, a friend’s cabin,” Lisa said. “Down in Lewis County. I don’t know where exactly,” she said, wishing that she didn’t have to lie to her neighbors. But that asshole Grant was making her.

  Ron said some more things, but Lisa couldn’t really hear him. She couldn’t concentrate on what he was saying; she was in a daze until he left.

  Maybe she should take Manda and Cole to the cabin? No, that would be crazy.

  She went up to the kids’ rooms and hugged them. They were awake and very scared. Grant was awful. Why was he doing this to them?

  She turned off the news and sat on the couch and cried until the sun started to come up.

  Chapter 53

  Uncle Chip

  (May 6)

  Grant woke up. He was in the cabin. Daylight was coming through the window shades in the bedroom. What was he doing there? Then he remembered that he had come there last night. He was in his clothes and had his pistol belt on. He couldn’t believe he could sleep with a pistol belt on, but he had been so tired that he slept fine with it.

  Grant got up and looked for Chip, who was outside. He was watching everything. Grant came up to him.

  “Mornin’, sunshine,” Chip said. He pointed at Grant’s pistol belt. “Sure you want your neighbors to see you have that?”

  “Oh, they’re cool,” Grant said. “In fact, we should go meet them. They need to know why an ugly man is hanging out at my cabin.” Grant motioned for Chip to follow him. As they walked, Grant asked Chip, “What do you want the story to be? They’re cool and all, but you can’t tell them about the inventory.”

  Grant stopped walking, turned, and looked at Chip. “Of course, man. No one—not a soul—will hear about the basement from me.” Chip nodded. He knew Grant was serious.

  They resumed walking toward the Colsons’, which was about fifty yards away.

  “I’m your uncle,” Chip said. He was in his early sixties and Grant was in his forties. The uncle story would work.

  “OK, Uncle Chip,” Grant said. He noticed the pistol tucked under Chip’s shirt. “You might want to lose the pistol when you make these first impressions with the neighbors.” Chip nodded and went into the cabin and then came out without a pistol.

  They walked up the stairs to the front door of the Colsons’. Paul, Mark’s son, answered the door. He was so overweight that he was breathing hard just walking. It was daytime, so Tammy must have been at work. Mark came to the door.

  Grant said, “Hey, Mark, I wanted to introduce you to my Uncle Chip. He’ll be out here for a while. Things are pretty hairy in Olympia. He and I came out to get the place ready for Lisa and the kids.”

  Mark looked at Grant’s pistol belt. Mark had a revolver on a belt holster. Mark grinned and said, “Come on in, gentlemen. It looks like we have some things to talk about.”

  Mark had the news on. Grant and Chip just stared at the TV. The shit had, indeed, hit the fan. This was it. Wow. Things were coming apart at the seams.

  Mark let them take in the headlines for a minute or two. “Yep, the shit has officially hit the fan as we used to say in the Marine Corps.” They all quietly took in some more headlines. This was unreal.

  Mark asked them, “How’s Olympia?” Grant told him about the protests and that the cops were too busy to do anything. He didn’t tell Mark about apparently killing three guys and wounding a couple others. Grant knew and trusted Mark, but why confess to what some might call murder? Besides, he didn’t want Mark to think he was a killer. He didn’t want Mark looking at him that way, like his neighbors did last night. He also didn’t tell Mark about evacuating the guns. That would be stupid.

  Mark pointed out the window toward the other cabins. “How are we gonna secure our places? I mean, there is basically no crime in Pierce Point, but things aren’t normal right now. In normal times, the cops would take a half hour to get out here if someone called them. Now it will take a day, if they even come out, which I doubt they would. I think we need to carry at all times. What about a guard at the end of the road?” He pointed to where the county road turned into the gravel road. “You know,” he said with a smile, “keep the riff-raff out. So, for guard duty that would be me, Paul, and you two. I bet John Morrell would do it, and hell, probably Mary Anne. That’s six people. Four-hour shifts. Not bad.”

  Chip just listened. He knew the less he said, the less of a chance the “Uncle Chip” story would unravel.

  Mark said, “Let’s go talk to John and Mary Anne.” They walked from the front door of Mark’s house, which was up on the hill, down to the gravel road below where Grant’s and the Morrells’ cabins were.

  As they came up to the Morrells, Grant looked up to the second story window and saw Mary Anne up there with a shotgun. He was reassured by that. She waved. They knocked on the door and John answered, also with a shotgun.

  “Figured you’d be coming around,” John said. “We have some things to discuss.” He looked at the stranger, Chip.

  “Hi, John,” Grant said. “This is my Uncle Chip. He’s helping me get the cabin ready for when Lisa and the kids come out. He had to bug out of Olympia, too. It’s pretty bad there.” Grant retold the same stories about Olympia that he told Mark and Paul, except for the part about killing guys and evacuating the gun store. And about abandoning his family.

  John thought the guard idea was great. So did Mary Anne. They planned a guard shift schedule. They would do the first few shifts in pairs so they could go over things like code phrases for family and friends who arrived and were OK to have out there. They had one Pierce Point full-time resident with Grant or Chip since the full-time residents knew things Grant and Chip didn’t, like who the neighbors down the other roads were.

  The Morrells, Colsons, Chip, and Grant spent the next few hours picking guard spots and fallback positions, alarms, hastily building a little guard shack for when it rained, coordinating which guns people would use, and generally going over all the details of the very important topic of guarding their homes.

  The whole time Grant was thinking about Lisa and the kids. He was trying to use the work of preparing the guard system to take his mind off his family back in Olympia. It would work for a while and then his mind would drift back to his family.

  He needed a plan to get his family out there, as unlikely as it seemed that it would be possible to pull off. He found that the best way to deal with a problem was to plan for it and work the plan hard. That’s what he had done with preparing for the Collapse and, for the most part, that was working very well. There was just one piece missing: his family.

  Grant came up with a plan while he was making the guard shack. It was risky, but just might work. He kept refining it in his mind until it was pretty solid.

  By late afternoon, the guard system was set up. Grant and Chip went back to the cabin. They were very hungry. Grant fired up the grill and grilled some of the frozen hamburger patties they had. He had gotten a bunch of them a few days ago because it was early May and the summer BBQ season at the cabin was just beginning. He was glad he did; hamburger would be a rarity soon.

  Damn. Those burgers tasted good. Three of them, apiece. They washed them down with a beer. Those would be a rarity soon, too.

  Grant was tired and couldn’t stop thinking about his plan to get the family out there. He was ready to get it going.

  “Hey, Chip,” Grant said, “I have some shit in my head to deal with. I’d love to hang out and have some beers with you but I need to be alone right now. No offense.”

  “None taken,” Chip said. “I felt the same after a fire fight in Vietnam. You’ve been through a lot the past t
wenty-four hours. Take care of your head, my friend. It’s what will get you through this. Remember that.”

  Grant nodded and headed into the master bedroom. He got into the bedroom, closed the door, and took off his 5.11s and his t-shirt. He stank. He had plenty of work clothes to change into because he had been bringing his old work clothes out to the cabin for some time. He got into an old pair of shorts and an old t-shirt that said “World’s Best Dad.” It had a handprint in paint from both Manda and Cole. They got him one of those each Father’s Day when they were little. He didn’t wear them often, but had brought them out to the cabin. Now they had a meaning. He was wearing that shirt to remind him of the good times.

  Grant activated his plan. He found Manda’s phone that he had taken. He had thought clearly enough to also take her phone charger and had been charging the phone all day while he worked on the guard project. Grant knew that in emergencies, when everyone is calling, voice calls take lots of bandwidth, and often go down. Texts take a fraction of the bandwidth, and can often still be used.

  He had his phone with him too, but he had turned it onto “airplane mode” so it did not transmit and then he turned it off, altogether. While he didn’t think the cops had the time to be tracing cell phones right now, why take the risk? He thought he’d use his phone for the contacts in it, but then he remembered he had made a hard copy of his important contacts, like the Team, and the copy was out there. That way he could keep his phone off permanently.

  Grant grabbed Manda’s phone and sent a text to Pow. It appeared to go through fine. His text described the plan.

  Grant could finally relax a little. He had launched his plan. At least he had done something about getting Lisa and the kids out there. He went out to the living room and saw Chip getting his pistol belt on. “Time for my first guard shift. I’m with Mark tonight. See you in eight hours. Stay plenty armed. We’ve got invaluable treasure down in the basement.”

  “Roger that,” Grant said. Then they went over the codes they would use to identify themselves and to give each other basic coded instructions. “Break!” meant someone was trying to break into the basement. Chip picked up one of his personal ARs, which was leaning against the wall by one on the downstairs couch. He had four extra magazines in the pockets of his Carhartt work pants. That AR leaning on the wall looked so weird, yet so natural at the same time.

  A minute after Chip left, John and Paul came over. First they told Grant the news that mushroom clouds were seen in Israel and Iran. No one knew who started it, but it didn’t really matter. They felt bad for all the innocent people who had just died. They couldn’t help thinking about the other consequence: gasoline would be worth its weight in gold now. There had been more suicide bombings in New York and DC and elsewhere. Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed terrorist group that had been openly operating in Mexico with the drug cartels, took responsibility and said it was in retaliation for the strike on Iran. John and Paul said there were protests everywhere. People were furious that everything was coming apart. Grocery stores were being looted in parts of California, although the news showed video after video of calm at grocery stores. No news about Olympia.

  Nothing seemed different out at Pierce Point, though. It was like the news was about a different country. At Pierce Point, it was just another beautiful spring day out on the water. The weather was perfect.

  After the news update, John and Paul talked about what they came over to discuss, which was fishing in the inlet, and gathering clams and oysters from the beach. They had all the gear and knew all the spots. They would go out in pairs during the days and bring back some food. They all had some regular food stored up. Grant hadn’t told them about his food stores yet; he was saving information like that for people on a need-to-know basis, but he knew he’d be telling his neighbors about it soon.

  All the fish and seafood would stretch their regular food supplies quite a bit. Plus, fishing and gathering clams and oysters was relaxing in a stressful time. Mary Anne and Tammy, who was now back from work at the power company, volunteered to cook up all the goodies. They would have a group BBQ each night. Fresh salmon, clams, and oysters. After John and Paul left, Grant’s phone started vibrating. It wasn’t Manda’s phone; it was his. He had turned the transmitter off so why was it vibrating? He looked at his phone. He had a calendar event on it. It said he had an argument in a court case tomorrow.

  Work? Oh, crap. He hadn’t even thought about his job for the past thirty-six hours. He laughed to himself. Work. Like anyone was going to work right now. There wouldn’t be any judges at the courthouse to hear him argue his case about why the government broke some law.

  Law. Courts. That was a lifetime ago. It seemed so artificial and abstract now. Having enough food for the next few weeks, not getting shot, being able to be with his family. That’s what mattered now. It was the “new normal.”

  Between guard duty and fishing and seafood gathering, each person would be pretty busy. Good. Grant could stay in shape that way. He couldn’t go to the gym anymore.

  More importantly, they weren’t sitting around waiting for the government to save them. Their little group was bonding and really pulling together.

  You are in the right place with the right people.

  The outside thought was so soothing and reassuring. Grant, in the middle of all this life-changing chaos, had confidence he was going down the right path. He relaxed when he realized that.

  While he was thankful to be where he was and who he was with, he was also thinking about his preps. This was the big test. Did he think of everything? Could he improvise to solve the problems that would surely come up? Grant was actually excited to find out. He felt guilty that he was excited because he had just left his family to do all this. (No, he corrected himself, Lisa had left him by staying in an unsafe situation when a perfectly safe one was waiting for her.) But he couldn’t deny that he felt excited by this new phase of his life. However long he might live. Two weeks? Who knows.

  He planned on living through this, but things could get really nasty, very quickly. Two weeks, he thought. That’s probably how long he’d live.

  Grant realized that assuming he’d be dead soon actually made things easier. He wasn’t afraid of things. He could just do what needed to be done. If someone were attacking the guard shack, he knew he could run up to it with guns blazing and save his neighbors. He didn’t want to die; he just accepted the very real possibility that he would be gone pretty soon. But he wanted to see his family again. That was his goal for living at the moment.

  Chapter 54

  Don’t Scare the Kids

  (May 6)

  Lisa was all cried out when the sun came up. She physically couldn’t cry anymore. She was a wreck. She hadn’t slept or eaten in at least twenty-four hours.

  Lisa’s life was over. Her life was about her kids and husband, and he had left. Bastard.

  She didn’t see this coming. It was like he had been hit by a bus. Suddenly he was gone and she was all alone to deal with everything.

  She finally looked at a clock. It was 6:12 a.m. Her mom would be awake. Lisa desperately wanted to talk to her mom. They were very close, to the point that people said they were practically clones of one another.

  Her parents were living in Olympia now that they were retired. They only lived a few miles away, but it didn’t seem wise to drive over there. The phone would have to do for now.

  “Mom, Grant left last night,” Lisa said without crying. Only for a second, though. Admitting this to her mom made Lisa break down in tears again. After a minute of sobbing, she continued. “He killed some robbers. It was self defense. They were trying to attack him and a neighbor with guns and clubs. Then he came home and was acting crazy and said we needed to go to the cabin. He must have PTSD.”

  “PTSD?” her mom, Eileen, asked.

  “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder,” Lisa said. “I see it in the ER all the time. After a stressful event, people do crazy things.” Lisa had convinced herself that PT
SD was the only explanation for why someone would think they needed to run out to a cabin. The more troubling part, however, was that this hadn’t been sudden; Grant had been stockpiling food and guns, so he had been suffering from some mental disorder before the shooting. Lisa could not figure out what had been driving him to have food and guns out at the cabin. A mid-life crisis? Whatever it was, it was crazy. Full-on crazy. Grant was probably permanently insane. She had married a mentally ill man.

  “He just left us here,” Lisa said. More sobbing.

  “I’m coming right over,” Eileen said.

  “Mom, I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,” Lisa said. “There has been a lot of crime.”

  “Not in our neighborhood,” Eileen said. They lived in a really nice part of Olympia. “I’m coming over to help my girl.”

  They hung up and Eileen got in her car. The short ride to Lisa’s house was smooth. No crime, no sign of any trouble. Things were strangely quiet, in fact. Very few cars were out on the streets.

  Eileen was in for a surprise, though. When she came into Lisa’s subdivision, there was a man there with a gun. What was that all about? Was he a plainclothes police officer? That was probably it. Eileen wasn’t stupid; far from it. Like Lisa, she had an extremely high IQ. It’s just that, like Lisa, Eileen had never experienced things like violence or the system not working. She was like so many other Americans during the Collapse: smart but completely ignorant when it came to how to stay alive when nothing is working.

  Eileen drove slowly up to him and rolled down her window. The man with the gun politely, but firmly, asked her, “What’s your business here?” He could tell that a nicely dressed lady in her sixties in a very nice car was no gang threat. She was probably visiting someone.

  “I’m coming to see my daughter, Lisa Taylor,” Eileen said.

  The armed man said, “Oh, Grant’s wife. You know Grant saved Ron Spencer’s life last night? Go ahead and go in.” He waved her through.