Glen Tate - 299 Days - The Visitors

War. That awful, awful thing you pray never happens during your lifetime. If one comes, you don’t get to choose what’s best for your family life. That’s something you get to do in normal times. In peacetime, you can avoid going to war and choose a job that’s best for your family because it’s possible to make choices. But now the choices had been taken away.

This didn’t feel like a war where the headlines screamed “Pearl Harbor Attacked!” No one on TV announced that this war had started. In fact, Grant didn’t know for sure that a war technically was even underway. But he knew the war was on. There was only one reason why two Special Forces soldiers were on his beach wanting to talk to him.

Before the Collapse, Ted had talked to the Team about what he saw was coming. He could see things from the inside, from the military preparations the government was making. Ted predicted, in great detail, a breakdown almost exactly like the one that had occurred. In particular, Ted predicted the military would mostly desert, but that some units would split into Patriot and Loyalist groups. Ted said he would bug out and try to meet up with the Team and do what Green Berets do: recruit, train, supply, coordinate and lead guerilla fighters. Ted made it clear that he hoped this wasn’t necessary.

Grant figured the war would be coming; he just hoped it could go on without him. That was stupid, when he thought about it. But wishful thinking can often take over a person’s thinking, especially in times like these.

Once Grant realized that his wishful, war-avoiding, thinking wouldn’t be happening, he started thinking clearly. He had some very powerful assets that could greatly help in a war, at least out here in this area. He was in a 500 person rural place out at Pierce Point. Thanks in some part to Grant’s organizational and political skills, Pierce Point was functioning smoothly, unlike almost everywhere else. They were feeding themselves and had security. Pierce Point was on a waterway with quick access to everywhere in the Puget Sound south of Seattle, which included Olympia. Access by sea meant going around checkpoints on land. It was a perfect staging area. Grant had figured out the strategic importance of Pierce Point the first time he saw it when he was looking for cabins before the Collapse. The strategic location of Pierce Point was one of the things that drew him to the place.

Now he was wishing he hadn’t been drawn to a strategic location, as it just put him in the thick of it.

You have a choice to make, Grant thought. Fight the war or sit it out?

Choice? What choice? Grant remembered he was a wanted man, a POI. He was relatively safe in Pierce Point because there was no functioning Loyalist government.

In stark contrast, he was dead if he went into Olympia or Frederickson. He was dead if the Loyalists won. They’d kill him in a second if they could. Maybe his family, too.

Grant actually didn’t have a choice. The Patriots had to win or Grant and his family were dead. That was not a “choice.”

But, would his wife see it that way? Probably not. She had been so happy recently when Grant phased off of the Team. Lisa thought there was no need for Grant, a guy in his mid-forties, to go out and play Army with a bunch of shooting buddies.

Lisa, who had grown up in a peaceful upper income suburb, had never seen violence. She knew that bad people existed; she watched the news and saw that. What she didn’t appreciate was that bad people were much closer to her than she realized. They didn’t just live in “those areas.” They lived everywhere. Grant understood this, growing up poor and around lots of violence in his little logging town.

Bad people were even more of a problem when 911 no longer answered the phone and there were no police. Lisa couldn’t imagine that the police wouldn’t instantly be there, like they were in Lisa’s expensive neighborhood. That had never happened in her world; therefore, it couldn’t happen, period. So it seemed to Lisa like an absurd overreaction for Grant to run around with the Team breaking down doors at that meth house. It would be an even more absurd overreaction for him to go off and fight some stupid war.

War? Maybe all of this was an overreaction, Grant thought. A war? In the United States? Really? That doesn’t happen. Maybe Ted doesn’t need him, Grant thought, in another burst of wishful thinking.

Yeah, right. Grant knew exactly why Ted was there. And it involved Grant. Every eighty years or so, a generation in America had to fight a total war. Grant had been born into one of those generations. It was his turn.

Ted looked to Chip and motioned to the Chief and Paul as if to say, “These guys OK?”

Chip said, “They’re cool. You can talk around them.”

Ted looked relived. He turned to Grant, who had about two weeks of beard, and said, “Whoa, the scruff looks good on you. I never shave out in the field.” It sounded weird to hear Ted say “in the field” when he was in America.

Grant was trying to maintain a little distance with Ted because he was still very aware of how pissed Lisa would be about this, but he couldn’t stand it any longer. Finally, he snapped out of it and said, “Hey, man, nice to see you’re alive. Who’s your sidekick?”

“Sap.” Ted didn’t want to use last names around strangers like the Chief and Paul.

“Your guys here,” Ted said pointing toward the two of them, “are pretty good. We cruise in and out of beaches all the time and no one had ever caught us.”

The Chief, who had figured out who the mystery “Green Team” was, said, “United States Coast Guard, retired. Chief Boswain’s Mate. You ‘operators’ got caught by the lil’ ole’ Coast Guard.” The Chief laughed. He was always up for some inter-service jabs.

Paul chimed in, “And a civilian. That’s got to hurt.” Grant had never heard Paul trash talk like that and be so confident. He smiled to himself.

Ted and Sap laughed. “If we’re going to get caught, it’s best to get caught by guys like you,” Ted said. “You know, friendlies who aren’t going to kill us. Even if they are Coast Guard and, God forbid, a civilian.” They all laughed.

It was time to get down to business. Chip said to the Chief and Paul, “Uh, guys, you didn’t see this. Seriously. You didn’t. You can’t tell a single person about this. Don’t think that you can tell ‘just one person’ and it’ll stay a secret. This is highly important shit. People will easily die if this gets out. Do you want these two guys,” Chip said pointing at Ted and Sap, “to get killed?”

“See what?” the Chief said with a smile.

“Just another boring night of beach patrol,” Paul said. He had figured out that these two visitors were resistance leaders of some kind and was extremely excited to be part of this. He wanted to tell people, but realized that if he did, he’d be kicked off the beach patrol and maybe even beat up by these guys. Or worse. They had recently hung two people up at the Grange. Things were very serious right now.

Keeping a secret like this, even when he wanted to tell everyone, was part of the “new Paul.” Ever since the Collapse, he had been changing. There was some sort of change nearly every day, it seemed. He was losing weight, doing important things, like fabricating the metal gate, and with his knowledge of the currents on the inlet, he was a key part of the beach patrol. He was confident and proud. He wasn’t sitting around the house hating his ex-wife and complaining about how unfair the world was. He was intercepting resistance leaders, and the price to keep doing this was that he couldn’t say a word. It was a small price to pay, really. When this is over, Paul thought, I’ll have some great stories to tell. Save them up for then.