Glen Tate - 299 Days - The 17th Irregulars

“From who?” Ben asked.

Carly put her finger up to her lips as if to say “Shhh.” Ben’s curiosity was increasing rapidly. What was all this about? Was she going to pull that pistol and try to kill him? Why would Carly do that?

Carly looked around to make sure no one was around. Then she looked Ben in the eyes, smiled, and whispered, “The Patriots want you to be the next governor.”

Governor? Ben’s blood went cold. What? That was crazy. Did she just say that? He squinted and looked at her. He couldn’t understand what she just said.

“What are you talking about?” Ben finally got out. If this was some joke, it wasn’t funny sending a nice girl out into a combat zone just to do some gag.

Carly was brimming. “Yes, Ben, isn’t this great!” she said in a loud whisper. “You. The Governor. Super cool, huh?” Her youthful enthusiasm was such a contrast to something so grown up and serious, like being the governor.

“OK, I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Ben finally said. Maybe she was high. But that didn’t make sense.

“We want to have an interim government in place for when we win,” she said with a huge grin.

“Who’s ‘we’?” Ben asked.

“The Patriots, silly,” Carly said with a “no duh” look on her face.

“Who are the Patriots?” Ben asked. He knew that Patriots were the good guys, but he didn’t know who was speaking for them.

“You know, us,” she said with that same “no duh” look.

“Just a bunch of people in a room saying ‘We’re the Patriots’ or some organized group?” Ben asked. “Who, specifically?”

“The Free Washington Interim Government,” Carly said. “That’s who we are. We’re the political arm of the Patriots. The Free Washington State Guard does the military stuff. The Interim Government—the people who sent me—are the civilian commanders in charge of them. We’re the government—not the one in charge now. The one that will be when we win.”

“Is this some group of people claiming to be the interim government or are they for real?” Ben asked.

“We’re for real,” she said. “John Trappford was our leader.”

Trappford was the conservative state legislator from Eastern Washington who was the leader of the good guys before the Collapse.

“He put the Interim Government together before they got him a month ago,” she said. She looked sad. “They killed him.”

This was starting to seem plausible to Ben. If Trappford put this group together, they were the real deal. And Carly was solid. She was a true friend. There was no way she was making this up. She started naming conservative legislators and others they both knew from their days at WAB who were part of the Interim Government.

“How are you involved with this?” Ben asked.

Carly explained that when the Collapse started she was at her parents’ house in rural Lewis County. Without any plan, she got in her little car and went up to Olympia. She knew that’s where she needed to be. Trappford was taking in conservatives from all over who were coming to Olympia for the big showdown. They stayed at his house in Olympia where he lived during the legislative session and they became a revolutionary cadre. They stayed up all night talking about how they would run things once the Loyalists were thrown out. They built up a network of political sympathizers and, as the Collapse got worse and the union thugs were out looking for them, they helped Patriots get to safe places. Finally, after Trappford went back to his Eastern Washington home and was assassinated, they went fully underground.

They were mostly public policy people from think tanks and lived on a farm outside of Olympia, dubbed the “Think Farm” which was a play on the term “think tank.” The group didn’t have any contact with the outside world, except for the messengers who came and went. It was at this little farm where they planned out the Interim Government. They picked the temporary legislators and governor for after the military victory. They also planned the constitutional convention to rewrite the state constitution that they would hold once they had control. They would then hold an election to ratify the new constitution and elect the legislators, governor, and the handful of the other officials.

“Totally libertarian,” Carly said. “We’re not going to repeat the mistakes of the past. We’ll have real controls in place to prevent the government from growing like it did,” she said excitedly. She started going over the details of the new government.

Ben stopped her. “Hey, Carly, we can talk about that later,” he said. “I need to know that this group is legit before I go any further.”

Carly smiled and reached for her belt. Ben stepped back and instinctively drew his shotgun at her.

She jumped back and threw her hands up. “A letter,” she said. “I have a letter.”

The guards had been watching Ben and Carly from a distance. When they saw Ben reach for his shotgun, they shouldered their rifles. When he found out she had a letter, Ben motioned to the guards that they could lower their weapons. Ben still had his shotgun halfway ready, but not pointed at her.

“The letter is in my jeans,” Carly said with her hands up. “Sorry, but I couldn’t get caught with it.”

“OK, you can get it,” Ben said. He was a little uncomfortable when Carly, who was now a very attractive young woman after all the weight loss, unzipped her jeans right in front of him. He started to turn his head out of respect for her privacy, but he realized she could still shoot him so he decided to keep his eyes on her. Above her jeans.

She pulled out an envelope and handed it to him. It had some kind of logo on it that said “Free Washington Interim Government.” If these guys were goofballs, at least they had a decent logo, Ben thought. It sure looked official. Ben just looked at the envelope again and couldn’t really believe this was happening.

“Go ahead and open it, silly,” she said with a flirtatious smile. She always had a crush on Ben. Now she was on a dangerous mission to recruit him as the next governor. She was so excited. She knew Ben was married, but she could still have her harmless little crush.

Ben hesitated to open it. He had a feeling that, once he opened it, things would never be the same for him if what Carly was saying was true.

Ben was happy to be hiding out on the Prosser Farm with his family. He was done with politics. Just look at what politics had done: armed guards, food shortages, and all the rest. He wanted to spend the rest of his life growing some food and pulling his week of guard duty every month. That was fine with him. He wanted nothing to do with this Interim Government or whatever it was.

His curiosity got the best of him, though, and he opened the envelope and removed the letter. It was on fancy Interim Government letterhead that matched the envelope and had been printed on a printer instead of handwritten.

“Dear Ben:” the letter began. It was dated June 1. It went on to describe how the Interim Government had come together and dropped lots of names that Ben knew, like John Trappford. It mentioned Carly and many other conservatives Ben knew from back in Olympia. There were messages from them saying things that only they would know.

The letter said, “Russ Finehoff is working with us. He said that his dog, Sprucey, finally quit barking at the neighbor cat.” It was a reference to Ben’s friend Russ who worked for one of the few good legislators. Russ had Ben over for a BBQ one time and his dog, whose name Ben had forgotten, spent the entire party barking at a cat.

They couldn’t be making up these details, Ben thought. This letter was legit. Or the government had tortured a lot of people and gotten little tidbits like Russ’s dog out of them. But the government was so inept and had their hands full right now that it was highly unlikely they went to all that trouble just to write a fake letter to Ben.