Glen Tate - 299 Days - The 17th Irregulars

“So they’re coming by vehicle, not on foot,” Grant asked.

“Yep,” Al said. “There have been a couple people just walking down the road. One was a hippie chick—bad idea to be a female alone out here, but it’s her life. The other was a deranged homeless guy. Everyone else comes in cars. They stop at the gate to see if we have gas to sell, which we don’t. Surprisingly, lots of them stop to use the bathroom. We don’t want to go through all the hassles of bringing them in the gate if we don’t have to, so we hand them toilet paper and show them the bushes. They thank us profusely for the toilet paper.” Another thing modern Americans took for granted before the Collapse.

Al thought some more. “A few people, like the Folsoms, have their vehicles break down and walk up. We try to help them fix their vehicles, but only if we can. We’re not diverting a group of our guards to go walk a few miles down the road with some wrenches to find out that a computer in their engine is shot.”

“How many broken down vehicles are you seeing?” Grant asked.

“A handful,” Al said. “There is almost no traffic on the road anymore. A couple vehicles an hour. Nothing like it used to be before all of this.”

“You keep up on any epidemics, right?” Grant asked. “I mean if there’s some disease going around, you’re ready to screen people coming in for that?”

Al nodded. “I’m no doctor, but we have a plan for that. There’s always a medical person here at the fire station. We have a little quarantine area and are working on having a bigger quarantine area inside the gate for more people. We’ll be using a couple of parked RVs for that. They’re the perfect for quarantines.”

“Good,” Grant said. Disease was a big concern, and would especially be so when winter arrived. Grant didn’t want to think about how bad it would be then. He knew that disease killed more people than bullets in conditions like the Collapse.

Grant shook Al’s hand. He had a medic to go recruit.

Grant went over to Jordan and Manda, who were chatting with the younger guards. “Time to go, guys,” Grant said. He threw Jordan the keys and Jordan grinned. All his friends thought that was very cool.

Grant opened the front passenger door for Manda. “Thank you, Daddy,” she said. He was treating her like royalty today. She deserved it. And Grant may not have much more time with her. At a minimum, he’d be very busy. At worst…he wouldn’t be around at all. He wanted to get as much good times in with her as possible.

Grant got in the back seat and told Jordan they had to go visit someone on the way back. Grant told Jordan how to get to the Minton house where the Folsoms were staying. Al had thoughtfully drawn Grant a map, which he gave to Jordan to see if he could read a map. It was another test that Jordan passed.

The family that the Folsoms were staying with had a nice house. A dog was barking and a middle-aged man came out with a shotgun. Grant didn’t recognize him, but the man recognized Grant.

“Judge Matson, what can we do for you?” the man asked as he lowered the shotgun.

“Could I talk to Nick Folsom?” Grant asked.

“Sure,” the man said. A minute later, a young guy in his early twenties came out. He had black hair and was average looking in every way.

“I’m Nick Folsom,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

The middle-aged man also came out and said, “We have some lunch for you if you’d like.” Perfect, Grant thought. It was always easier to get to know someone over a meal, and Grant needed to get to know Nick quickly and make some key decisions about him. Besides, Grant was hungry.

“Sure,” Grant said. “Mind if my daughter and her boyfriend join us?”

“No problem,” the man said. He extended his hand, “I’m Jay Minton.”

“Nice to meet you, Jay,” Grant said. “I’m Grant Matson.”

“Oh, we know,” Jay said. “We’ve been to some of the Grange meetings.” Grant felt like a mini-celebrity. His first thought was that any credibility he had from his Grange work could be used to recruit Nick into the unit out at Marion Farm.

The families assembled for lunch, which consisted of sandwiches on homemade bread. They were really good. The Folsom babies, ages one and two, had just gone to sleep. Nick’s wife, Rita, looked tired. She looked young to be a mom. Then again, Nick looked young to be a dad.

They made small talk. The Mintons had been in Pierce Point for about five years. They had moved here from Colorado. Jay’s job as a store manager took him to this area. He used to work in Olympia at the mall, but his store closed about a year ago. They had been living a simple life since then. They had enough to eat and did OK, but it was definitely a much less extravagant life than before the Collapse. They were getting by in a different way than they were used to, but getting by. Grant didn’t ask, but he suspected the Mintons were living on the one year worth of food Mormons were supposed to store up.

In the course of the small talk, Grant had a favorable impression of Nick. He was a young guy who joined the military to get some college money. He went into the combat medic field because he wanted to go medical school, but the Collapse ended that. That gave Nick a personal motive to get things back to normal, Grant thought. Nick’s dreams had been destroyed.

Grant wanted to know two things about Nick. First, his politics. Given that he was Mormon and in the military, the odds were pretty good that he wasn’t a socialist. Second, would Rita let him go off to war? That was a biggie. Grant could relate to that.

“So, what do you guys think about this whole situation, if you don’t mind me asking,” Grant inquired after a while. He didn’t have all day to beat around the bush about politics.

“Totally predictable,” Jay said about the current situation. He described all the insane regulations and taxes imposed on his store before the Collapse. He described how the police wouldn’t do a thing about the ever-increasing shoplifting. Then it became violent crime in the parking lot of the mall. Pretty soon, it became too dangerous for his employees to go to work.

“I realized about a year ago that this was absolutely inevitable,” Jay said. “So we…” Jay paused. He didn’t want to say how prepared they were and how much food they had.

“…did some commonsense things,” Jay said. “Glad we did.”

“What do you think will happen next?” Grant asked. Jay was silent. He didn’t want to say it. Neither did Nick.

Fair enough, Grant thought. He walked into their house and was asking them if they were waiting for a revolution. He recognized that he needed to respect their privacy a little more.

“Well,” Grant said, “I think there is going to be armed trouble.” That got their attention. They were thinking the same thing. Grant knew there were two directions to take the “armed trouble” talk. So he chose the safe route.

“You know, gangs,” Grant said. “That’s why we have a pretty amazing gate guard and a beach patrol. And our internal SWAT team, which I’m fortunate enough to be a nominal member of. I’m the old guy they let hang out with them.” That got a few smiles. Grant was warming them up to the topic of “armed trouble.” The topic of gangs was always the way to ease into the topic of fighting the government. If people accepted that fighting was necessary because of the gangs, the next logical step was fighting the biggest gang of all: the government.

“Nick, what did you see at Ft. Lewis?” Grant asked. He was cutting to the chase. Normally, he would have taken a few visits to get to this topic. But he didn’t have time. He didn’t want Nick to get too settled into the Minton house. And he needed a military medic out at Marion Farm right then.