Glen Tate - 299 Days - The Community

“I keep meaning to hook you up with Curt Copeland,” Rich said. “I think we can use ham units for those kinds of communications, but use CBs for routine stuff.” Rich thought, in a perfect world, everyone would have a ham license and a ham handheld radio in their preps before the Collapse. But this wasn’t a perfect world. CBs were a decent alternative.

“I’ll get with him,” Scotty said. He wanted to show off a little. He asked Rich, “What’s his call sign and what frequency is he on?”

Rich told him. Scotty got on his ham handheld and, in a few seconds, was talking to Curt, who was two miles away and behind a slight hill from the Grange. Everyone had thought they’d have to wait until the end of the day and then drive over to Curt’s house in order for the two to talk. Nope. It took ten seconds and not a drop of gas to talk using the ham units. Grant realized that, with the distances involved, Scotty and Curt could have probably talked on the CB, but the ham was pretty cool. And secure. Well, not truly secure, but not as easy to listen in on as a CB. Sensitive communications couldn’t be blabbed on a CB when bad guys could be listening. Odds were that criminals didn’t know how to run a ham radio, or if they did, that they didn’t have the exact frequency the good guys were talking on.

Mark’s truck with the Team, Paul, and Rich came down the hill to the entrance to Pierce Point. There were several cars and trucks parked at the volunteer fire station about a hundred yards from the bridge that had the car across the road. There were about fifteen armed guys and few women there. Mostly shotguns and hunting rifles, although one guy had an AR and another had a Mini-14. They were talking, but were clearly paying attention to the gate and bridge. While people were chatting and social, it wasn’t a BS session. It was a serious job.

Grant thought about how much things had changed. Ten days ago, a group of armed people guarding a community would have seemed hugely out of place. In fact, Grant had never seen it before, except when watching footage of Hurricane Katrina. He more recently saw it on TV down in Texas and California with the Mexican refugee situation. Then one amazing day he saw it with his own eyes in his own neighborhood. He saw it again a few days ago when he came to Pierce Point. Now it was starting to seem normal.

The gate guards were happy to see the Team, who, with their ARs and gear, looked much more professional than the rag-tag gate guards. But, the gate guards looked like a badass group of good ol’ boys (and girls). What they lacked in gear, they made up for in attitude. Perfect, Grant thought. All these guys need is a basement full of ARs and they’d have a pretty decent fighting force.

Exactly. Now you see what’s going on.

Grant started getting this strange sensation that he could predict what was going to happen in the future. Seeing the guards, a prediction formed in his mind, but he didn’t want to say it out loud because it seemed outlandish.

Rich found Dan and Ryan and motioned for Paul to come over to them.

“Paul here is a metal fabricator,” Rich said to Dan. “Would you like a nice metal swing-out gate instead of that piece of shit car?”

Dan grinned. “Hell, yes.”

Rich asked Dan, “What kind of gate materials do we have?”

Dan and Paul talked about the materials they had and how to make the gate. Paul was in heaven. He was needed. This was one of the best days of his life.

While Dan and Paul were coming up with a plan for the gate, Rich was introducing the Team to the guards. Many had already met them at the Grange meetings, but some had been on guard duty and hadn’t had the chance. The guards were less wowed by the Team than the civilians were, but they were glad to have the well-armed and seemingly well trained Team around. Everyone was getting along well. The Team realized that these gate guys, with their duck hunter guns, would be the first line of defense if Pierce Point were attacked. These guys were putting their lives on the line to protect everyone, just like the Team was. They had different jobs and gear, but every one of them was equal. They were all risking their lives for others, which is all that mattered.

Scotty was talking to the woman who appeared to be in charge of communications. They were working on which CB channels to use. Grant took the rest of the Team to the gate and talked to the guys behind the car about the defenses there. They had a great field of fire into the road that fed onto the bridge. They had guards and patrols along the “river,” which was actually a large creek.

One of the gate guards pointed up the hill to the treeline and said that they had snipers up there.

“How many?” Grant asked.

“Enough,” the guard said with an evasive smile. “Some of my hunting buddies who like to sit in the forest for hours at a time and watch things. Their old ladies aren’t around to nag at them out here so this is like a vacation for them. A couple of them are older guys who can’t walk around and stand all day. They can find a comfy shady patch up there and hunt for anyone who somehow makes it past us, or who tries to get across the river. They’ve got a CB so we can talk.”

Grant asked the guard, “How far of a shot is that?”

The guard pointed to his hunting laser rangefinder. “217 yards, more or less.” He smiled.

Hunters concealed on a forested hill with a CB; low tech, but extremely effective.

Some dogs started barking. It sounded like they were in the volunteer fire department building. Bobby motioned for Grant to come into the building.

When he walked in, Grant saw Dan with his AK slung over his shoulder and something far more ferocious: three German Shepherds. Grant surmised that these must be the K9s Dan was training. They were impressive animals. Dan calmed them down quickly. He knew these dogs well and they knew him.

“Dan, tell the Team about your dogs,” Rich said. Rich was very proud of his friend, Dan, and the dogs.

“Well, I run three dogs at the gate here,” Dan said. “These are attack dogs. I have detection dogs at home that are trained to sniff for drugs and explosives, but we don’t need them here. We need attack dogs.”

Dan pointed to his three dogs. “They’re named Cairo, Boris, and Adis.” Each dog looked with approval at Dan when he said its name. “We patrol the river. These guys can pick up the scent of anyone coming, or attempting to come, across the river. If I release one and tell it to ‘fetch!’ it’ll go after whoever is unlucky enough to be hiding or running away. There is nothing more terrifying than an eighty pound snarling German Shepherd coming at you doing about twenty miles an hour. I’ve seen Taliban shit their pants, literally crap their drawers, and throw up their hands when they hear and see a dog coming. The bad guys weren’t afraid of men with guns. It was the dogs that got them to surrender.” Dan was smiling.

These dogs were a huge asset; better than a machine gun or surveillance cameras. Or both.

Grant asked Dan, “So this is what you did in the Air Force?”

“Yep. Base defense,” Dan said. “I worked with dogs the last eight years of my twenty-five years in. Now I train the Sheriff Department’s K9s on a volunteer basis. When I was in the Air Force, I did the usual stuff, which included law enforcement on base. But a lot of what we did was more like infantry, except that we were more defense-oriented than typical infantry, which is offense-oriented. We had a big ol’ air base to defend with fences and mines sometimes. That’s where the dogs come in. They can find intruders and attack them. Arabs are terrified of dogs, which came in handy…where I was a couple of times.” The U.S. used air bases in various countries that did not want it known that they were helping the Americans, so the locations of the bases were secret. Dan, out of habit, wasn’t saying where the bases were.