Glen Tate - 299 Days - The Community

People in Forks had been watching the size of government grow, too. There were more and more controls on the land, and taxes kept going up. More and more people worked for government; directly, or as contractors. Longtime hometown businesses went out of business. More and more people went on welfare and weren’t even trying to find work. Many people were making questionable disability claims and going on the state-funded workers’ compensation system. Rural and isolated Forks was not immune from the slide into government dependence that was going on in the rest of America. But, it wasn’t as bad there. People still knew how to live poor and take care of themselves. Most of them, at least.

Steve, the manager of the now-closed auto parts store in town, was amazed that all economic activity had stopped; just stopped. No one was buying and selling anything. Well, they were, but not like before the May Day Collapse. People still traded deer meat for gasoline and that kind of thing, but, they’d increasingly been doing that in the hard economic times leading up to the Collapse. Now it was the only way to do it. No supplies from the outside world, and no cash. Barter was it.

The news wasn’t worth watching, anymore. Steve wasn’t sure he could trust it. During the first few days of the Collapse, the news had story after story about terrorist attacks, power outages, riots, looting, and states threatening to “opt out” of the union. At first, most of the terrorist attacks were blamed on the left-wing Red Brigade and some splinter groups of public employee unions. The union thugs—a handful of radicals out of the millions of unionized public employees—were furious that their jobs and pensions had been cut off. No one was very sympathetic to them given that Americans’ 401(k)s were now basically worthless after the stock market crashed. After a few days of stories about the Red Brigade and union thugs, the news quit mentioning them. Either the left-wing attacks stopped, the news wanted to quit scaring people, or the news decided to start blaming attacks on “right-wing” and “militia” groups. Which they did. That became the theme on the news. The “Right” was going on a rampage. Some believed it, though many didn’t.

Don Watson, the ham radio operator in town, kept them abreast of the latest rumors from the outside world. People were saying that some military units were mutinying. They were killing their officers. It didn’t sound like many were doing this. Most were either working hard at the relief efforts or sitting out the political stuff, waiting to see which side would be stronger. Some military units were defecting and joining gangs, which was what had happened a few years earlier in Mexico. Whole military units in Mexico would just start working for a drug cartel. Steve didn’t know if American units doing this was true, or just a bunch of crazy rumors. There were so many rumors and most didn’t turn out to be true. After a while, most people quit trying to stay up on the rumors, and tried to keep their heads down and just survive what was happening. Rumors were an unnecessary distraction, and usually only served to scare people with an endless list of “what-ifs.”

The power was on most of the time, but would go off for a few hours at a time. One of Steve’s friends at the electric company said that when the hackers periodically attacked, the government would shut down the power in the rural areas first, where there were fewer people to inconvenience and scare. Seattle had power almost all of the time.

Steve saw on the news that the government had started something called “Freedom Corps.” Whatever, he thought. Wear your silly hats. No one in Forks would be caught dead in one of those. They didn’t need the Freedom Corps in Forks. The people there were taking care of things on their own. Pretty damned well, as a matter of fact. The last thing they needed was a new government agency. That’s what got them in this mess in the first place.

There was one bright spot in Forks: the police. The city police and the sheriff’s deputies were local guys. Everyone knew them. There were a couple yahoos on the force, but most were solid. They weren’t abandoning their jobs because they couldn’t. They lived in Forks. There was nowhere else to go. Defending home and family meant defending Forks.

The police quickly set up a volunteer “posse” force. They had lots of men willing to join up. In fact, they had to turn some away. There weren’t any neighborhood guards because the posse served that function. Besides, Forks was one giant neighborhood. Might as well have a city-wide guard force instead of a measly neighborhood one. Everyone knew each other, so it was possible to trust people. People in Olympia would have a hard time trusting someone who came from another part of the city to guard their neighborhood. That wasn’t the situation in Forks.

Steve was a posse captain. He had about fifteen guys working for him. They patrolled on foot because gas was too precious to waste driving around. They carried pistols, and sometimes shotguns or rifles. They didn’t have a colored cloth tied around their arms like many of the communities were starting to. They didn’t need any identification; everyone knew who the posse was.

Steve used the auto parts store as a headquarters. He had the swing shift of guards. Just like the swing shifts from the days back when they logged in Forks: 3:00 pm to 11:00 pm. This was a pretty active time for guarding since lots of crime started after dark, which was about 9:00 pm in mid-May.

There wasn’t a lot of crime, though. Some stealing. Mostly kids; the welfare kids, to be honest. There were other people stealing, but the “shitbags” as they called the welfare kids and their families, were usually the culprits. They usually stole firewood stacked at someone’s house or siphoned gas from parked cars. The town used the school for a makeshift jail. Stealing got someone about thirty days in jail, along with shame from the community. Everyone knew who was in jail and would make sure to stay clear of them once they got out.

The criminals usually weren’t violent. One burglar—an adult shitbag and notorious alcoholic—broke into a single mom’s house. She shot him with a shotgun. That same night, a kid stealing firewood pointed a gun at a posse member. It didn’t end well for the kid. The shootings jolted Forks. The welfare people were getting more and more pissed at the posse, and the good people of Forks didn’t care. They backed the posse. But, things weren’t heading for a deep split in town because most people were related. It wasn’t uncommon for a welfare recipient to be the cousin or nephew of a posse member. That kept a lid on the divisiveness. It didn’t eliminate it, but it limited it.

People in Forks were helping each other in ways they never had. Steve made sure to go check on Patty Matson, Grant’s mom. She was doing fine. He hadn’t been over to see her since Grant’s dad died and Grant had come to visit. It was things like this that made life a little bit more meaningful in Forks. People were helping each other. It had been too long since people acted so decently toward each other.

The three churches in Forks seemed to be working as usual. They were mainstream churches without any real theological differences; they got along fine. Attendance before the Collapse had been light. Mostly old people went to church in Forks. The Pacific Northwest was known for having some of the lowest church attendance in the country. After May Day, however, people of all ages started to come to church. The world seemed to be turned upside down and many looked to a higher power for comfort. A fair number of people started wondering if all that was happening was the end times described in Revelation. Was Jesus coming back very soon? Was this the Tribulation? The three churches were packed. A couple people started holding home church services.