Glen Tate - 299 Days - The Collapse

All the fish and seafood would stretch their regular food supplies quite a bit. Plus, fishing and gathering clams and oysters was relaxing in a stressful time. Mary Anne and Tammy, who was now back from work at the power company, volunteered to cook up all the goodies. They would have a group BBQ each night. Fresh salmon, clams, and oysters. After John and Paul left, Grant’s phone started vibrating. It wasn’t Manda’s phone; it was his. He had turned the transmitter off so why was it vibrating? He looked at his phone. He had a calendar event on it. It said he had an argument in a court case tomorrow.

Work? Oh, crap. He hadn’t even thought about his job for the past thirty-six hours. He laughed to himself. Work. Like anyone was going to work right now. There wouldn’t be any judges at the courthouse to hear him argue his case about why the government broke some law.

Law. Courts. That was a lifetime ago. It seemed so artificial and abstract now. Having enough food for the next few weeks, not getting shot, being able to be with his family. That’s what mattered now. It was the “new normal.”

Between guard duty and fishing and seafood gathering, each person would be pretty busy. Good. Grant could stay in shape that way. He couldn’t go to the gym anymore.

More importantly, they weren’t sitting around waiting for the government to save them. Their little group was bonding and really pulling together.

You are in the right place with the right people.

The outside thought was so soothing and reassuring. Grant, in the middle of all this life-changing chaos, had confidence he was going down the right path. He relaxed when he realized that.

While he was thankful to be where he was and who he was with, he was also thinking about his preps. This was the big test. Did he think of everything? Could he improvise to solve the problems that would surely come up? Grant was actually excited to find out. He felt guilty that he was excited because he had just left his family to do all this. (No, he corrected himself, Lisa had left him by staying in an unsafe situation when a perfectly safe one was waiting for her.) But he couldn’t deny that he felt excited by this new phase of his life. However long he might live. Two weeks? Who knows.

He planned on living through this, but things could get really nasty, very quickly. Two weeks, he thought. That’s probably how long he’d live.

Grant realized that assuming he’d be dead soon actually made things easier. He wasn’t afraid of things. He could just do what needed to be done. If someone were attacking the guard shack, he knew he could run up to it with guns blazing and save his neighbors. He didn’t want to die; he just accepted the very real possibility that he would be gone pretty soon. But he wanted to see his family again. That was his goal for living at the moment.

Lisa was all cried out when the sun came up. She physically couldn’t cry anymore. She was a wreck. She hadn’t slept or eaten in at least twenty-four hours.

Lisa’s life was over. Her life was about her kids and husband, and he had left. Bastard.

She didn’t see this coming. It was like he had been hit by a bus. Suddenly he was gone and she was all alone to deal with everything.

She finally looked at a clock. It was 6:12 a.m. Her mom would be awake. Lisa desperately wanted to talk to her mom. They were very close, to the point that people said they were practically clones of one another.

Her parents were living in Olympia now that they were retired. They only lived a few miles away, but it didn’t seem wise to drive over there. The phone would have to do for now.

“Mom, Grant left last night,” Lisa said without crying. Only for a second, though. Admitting this to her mom made Lisa break down in tears again. After a minute of sobbing, she continued. “He killed some robbers. It was self defense. They were trying to attack him and a neighbor with guns and clubs. Then he came home and was acting crazy and said we needed to go to the cabin. He must have PTSD.”

“PTSD?” her mom, Eileen, asked.

“Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder,” Lisa said. “I see it in the ER all the time. After a stressful event, people do crazy things.” Lisa had convinced herself that PTSD was the only explanation for why someone would think they needed to run out to a cabin. The more troubling part, however, was that this hadn’t been sudden; Grant had been stockpiling food and guns, so he had been suffering from some mental disorder before the shooting. Lisa could not figure out what had been driving him to have food and guns out at the cabin. A mid-life crisis? Whatever it was, it was crazy. Full-on crazy. Grant was probably permanently insane. She had married a mentally ill man.

“He just left us here,” Lisa said. More sobbing.

“I’m coming right over,” Eileen said.

“Mom, I’m not sure that’s such a good idea,” Lisa said. “There has been a lot of crime.”

“Not in our neighborhood,” Eileen said. They lived in a really nice part of Olympia. “I’m coming over to help my girl.”

They hung up and Eileen got in her car. The short ride to Lisa’s house was smooth. No crime, no sign of any trouble. Things were strangely quiet, in fact. Very few cars were out on the streets.

Eileen was in for a surprise, though. When she came into Lisa’s subdivision, there was a man there with a gun. What was that all about? Was he a plainclothes police officer? That was probably it. Eileen wasn’t stupid; far from it. Like Lisa, she had an extremely high IQ. It’s just that, like Lisa, Eileen had never experienced things like violence or the system not working. She was like so many other Americans during the Collapse: smart but completely ignorant when it came to how to stay alive when nothing is working.

Eileen drove slowly up to him and rolled down her window. The man with the gun politely, but firmly, asked her, “What’s your business here?” He could tell that a nicely dressed lady in her sixties in a very nice car was no gang threat. She was probably visiting someone.

“I’m coming to see my daughter, Lisa Taylor,” Eileen said.

The armed man said, “Oh, Grant’s wife. You know Grant saved Ron Spencer’s life last night? Go ahead and go in.” He waved her through.

Grant had saved someone’s life? That couldn’t be the shooting thing Lisa was talking about. Maybe it was. Eileen then thought about the guard with the gun. How strange, she thought. He didn’t have a badge, but he had a gun. That didn’t make any sense. Then again, lots of things lately were not making sense.

She drove the last two blocks to Lisa’s house. Her little girl was there in the doorway crying. It must be because Grant left. What had gotten into him? He seemed like he had a good head on his shoulders.

Eileen spent the rest of the day consoling Lisa. She also spent time with the kids, reassuring them that everything would be OK, and that surely, their dad would be home soon.

It was dinnertime, so Eileen decided she needed to go home and get some clothes to stay over with Lisa and the kids. They needed her. She said goodbye for now and left.

When she was leaving the neighborhood, a different man with a gun was at the entrance. Maybe they were guards, Eileen thought when she saw a second man with a gun but without a badge. He motioned for her to slow down and roll down her window. He realized she was not exactly a gang threat.

“Will you be coming back?” the guard asked. He had a clipboard like he was keeping track of these things.

“Yes, in about a half hour,” Eileen said. “To see my daughter, Lisa Taylor.”

“OK, but be careful out there,” the second guard said. “It will be dark in a few hours. You don’t want to be out in the dark.”