Glen Tate: 299 Days: The Collapse

“It’ll be like Katrina,” Lisa’s boss said. “We’re having the people who are already at work stay here. We’re on lockdown. I wouldn’t ask you to come up in all that traffic, with all the bad things happening on the roads, just to be in lockdown,” he said.

Lockdown. Wow. This seemed so unexpected.

“Is there some way I can help?” Lisa asked.

“Maybe you can go in to your local ER,” her boss said, “the one in Olympia, but I bet they’re in a similar situation. Maybe a little less serious since Olympia is a smaller city than Tacoma.”

“OK,” Lisa said. “I’ll see if I can do that.” She then asked if her co-workers were safe. Some of them were at the hospital seemingly safe and the others had called in to say they would stay at home for a few days until this blew over.

Lisa said goodbye and wished them well. Just then, the doorbell rang and Grant answered it. It was Sherrie Spencer, their neighbor.

“There’s been a break-in at the Kaczmareks’ over on Whitman Drive,” Sherrie said.

What? A home invasion in the Cedars? In their own neighborhood. One cul-de-sac down from his. He didn’t really know the people whose house was broken into, but Lisa seemed to recognize the name.

“Were they hurt?” Lisa asked.

“No,” said Sherrie. “They weren’t home. It happened during the day. Can you believe that?”

Yes, Grant thought. This was no surprise to him, but Lisa couldn’t believe it. Grant needed to find out more.

“I’m going over to see what’s going on,” Grant said. He walked over to Whitman Drive.

There were some other neighborhood people there asking the Kaczmareks the same questions. Grant vaguely recognized Mr. Kaczmarek from last Halloween’s trick or treating. He was a retired guy.

“We were at work and, in broad daylight, someone just smashed the back door down, came in, and cleaned us out,” Mr. Kaczmarek said. “Thank God we weren’t home.”

Grant decided to take a little social risk with the guy. “Do you have a way to defend yourself in case they come back?” he asked.

Kaczmarek looked at Grant like he had said something horribly inappropriate. “No,” Kaczmarek said. “Like a gun? Why would I have a gun? They’re dangerous.”

OK. That’s how this is going to go. These people are idiots. There’s no hope for them. Just play along.

“Odds are that they won’t come back,” Grant said, changing the subject a little. “We’ll keep an eye on things as best we can. If you need anything, let me know.” Grant said. If you need anything? You need a gun, you dumb shit. Grant didn’t say it. He didn’t want this guy to know that he had guns. Besides, he was done trying to tell people things like this. He had given up.

Later that day, another neighbor, who Grant recognized but didn’t know her name, came to the door.

“We’re having a neighborhood meeting this evening. It’s about the break in at the Kaczmareks’,” she said.

Grant thought a neighborhood meeting of the weenies, the term he used for all the progressives that lived in the Cedars, would be pure entertainment. He might as well go in case they tried to do something stupid that affected him.

“I’ll be there,” Grant said to the neighbor he still couldn’t remember the name of. The meeting would be at her house. He was embarrassed to ask which house she lived in. She smiled politely, a little miffed that Grant didn’t know his neighbors well enough to know where they lived. But she was running into that frequently in the door-knocking she was doing that day.

Grant told Lisa what had happened at the Kaz-something house and that he would be going to the neighborhood meeting.

“That’s good,” Lisa said. “We could probably use a crime watch here.” Grant thought, oh, a crime watch with people who don’t own guns. That ought to be effective. If someone breaks in, the crime watch can call 911 and wait an hour for a cop to maybe show up. Or just go online and report the crime. After it’s occurred, of course.

Grant needed Lisa to view him as a resource on these things. Don’t debate her, just try to reassure her, he told himself. “We should double our efforts on making sure things are locked,” he said. “We do a good job, but I’ll start checking the doors at night.”

Lisa was relieved. Thank goodness Grant was being so practical talking about sensible things like locking doors instead of talking about guns.

When Lisa was downstairs, Grant went upstairs to their bedroom and checked his shotgun. He could quickly release the small luggage combination lock on it by keeping it one number off the combination. He did so in less than a second. The lock popped open and he unzipped the gun case. He had two five-round boxes of buckshot in the case. He wouldn’t store his shotgun loaded unless things got really bad. He could load his Remington 870 blindfolded and instantly. He practiced often.

Grant saw his pistol case by the shotgun in the master bedroom closet. He kept his Glock in .40 in that case. It, too, had a small luggage combination lock set one number off for quick access. He opened the pistol case. His Glock was ready to go. He had a loaded magazine in the gun (but without a round chambered) and his small Surefire flashlight that went on the end of the gun. This way he could see what he’s shooting if they happened to have an intruder in the middle of the night.

After checking that his home-defense weapons were in order, Grant went to the neighborhood meeting. He couldn’t resist going there armed. He slipped his little 380 auto into his jeans pocket. There was no chance of the weenies seeing him carrying that, unlike if he had his full-sized Glock in a holster and his jacket got hung up on the gun and exposed it. He didn’t want the weenies to catch him carrying a gun, which would cause them to think he was a whacko and then they wouldn’t listen to his ideas about defending the neighborhood. But at least he had a gun of some sort. He was carrying them more frequently now.

Of course, Nancy Ringman took over as the leader of the neighborhood group. Grant hated looking at her. She was the one who had seized WAB’s bank account. And now she was putting herself in charge of their neighborhood’s security. Great.

Nancy was superficially nice to Grant. “Oh, hi, Grant,” she said in her sarcastically sweet voice. “Nice to see you. We can’t talk about, you know, the case.”

No shit, we can’t talk about the case, Grant thought. He wasn’t here to talk about a case. He felt like leaving. He couldn’t stand these people.

Nancy called the meeting to order. She was loving this. She was in charge, and everyone in the room needed her. Nancy had Ken Kaczmarek describe what happened. No one had seen a thing. The theory was that his place was targeted because it was near the exit from the subdivision. It had a fence around it so they could get in through the back, do their business, and drive right out. Then Nancy told everyone to lock their doors. No shit, Nancy.

Grant couldn’t live with himself if he didn’t state the obvious. He had to at least try to reason with these people. Maybe he’d get lucky. Maybe things had changed so much in the past week of mayhem that they would actually listen to a voice of reason. Grant raised his hand and Nancy called on him.

“The response times for 911 calls are over an hour now, if they can even respond at all, with all the cutbacks,” Grant said. People were nodding. That was a good sign. “Maybe we should have some of us discretely carrying guns and driving around the neighborhood.”

Gasps. Actual audible gasps. Oh great.

Not everyone gasped. Ron Spencer, Grant’s Mormon neighbor, was nodding. So was that guy on the next cul-de-sac who was a retired Navy pilot. Len. That was his name, if Grant recalled correctly.