Glen Tate - 299 Days - The Collapse

“Yes, sir,” they said, which was weird because Wes was younger than them.

Wes got back to his truck and used the hood of it to rest his AR as he covered the car. With his left hand, he got on the CB and told Pow he had them covered. Pow ran to his Hummer. Seeing Wes had the men covered, Bobby and then Scotty got back into their pickups. The time from Wes coming up to the car with the gas can to the Team being back in their vehicles was about one minute.

The convoy started back up.

Lisa had watched this in amazement. She kept expecting some shooting. That’s how things always went on TV. She was half-cringing the whole time. But no one got shot. In fact, after she thought about it, these guys in the convoy protecting her and her kids were moving so smoothly that they seemed like guys in the movies.

Lisa was concerned that Cole would be traumatized. He was fine. He just looked out the window. He had complied with all the instructions to get down. He held it together very well. Manda did, too. She never drew her revolver because she knew her mom would get mad.

As the convoy started back down the road, Lisa got the CB from Manda. Lisa said into the radio to everyone, “Well, that’s never happened to me before.” Her car erupted with nervous laughter from her passengers.

As they were heading down the road again, Lisa thought about the men protecting her family. Did Grant know how to do this stuff? He had been keeping a lot of secrets from her. She smiled. There are good secrets and bad secrets.

Grant woke up. It was evening. He had been asleep most of the day. Even though he was tired, it was a restless sleep.

The night before, while on guard duty, he had finally come to grips with the fact that he’d lost his family. His old life was over. Lisa and the kids hated him. He had “abandoned” his family. No one understood what was happening and what would be happening next.

He checked Manda’s cell phone on the night stand. Nothing. No voice mails, no texts. Of course there were no messages. His family wasn’t trying to contact him. Don’t be stupid. They hate you, he thought.

He heard Chip and Paul out on the deck. It sounded like they were eating dinner. Something smelled good. He got up and went out to be with his new family.

“Morning sunshine,” Chip said.

Paul said, “Hey, Grant.”

It was a beautiful May evening. They had a plate of BBQ. Paul said, “We’re cooking up all the deer meat in our freezer. We might lose power. The power went off for a while today, for about an hour. My mom said the power company has been told to expect rolling blackouts. There’s still some bug in the software that routes the power. East Coast had a big power outage today.” Paul pointed at the BBQ, “You want some?”

“In a while,” Grant said. “I just woke up and I’m still a little groggy.” The truth was that he was depressed and had no appetite.

They talked about guard duty. It had been amazingly quiet. They hadn’t seen anyone. It seemed that the people who didn’t live out there full time weren’t coming out, at least not out to the northern end of Pierce Point where they were.

It was good to see Chip and Paul getting along so well. Everyone loved “Uncle Chip.”

“I can take guard duty again tonight,” Grant said. He had a lot of thinking to do and he wanted to be alone.

“Sounds good,” Paul said. “We had you down for tonight, anyway.”

Mark and Tammy came over with a plate covered with foil. “More deer steaks if you want ‘em,” Mark said.

Grant got out a plate. He knew he’d be hungry later and didn’t want to insult them by not eating their food.

“Where are John and Mary Anne?” he asked.

“John is on guard duty and Mary Anne is organizing her canning supplies,” Tammy said. “We’re going to start canning. I haven’t done that since I was a kid.”

Grant wondered if there were any other disasters that day. “Anyone heard any news?”

Mark said, “Same stuff. It’s getting worse. Seattle has full-on looting now. I’m not sure I can trust the news anymore. They’re downplaying everything. The TV is just full of politicians telling us how everything is under control.”

Mark added, “Hey, the internet is down. I tried to get online for work, just for laughs, since there is no one working now. It’s been down all day.”

Maybe that’s why there hasn’t been a text from Lisa, Grant thought. While texts didn’t come over the internet, maybe the software for routing them relied on the internet.

Grant felt stupid for even trying to analyze if an internet outage would affect text messages. It was simpler than that, Grant thought. There hadn’t been a call or text from Lisa because she hated him. Get over the past. They’re gone forever.

Then he heard something absolutely amazing. Car wheels on a gravel road? It almost sounded like Lisa’s car.

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