Glen Tate - 299 Days - The Preparation

Scotty had a feeling things would be going downhill in the country soon and that they had better learn how to take care of business if there were no cops around.

Others, like Bobby and Pow, had an inkling of what looting and gang warfare could look like, but they were training primarily because it was fun.

Wes was hard to read. There was something complex going on in that guy’s head. Grant decided to find out. If Wes were crazy, Grant needed to know so they could kick him off the Team. Crazy people can’t be trusted to be around live fire exercises.

“So what’s the life story of Wes Marlin?” Grant asked one day when they were cleaning their guns and were the only ones left on the range. There was something about cleaning guns that leads guys to have deep conversations.

“Not much,” Wes said in that southern accent. He paused.

“I grew up in North Carolina mostly,” he continued. “My dad is in the Army and we went all over, but he spent a lot of time at Bragg and Benning,” two Army bases for special operations forces.

“What does he do in the Army?” Grant asked.

“He’s a Ranger,” Wes said. “Just about to retire. He’s out at Ft. Lewis now. That’s how I got out here to Washington State.” Wes was kind of quiet.

“Do you like it out here?” Grant asked.

“Yeah, it’s OK,” he said with a shrug. “It’s a little cold up here and the people are a little weird. There are too many leftist, bleeding heart stickers on Subarus up here, y’know?” They talked about all the liberal whack jobs in Washington State for a while.

“So what do you do at the equipment rental store?” Grant asked.

“Just about everything,” Wes said. “I fix all the machinery and maintain it. I show customers how to use all the machines.” Wow, Grant thought. This guy knows how to fix machinery. What an asset when equipment breaks and there’s no one to call. Wes was still holding something back. Grant thought there was a disconnect between Wes coming out to Washington State and spending the past few years working at the rental place.

“What’s your dad like?” Grant asked.

Wes straightened his posture, looked Grant in the eye, and said, “He’s an asshole.”

That’s what Wes was holding back.

“He’s a gung ho Ranger and always pushed me to join the Army,” Wes said. “I wouldn’t mind being in the Army, but he said I needed to be a Ranger or something equivalent or I would embarrass him. He actually said that. He was constantly deployed when I was a kid and when he was home he would ride me pretty hard. I just didn’t want to deal with his shit anymore so I graduated from high school and went to work out here. I see him on occasion, but we’re not really close. He can’t understand why I didn’t join the Army.”

Grant and Wes had something in common: asshole dads. “Is your mom out here?” Grant asked.

“Nope,” he said. “Divorced a long time ago.” Wes looked off. “Not sure where she is now.”

“What kind of equipment do you work on?” Grant asked, to both change the subject from asshole dads and to get an inventory of Wes’s skills. He described how he worked on power tools; small gas- powered things like chainsaws, trucks and trailers, and things all the way up to small bulldozers. Like so many others Grant was coming into contact with, Wes didn’t really have a family. He would need a family when a collapse hit, and Grant would provide it.

The conversation wound its way to guns and women, as conversations between men cleaning guns often do. Then they went home; Wes to his apartment alone and Grant to his family who had no idea about the guns, the Team, the stored food, or his thoughts on the coming collapse. In a sense, Grant was as alone as Wes was.

Coming home from the range after a session with the Team was always a weird experience. Grant went from being one hundred percent himself with the guys, with an AR slung over his shoulder and a sidearm, to being a typical suburban father and husband. That twenty-minute car ride from the range to home was a forced transformation process. He had to go from gunfighter to suburban conformist.

It was bullshit. Why did he have to keep hiding what he was doing? He wasn’t hurting anyone. In fact, he was doing things that could very easily save all their lives. Most of his friends from work had habits and hobbies that were a lot worse; drinking and overeating, trips to Vegas where who knows what happened, a new car every few years, and spending money on totally useless things like golf. A year’s worth of prepping cost about as much as a trip to Vegas or playing golf, and a lot less than new cars every couple of years. At least with prepping, he actually had tangible things to show that were slightly more useful, like food to feed his family and weapons to defend himself and the ones he loved most.

Yet, Grant was the weirdo for being a “survivalist.” It wasn’t weird to waste money on Vegas or clothes or cars. Nope, that was normal in suburban America, where people didn’t worry about how they would survive and protect their family if an unexpected event changed their lives.

The outside thought had been telling Grant for a few years that it wasn’t normal for people to just consume things and live in comfort and peace. Maybe it was normal for these suburban people, but Grant had lived the way most other people in the world had to: poor and scared. He knew that this current affluence in America was not “normal.” It would end soon. It had to.

Grant pulled into his driveway and hit the garage door button. Time to be a suburban guy again.

“Did you have fun shooting?” Lisa asked when Grant got inside the house. She thought it was fine that he went and shot a .22 at paper targets or whatever it was he did. A .22 and paper targets was the impression he had left with her.

“Yep,” Grant said. “Good times.” But he didn’t want to dwell on how much fun he had; he needed to be a good suburban dad. So he asked Lisa, “Do the kids have any homework I need to help them with?”

Whenever Grant came home after prepping and saw Lisa, he would think about how unfair it was that he couldn’t share his whole life with her. He couldn’t talk to her about his greatest hopes and fears. That would involve a topic that was off limits. He had to hide expense check money from her and literally hide things like guns and stored food. He felt like a wimp for not telling his wife.

But he couldn’t. Grant remembered the conversation about the stock market and the coming collapse. She literally put her hands over her ears. She would not hear about it. He needed to control his emotions. A survivalist who gets his family through the worst possible times will have to keep his emotions in check. Start practicing now, pal, Grant thought to himself. Emotionally you want to tell her all about the prepping and to have her accept you as you are. But telling her won’t accomplish that. It will just get her mad, especially that you’ve been hiding things from her. She’ll tell you to get rid of all this stuff and start golfing like a normal guy. And you won’t. This will lead to…

OK, Grant told himself, there is no upside to telling her except to feel better. Feeling better is for pussies. Toughen up. You have a job to do.

Manda was the bright spot in the family. She got it. Grant had an idea to bring her into a closer orbit with him on the prepping stuff. An idea that would also make him feel better. If he couldn’t share his prepping with his wife, at least he could with his daughter.

Grant briefly thought about getting Cole involved with prepping. He wouldn’t understand the words. Grant could involve him by taking really good care of him when disaster struck. That’s what drove Grant to prep when it came to Cole. He wanted to make his life as good as possible. It was all about pancakes and safety.