299 Days: The Collapse (2 page)

In the Southern and Mountain West states, which people started calling the “Southern States,” the Federal Government was becoming increasingly less relevant. Many states, again led by Texas, were having their Congressmen and Senators take an oath of loyalty to their states, not the Federal Government. Some refused, but most took the oath. Southern States were passing laws nullifying federal laws. Oklahoma passed a law that guns made and sold in Oklahoma were no longer subject to federal firearm regulations. Southern states were passing laws reaffirming their Tenth Amendment rights, which was the part of the Constitution essentially saying that power not specifically given to the Federal Government remains with the states and the people. The Federal Government was exercising all kinds of power not specifically given to it under the Constitution, like draconian environmental laws. Federal agencies like the EPA essentially stopped working in the Southern states. They had no money to enforce their regulations, so they just stopped coming to work.

The country was not headed into a second Civil War because it wasn’t necessary. The Feds were so broke and powerless that the Southern states could just ignore them. There was nothing dramatic about it. These states, along with many Americans were quietly ignoring the Federal Government.

Before the Collapse, most anyone who imagined what dissolution of the United States would look like often jumped to dramatic conclusions. They would envision large federal and rebel armies fighting each other; like the Civil War.

It didn’t happen that way. Real life is usually less dramatic than grand predictions. Instead, it was a gradual dissolution over the period of a few months based on the impracticality of the Federal Government continuing to govern, followed by the Southern states coming into fill the vacuum. There needed to be some level of government, especially honest police protection and infrastructure like roads and utilities, and the Southern states could do it. The Feds couldn’t. It was that simple. It was practical, not dramatic.

During the Collapse, most people didn’t want to choose sides; they just wanted the economy to be fixed and the crimes to stop. No one wanted the bloodshed that would come if the federal and Southern armies began fighting each other. There were ten thousand nuclear warheads out there, many of them on bases in the Southern states. The Feds kept strict control over the launch codes for them, but there were still ten thousand containers of highly radioactive materials that could be used to make “dirty bombs.” Those were a conventional explosive that distributed uranium or plutonium in an area, making it radioactive. Not as big of a “bang” as a nuclear detonation, but devastating all the same. Very quickly into the Collapse, the Feds secured these weapons. They had planned for this.

There was another reason why there wasn’t a fight between two giant armies. Oath Keepers and those loyal to the Federal Government were thoroughly mixed together; sometimes a unit was split down the middle between the two. Oath Keepers called themselves “Patriots,” and those loyal to the Federal Government, “Loyalists.” Each side knew a full-on fight with large armies, navies, and air forces would destroy both sides in about fifteen minutes. Fight over what? Who wanted to rule over the burned out and broken shell of the FUSA? It was like a couple that, instead of getting divorced, just starts doing their own thing but still live in the same house and go through the motions of being married. They still fight, but not the final showdown kind of fight.

“Don’t Tread on Me” flags were everywhere, especially in the Southern states. The flags were even popping up in Washington State. There were quite a few Patriots in Grant’s state.

The “Don’t Tread on Me” flag, which was once a mild political statement, had now become a battle flag. It was a statement that a person had taken sides and that he or she were accepting the risks that came with that. Grant got a big “Don’t Tread on Me” flag for the cabin. At the beginning, he didn’t fly it out there because he didn’t want to attract attention, but he knew that he would be flying it at some point. He knew it. It was that weird feeling of the present and the future happening at the same time.

Chapter 44

Quit Whining and Start Shining

(First week of May)

Everything happened so quickly in those first days of May. Each day after the May Day Dump of bonds brought some new amazing revelation that the whole system, held together with duct tape and chewing gum, was coming apart. The U.S. could no longer borrow money. There was a giant tax protest movement. Each day after the May Day Dump, millions of people were quietly deciding they would no longer pay their taxes. Arizona renamed its National Guard the State Guard and announced it would use state forces to enforce the border. Several states, led by Oklahoma, announced that they would no longer contribute to Social Security for state employees, and they would not assist federal authorities in tax collection or any other activity. Large communities in California were given orders to relocate because of all the violence. A gallon of milk was approaching $10. There were gasoline shortages.

Grant and Lisa were both home a few days after the May Day Dump. Grant was making some lunch when Lisa got a call from her boss. She couldn’t believe what he was telling her. They didn’t want her to come to work. She commuted from Olympia to Tacoma, a thirty-minute drive in normal conditions, but the interstate was jammed. It was taking two hours to get to Tacoma. Her boss also said that they couldn’t guarantee her safety in the hospital, despite all the need for doctors as a result of the increased crime. The crime was causing the ER to overflow. People were running into the hospitals—some armed, some not—to steal pain killers. Lisa’s hospital didn’t have enough guards, and the ones they did have were unarmed because long ago the hospital decided it would be a “gun free zone.” Doctors and nurses were being robbed in the parking lot and attacked for no reason.

“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.

Silence. Nancy decided she needed to save this discussion from going horribly wrong. “Um, Grant, guns are very dangerous,” she said in a condescending tone. “We don’t want them going off in our neighborhood and hurting people.”

Was she serious? Quite a few people nodded with her. Oh, God, these people were hopeless.

Grant felt a debate coming on, one he would surely lose with these people, but he opened his mouth, anyway.

“Nancy,” Grant said as politely as possible, “I don’t know how much experience you have with firearms, but they don’t just go off by themselves. Those of us who are hunters carry guns all day out in the woods and nothing bad ever happens.”