299 Days: The Collapse (20 page)

Drew got out $100 in twenty dollar bills and put it down on the counter.

“Ten gallons on pump four,” the cashier said as Drew left. That gas station had always been a pleasant place in the million times Drew had been there before. But not now. It was a mean and dangerous place. Drew didn’t want to be there. He wanted to gas up and get the hell out.

He pumped his gas and started to leave. Two women were arguing over something. Drew kept his eyes to himself and got back in the car. Whatever was wrong was between those people, not him. Drew realized that he had never been in a gas station and heard people argue. Ever.

He got in the car and grabbed the CB. “All done. Ten gallons. Ten bucks a gallon. Thanks for waiting, gentlemen. Let’s get out of here.”

“You paid how much a gallon for this gas?” Eileen asked.

“Dear, this is a stressful enough situation,” Drew said as politely as he could. “Please don’t treat this like it’s the normal world. This isn’t normal. We are lucky to get any gas and we’re extremely fortunate to have these guys taking us to Lisa’s cabin. I need you keeping your eyes open for things on the road. This is not going to be a normal car ride. OK? I let a lot of stuff slide in the past, but not today. I am in charge of getting you to safety. I take my job very seriously. OK?”

Eileen had never heard Drew talk like that. But she was glad he was. He was being a man. She paused. “OK, Drew. Thank you for what you’re doing. I can’t wait to be with our grandkids.” She put her hand on his shoulder. She felt so close to him.

He felt the closeness with her, too. Stronger than he ever had. Her hand on his shoulder was what he needed. He had a hard job ahead. They all did. He needed to know that Eileen was on his side, not complaining about how things were different. Thank God she understood.

Chapter 68

“Trouble!”

(May 7)

The convoy got back into the order they had arrived in and got on the road. It was a short jaunt to the freeway. Luckily, they weren’t getting on I-5, which was totally jammed. They were getting on Highway 101, which was a smaller freeway that went from Olympia to the Hood Canal area of Puget Sound. Traffic was very heavy, but not jammed. Pow realized this would be a long ride. It seemed that quite a few people had the same idea they did: bug out toward the water.

Traffic was slow, but it kept moving. This was unlike any ride he’d ever been on. Occasionally, one of the guys would get on the CB and say that everything seemed OK and the others would check in with a similar report. They were going about thirty-five miles an hour, which pleasantly surprised Pow.

They went through the main town out by the cabin, Frederickson. Things seemed like they were in Olympia: people were trying to go out and get food and gas. Everyone looked tense.

The convoy turned off onto the road leading in the direction of Pierce Point. Things still seemed OK. They turned off on another smaller road. It was hugging the beach on the water on the other side of the inlet from the cabin. It was beautiful.

Pow came around a corner and saw a car stopped in the middle of the road, blocking traffic both ways. Two men were waving them down. He yelled into the CB, “Trouble!” and then he realized that he was scaring the Taylors and Matsons. “Everyone stay in their vehicles except the Team. Go!”

The Team had never practiced for this, but they instinctively knew what to do. They slammed on their brakes and tried to park their trucks in the other lane to shield the Taylor and Matson cars from the roadblock. Lisa was just trying to stop her SUV without hitting any cars. She saw the guys jumping out of their trucks with assault rifles. They were using their trucks as shields.

“Get down!” Lisa yelled at Manda and Cole. The CBs were silent for a few seconds, which seemed like an hour.

Bobby came on the CB. “Nothing to the rear. I’m going to the Matson car.” Lisa was enormously relieved to hear that. Pretty soon Bobby came running up to their car, motioned for them to stay down, and started pointing his rifle toward the car jamming the road. Bobby would periodically turn around and scan the rear of the convoy.

Wes came running up to the Taylor car. Eileen thought it looked like the Secret Service protecting them, except they weren’t in suits. She could not believe how brave these young men were. They didn’t even know her; they were just friends of Grant’s. Drew pulled out his revolver, not caring if Eileen saw it. That was a concern an hour ago. Now things were entirely different.

Pow came on the CB, “You got the bad guys covered?”

Scotty came on, “Yep.”

Pow yelled at the men waving, “Move away. We’ve got you covered.”

The two men with the car blocking the road saw all the trucks with AR-15s pointing out at them. Who were these guys? What the hell?

They put their hands up. “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! Our car is out of gas! Don’t shoot!”

To make sure everyone knew what was going on, Pow said on the CB, “They say they’re out of gas. Watch the sides and rear.” He could hold his AR with one hand and use the radio with the other. He’d practiced.

Pow yelled to the two men in a deep and scary voice, “Walk slowly over to the side. To your left. We will kill you if you fuck around. Understand?” They nodded.

“I got the one on the right,” Scotty said into the CB.

“Left,” Wes said.

It was quiet for about thirty seconds. Pow wanted to give any of potential accomplices time to show themselves. After it appeared that the two men were alone, Pow said into the radio, “Moving.”

“Move,” Wes and Scotty said in the radio, nearly simultaneously.

Pow started running toward the car in the middle of the road, scanning right and left with his rifle, hiding behind cover as he went. He didn’t want to run toward a situation like this; he would rather wait them out. But they didn’t have time to wait. They had to get to the cabin and traffic was backing up behind them. People were honking their horns. It was annoying Pow. He wanted to solve this problem and get going.

Pow made it up to the two men’s car. There was no one else there. He looked to see if anyone else was waiting to ambush them. He was glad it was light out and he didn’t need to take an hour to do this. Pow didn’t see anyone. He looked at the car. Sure enough, there was a gas can sitting there. Maybe they really ran out of gas. They didn’t look like dirtbags, but Pow was still very careful.

He pointed his rifle right at the two men and said, “You really out of gas?”

They both nodded, appearing completely terrified. They thought they were being robbed by some…military contractors? That made no sense, which just made the two men more terrified. They had no idea who these guys were.

One of the men said, in a cracking voice, “We were trying to push it to the side. It’s in neutral. You can check.”

Pow slowly went toward the car and looked. It was in neutral.

“OK,” he commanded, “you two slowly come over to your vehicle and keep pushing this thing when I say it’s OK.” He got on the CB, “They are out of gas. They’re going to push it. When I raise my hand, it’s OK for them to move. Don’t shoot them,” Pow said noticing that the men with the stalled car were listening, so he added, “unless you have to.”

Pow said to the men, “OK, keep your hands up and slowly come over here to push.” Pow put his left hand up. That was the signal for the Team to hold their fire.

The men slowly walked over. When they got to the car, one asked Pow, “Can I get in the car to steer?” The other guy was pushing all alone but they were on flat ground.

Pow nodded. He wanted to help him but caught his politeness impulse and decided to instead scan the area for any potential bad guys. He was getting nervous about the number of cars that were now stopped in both directions. They could have lots of bad guys, or even pissed off guys who might come out and get in the Team’s faces. Pow wanted the situation to be simple: just two threats to watch, not people pouring out of their cars. So far no one was. That was probably because it looked like the stalled car was getting off the road.

The man pushed the car. Slowly, it went onto the side of the road. The man pushing put his hands back up. The man steering put his hands out the window for Pow to see.

Pow yelled, “You, in the car, come out and put your hands up.” Once the man did, Pow told both of them, “Stand over there and keep those hands up.” They did so.

Pow got on the CB. “It’s clear. I’ll keep them covered. Everyone else get back in line and we’ll get going.” By now, the horns were blaring behind them. Feeling agitated, Pow thought about shooting the first car honking its horn, but resisted.

“Where are my manners?” Pow said to the two men with a smile. “You guys need some gas?”

They nodded emphatically.

“We have one gas can,” Pow said. He continued to cover the men; just to be on the safe side. Pow held up his AR with his right hand, and used his left hand to work the CB. He said into the CB, “Could one of you round up a hose and the gas can and get these guys some gas?”

“Roger that,” Wes said on the CB. He had a short section of garden hose in his truck for siphoning gas. He got the spare gas can from Bobby, drew a gallon of gas from Bobby’s truck’s tank, and slowly walked up to the car on the side of the road.

Once other people could see the stalled car was off to the side, but traffic still wasn’t moving, horns started blaring.

Bobby, the one in the rear, walked up to the cars behind him, raised his AR in the air and yelled, “Shut the fuck up!” The horns stopped. Bobby smiled. That was cool, he thought.

When Wes got up to the two stranded men with the can of gas, they couldn’t stop thanking him.

“Let’s get this in your car quick,” Wes said in his North Carolina accent. “Or we’re gonna have to start shootin’ people behind us. I’ve killed enough people today.”

The two men froze.

“Just kiddin’,” Wes said with a laugh. “Got you.”

The two men relaxed. Things were semi-normal. Some nice passersby were helping them. That was normal. For a moment, both Wes and the two stranded men felt like things were normal. That was such a relief.

“Good luck, gentlemen,” Wes said as he took the now-empty gas can. He held up the gas can to his head like he was saluting and said, “Now you guys go do something good for someone else down the road, you hear?”

“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.

Chapter 69

An Absolutely Amazing Sound

(May 7)

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.”