299 Days: The Community (21 page)

Todd got defensive. “No. I never thought…well, Chloe doesn’t like guns.”

Steve normally wouldn’t get on a guy about things like this, but he knew that Todd really needed a gun.

“Can you get one?” Steve asked. “I hope I’m not sounding like I’m on you about this, but, Todd, you need a gun. Things will get nasty pretty soon.” He didn’t say what he really wanted, though, which was “think about Chloe and the girls.”

Todd just sighed. He knew he was screwed. His chance to get a gun was down to about zero. There weren’t any gun stores around Bellevue. One had tried to open, but the city council wouldn’t let them because it wasn’t “the kind of thing we like to have here.” There were plenty of porno stores, but a gun store didn’t meet “community standards.”

Even if there were a gun store, Todd was still screwed. With the Governor’s executive order, guns were illegal. Todd didn’t know anyone who had a gun, either. He’d never fired one, so he was afraid they would blow up in his hand or something.

“We’ll be OK without one,” Todd said. “We have the best cops in the state. They make over $100,000 a year here. We’ve paid good money for them to protect us. They will. Besides, not to be a dick, but you’ve seen my neighborhood. Not exactly a high-crime area.” Todd was doing a good job of convincing himself that they’d be fine. Just like they always had been. Crime happened elsewhere.

Steve knew he couldn’t help Todd. Steve finally said, “Yeah, you’re right. Didn’t mean to scare you. You guys will be fine.” He wondered if he sounded convincing. At this point, all Steve could do for Todd was try to convince him that nothing bad could happen.

Todd had to go. He had a bunch of other calls like this. He didn’t look forward to them. “You take care now, Steve.”

“You bet, Todd,” Steve said. “A country boy can survive.”

Todd had no idea what Steve was talking about.

Chapter 94

Hoarders

(May 9)

Nancy Ringman was a piece of work. Two days ago, immediately after Ron Spencer had seen the Matson’s trashed house and heard what his wife, Sherri, had told him about Nancy’s odd behavior, he had gone to Nancy’s house to confront her. She denied doing any of it. Flat out lied. And she acted like Ron was the crazy one for suggesting that she’d do something like that. Her voice was dripping with condescension. He wanted to punch her in the face. He’d never actually done that to a woman before. He’d never had a reason to.

The final straw came when Ron was leaving Nancy’s house. She actually said, “Ron, I’ll bring up your concerns about whoever vandalized the Matson house at the neighborhood meeting. We are getting a Freedom Corps group together. Maybe you’d like to serve on it. The Freedom Corps would find the vandal or vandals. Oh, and perhaps you can help us catch Grant Matson. He’s on the POI list, you know.” She was actually smiling when she said that. She was a crazy, crazy bitch. Ron had never used that word before. It wasn’t worth his energy to use it now.

Ron walked out. He wouldn’t take the POI bait from her and get mad, which was just what she wanted. She would use him being mad to convince everyone that she was the calm one who they should listen to.

On his walk from Nancy’s house to his, Ron started to realize how outnumbered he was. Nancy might just succeed in turning the neighborhood into her fire-wardens-with-funny-hats Freedom Corps group. Most people in the Cedars were government workers. They were used to some government structure for anything to get done. They didn’t have many independent thoughts. They had never relied on themselves for their own safety. This Freedom Corps thing was perfect for them. Taking direction from an aggressive and manipulative political hack. They did that all day at work. It would be “normal.”

For the first time, Ron realized that the greatest threat to his family might not be from the looters outside the Cedars, but from his neighbors inside the Cedars. He could see how this would play out. He needed to suspend the fight against the looters and start it against Nancy. He hated politics and neighborhood meetings, but he had to do this.

He told Sherri what had happened. She said, “I’m coming to this meeting, too. I won’t let her treat us that way.” Sherri knew that Nancy would claim Ron and his “testosterone” were trying to intimidate poor little Nancy. Sherri could say things that Ron couldn’t because she wasn’t a man.

Ron talked to Len before the meeting, who, along with some others were feeling the same about Nancy. This meeting would be a showdown.

They assembled for the meeting at Nancy’s house. There was some guy there with a funny hat. It was a hard hat with a “FC” sticker on it for “Freedom Corps.” Oh, God. Were they serious? Funny hats and everything. Ron actually laughed out loud when he saw it.

Nancy started. She absolutely loved having a crowd and power. “OK, thanks for coming,” she said. “I have a special guest with me. He’s Clint Peterson of the Freedom Corps. He is our official Freedom corps, or “FC” as we call it, representative. I know Clint from our work on the Governor’s campaign. He’s at Revenue,” meaning the Department of Revenue. “He’s here to tell us about the FC and how we can all help get this situation back under control so we can return to normal. It’s all been so hard on everyone.”

Clint Sillyhat, or whatever his name was, droned on for a while. Ron kept thinking about his great grandfather’s description of the American Protective League during World War I. Most people had no idea how bad the government, and lots of willing citizens, infringed on civil liberties during World War I. The APL was a group of hundreds of thousands of citizens who worked closely with the government to “keep an eye” on undesirables, such as those opposing President Woodrow Wilson. The APL had semi-official status. Federal authorities bragged about having a cadre of Loyalist APL people helping the government. Some APL members carried badges. The FC was the APL all over again.

When Clint was done with something about “neighbor helping neighbor” and asked if there were any questions, Ron’s hand shot up.

“How,” Ron asked in his nicest voice, “in specific ways, not platitudes, will your little Freedom Corps protect us from the looters that came here a few days ago and tried to kill me?”

That surprised Clint. In his world of polite bureaucratic meetings, people didn’t talk that way.

Nancy answered Ron’s question. “Oh,” she said sarcastically, “your way worked so well, Ron. How many died? Three, at least. And there were bullets flying all over the place.” Nancy’s voice changed to her concerned mother tone. “Ron, you are brave and all, but you’re not a trained professional. You need resources. The FC has resources.”

“Like what? Tell me the resources,” Ron yelled. “Tell me, Nancy. Tell me.”

Silence. Ron was on a roll. He went on. “Does the FC have the resources to catch the Matson vandal, Nancy? Gee, who could have done that? Maybe the person who attacked Lisa Matson and her special needs son right before the place was trashed? I hope the mighty FC catches him—or her.”

People were stunned. They’d never seen mild mannered Mormon accountant Ron so angry. Sherri just glared at Nancy. No one had ever seen Sherri angry.

Clint started to talk, but Nancy put her hand up to him. She’d handle this.

“Well, Ron,” Nancy said coldly, “I can understand why you’re so concerned about security here. You have a lot to lose, don’t you?” She pointed in the direction of Ron and Sherri’s house, and then she pointed to Ron and Sherri.

“You know what you have there, don’t you?” she said to the audience. Nancy looked like she was about to punch Ron and Sherri.

“Tell us what you have in your house, Ron,” Nancy yelled. “Tell us.”

Ron and Sherri had no idea what she was talking about. They shook their heads. Ron finally said, “Huh?”

“Tell everyone about the food you little Mormons have,” Nancy yelled. “Oh, is ‘LDS’ the term you prefer?” she said sarcastically. “Tell us about the year’s worth of food that your Grand Pooh-Bah tells you to have in your home.” Nancy was screaming at this point.

Ron and Sherri didn’t have a year’s worth of food. They didn’t follow all of their church’s teachings to the letter. They had no more food than anyone else.

Ron was stunned. He could feel the eyes on him. “I don’t have any food. A year’s worth? Where would we put it?”

“I don’t know,” Nancy said. “It’s your religion, your fundamentalist religion. Your macho shoot-em-up religion. You want to shoot people rather than share your food.” She went back to the condescending tone, “Not very ‘Christian,’ is it Ron? What would Jesus do? Shoot the hungry?”

Ron could not speak. He could not believe what was happening.

“Shut up, bitch!” Sherri jumped up and yelled. That stunned the room. Nice Mormon homemaker Sherri just dropped the “b” bomb.

She started walking toward Nancy pointing her finger and saying, “You will not threaten my family. You will not turn everyone against us. I will not let you…”

When she got close enough to hit Nancy, Cliff stepped between the two women. “Calm down. No one is threatening anyone,” Cliff said.

“The hell she isn’t,” Sherri said. No one had ever heard her swear, even if it was a minor swear word like that. Sherri pushed the rather weak Clint aside and pointed her finger right at Nancy. The two women were about a foot apart.

“Stay away from my family and don’t attack my religion,” Sherri screamed. “Understand? Understand?” Sherri was shaking with rage.

Nancy stood there. Calmly. This was exactly the reaction she was hoping for from the fundamentalists. Poor Sherri, Nancy thought. She has been subjugated by the fundamentalist male power structure. She has been so subjugated that she was violent against someone like Nancy who was trying to help her be free from it.

Nancy went with the concerned mom voice again. It seemed to be working well. “This is the kind of hostility we don’t need here.”

Sherri turned around and walked out. Ron came with her. As they left, Nancy yelled at them, “People need to share now. We all need to sacrifice. You need to help the community with all your food. Don’t hoard it.”

Len stood up. This was crap. “Nancy, you’re way out of line. The Spencers are good people. I’ve been to their house numerous times. They don’t have a year’s worth of food lying around.”

“That you can see,” Nancy interrupted him. “That you can see. Their religion teaches them…”

“Stop with the religious shit,” Len said. No one had ever heard him swear either.

Three others stood up. One of them, Ken Kallerman the Fish and Wildlife Department biologist said, “We’re LDS, too, and we won’t tolerate this.” He pointed at Nancy and said, “Stop it right now.” No one there had ever seen Mr. Scientist raise his voice.

Nancy was silent for a while, evaluating the field of battle to decide her next attack. Clint started saying something but, once again, Nancy put her hand up to him and he stopped talking.

“You fundamentalists are free to leave,” she said to Ken. “We don’t need your intolerance here. Don’t try to leave with your food. It belongs to the community.”

People were stunned. People had been worrying about food because there was the $200 limit at the store, but they still had several days’ worth. It wasn’t like they were starving.

Finally, “Judge” Judy Kilmer, the administrative law judge who was tight with Nancy, said, “Nancy, what’s wrong with you? Are you OK?”

With that comment, Nancy knew that her control of the Cedars was over. At least for now. Judy Kilmer, who was on Nancy’s side, said what everyone was wondering. It was obvious that Nancy had snapped under the pressure and stress of recent events. Everyone was on edge with all that was going on, but targeting people for their religion, trying to turn people against them, and telling them to leave was too much.

Nancy knew she couldn’t turn the Cedars into what she wanted, at least not at this meeting. She had overdone it. Her intentions were good, she told herself. All she wanted to do was to prevent the fundamentalists from hoarding food and imposing their will on everyone else. But these stupid people weren’t ready for the cold hard truth, which was that the Mormons wanted to take over with their guns and testosterone. She needed to regroup for later, when the stupid people would finally see it.

“I’ve been up for a few days,” Nancy said, quickly deciding to make a small political retreat. “I’ve been working so hard for all of you.” She started sobbing, which was genuine.

She hadn’t had her depression medicine for several days either, but she didn’t think that was the problem. “I’m just trying so hard to make everything perfect for all of us.”

Judy came over and hugged her. “You’ll be fine, Nancy. Let’s just get some rest for you.” Nancy was sobbing, but smiling inside. They were falling for it. Judy was one of the stupid people, too, Nancy thought. Nancy made a mental note not to trust Judy.

Nancy had big plans and they didn’t include being slowed down by idiots. This was just round one.

Chapter 95

Jason’s Briefing

(May 9)

Jeanie had two good nights of sleep in a row. Whoa. That was a record. She hadn’t felt this good in about two weeks.

She had her organic oatmeal and fruit for breakfast. The night before, they had veal kabobs with rice pilaf, which was very nice. They even had ice cream for dessert. Life was not bad at Camp Murray.

Jeanie hadn’t seen her boss, Rick Menlow, since they got there. She had no idea where he was. All she knew was that she was working hard to get the State of Washington’s message out to the people through the media. She was very good at her job. She was proud to help with the effort. Lots of people were doing great things—some of them dangerous—to make life better for everyone, but those great things had much more impact if the public got to know about them. Keeping the public calm and upbeat was as important, if not more important, than a load of some spare parts getting up I-5 to some water treatment plant or whatever the crisis of the minute was there at the Command Center of the Washington Department of Emergency Management.