“That’ll be safe in the car,” Bennington said. “The barricades, rows of barbed wire, armed guards, and,” Bennington said pointing to the roof, “sharpshooters keep the riff-raff away.”
Sharpshooters on the roof of the courthouse? Good to know, Rich thought. He wondered if Bennington was trying to give him all this information or was just being too chatty.
They got out and went into the back basement entrance to the courthouse. Rich had been there a million times because he used to be a Sheriff’s deputy. But he couldn’t believe what he saw.
The halls were full of cases of food and bottled water. There were generators and cans of gas. It didn’t look like government-issue things. It looked like they had seized civilian items and were storing them there.
As they got up to the first floor, the stolen merchandise was no longer in the halls. The first floor offices were crowded. People were everywhere, working in cramped spaces. He recognized some of them as county workers. There were quite a few strangers. Some had National Guard uniforms and there were plenty of FCorps.
It took a surprising number of government employees there in the courthouse to run what little government was left, but then Rich thought about it. There was no private sector anymore (except the gangs and tiny businesses and people bartering). All the former grocery store employees, truck drivers, and the dozens of other people who were employed by the private sector in the past to stock up Martin’s were no longer doing those jobs. Now it took dozens of government employees to get the food to Martin’s. That’s who was running around the cramped halls of the courthouse, which is why it took so many government employees to do so little governing.
Bennington took Rich up the stairs to the second floor, which Rich remembered was the top floor. There were two well-armed and professional looking guards at the entrance to this floor. It must be the VIP floor. Bennington walked right past the guards, who were looking at Rich carefully to see if he was armed. Out of courtesy, Rich lifted up his shirt and spun around to show them he wasn’t armed.
They were headed for the county commissioner’s offices. Bennington came up to the receptionist. A receptionist?
It seemed so weird to have a nice civilian woman—a very attractive one, by the way—sitting there like things were normal. She must be someone’s girlfriend. Before the Collapse, when unemployment in the private sector was so high, cushy government jobs like this were highly sought after. Rich noticed that many of the old government workers who had been there forever were disappearing. Some got reassigned and some got laid off. But new employees—many of them beautiful women—replaced them. It was obvious what was going on. Everything was corrupt. Everything was unfair. Everything was a scam.
“Here to see Commissioner Winters,” Bennington said to the receptionist. It was hard for Bennington and Rich not to stare at her. She was in her early thirties, gorgeous, and had nice clothes. Most people were wearing tee shirts and jeans nowadays; no one dressed up anymore. But she was wearing a nice dress and her hair was perfect. She had showered recently, too, which was pretty abnormal these days. She looked like people looked before the Collapse. It was quite a contrast to everyone else.
“He’ll be right with you,” she said. She picked up the phone and said, “Your guests are here.”
A minute later, the phone rang and she got up and took them into Winters’ office.
Rich saw Winters and was reminded about how he looked like a rat. A human rat. He had beady eyes and was slightly hunched over, like he sat a desk all day plotting and scheming. “Welcome, gentlemen,” Winters said in that warm, charming, fake politician way.
Rich was struck by the old and the new in Winters’ office. The old was that it was a basic government office with standard furniture. The new was that there were bottles of booze and boxes of cigars everywhere. There were antique shotguns, the ones that cost thousands of dollars. Winters’ office looked like some high-end fencing operation full of stolen goods. It was.
“Have a seat, please,” Winters said. He looked up at the clock. “Too early in the morning or I’d offer you a brandy. Oh, what the hell. Want a brandy?”
“No, sir,” Bennington said.
“Me neither,” Rich said.
“Well, you got me thinking about an eye-opener to get the day going, so I believe I will have one myself,” Winters said.
The bottle of brandy he was pouring was now worth a month’s groceries. Winters was pouring a glass like it was no big deal.
Drinking in the morning? Rich looked around and saw that most of the dozen or so bottles in the office were half gone. Winters must be drinking pretty heavily. That was more information that was good to know and then tell to Ted and Sap. He was under a lot of stress and the bottle and receptionist were probably how he dealt with it. Winters had not been known as a drunk or womanizer before the Collapse. Maybe all of this had brought it on.
Winters started the meeting with small talk. He asked Rich about his family, obviously not knowing that he and Amy didn’t have kids. Rich answered politely. Winters told Rich how former Sheriff’s deputies were doing, only mentioning about a third of them, the third who hadn’t gone AWOL. Winters asked Rich how things were going during the Crisis and Rich answered that, after leaving the Sheriff’s department, he had become a security consultant helping people with home security.
“You were an Oath Keeper back on the force,” Winters said, suddenly getting very serious. “Isn’t that right?”
“Yes, sir,” Rich said. “But that was back then, when politics mattered. Who has time for that kind of thing now? Now I think about chopping enough wood for the winter. About making sure I get all the FCard food my wife tells me to.” He said it very convincingly. He’d rehearsed it.
“Good,” Winters said, trying to believe what Rich said. He desperately wanted to believe it.
Everyone around Winters said things like that all day long. The official line was that Oath Keepers membership had plummeted because people didn’t care about politics anymore. The other official line was that Oath Keepers were militia whacko “terrorists” and had scared all the good people away from that organization. The truth was the exact opposite, but no one spoke the truth in the courthouse. It was a truth-free zone, where people just mouthed the same lines over and over again. The Recovery is working. The people appreciate all that government is doing for them. This will all be over soon. Things will get back to normal. We’re Americans. We can get through this and democracy will be back.
If Winters had a clear head, he would have realized that Rich was an Oath Keeper, a Patriot, and a threat to Winters and all the corrupt thugs in the courthouse. It was very obvious. But Winters was distracted by paranoia and drunkenness. It happened slowly.
Winters had been scheming for years leading up to the Collapse about how to steer all that pork to his people. He broke many laws to do it, which made him progressively more paranoid. He thought everyone was out to get him. Someone would turn him in and try to take his power. He was saving the county. Anyone who got in his way was classed as some right-wing nut who was against progress. He wasn’t sleeping much at all. He had terrible nightmares about…things he was doing to people. They would haunt him in his dreams. He was drinking all day long and never even knew what time it was. He would invite his receptionist into his sleeping quarters in the conference room, but could tell she hated it. Sometimes she would cry afterwards.
Winters looked for good news anywhere he could find it, even when it didn’t make any sense. He would believe things were fine when, if he were thinking straight, he could have instantly seen they weren’t. Now that he lived behind barbed wire, Winters had to have good news. He craved it. When people told him how great he was and how he was saving the county, he believed them. He became addicted to people kissing his ass and telling him things were fine, because at night, the nightmares came. He needed to spend all day thinking things were fine to make up for what the people in his dreams were telling him.