Tammy left the room and Bill didn’t even look at her. He wasn’t going to give her a look that might tip off the FC man.
Tammy took the FC man out of the building and they got into his truck
“Which way?” he asked, a little curtly, like she should have been giving him better directions.
She pointed out of the parking lot and down the road, and he began following her direction.
“How far?” he asked impatiently.
“Oh, about half a mile,” Tammy said. “Then we turn off on Dearborn Road. Take a left on it.” Her heart was pounding. She was trying her best to be calm, but she was afraid she wasn’t pulling it off. It only took a minute to get to Dearborn Road. He turned left.
“How far now?” he asked.
“Just around this corner,” she said.
They turned the corner and there was a pickup truck in the road. It looked like they had broken down.
“Oh, great. Some hillbillies,” the FC man said. Tammy looked at his pistol. This wouldn’t be easy, but it had to be done.
He honked the horn and stopped the truck. He yelled at the men in the pickup, “Hey, move!”
The men got out of their truck. They looked familiar. They were the repairmen, but were wearing different shirts and now had sunglasses. The FC man obviously didn’t recognize them from the conference room.
Tammy opened the door and sprinted out of the way. She ran as fast as she could. Away, away, away from there she kept thinking as she ran. She wanted to be as far away as possible because of the…
Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!
Because of the loud gun shots. Tammy hoped those were the repairmen’s guns going off and not an FC pistol.
Tammy got ahold of herself. She realized that she was a coward running away like that.
Missy. Tammy thought about her sweet, innocent little granddaughter Missy, who would grow up in a destroyed country if the power were shut off. She might not even live, because of what these bastards had done. Tammy stopped and turned around. She ran back toward the gun fire, suddenly wanting to be a part of this. She wanted to do something to change the horrible situation. She wanted to do her part. She ran up and saw the two repairmen with shotguns leveled at the FC truck. She saw a person in the truck slumped over. As she got closer, she saw some big holes punched in the driver’s side door of the truck. They had used rifled slugs, which had punched through the truck door, like a nail through a soda can. There was blood all over the inside of the windows of the truck. It looked like the FC man exploded.
Tammy saw the blood. She wished she hadn’t looked at it. She started to feel sick. They had killed a human being. Her mind started racing: she didn’t know for sure that the FC man was a bad person. Maybe he wasn’t there to shut off the power. Maybe he didn’t have to die. Maybe he had kids like she did. Maybe they didn’t have to kill him. It was so final. If this were a mistake, she could never undo it.
“Let’s go,” one of the repairmen yelled.
The other repairman came over and they both ran to the FC truck. One of the repairmen ran back to their truck and got a can of spray paint. He sprayed a big red star on the FC truck and wrote “Red Brigade” on it.
The first repairman came over to Tammy and said to her, “OK, remember. The truck was stopped by two men. They had ski masks on. They made you get out and then they shot him. OK? We’re going to take off now. You just wander back to the office.” He didn’t even say good bye or look at her. They just got in their truck and they took off.
Tammy wanted to get out of there. She didn’t want to look at the FC truck again, or especially the bloody dead man in there. It was too disturbing. She realized she’d have this scene in her mind for years to come; likely the rest of her life. This “do-your-part-for-the-movement” thing was all fine and good, until you were looking at a dead man blown to pieces and you helped to do it. Tammy knew she’d have nightmares, but it had to be done. She would have worse nightmares if the power had been turned off.
Missy. This is for Missy; for her future. That’s what this is for, Tammy kept saying to herself as she ran back toward the office.
She got winded after running a while, so she started walking down the road. Walking? No, that wouldn’t be believable. She had to run. If she had really just been ambushed, but managed to escape and really wanted to summon help, she would run back to the office. She would sprint. She started to run. It was hard to keep running, but she had to make this convincing.
She only got a few hundred yards until she had to stop. She started walking again. Then she’d jog a little and walk some more. Pretty soon she was at the office. She started yelling when she got in the parking lot.
“They attacked us!” she screamed. “They shot him! They shot him!” Bill came running out, acting very surprised. He was surrounded by other employees who looked confused and scared.
She told the story to the crowd of her co-workers huddling around her at the entrance to the power company. The same simple story she’d been rehearsing on the way back to the office. She didn’t tell the part about the red star. She wouldn’t have known that because she just got out of the truck and ran. She heard the shots and kept running toward the office. That was the story. Everything was a blur.
“Someone call the police!” Bill yelled. That scared Tammy. She didn’t want anyone actually investigating this. Too bad; she was in it too far now.
“Send someone out to go see if he’s still alive!” Bill yelled. “And be careful. They still might be in the area.” Two trucks left the parking lot and headed out toward Dearborn Road.
About twenty minutes later, which seemed like twenty days, the two trucks came back to the office. “Terrorists!” one of drivers said. He described the red star and “Red Brigade” on the truck. He wasn’t in on the plan, so he really believed it.
“Tell the police we have terrorists here!” Bill yelled. “Everyone, back in the office! They might be coming back for us!” He was so convincing.
Employees started running back into the office. People were running out to their trucks and grabbing rifles and shotguns to take with them into the office.
Everyone was hovering around Tammy. They were offering water, asking her what the terrorists looked like, and what kind of truck they had. What was the license plate? She couldn’t remember. “It all happened so fast,” she kept saying. Which was true.
Before the Collapse, the police would have been on the scene in a matter of minutes. Now, however, they probably wouldn’t even make it out there. A killing on the side of the road? Take a number. But, the call came in that “terrorists” had attacked. That got the attention of the police.
Lt. Bennington was the first to arrive. Terrorists? Oh wow. This was getting serious. He wanted to find them. He interviewed Tammy. She kept telling the same story. She said she needed to go home. Bennington said she wouldn’t be safe there. The terrorists might try to get her at her home. She needed to stay at the offices for a while. She’d be safe there. She knew that, if her story had been true, they would be right about that, so she had to play along.
Someone sent for Mark and he came, appearing very worried for her. She couldn’t tell him what had really happened. That was going to be extremely difficult for her. She knew she’d eventually cave; she couldn’t keep something like that from him. The day seemed to go on forever, until that evening when an agent of some kind came from Olympia. He wanted to know all about the terrorists. Tammy kept telling the same story. She was hoping she was telling it consistently. She didn’t want to slip up. She would get out of telling details by saying she needed a break and that it was too traumatic. She had already told the other police. Could she just have a break?