Tom asked to shoot the AK once, to see if it kicked. It wasn’t bad at all. He actually hit the target—a milk jug out at about fifteen yards. Not too shabby, he thought. He realized that he didn’t have to be some military guy. The Delphi bubba guards were all just civilians with guns guarding a roadblock. Tom could do that.
He was also initially nervous about spending a week with people who were essentially strangers. It was like going to a cocktail party where you don’t know anyone, but the party lasts for a week.
It turns out this wasn’t a problem. Everyone greeted him warmly when they found out he was a guest at the Prosser farm. The Prosser family had been on that land for over 100 years and had built up a lot of goodwill there. Some people asked what he did back in Olympia. Tom would just change the subject. He never gave out his last name. He was just “Tom.”
“Something’s coming! Get ready!” someone yelled during the second day of one of Tom’s shifts. It was late in the evening at dusk. They spotted some suspicious men in three Jeeps coming off the exit, going slowly. They were civilian Jeeps that looked like they were in a four-wheeler club or something. Tom was on secondary guard duty so all he had was his pistol. He slowly went to the guard line. He didn’t really want to go up there, but he knew he was supposed to.
The guards watched as the Jeeps stopped and idled for a few minutes. Someone said they should show them how many guards they had and all their guns. The leader of the guards, who was an Army veteran, said no. They didn’t want them to know what they had.
Finally, the Jeeps left. “They’ll be back tonight,” the guard leader said. Later that night, Tom couldn’t sleep as he was waiting for the Jeeps to return. He was afraid he wouldn’t know what to do or would be a coward. It was a very long night.
Dawn finally appeared, after what felt like a few days. The guard leader had adjusted his prediction and now thought the Jeeps would reappear right before dawn.
Luckily, they didn’t, and it was now light and Tom was tired and hungry. He had a nice breakfast of eggs and biscuits, smothered in a lot of homemade strawberry jam. It tasted so much better than store-bought jam. It was now the day shift, so Tom could sleep in the RV. Normally, it would be hard for him to sleep during the day, but he was so tired from staying up all night that he didn’t expect it would take very long to fall asleep this time.
Justin, the farm kid who showed him how to run an AK, came up to him. “Hey,” Justin said to Tom, “I’m out of good beer, but I have a bottle of this shit.” He handed a cold bottle to Tom. It was one of Tom’s favorite microbrews, a Belgian Chimay – the very beer he drank back in Olympia before all this started. Tom was stunned.
“We’re out of Coors,” Justin said. “Sorry, man, this weird beer is all I got.”
“That’ll do,” Tom said. He smiled. He popped the top and took a long drink. Oh God. That tasted good. He was so relieved. He was relaxed for the first time in twenty-four hours. He sat in one of the lawn chairs they had around the fire pit and kept sipping the delicious beer. He was letting it seep into him. Tom looked around. There he was; out in the country, guarding Delphi Road with some farmers. He had a pistol on his belt. He had no idea what he was doing, but this was a good place to be, with good people around him.
Tom took another long pull of that amazing beer. He looked at the familiar Chimay bottle. It was a very, very familiar bottle, just like he’d seen a thousand times before. He looked around at the guards. “This is the new normal,” he said to Justin. The new normal.
Chapter 146
The Octopus Family
(June 5)
Grant woke up totally refreshed. That hadn’t happened in…Grant forgot how long. He woke up in his bed with his wife. The bed in the cabin was amazingly comfortable. Grant remembered getting it right after he bought the cabin. He found an old 1970s-era bed in a want ad at the gym where he worked out. The bed had big chunks of wood carved into it, resembling a Hawaiian look, like a bed from the original Hawaii 5-0. It was solid. The joints were joined as if wood could be welded together. It weighed a ton when he moved it. It was obviously American made; solid and built to last. It felt so different than everything else he’d bought in recent years, which was light, flimsy, and made of particle board. The modern ones were built to last a couple years and be thrown away. Not this bed.
And the mattress was the best one he’d ever slept on, even better than their bed in Olympia. The bed hadn’t been slept on much, if at all when he got it. He bought it from an old man who said it had been in their guest room, but they never had guests. That soft, but solid, mattress swallowed him up. If a mattress could have a taste like a food, this mattress would be cream. Once he laid down on this bed, it was impossible not to fall comfortably asleep.
Grant looked around. There was Lisa, still asleep, with a slight smile on her face. He didn’t know it was possible to smile in your sleep, but she was doing it.
This is where he needed to be. No more gun fighting. No more.
Grant looked over at his pistol on the night stand. The tritium night sights were glowing in the nearly dark room. There was enough light for him to see his AR-15 up against the wall. Yeah, he needed that and it belonged there. But, maybe only up against the wall when he slept with his wife in his own cabin. He didn’t need to be carrying it around all night on patrol while his wife slept alone. There were plenty of young guys who could go out on patrol.
Grant laid in bed thinking about all the things that had been constantly running through his mind since the raid on the tweaker house. The community had been debating, debating, and endlessly debating, for almost three weeks what to do with the tweakers, who had been sitting in the makeshift jail since the raid. He would be immersed back into that debate later that night when he went to yet another meeting at the Grange.
A minority of the people at the Grange wanted to hold them until the “authorities” (whoever those were) could come and get the defendants and give them a “proper” (whatever that was) trial in Frederickson. Grant and the majority of people wanted to hold a trial themselves and take care of the problem on their own. However, Grant realized that he was asking a tremendous amount from the people at Pierce Point, who were still in varying degrees of shock that their country had ceased to exist, by having homemade trials for people and ultimately executing some of their neighbors. Grant, who knew his ultimate job out at Pierce Point was to guide the community into realizing they were on their own and had to do unpleasant things like executing people, was moving slowly and taking the time to get consensus from the community. Spending all this time on such an obvious decision frustrated him. But he knew much more was at stake than what to do with the tweakers. This would determine if Pierce Point made it on its own or became just another community pathetically dependent on a non-existent government.
During the past three weeks of debate and frustration, he spent a lot of time thinking about whether he had to continue to be a gunfighter. He loved waking up with Lisa like he was this morning; he needed to figure out how to make that happen for the next several decades instead of getting himself killed during some raid.
Grant wasn’t a quitter, though. He thought about what he could still do for the community, but that didn’t involve breaking down doors and getting shot at. He could be the judge and administrator. He could keep the community together, politically. He could train gun fighters during the day and then come home for dinner. He could do a lot for Pierce Point. He had already done a lot. He had been the political and administrative leader they needed during those critical first few days. He started the Pierce Point meal cards and the FCard lottery. He got the ARs to Bennington so they now had medical supplies and safe passage into Frederickson. He helped train and motivate the guards at the gate. He masterminded the brilliant head fake that let them keep a semi load of food. Grant smiled. He’d done plenty. Plenty.