299 Days: The Change of Seasons

by Glen Tate

  Brad instinctively took off his seat belt and was looking around for what to do next. Normally he knew every detail of what to do next – where to go when he got out of the vehicle, who was in the lead, who was in the rear, and where they were going next. It was very unusual and unsettling for him to not know these details. But, he would just roll with it, knowing that his team was taking care of everything.

  As Brad was exiting the passenger side of Jerry’s truck, he saw two men in work overalls signaling for him to follow them. Mike turned around and put his hand behind his head, which was the signal to follow the other’s lead. Brad did so.

  Russ and Brad met up with the two men and headed through a door into the office of the welding shop. Brad still had no idea what was going on. Brad, who was always armed with at least his service weapon, a Smith and Wesson M&P .40, felt comfortable having these strangers take him and his son somewhere. But, still wanting to know what the plan was, he turned back to get an indicator from his team. Mike pointed toward Brad and Russ, and then at the two men, and said, “You’re going with them. You’ll know they’re on the right team if they know what you were having for lunch.” Brad nodded and, along with Russ, who looked so strange dressed up as a bum, walked out of the office into a welding shop van waiting on the street outside. One of the men opened the panel door and Brad and Russ got in the rear seat. There was a new man in coveralls driving, in addition to the first two who had guided them into the van.

  Brad felt perfectly comfortable when his team was around, but now they weren’t. He immediately swung into “possible threat” mode and felt for his pistol, which was right where it was supposed to be.

  “What’d I want for lunch?” Brad said to the driver.

  “Meatball sub, sir,” one of the two men in coveralls said.

  That reminded him about his lunch that he never got to eat. “Where is it?” he asked Russ.

  “Where’s what?” Russ asked.

  “My lunch,” Brad said.

  Russ smiled, which looked so strange in that fake beard, and said, “I kinda ate it.” Things were just like normal, Brad thought. His always-hungry son ate his lunch.

  Brad was starting to relax – to the extent he ever relaxed when he was on a protective detail. Then it hit him: he was on a protective detail, not protecting the Governor or some other state official, but his son. And he was working for the Patriots. Doing what, he wasn’t sure. But he knew it would be worthwhile.

  Brad wanted to ask Russ everything about what he had been doing while he was missing, where they were going to, and what lay ahead, but he knew that conversation would come later, when they were in a secure place. It was excruciating to sit silently and not talk to his son. Russ had been instructed in advance to just remain quiet during the ride.

  “What’s our cover story?” Brad asked the men in coveralls. They had to have an explanation for why men in a welding van had an EPU agent and bum.

  “Stranded motorists,” the first man in coveralls said.

  “Pretty crappy cover story,” Brad said. “Where’s my car, what kind of car is it, why don’t I have the keys on me, and why would a bum either be riding with me or have a second vehicle?”

  “We’re winging some of the details,” the second man in coveralls said. “This isn’t like the old days when we had tons of resources.” He sounded like he had been an agent of some kind before the Collapse.

  Brad was silent. It was true that no one had the resources to plan out things like they used to, when they had plenty of money, personnel, and no threats against the people they protected. Then again, the government didn’t have the resources, either. The government was winging it, too.

  “If we’re stopped,” the driver said after a few moments, “We shoot our way out of it.”

  “Roger that,” Brad said. That was a plan. Of sorts.

  They drove in the van for about half an hour, which took them out into the countryside. They slowly pulled up to a long driveway that served several homes judging by all the mailboxes at the junction between the driveway and the road. They were in a heavily forested area and the houses were spread out so each home was hidden.

  A few yards from the beginning of the driveway was a broken down car in the way. The first man in coveralls got on the radio and said, “Gazelle pasta.”

  “Space command,” was the reply on the radio. A teenage boy appeared out of nowhere and started the ignition in the car and moved it so the van could come down the driveway. As they were passing by, Brad noticed about twenty heavily camouflaged and extremely well-armed soldiers. They weren’t duck hunters; they had current-issue military fatigues and radios. A few had camouflage paint on their faces and looked like the special operations guys Brad’s EPU unit sometimes trained with. These men were pros.

  They passed several houses that looked like typical country homes in the area. They were nice but not ostentatious. They were typical houses from the building boom in the mid-2000s when nice homes were built on wooded five-acre parcels all around Olympia. The houses were not noteworthy; they blended in perfectly.

  About two hundred yards down the driveway, there was a second checkpoint. It was in front of a belt-fed machine gun under the canopy of a big evergreen tree so it couldn’t be seen from the air. Three soldiers were manning it with anti-armor rocket launchers. The driver exchanged code words with the men at the second checkpoint and they kept driving slowly down the driveway.

  They pulled off the main driveway onto a smaller one and toward a nice house tucked away in the woods. As they pulled up, Brad immediately noticed only one vehicle parked in front of it. That made sense, he thought, because drones or satellites would notice a throng of vehicles in front of a house. Brad realized that even though his former employer, the Legitimate Authorities, had limited drone and satellite capabilities with all the personnel shortages, they still had some. And if they were looking for some extremely high-value targets, or HVTs, they could use these whiz-bang toys to find people – but only a handful of people, out of the tens of millions who no longer were loyal citizens of the United States.

  “We’re home,” Russ said as the van stopped at the house.

  The men in coveralls got a cowboy hat out from a bag and handed it to Brad. “Just in case a drone has been tracking the van and wants to see who our passenger is,” the driver said. “Super unlikely, but it’s an easy precaution to take.” Brad put on the hat. He felt weird wearing a cowboy hat in a suit and getting out of a van with his son dressed as a homeless man, but he also felt reassured that his hosts were professionals who were taking good care of them.

  An attractive woman in her early forties came out the front door of the house in shorts and a t-shirt with a diet Coke in her hand. She looked like a soccer mom getting ready to take the kids to a day at the beach. She was quite a contrast to the camouflage-faced soldiers hiding in the woods a few hundred yards away.

  “Welcome, guys!” she said. “Nice to see you. A cowboy and a bum; what is it? Halloween?” she said with a laugh.

  “Trick or treat,” Russ said, getting out of the van. He pointed to Brad and said, “Amber Taurus, please meet my dad, Brad Finehoff.”

  Brad walked up to her and shook her hand. He wondered if they were at the right house. Surely, a super-secret den of HVTs wasn’t hosted by a soccer mom with a diet Coke in her hand.

  “Welcome to the Think Farm,” Amber said. “We call it the Think Farm because it’s a public policy think tank but we’re hiding out here on the little farms we have.” Amber had been a liberty activist before the Collapse and galvanized her like-minded neighbors to let her have some “guests” out.

  “We’re glad to have you, Brad,” Amber said. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  “Glad to be here,” Brad said, suddenly wondering what exactly he would be doing out here.

  “Come on in,” Amber said. “I’ve got sandwiches for you if you’re hungry.”

  “Great,” Brad said. “Some homeless guy ate my meat
ball sub.”

  Amber looked puzzled.

  “It’s a long story,” Russ said.

  “Well, come on in,” Amber said as she motioned for Brad and Russ to enter her home.

  When they entered, several people in the house came to greet them. They were college-looking kids and it looked like Amber was their den mother.

  Brad recognized a few of the kids as friends of Russ from when he worked on the staff of the Republican caucus in the Legislature. One was Carly, the former intern at the Washington Association of Business. Brad said hi to her. He realized he had a cowboy hat on and a suit. No one thought it looked odd; they knew that new visitors wore cowboy hats in case any drones were hovering above the Think Farm.

  “What’s it like back in Olympia?” one of the kids asked. Russ gave a good report, giving them his observations about little things with political significance like the graffiti and the increasing garbage on the streets. “More burned out cars,” he added. He went on to describe the alertness of the guards. A pretty good Intel report, Brad thought. He was proud.

  After the kids discussed the conditions in Olympia, Amber said, “Brad, we need to get you to your quarters and to our afternoon meeting.”

  Brad nodded. “Go ahead, Dad,” Russ said. “I’ll catch up with you at dinner.” Brad said his goodbyes and walked out the front door with Amber.

  The van was still there. “They’ll take you to where you’ll be staying,” Amber said. “It’s two houses down the road.” She looked back at her house and said, “Don’t worry. You’ll be staying with grown-ups.” Brad laughed.

  The van took him two houses down the road. He came to a house very similar to Amber’s. He got out, wearing his cowboy hat again, and met a man who introduced himself as Jason. Brad recognized him from many legislative receptions the Governor attended when he was on her EPU detail.

  “Welcome to the capitol of New Washington,” Jason said. “Here are two other former members of the House, Matt and Dave.” Jason also introduced Brad to a former judge, a few former county commissioners, and some former staffers for various elected officials.

  “We’re all ‘formers,’” Jason said. “As in former office holders because, in our case,” he said, motioning to himself, Matt, and Dave, “the House voted a few days after May Day to eject me from my seat and appoint one of their own people.” He rolled his eyes.

  Brad took off the cowboy hat. It seemed too ridiculous to be wearing it inside. “So, what do you guys do out here?”

  “We are figuring out how to rebuild after we win,” Dave said. “Rebuilding politically. We spend hours talking about the new constitution we’ll enact, elections, the size of the new government, and how we’ll reconcile with the Limas who want to live in our territory.” It sounded strange for him to say “our” territory.

  “What territory we want is a big topic,” Matt said. “Do we want to try to govern the whole state, or leave Seattle to rot?”

  Brad listened as they discussed the pros and cons of trying to take and govern Seattle. It was fascinating. They all seemed convinced the Patriots would win. They were already working on the details of governing, getting private industry to rebuild infrastructure, starting a court system, a new police force, and even relations with other states and nearby Canada.

  “So, what will I be doing out here?” Brad asked them after a while.

  Their answer stunned him.

  Chapter 223

  End of Summer

  (September - October)

  As autumn settled in, a new normal developed at Pierce Point. All the things that became earth-shatteringly different when the Collapse hit were now nearly commonplace. The daily 9 to 5 existence disappeared, and was replaced by gardening, bartering, and learning how to survive without Starbucks. Office jobs quickly seemed like a thing of the past. This had an enormous impact on everyone’s lives. There were no more alarm clocks, no more commutes, no more lunch hours, and no more quitting times. No more hard structure to the day. It was like being on vacation—sort of.

  Despite this change in pace, the Collapse was no vacation, as in carefree fun and games. The lack of structured work days came with a price: there was now a lot more work that people had to do themselves. People were much busier, but it was a good kind of busy. They started walking everywhere instead of driving. They had to spend time finding food and cooking it because there were no more restaurants. They canned, dried, smoked, and froze food.

  Gathering firewood became a constant chore because the pre-Collapse ways of heating a home could no longer be counted on. Those relying on heating oil were out of luck; petroleum was now being used exclusively for gasoline and diesel. Natural gas was still flowing most of the time because it was one of the utilities protected under the Utility Treaty. The problem with that was that a natural gas furnace relied on electricity to power the fan.

  The electricity stayed on most of the time throughout the summer, but it was inconsistent. The hackers continued attacking the grid periodically. The bigger disruption to the electrical system was that the government couldn’t get replacement parts out to the electrical companies.

  Woodstoves and fireplaces started becoming very popular. Quite a few people started little businesses supplying firewood. Luckily, there were lots of woodstoves and plenty of firewood in Pierce Point.

  Repairing things, like the chainsaws that were now necessary to provide firewood, was another thing that was done during the hours that people used to check email at their work desks. There were no more repair people to come out to a person’s house and fix something like a broken door. People had to fix things themselves or find people nearby who could. Since almost no one knew how to do things like that, even out at rugged and relatively self-reliant Pierce Point, it often required relying on people who knew how to fix things, which could take a few days, or longer.

  In Pierce Point, finding these people was often done by walking or riding a bike to the Grange and writing a help wanted note on the bulletin board. Then, if the phones were down, like they often were, walking or riding a bike to the Grange the next day to see if someone had responded. And then maybe another walk or bike ride somewhere to contact the fix-it person. People with fix-it skills were in very high demand and were starting to make a nice living.

  Even harder than finding a person who knew how to fix things was finding the replacement parts. Before the Collapse, getting a new door just meant a quick trip to a home improvement super store. Now it might take a few days. It might mean visiting neighbors and asking if they knew of a door not being used at an abandoned house, what its measurements were, and then removing it. All this had to happen before a person could even attempt to use the door. It might take a few weeks to replace the door.

  In addition to simple tasks taking days or weeks, people’s new jobs for the community, like guard duty or kitchen duty at the Grange, took much of their time. Most people were working a lot more even though they were technically unemployed.

  Due to the generally slower pace, the lack of a daily grind, and the unpredictable nature of how long various tasks would take, punctuality was soon thrown out the window.

  All of this walking and biking, and the more vigorous lifestyle in general, meant that people were in the best shape of their lives. Despite the stress that people were under, they were generally sleeping much better, because they were so exhausted at the end of the day.

  The exercise wasn’t the only reason people were in much better shape. They weren’t eating crap all the time. Instead of drive-thru value meals, people were relying a lot more on vegetables from gardens, lean deer or elk meat and fish. They drank water instead of sugared soda.

  Aside from the health benefits, the widespread weight loss and nicely tanned skin from the summer sun had other benefits, too. Men and women who used to be uninterested in each other were suddenly rediscovering each other. Before the Collapse, slender and tan was sexy, but rare. Now many more people were in that category and they were getting n
oticed by the opposite sex.

  Sex came roaring back. Immediately following the shock and stress that occurred after the May Day collapse, sex had been the last thing on most people’s minds. But, as things started stabilizing in Pierce Point around mid-summer, people rediscovered it, especially since there wasn’t much else to do without TV worth watching, movies, restaurants, or anything else that involved driving places. People went back to doing what they did before all of those distractions.

  The new way of life was somewhat freeing to some women, too: most quit wearing makeup. There were no more semi-trucks of makeup restocking the shelves, so people had to make do with what they had on hand when the Collapse started.

  At first it was hard for some women to go without makeup, but they slowly got used to it. The men also got used to seeing women without blush and mascara, although they never cared nearly as much about women wearing makeup as the women did. Besides, the general trend of slender and tan more than made up for the lack of makeup in most men’s eyes.

  The notable exception to the lack of makeup was the women on TV. They still had painted faces. They started looking stranger to all the people who didn’t have any makeup around. Women with makeup on TV were just another indicator that the government running the TV networks was out of touch with real people.

  Another social phenomenon from the Collapse was that most men started growing beards. They didn’t have the time or shaving supplies to shave every day. One exception was that Loyalist men were often clean shaven. Loyalists had the shaving supplies because they were first in line to get things. Shaving became a status symbol to Loyalists, as it showed they had the power to get the necessary supplies. Loyalists thought the bearded men were barbarian teabaggers. The men on government TV were clean shaven, except the villains, who all had beards. The clean shaven men on television made it even more artificial for people out in rural areas where most men were bearded. The division in the country between the ruling class and the ruled class popped up in the most unlikely places: facial hair and makeup.