299 Days: The Change of Seasons

by Glen Tate

  Another unforeseen outcome was that being fat became a positive status symbol, at least among Loyalists. Before the Collapse, most Americans were fat. The question was whether they were very fat or just fat. During the Collapse, when most people lost weight, some Loyalists still had access to all the food they wanted and they still had people to do all their physical work for them. Well-connected Loyalists could get gas so they could drive instead of walk, like everyone else had to. So some Loyalists who had the luxury of being fat showed it off as a status symbol.

  Weekends were no longer what they used to be. Before the Collapse, people went to work during the week and tried to avoid their offices on the weekends. After the Collapse, weekdays and weekends started blurring together. People did what they needed to do—get food, repair things, do guard duty—when it needed to be done, which was seven days a week. No one could take off Saturday and Sunday and leave the gate unguarded. People had a much more relaxed pace during each day, but they had that relaxed pace seven days a week. About the only thing that happened on the weekends that set those days apart was that some went to church and funeral services on Sundays.

  And Sunday dinners. A strong tradition one hundred years ago, the Sunday dinner was back. After the Collapse, most people would have a big meal Sunday afternoon with their family and friends. It was a mini-Thanksgiving, but with whatever food they had, instead of turkey and stuffing. People brought different foods and shared them. The Grange often held a big Sunday potluck for the people who didn’t have families. The guards also had a version of Sunday dinner. Guards who didn’t have family and weren’t working on Sunday would come down to the fire station on Sunday afternoon.

  It was odd. So many traditional American things returned during the Collapse. Sunday dinners, church attendance, beards, healthier people, less reliance on technology, and lots of good old fashioned American self-reliance.

  At the same time old traditions resurfaced, other traditional American things faded away. No one cared if people were married or not. Non-official “war marriages” as they were called and shacking up started becoming more acceptable.

  There was no detectable racism at Pierce Point. That had faded over the decades. Now most communities, including Pierce Point, had people of many races in them. In Pierce Point there were several Mexican families who had been there for decades. Most people didn’t know a white-only world. People—at least out in Pierce Point—were smart enough to know that good people and bad people come in all colors.

  The one role race was supposed to play never materialized. The government tried to use race to mobilize Loyalists by warning that teabagger Patriots were evil racists out to hang blacks and Hispanics. That message worked in Loyalist-held cities, but not out in the rural areas, like Pierce Point. To most people out there, it seemed absurd to think that Patriots were Klansmen. Rural people saw with their own eyes how ridiculous that was.

  One thing that people firmly agreed on was the fact that winter was coming. The mornings were now crisp and the days were cooler. It got dark earlier. Leaves were starting to fall, along with the rain. In Western Washington, it would be cloudy and rain on and off from October until mid-spring.

  People knew things would be tougher in the winter. The gardens would stop producing their bounty. In addition, hunting and fishing were already yielding less food because everyone spent the summer hunting and fishing.

  Getting food during the winter was a big concern, but the government said everything would be fine. Most people in the nation knew the government had just barely held things together during the summer. If struggling during the summer had been the best the government could do, then the winter would be a disaster. There was no way the government could get food out by truck when the snow and ice hit in the Midwest where most of the government food came from. With no heating oil and only spotty natural gas, people in the Northeast and Midwest would literally freeze to death. Winter colds and flu viruses would be able to kill people who lacked medicine. People were stressed and undernourished, and without medicines. These things were becoming a big deal; a deadly big deal.

  People in Pierce Point were working overtime to get enough food put up for the winter. There was increasing chatter about when to open up Gideon’s semi-truck of food. Residents who had not been volunteering at the Grange, and therefore didn’t have a meal card, were now very interested in volunteering.

  For the first time, it looked like the Grange might not have enough food for all the people eating there with meal cards. There wouldn’t be mass starvation, but things would get sparse. Tensions would rise. This would lead to arguing; possibly violence. Maybe Pierce Point was like the Loyalist government in one way: things were relatively easy during the summer, but the winter would be different.

  On top of all this, there was going to be a war.

  Chapter 224

  Kit Kat

  (Late October)

  Grant was trying his hardest to attend to his Pierce Point duties, though he was distracted by the activities at Marion Farm. He had to force himself to focus on Pierce Point. After all, Pierce Point was a civil affairs success story and he had to make sure it was still working as the great example of what could be done when people didn’t rely on the government. More importantly, he had to make sure his family was fed and defended. He found those things to be amazing motivators.

  As part of his day job at the Grange, Grant trained with the Team whenever he could. He even went out on a couple of calls with them (all of which turned out to be false alarms). Grant talked regularly with Rich, Dan, and the Chief to make sure the guards, beach patrol, and Team had everything they needed to do their jobs. He made sure the communications system between the security forces was working. He had never truly realized how important good communications were until now.

  He also presided over three or four trials a week; a few criminal trials, mostly for smaller things, no murders or rapes. Hanging people early on swiftly created a law-and-order atmosphere, which was good.

  Brittany and Ronnie from the meth house were released from jail early for good behavior. They had a hard time in jail because they were cut off from their various drugs and the withdrawal was horrible. Brittany came out of it better because she wasn’t as addicted as Ronnie. She even started having Pastor Pete come by and became a very active church member after she was released. The church gave Brittany a place to live and they fed her. They gave her a job as the “administrative assistant,” but she didn’t have much to do. It was just a nice way to give her charity, but she took the job seriously and worked diligently at it.

  After his release, Ronnie was depressed and was basically waiting around to die. He did odd jobs at the Grange and went to be by himself in an abandoned mobile home he had refurbished. No one heard from him for long periods of time, which was how he liked it.

  Most of the trials were mental health commitments and a few terminations of parental rights. After an initial spike in mental health commitments resulting from the lack of medications, the number of commitments went down. The commitments never completely diminished because there were still plenty of people who were mildly mentally ill who were finally breaking down. Also, some people who were not mentally ill were cracking under the pressure of life after the Collapse. The mental ward was starting to fill up.

  There were only a few terminations of parental rights. Most of them were kids being taken out of the homes of people being committed to the mental ward.

  Grant was proud of the parental termination system they had developed. It took a lot of credible evidence for a jury to take kids from their parents because parents are supposed to raise kids, not the government. Removing them from their families was only to be done out of absolute necessity. Pierce Point’s system was so much better than the old government one, which seemed to let kids get abused for years before intervening, or, on the flipside, to overreact and take kids on a whim. The old system was all about jobs for social workers, not safety for kids. Pierce Poin
t had stripped down the bureaucracy and ensured no one had a profit motive in the child protection system. Taking away the profit motive seemed to eliminate the problem, as did keeping things small, like a tight-knit community that actually knew the kids and parents and truly cared about them. That was undoubtedly better than a giant countywide or statewide system of anonymous faces. And a profit motive.

  The main thing Grant worked on was political unity. Without unity, there would be fighting and that would be the end of Pierce Point. Unity was essential.

  And by “unity,” Grant meant “people who think like I do.” Was that “bossy” or “close minded”? He didn’t care.

  Long ago, Grant had gotten over any guilt about insisting that Pierce Point operate on a Patriot set of principles. This wasn’t some debating club with the luxury of asking everyone to share their feelings and gently consider opposing viewpoints. This was survival. Taking too long to decide life-and-death matters, or having constant debates that divided everyone, would get people killed. Pierce Point needed leadership, not a moderator of philosophical discussion.

  Grant wasn’t a dictator, though. This was especially true since there were other leaders in the community, like Rich and Dan. There was no way for one person to emerge as a dictator. That was by design; checks and balances.

  While he wasn’t a dictator, Grant was very firm in how he approached his leadership role. His view was that if Pierce Point wanted to succeed, they needed to do it the Patriot way using the smallest government possible, self-reliance, liberty, law and order, a strong defense, and charity. People at Pierce Point didn’t need to be total Patriots and believe exactly what Grant did. No, they just needed to do things the Patriot way. Because it worked. Period. The Loyalist way … well, that’s how things got screwed up.

  If someone wanted big government, dependence on others, and oppression, then they could move to Frederickson, or Olympia, or Seattle. Leave. Good riddance.

  Besides, Grant had a very personal stake in the Patriots prevailing at Pierce Point. He was a wanted man. The Loyalists would haul him off to jail or maybe shoot him on the spot if they captured him. Snelling had been going down the path of turning Grant in to the authorities before Wes … announced “Lima down.”

  That was how Grant chose to characterize to himself what happened to Snelling: Lima down. It sounded so bland and businesslike. “Killing people who disagree with you” didn’t have as nice a ring to it. And Grant was concerned about the war turning into a political bloodbath of petty vendettas. Even when the person involved, Snelling in this case, was actually trying to get Grant killed. He still hated to see this political killing, but he was ready to do it and knew he’d be doing more of it in the future.

  Therefore, given how crucial political unity was, Grant spent lots of his day-job time on politics. There were no more open Loyalists at Pierce Point. If they existed (and they surely did) they were keeping quiet. Some rumors went around about Snelling’s disappearance and how the Team may have killed him. That seemed to silence the Loyalists. Good. Grant hadn’t wanted to kill Snelling, but now that he was dead, at least there was some good coming from it.

  Grant constantly tried to figure out who the Patriots were and, more importantly, the ULPs, which stood for “Undecided/Leaning Patriot.” ULPs were the people Grant concentrated his efforts on. For every open Patriot, there were probably ten ULPs. They were the key to political unity at Pierce Point. And political unity was the key to survival.

  There were also the “U”s: Undecideds. These were the truly undecided people who didn’t care about politics, which was the majority of people at Pierce Point. They just wanted to make it through the Collapse and hopefully have a better life when it was all over.

  Grant remembered how the majority of the population back in the Revolutionary War was also undecided. They waited to see who was winning and then started coming out in support of the soon-to-be winner. There was no use getting mad at the “U”s for being spineless. People just needed to accept that this was how most human beings act in such situations.

  At Pierce Point, the “U”s would look at the growing number of ULPs turning into open Patriots. The “U”s were the big prize and the ULPs were the key to winning over the “U”s.

  Grant would find out what ULPs needed and try to make sure they got it. A ULP needs some canning jars? Grant would try to make sure they got some. Upon delivery, he would say something not very subtle like, “The government couldn’t get this for you.” He would stop and take plenty of time to talk to ULPs and let them know all about the good things: the guards, the food, and the social events.

  Everyone knew Grant was a Patriot and was trying to persuade them, though he wasn’t doing it in an obnoxious car-salesman way, or in an intellectual and theoretical “Thomas Jefferson once said…” way. Instead, Grant would try to persuade people in a “here’s what’s working” way, with plenty of “remember what didn’t work” sprinkled in.

  His practical approach to persuasion was working. People saw results. The government had absolutely no credibility at this point, so just about any alternative to it would be persuasive. People in Pierce Point, who could still intermittently use the internet and phones, knew from the outside world that they had it very good out there. Instead of cowering in their homes hiding from gangs and waiting for the next shipment of food to try to buy with their FCards, people in Pierce Point were getting by. School—at least a part-time, volunteer one—had started in September. Some of the families out there thought that the structure of school and resemblance of normalcy would be helpful for the kids.

  When Halloween rolled around, it was obvious how well Pierce Point was doing. When he started prepping a few years earlier, Grant began taking all the extra Halloween candy they had—and there were way too many bags of it—and vacuum sealed it. He had told Lisa that he was taking it to the homeless shelter, but he had actually sealed it and put it out at the cabin. He just knew that something as simple as Halloween candy would have a big impact during a disaster. It would be a luxury, even.

  Sure enough. When the post-Collapse Halloween arrived, Grant had several hundred miniature candy bars and other goodies. Other families had a little Halloween candy and chipped in, too. When they pooled their candy, there was enough for all the kids at Pierce Point to have a couple of pieces.

  They had a big Halloween party at the Grange, which was nicely decorated, and everyone came in costume. And they didn’t arrive in the fancy pre-Collapse, store-bought, costumes. They came in real ones that people actually took the time to make. Lisa had mouse ears that Eileen made her and Grant was a farmer with a John Deere hat and overalls. Manda came as a princess and Cole was a pirate.

  Grant took great joy in handing out the candy at the Grange Halloween party. The kids hadn’t had much, if any, candy in months. After going so long without sugar, the candy tasted overly sweet. Grant allowed himself one Kit Kat. It tasted sweeter than anything he’d ever eaten. Just seeing that red wrapper and snapping apart the sticks of the Kit Kat took him back to days past when things were normal. Back when he just went to the store and got himself a Kit Kat whenever he wanted one.

  Dozens of parents profusely thanked Grant and the others who donated the candy. “This feels like a ‘normal’ Halloween,” a single mom told Grant. “That means everything. The kids need to have ‘normal’ things,” she said. Soon after, Grant noticed she had switched from ULP to Patriot on Drew’s list. The government couldn’t get her kids Halloween candy, but the Patriots could.

  Grant would gleefully tell Ted the details of how well Pierce Point was functioning, which Ted reported to Boston Harbor. He wanted HQ to know that Grant was handling the civil affairs job at Pierce Point extremely well. Ted also wanted HQ to know that this area was hospitable to even more troops. He wanted to get the biggest and best equipped unit possible. Not for his ego, but to have a better chance of winning the fight that was coming.

  Things on the home front were going well for G
rant. He and Lisa were getting along magnificently. She had almost fully adjusted to her new life and living conditions. She had realized a long time ago that she was lucky to have a man like Grant who had made all the preparations he did. She wouldn’t tell Grant that, though; it might go to his head.

  The one thing that still stood between Grant and Lisa was his continual lying. He wasn’t telling her what he was doing at Marion Farm. While the guilt ate him up at first, he was slowly adjusting to lying to her as the months went on. He had to. He’d been through that in his head a million times.

  Manda and Cole were doing very well. Manda and Jordan were full-on boyfriend and girlfriend. She was still doing a fabulous job of taking care of all the kids. Jordan was doing an excellent job as a gate guard. Cole was continuing to improve every day with his talking. He was a very happy kid and was taking care of the younger kids, too. It was heartwarming.

  Drew and Eileen were fully at home upstairs in the cabin. They loved having the grandkids around and they had made many friends out at Pierce Point.

  Grant, Lisa, and Drew had meal cards at the Grange. (Actually, they didn’t physically have cards; everyone just knew they could eat there.) That meant Eileen, Manda, and Cole were on their own for food. Mary Anne brought over produce from her garden and other people’s, and Eileen got food from people for helping them with canning and drying. Lisa got quite a bit of food in barter for her medical services. The food coming from others accounted for about half of their food.

  The other half of the food for Eileen, Manda, and Cole was the stored food in the shed. Thank God, Grant thought, that they didn’t have to rely exclusively on the stored food because it was running out.