299 Days IX: The Restoration

by Glen Tate

  “Put up signs for the hospital, prisoner processing, and kitchen,” Grant remembered telling someone who ran off and, presumably, followed his instructions. Franny asked Grant if the brewery had any refrigerators or freezers. “Try the Baskin Robbins up the street,” Grant suggested.

  The radio was full of urgent messages. Everyone in the Patriots’ Olympia forces seemed to have something to say to the civil affairs hub or ask the hub for. And, though Grant was technically in charge, most of the time he had no idea what he was doing. He was just doing. Occasionally he would hear himself talking and was amazed at how authoritative and knowledgeable he sounded.

  After a while, Grant’s voice was getting hoarse. He had to stop and … just not talk. He was getting woozy again so he tried to eat an MRE, but he couldn’t. He tried to lie down and get a quick nap. He couldn’t. He had to continue doing all the stuff he was doing.

  Keep going. This is no time to stop.

  He jumped back up, full of energy and ran at full speed until dark.

  He saw some of the Bravo Company squad leaders coming up to the fourth floor, which had become the command post.

  “Any casualties?” Grant asked the squad leaders.

  They nodded. “Two,” a sergeant answered.

  “Who?” Grant asked. He was praying it wasn’t any of his.

  “A couple of ours, Lieutenant,” the sergeant said. “Your guys are all fine.”

  Grant tried not to act happy. Two Bravo Company men were casualties and that wasn’t good news.

  “How bad?” Grant asked.

  “One KIA,” the sergeant said, meaning killed in action, “and one with some shrapnel to the legs. He’ll be okay.”

  “My condolences,” Grant said to the sergeant who nodded slightly at Grant.

  That reminded Grant that they needed a place to put bodies. He had a runner find Don to see if any place in the brewery had a functioning refrigeration system. Nope. Don and the commander of the medical unit came up with a temporary solution and Grant didn’t want to know what it was.

  Pastor Pete and a couple other chaplains had set up a makeshift chapel in one of the brewery’s office buildings. They were counseling soldiers one on one. Lots of grieving over lost comrades. Lots of people who had never seen or done what they had just seen or done, like killing people. Or watching people kill and be killed. Or seeing horrific injuries. There were lots of Anne Sherrytons. Nice people doing horrible things and trying to figure out what just happened.

  Grant saw the Team coming up to the fourth floor. They looked tired.

  “Welcome back,” Grant said. “How’d it go?”

  “Shitty,” Pow said. “We didn’t see any action.”

  The Team went on to tell Grant about how they slowly made their way down the main street to the capitol only to hear of the surrender right before they got into position. There were Limas running away from the capitol and straight toward their general position.

  “Bravo Company got a bunch of them who wouldn’t drop their weapons,” Wes said. “We were holding an intersection and the bad guys went the other way.” Wes was a little disappointed.

  Capt. Edwards came up and said to the Team, “Get something to eat and maybe a nap. We’re going back out in an hour. Night patrol.” The Team nodded slowly. They wanted to go back out and kill some bad guys, but … they were so tired.

  Grant pulled Edwards aside. “Can I ask a favor?” he asked Edwards after a bright idea jumped into his mind. “I need to motivate some of my guys.”

  “What do you have in mind?” Edwards asked.

  “Could my Team do a motorized patrol with you guys?” Grant asked.

  “Sure,” Edwards said. “As long as you supply the motor.” He looked at Grant, “Why a motorized patrol?”

  “Kind of an inside joke,” Grant said. “But it’ll motivate them.”

  “Okay,” Edwards said. He didn’t care about some joke. If Grant wanted his guys to ride, and if he provided the ride, whatever.

  Grant went to find the Team as they were just finishing their pancakes. He got an eerie feeling as he watched Wes eat his pancakes. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but he sensed something bad.

  They got their gear and slowly went outside to Mark’s truck. Grant handed the keys to Bobby. “Get in.”

  The Team got into the truck, wondering what was up. Once they were in, Grant said, “This never gets old.”

  “Beats the shit out of selling insurance,” Pow said with a smile. It was a tired smile, but a smile nonetheless.

  They all laughed. Then teared up. It was exactly what they needed to hear. They needed to be reminded that they were part of a team, something special. They had come a long way. They’d been doing this for months now—years, counting all the pre-Collapse training they had done together. They could do this. They were tired and cold and heading out into pockets of fierce Lima resistance, about to face urban combat which was the most dangerous kind. But they could do it. Because this was what they were made to do, and who they were made to do it with.

  This never gets old, Grant thought to himself as he watched them drive away.

  Chapter 301

  The Blur II

  (January 2)

  Grant wanted to join the Team and Bravo Company, but he had work to do.

  The brewery was now the field headquarters of the Olympia operation. Grant was totally overwhelmed. He thought he was organized and good at things like this, but he was in over his head. Way over.

  The wounded kept flowing in. It was hard to tell if they were friendlies or enemy, but it didn’t matter. They all got treated. Grant had never understood that. Why waste precious medical supplies on the people who had been trying to kill you just a little while ago? But doctors and nurses took an oath to treat the wounded. It was also part of the Geneva Convention. As if the Limas followed that. But the Patriots did, to the best of their ability. Luckily for Grant, the medical units took over those operations. All he was doing for them was giving them a building with electricity and water and providing security for the area. Well, several other units were augmenting the 17th on security. At this point, things were very blurry for Grant. He didn’t know what he and the 17th were doing exactly; he just knew that stuff was getting done somehow.

  At some point in the middle of the night, prisoners started trickling in. Some came from the field hospital after being treated. Others walked in under their own power to surrender. Most came with their hands already zip tied by Patriot units. But some just walked up to the brewery with their hands up. They were mostly young National Guard kids who were glad this whole stupid thing was over. They’d been told the Patriots would torture and kill them, but everything else their Lima officers had told them was a lie so, they figured this must be, too.

  The amount of prisoners was becoming a problem. The brewery building they were using was quickly filling up. And it wasn’t too secure. They needed to figure out where to set up a makeshift detention facility.

  “The high school is about a mile that way,” Grant explained to a major who said he was the head of the MPs, or military police. Grant was pointed up the street toward the Baskin Robbins. “Lots of lockable rooms and a big kitchen. High schools are kind of like prisons anyway,” Grant said with a laugh.

  “Good idea, Lieutenant,” the major said. He started yelling to get a team together to go check out the high school. He found a local civilian who would show them where the high school was.

  There were lots of civilians pouring in to the brewery—the word got out that this was the place where the Patriots were—to offer help. There were two kinds of civilians at the brewery. The first were hungry civilians, or those with untreated medical needs. They had no political ideals; they viewed the Patriots as just another provider of food or medical treatment. They didn’t care. There were way too many hungry kids. They got first priority in the kitchen, right after soldiers going back out to fight.

  The second category of civilians streaming in to
the brewery was the closet Patriots and gray men and women who wanted to offer their help. People like Ron Spencer.

  Earlier, a neighbor of Ron’s, an Undecided, had come running to Ron’s house to tell him the Patriots had taken the capitol campus and had set up a headquarters at the brewery. Ron wanted to race to the brewery and offer his help but, after thinking about it, decided to stay in his neighborhood. Ron had his shotgun and was ready. He was going to protect his family. The three members of the “Carlos Cabal,” as they called the neighborhood Lima leaders, could try to come after Ron and his family. Protecting his family was his first priority. Killing Limas was a distant second. Besides, Ron had done his duty by tagging the three Carlos Cabal houses with that big black “L” on the front door, which would help the Patriots when they finally got to the Cedars.

  The fourth floor observation point was becoming a communications center. Radio after radio was carried up those stairs and being set up.

  The fourth floor com center was a family reunion of Quadras. They were reunited after being in separate units for months and not seeing each other. They hugged and did a short dance that looked like a Greek wedding dance. They talked a thousand miles an hour in their language, laughed, and threw up their arms in joy. Then they went back to work relaying the very sensitive communications with huge smiles on their faces.

  No one was working on political affairs, Grant realized. Everyone at the brewery was a military person working on military issues, like a field hospital, communications, field kitchen, and holding prisoners. Grant realized this was a critical time for politics.

  Grant was very respectful of others’ rank and position, but he needed to assert himself on the political affairs. If someone wanted to tell him to stand down, he’d be happy to let them handle it while he took a nap. He was getting delirious at this point, but the outside thought had told him to press on so that was what he was going to do.

  Grant found the major who was in charge of intelligence. “Major,” Grant said as he re-introduced himself, “I’m in charge of civil affairs.” That was kind of true. No one had told him he wasn’t in charge of civil affairs.

  “Great,” the major said, assuming Grant had actual training and experience at civil affairs. “Go do it. What’s your plan?”

  That was a great question. “We’ll start off,” Grant said authoritatively, “with some political messages. We’ll brief the troops on what to tell people they encounter. That message will basically be that we’re here to help, not carry out revenge killings.”

  Grant held up two fingers and said, “There are two messages, one to enemy military and one to the civilians. To the enemy military, the message is that we accept Lima—or, pardon me “legitimate authority”—surrenders and will treat them well. Feed them, that kind of thing.”

  Grant put up his second finger and continued as if he knew what he was talking about, “The message to the civilians is that we are here to feed them and treat their medical needs. We will establish order and protect them from the gangs. Enemy military and law enforcement will get fair treatment; gangs won’t. They’re criminals and the civilians need to see that we’re not a gang and won’t tolerate it.”

  The major nodded. In his mind, Lima military and police got fair treatment because they were uniformed enemy. Gangs weren’t. They were just criminals.

  Grant continued, “So we get those two messages out to the troops and then we start to get the messages out to the civilians who are coming here. Every soldier should have the spiel down. The civilians will take the messages they receive back to their neighbors. The good news that we’re treating people fairly will spread like wildfire. Then we try to get a radio station and broadcast. I’d love to print up pamphlets but, let me guess, we don’t have printing capabilities.”

  “There was a copy center on the way in here,” the major said. Of course. Grant had forgotten about the copy center two blocks away. If their copy machines hadn’t been stolen and they had paper and electricity, then they were in business. It was pamphlet time.

  “Great,” Grant said. “I’ll put one of my men on making pamphlets.” By “one of my men,” Grant meant … he’d hand write them himself.

  “Go at it … what’s your name again?” the major asked.

  “Lt. Matson,” Grant said. “I’m in command of the 17th Irregulars.” He knew his credibility would go down with his lowly rank of lieutenant and the fact that he was in a mere irregular unit. So he smiled and added, “We’re the guys who brought this fine brewery to you.”

  “An irregular unit did this?” the major asked and looked around at the humming observation center up on the fourth floor.

  “Solid,” the major said. “Very solid, Lieutenant.” Then he thought about it: a good chunk of the Patriot forces were irregular units. He shouldn’t have been that surprised.

  Grant started on the pamphlet. He got a runner to go to the copy center, break in, and check out the equipment. He asked him to return with a ream of paper and any pens they could find. The runner saluted and took off.

  Some new people came up to the fourth floor. One of them was a lieutenant colonel.

  “Who’s in command here?” the Lieutenant Colonel asked.

  “I am, sir,” Grant said and walked up to him. “Lt. Matson, 17th Irregulars.”

  “I’m Lt. Col. Brussels, 3rd Battalion CO,” he said. “I’m in command now.”

  “Yes, sir,” Grant said. Okay, that was that. Grant could now focus on civil affairs and taking care of his people in the 17th. What a relief.

  “What’s the status here?” Brussels asked.

  Grant briefed Brussels on everything.

  “How did you end up in command of this?” Brussels asked.

  “We took the brewery,” Grant said. “Everything just flowed from that. This is the perfect facility in the perfect location. Everyone just started using it as a headquarters, and I was running things until someone came to relieve me.”

  Brussels nodded. “Thank you, Lt. Matson. Go back to your unit and have them support the mop up.”

  “Yes, sir,” Grant said.

  Mop up. That meant this wasn’t over yet. Grant had mentally considered the Limas' surrender to be the end of hostilities. Wishful thinking. The remaining Limas out there were diehards. “Diehard” as in they will die … hard. These Limas, and especially gangs, had committed so many crimes and hurt so many people that they knew no one could just forgive and forget. If the Patriots didn’t kill them, they figured the civilians would. They had nowhere to go, so they might as well go down with a fight. Better to die than be captured by the teabaggers.

  Twenty four hours of euphoria over what seemed like a quick victory came crashing down. For the first time since he arrived at the brewery, Grant realized that this was going to be a long, hard slog.

  Chapter 302

  Watershed Park

  (January 2)

  Grant looked around as he walked out of the fourth floor observation point to go back to his unit. He remembered walking into this room just a few hours ago. It was dark, cold, dangerous, and empty, totally empty. Now, just a few hours later, it was packed full of people and radio equipment. Grant looked at all the hustle and bustle on the empty brewery floor and smiled. He was proud of what he’d got up and going. It was kind of like when he left Pierce Point.

  Now Grant got to do what he really wanted: get the civil affairs mission going. More importantly, he could be back with his guys, the 17th Irregulars.

  It was 4:15 a.m. and pitch black. The lights were on now so Grant could see the place outside where he had watched the Team leave in Mark’s truck just a few hours earlier. There they were, without him, sitting in the back of the truck with their kit and ARs, grinning for the whole world. They were in heaven, doing what they loved. Going out to hunt some Limas and gangbangers.

  “You guys are locals, right?” Capt. Edwards asked the Team as they were waiting to head out.

  “Yes, sir,” Pow said, pointing at Scott
y, Bobby, and Wes.

  “So you guys know the area then?” Capt. Edwards asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Pow said. “Very well. We drive these streets all the time.”

  “If you were retreating, desperate Limas, where would you go?” Capt. Edwards asked. Might as well get the thoughts of the people who knew the area.

  “I’d get away from the capitol,” Pow answered, pointing north, “where all the Patriot forces are. I’d go south and try to rally at the airport,” he said, pointing in the opposite direction. Edwards recalled from the briefings that Olympia had a small regional airport about five miles to the south.

  “I hear we are holding I-5,” Pow continued, “so they can’t get back up to Seattle, their stronghold, and I guess we landed some people at the port so they can’t leave by sea, so the airport is it.”

  “Well, too bad,” Edwards said, despite thinking that Pow had a great idea. “That’s where I would go to, but we have orders to go straight toward the capitol, to a place called ‘Watershed Park.’ You guys know where that is?”

  Pow had the strongest urge to tell the Captain that they needed to go to the airport. He started to speak up but hesitated. He didn’t want to sound like he, an UCG, knew better than battalion or whoever had decided to send Bravo Company to Watershed Park.

  He had this overwhelming urge to say something, but he just couldn’t.

  “Over there,” Scotty said, pointing roughly north. “It’s a huge park over the area around the waterfalls. That’s where the city gets its water.”

  “I can get you there,” said Bobby, who was in the driver’s seat of Mark’s truck.

  “Watershed Park?” Wes said. “Are you sure, Captain? That place is hairy.”

  “Whatcha mean?” Capt. Edwards asked.

  “It’s thick woods in there,” Wes said in his southern accent. “I mean thick, sir. Thicker than the North Carolina pines I come from. It’s dark, too. There are acres of steep terrain and extremely thick foliage, right in the middle of the city, if you can believe that. It’s basically Ambush City, sir.”