299 Days: The 17th Irregulars 2d-6

by Glen Tate

  Ben nodded. He wasn’t entirely sure he could believe that no one else knew where they were hiding, but he had to trust Carly.

  “A message?” Ben asked. “And who are your ‘guys?’” By now he had walked with her over to a place where no one could hear them so he was talking at a normal level.

  She nodded with glee. Ben started to realize how dangerous it was for her to come out there with a message. Walking around the countryside full of murderers, rapists, and robbers just to deliver a message. It must be pretty important.

  “From who?” Ben asked.

  Carly put her finger up to her lips as if to say “Shhh.” Ben’s curiosity was increasing rapidly. What was all this about? Was she going to pull that pistol and try to kill him? Why would Carly do that?

  Carly looked around to make sure no one was around. Then she looked Ben in the eyes, smiled, and whispered, “The Patriots want you to be the next governor.”

  Governor? Ben’s blood went cold. What? That was crazy. Did she just say that? He squinted and looked at her. He couldn’t understand what she just said.

  “What are you talking about?” Ben finally got out. If this was some joke, it wasn’t funny sending a nice girl out into a combat zone just to do some gag.

  Carly was brimming. “Yes, Ben, isn’t this great!” she said in a loud whisper. “You. The Governor. Super cool, huh?” Her youthful enthusiasm was such a contrast to something so grown up and serious, like being the governor.

  “OK, I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Ben finally said. Maybe she was high. But that didn’t make sense.

  “We want to have an interim government in place for when we win,” she said with a huge grin.

  “Who’s ‘we’?” Ben asked.

  “The Patriots, silly,” Carly said with a “no duh” look on her face.

  “Who are the Patriots?” Ben asked. He knew that Patriots were the good guys, but he didn’t know who was speaking for them.

  “You know, us,” she said with that same “no duh” look.

  “Just a bunch of people in a room saying ‘We’re the Patriots’ or some organized group?” Ben asked. “Who, specifically?”

  “The Free Washington Interim Government,” Carly said. “That’s who we are. We’re the political arm of the Patriots. The Free Washington State Guard does the military stuff. The Interim Government—the people who sent me—are the civilian commanders in charge of them. We’re the government—not the one in charge now. The one that will be when we win.”

  “Is this some group of people claiming to be the interim government or are they for real?” Ben asked.

  “We’re for real,” she said. “John Trappford was our leader.”

  Trappford was the conservative state legislator from Eastern Washington who was the leader of the good guys before the Collapse.

  “He put the Interim Government together before they got him a month ago,” she said. She looked sad. “They killed him.”

  This was starting to seem plausible to Ben. If Trappford put this group together, they were the real deal. And Carly was solid. She was a true friend. There was no way she was making this up. She started naming conservative legislators and others they both knew from their days at WAB who were part of the Interim Government.

  “How are you involved with this?” Ben asked.

  Carly explained that when the Collapse started she was at her parents’ house in rural Lewis County. Without any plan, she got in her little car and went up to Olympia. She knew that’s where she needed to be. Trappford was taking in conservatives from all over who were coming to Olympia for the big showdown. They stayed at his house in Olympia where he lived during the legislative session and they became a revolutionary cadre. They stayed up all night talking about how they would run things once the Loyalists were thrown out. They built up a network of political sympathizers and, as the Collapse got worse and the union thugs were out looking for them, they helped Patriots get to safe places. Finally, after Trappford went back to his Eastern Washington home and was assassinated, they went fully underground.

  They were mostly public policy people from think tanks and lived on a farm outside of Olympia, dubbed the “Think Farm” which was a play on the term “think tank.” The group didn’t have any contact with the outside world, except for the messengers who came and went. It was at this little farm where they planned out the Interim Government. They picked the temporary legislators and governor for after the military victory. They also planned the constitutional convention to rewrite the state constitution that they would hold once they had control. They would then hold an election to ratify the new constitution and elect the legislators, governor, and the handful of the other officials.

  “Totally libertarian,” Carly said. “We’re not going to repeat the mistakes of the past. We’ll have real controls in place to prevent the government from growing like it did,” she said excitedly. She started going over the details of the new government.

  Ben stopped her. “Hey, Carly, we can talk about that later,” he said. “I need to know that this group is legit before I go any further.”

  Carly smiled and reached for her belt. Ben stepped back and instinctively drew his shotgun at her.

  She jumped back and threw her hands up. “A letter,” she said. “I have a letter.”

  The guards had been watching Ben and Carly from a distance. When they saw Ben reach for his shotgun, they shouldered their rifles. When he found out she had a letter, Ben motioned to the guards that they could lower their weapons. Ben still had his shotgun halfway ready, but not pointed at her.

  “The letter is in my jeans,” Carly said with her hands up. “Sorry, but I couldn’t get caught with it.”

  “OK, you can get it,” Ben said. He was a little uncomfortable when Carly, who was now a very attractive young woman after all the weight loss, unzipped her jeans right in front of him. He started to turn his head out of respect for her privacy, but he realized she could still shoot him so he decided to keep his eyes on her. Above her jeans.

  She pulled out an envelope and handed it to him. It had some kind of logo on it that said “Free Washington Interim Government.” If these guys were goofballs, at least they had a decent logo, Ben thought. It sure looked official. Ben just looked at the envelope again and couldn’t really believe this was happening.

  “Go ahead and open it, silly,” she said with a flirtatious smile. She always had a crush on Ben. Now she was on a dangerous mission to recruit him as the next governor. She was so excited. She knew Ben was married, but she could still have her harmless little crush.

  Ben hesitated to open it. He had a feeling that, once he opened it, things would never be the same for him if what Carly was saying was true.

  Ben was happy to be hiding out on the Prosser Farm with his family. He was done with politics. Just look at what politics had done: armed guards, food shortages, and all the rest. He wanted to spend the rest of his life growing some food and pulling his week of guard duty every month. That was fine with him. He wanted nothing to do with this Interim Government or whatever it was.

  His curiosity got the best of him, though, and he opened the envelope and removed the letter. It was on fancy Interim Government letterhead that matched the envelope and had been printed on a printer instead of handwritten.

  “Dear Ben:” the letter began. It was dated June 1. It went on to describe how the Interim Government had come together and dropped lots of names that Ben knew, like John Trappford. It mentioned Carly and many other conservatives Ben knew from back in Olympia. There were messages from them saying things that only they would know.

  The letter said, “Russ Finehoff is working with us. He said that his dog, Sprucey, finally quit barking at the neighbor cat.” It was a reference to Ben’s friend Russ who worked for one of the few good legislators. Russ had Ben over for a BBQ one time and his dog, whose name Ben had forgotten, spent the entire party barking at a cat.

  They couldn’t be making up thes
e details, Ben thought. This letter was legit. Or the government had tortured a lot of people and gotten little tidbits like Russ’s dog out of them. But the government was so inept and had their hands full right now that it was highly unlikely they went to all that trouble just to write a fake letter to Ben.

  The letter transitioned from friendly shout outs to serious business. It described how weak the Loyalists were, how many military units were defecting, how the Patriots were forming guerilla bands all over the state, and how the population was turning against the so-called “legitimate authorities.”

  “Why you, Ben?” the letter asked. “A fair question,” it said. “We know you and trust you. You are a Patriot. And you have thousands of followers from Rebel Radio.”

  That really caught Ben off guard. Other than Dennis’ observations around town of their slogans going up as graffiti, he had no idea that people were taking Rebel Radio seriously.

  The letter went on to describe how, after the military victory, the Patriots would set up an interim government. They would appoint temporary legislators, a governor, and judges. They would hold an election—at least in the territories they controlled—to ratify the temporary officials. They would then work on a constitutional convention to draft a new state constitution—with real checks on power. The letter went on to proudly state that they would adopt a “high five” constitutional provision. This was the provision Ben and the others had always talked about that would limit the state spending to a maximum of five percent of the state’s gross domestic product, hence the label “high five.” These were all things Ben and others had talked about many times over beers before the Collapse. Things they said they would love to do if they ever could.

  “Well, now we can,” the letter said. “It’s our time to fix things, Ben. We need you. We need you for governor. We’ve talked about it and talked about it, and no one can come up with a better person to be the Interim Governor. This will be the most important thing you ever do. People will remember it for generations. We need you.”

  Ben was stunned. The letter was so personal, with all those references to people he knew so well, and seemed to be written by someone who knew him well. He got to the end of the letter and saw who signed it.

  “John Trappford.” He must have written this a few days before he was killed. Ben looked at the handwritten note below the signature.

  “PS: You’re dead anyway, Ben. They’re looking for you. They’ll find you eventually—if they stay in power. You might as well help us prevent that from happening. John.”

  How could Ben say no to John Trappford? And Carly, who had risked her life to get this letter to him. And, Ben admitted to himself, that postscript about being dead if the Loyalists stayed in power was a motivating factor, too.

  “This is the chance we’ve been waiting for,” Carly said when she saw Ben was done reading the letter. “This is what we’ve always talked about. It’s time to do it.”

  Ben knew she was right. He knew he wanted to do it. He’d have to talk to Laura, his wife. They had always talked about him running for office if the state ever got its crap together and was actually open to someone like him. As the Collapse started, they knew that getting elected was even less likely. Both Ben and Laura thought about the possibility of the Patriots winning by force and then utilizing the services of Ben and the other WAB people. But they never really thought through the whole part about people trying to catch them and kill them. It added a whole new seriousness to what used to be just a daydream.

  “I’ve got to talk to my family about this,” Ben said.

  “Of course,” Carly said. The people at the Think Farm had told her that Ben would probably say this.

  “How do I get back to you guys?” Ben asked.

  “There’s no real good way to do that,” Carly said. The people at the Think Farm had no radios because they could only use very, very high-tech encrypted ones. The Loyalist might not be putting too much effort into rounding up garden-variety POIs, but they would spare nothing to take out the Think Farm. The Patriots didn’t yet have any ultra-encrypted radios for them. They relied on messengers, which was less than ideal.

  “I will come back in a few days,” she said. She was not excited about making the trip out again with all the dangers, but a return trip would be much safer and easier. Besides, she told herself, she would be coming back with some friends; well-armed friends.

  Chapter 207

  Life in the Loyal Areas

  (July 26)

  Life was going really well in Seattle for Professor Carol Matson. Well, going as well as could be expected given all the terrorists and teabaggers trying to prevent the government from helping people. Carol still had her job — thank God — at the University of Washington teaching Freedom Corps volunteers Spanish, which was her specialty.

  Kind of. She was a world-renowned scholar of the literature of the Simon Bolivar era. But, in these times, there wasn’t a use for that now, so she taught beginning Spanish.

  Actually, she was tasked with keeping an eye on the FCorps volunteers. “Patriot” spies had infiltrated the FCorps and Carol was helping the legitimate authorities figure out who they were. In fact, teaching beginning Spanish was only a small part of what she did. Getting to know the FCorps volunteers, and finding out all she could about them, was her real job.

  Her FCard had a good balance put on it each month. She could get her beloved lattes at the University book store. With coffee beans being so scarce, only faculty like her and important officials could get lattes there. She was very glad to get special treatment like that. She felt a little guilty about this, being a progressive and all, but she had to admit she’d do just about anything for that daily latte.

  Carol continued to worry about her Patriot right-wing whacko brother, Grant, who was on the POI list. She was worried the authorities would hold her brother’s insanity against her. So far they hadn’t.

  This should all be over soon, Carol thought as she sipped her daily latte at 9:15 a.m. Time for that latte and the caffeine rush that would get her through the day. The news said that the military and police were rounding up many teabaggers and stopping dozens of attacks on a daily basis. She saw teabaggers confessing on TV every night. They admitted doing horrible things, but were sorry now. One time, she thought she noticed the same teabagger confessing twice, only with a different name. There was a rumor that the confessions were fake, but that was just right-wing propaganda.

  The initial shock of Crisis was over for Carol. The first few weeks were horrifying. The empty shelves, the crime, the terrorist attacks, but things were now in a “new normal” phase.

  Carol felt like she was part of something new and very big. The right people were running things now and the legitimate authorities had nationalized almost everything. Progressives like her were in charge. They were getting so much done with all these new emergency powers to overthrow the capitalist power structure. She hated to admit it, but she was a little glad about the Crisis. It was a way to get some things done that couldn’t be done with the knuckle dragger macho men in control of everything.

  It had been such an adventurous spring and early summer, and things would be heading toward autumn in a few months. This would all be over soon. Probably by the winter break. Or, as the teabaggers called it, “Christmas.”

  Carol finished her latte and went to work. She was so lucky to be in Seattle.

  Jeanie Thompson also felt lucky to be where she was: Camp Murray, the Washington State command center at Ft. Lewis. It was extremely secure. A thousand troops guarded her and the people she worked with, who consisted of the Governor, the command staff of the Washington National Guard, the state police, several federal agents, and miscellaneous state officials. Her boss was one of those state officials. Jeanie felt extremely secure there. She could hear the faint sound of gunfire “outside the wire” in the surrounding area. There was more and more gunfire at night, and now there was even some during the day, though it sounded far away.


  While she was glad to be “inside the wire” of Camp Murray, the downside was that her career was basically over. Jeanie was a public relations genius. She had been so close to being the communications director for the next governor. Back then, she had been in all the important top secret briefings and had been spinning stories to the media. She was in heaven.

  Then Jeanie was abruptly yanked off those cool duties. Her friend from the past, Grant Matson, was a POI and the police found out. Damned Facebook. They took her out of the top secret briefings and relegated her to doing stupid “happy smiley” tours for VIPs, who were very important people, like city council members from medium sized suburban towns or water district commissioners from who knows where. Or the employee of the year for the Department of General Administration. Wow. Real celebrities.

  “I’m not out there,” Jeanie would say to herself as she looked out past the barbed wire to the chaos and God-knows-what going on outside the wire. Even though she was no longer getting the top secret briefings, she knew that things weren’t going well. The Recovery was stalling. They had dodged a bullet early on. After a few weeks of total disarray, the government finally got food rolling into the stores and contained the riots. The relative calm of most people being fed had been going on for several weeks now. It was much better than the “crisis of the hour” mode they had been in at the beginning.

  Despite this, Jeanie could tell that things were not going well. There were some all-night sessions in the briefing room with lots of yelling. She still got to eat in the DFAC, the dining facility, with all the others and people in the DFAC looked pissed all the time. They were tired—so tired their brains weren’t working, like they were on drugs—and they were worried. Deathly afraid. Terrified of how out of control the situation was. She even saw some of them crying as they ate. No one came over and comforted them. They just cried alone. People tried to ignore that it was happening.