299 Days: The Visitors 2d-5

by Glen Tate

  Medical care was another irony: Who was it that opposed universal medical care? The teabaggers. So, who wasn’t getting any medical care at the TDF? Nancy chuckled to herself. Sometimes you get what you wish for, you stupid hillbillies. She loved it.

  The TDF was staffed by the Freedom Corps. Nancy gave them a pretty free hand in disciplining the detainees. Guards were allowed to use force with detainees. Nothing too extreme; no killings. She didn’t want to deal with the paperwork on that. Yesterday, on her first day on the job, one detainee was beaten into unconsciousness. He died when he wasn’t treated. What a pile of paperwork that caused. She learned her lesson. Don’t kill the detainees if you can avoid it.

  Nancy had a morning full of meetings. She loved meetings. She got to be in charge and everyone had to ask her for permission to do whatever it was they talked about in the meeting. This morning, she was helping staff develop their policies and protocols, as they still didn’t have any formal procedures for running a temporary jail.

  Temporary? Nancy sighed. Yes, this would only be temporary. That was what the Governor said. Too bad. She wished this could go on permanently.

  Chapter 155

  Chip’s Horse

  (June 7)

  The collapse of a society is nothing to wish for, no matter how corrupt the old society was. In his heart, Grant believed the new society would eventually be better than the old, but it would undoubtedly take lots and lots of hard work and years of trial and error for a better society to take hold. Long-range optimism about the new society was possible because it wouldn’t be difficult to do better than the old society. Just come up with a new system that didn’t worship government, enslave people with taxes, destroy free enterprise, and divide people along racial and regional lines. It wasn’t too hard to beat that.

  In almost the next thought, the doubt set in. Grant wondered if the new society would make it through this terrible period. So many people were dying. He started wondering who would be next.

  Grant looked around him at the cabin and realized what was truly important. He was glad to be home with his family. He needed to be there to protect them. Forget the rest of society. Forget rebuilding a government that protects liberty. Liberty? What makes anyone think that’s possible? America had it and pissed it away.

  Grant laughed out loud at the thought of fighting for “liberty.” His family was all that mattered. He needed to make sure they made it. Oh, and him, too. But them first. He would start with his family and make it strong. Then he’d branch out to Pierce Point and hopefully make it strong, too.

  Then beyond.

  He was hearing from the outside thought a lot lately. Grant assumed this must be a critical period when he needed some encouragement and guidance.

  He hadn’t slept last night because he couldn’t stop thinking about the trial and the death of the mother and older man. He normally slept like a log out there, given how much physical activity he did all day long, but he kept thinking about the hanging coming up that morning. He was envisioning the people with ropes around their necks. The horse walking forward. The person falling. The rope catching. The crunching sound of broken neck bones. The person swinging. The look on the crowd’s face.

  Throughout last night, this series of images and sounds kept replaying in Grant’s mind. Finally he fell asleep, only to be awakened too soon by the early light coming through the windows. It was the opposite of the previous morning when he’d waken up refreshed and jubilant. This morning he was tired and horrified.

  Grant skipped the pancake breakfast. He didn’t want to spoil the joy of making pancakes with what was on his mind, and he especially didn’t want to think of the hangings the next time he made pancakes.

  He got his AR and kit and put on his pistol belt. It was too early for the Team to be up. He would go up to the Grange alone, which was better. He wanted to be alone.

  He rode the moped up to the Grange. Then he saw it.

  A rope and noose dangling from a strong tree branch in the Grange parking lot. Under the noose, a horse was grazing on some grass without any idea of what part she would have in the killing of a human being. The noose in the tree turned the Grange, which had been a happy place, into a place of death.

  Stop. Quit whining, Grant told himself. Stop being a baby. Sure, it’s awful that people are going to be hung, but they deserve it. He thought about what Frankie said to receive Rich’s, “I doubt it” and the resulting blow from Rich’s pistol. He recalled Ronnie’s testimony about what Josie had done to Crystal just to make Frankie happy. She had done that just to keep a piece of shit as her “boyfriend.” That wasn’t a human being who had done that. That was an animal, and an animal who can hurt people needs to be killed.

  No, Grant thought, he should be happy that this was happening. That they had pulled the raid off without losing any of their own, that they hadn’t shot any innocent people, and that Crystal didn’t have to spend one more night in the meth house with Frankie. Finally, he should be happy that the community saw a fair trial and that Pierce Point dealt with these problems in a civilized, albeit violent, way.

  “Never thought I’d see one of those,” Chip said as he pointed to the noose in the tree. He had walked up behind Grant, but Grant had been so heavy in thought that he hadn’t heard him. “Never thought I’d have to do this,” Chip said.

  “Do what?” Grant asked.

  “I’m the one who is going to shoo the horse. I’m the executioner,” Chip said.

  They didn’t say anything for a while. Then Grant said, “Well, get used to it. That’s how things are out here. You hurt a child, you get to ride Chip’s horse.” Saying that helped Grant feel more sure of what they were about to do.

  “Yep,” Chip said. He drew in a deep breath. “Yep.”

  Grant was hungry; his appetite was slowly returning. He had thrown up last night and not wanted to eat dinner, and now he was starving.

  He went into the Grange and the ladies were cooking breakfast. It smelled great. He poured a cup of coffee, amazed that they still had coffee out there. They only made a little each day now. Grant hoped coffee was on someone’s FCard list. There. He was back to thinking about things like FCards. He was back to normal.

  He ate a huge breakfast. Biscuits, canned fruit, and deer sausage. Delicious. As he was finishing up, Pastor Pete came in with a Bible in his hand.

  “You, uh, officiating?” Grant asked him. Grant didn’t know what word to use for overseeing a hanging. “Officiating” seemed to work.

  Pastor Pete nodded. He never thought he’d be doing this.

  People started coming into the Grange. A small, very quiet, crowd was gathering outside near the tree. There were not nearly as many people as had been to the trial. Most people didn’t want to see this. Good for them. They were still humans. Not animals.

  Grant went outside. As the judge of the trial, he felt obligated to watch. People expected him to. Besides, if he couldn’t watch the sentences he allowed to be handed down, how could people trust him to do the right thing?

  Josie was first. She had on the same borrowed “Princess” t-shirt and sweat pants from the trial. She was cuffed with her hands behind her back, and her ankles were cuffed because she had been kicking the guards that morning. She was being carried by four jail guards. Pastor Pete asked her if she wanted to pray. She kept screaming. He tried to pray for her but she was screaming too loudly. He kept praying despite her. When he was done, the guards cut the zip ties on her legs and hoisted her onto the horse.

  A volunteer held onto the bridle so the horse wouldn’t move.

  Chip asked Josie if she wanted a blindfold. More screaming. He shrugged, realizing it would be too hard to put a blindfold on her, anyway.

  Chip got on a ladder and put the noose around her neck. All of a sudden, she stopped screaming. She finally realized that it was going to happen. She looked around and started saying in a soft voice, “I’m sorry Crystal. I’m sorry…”

  Chip got down from the lad
der and someone handed him a horse whip. He smacked the horse’s hind end. The horse lurched forward, and Josie instantly fell off the horse. There was a “snap” sound. The crowd winced. Josie swung on the rope. No one said a word. A few were crying.

  Without missing a beat, Chip and the guards got Josie down. They were careful and respectful. It didn’t seem odd at all for them to be reverent and respectful of a woman they had hanged. Everyone felt sorry for her at one level or another. She had thrown her life away, but hurt little Crystal in the process.

  Grant realized he needed to appear to be emotionless and businesslike. It was actually easier to do so than he’d thought. In the past day he’d gotten over some of the shock of hanging people.

  “Bring in the next prisoner,” he said.

  Frankie was handcuffed, but walking on his own power. He was very deliberate in his steps, as they were the last steps he’d ever take. And he was fine with that. He wasn’t going to give the people in the crowd any satisfaction. He’d just get it over with.

  Pastor Pete asked him if he had any last words. Frankie just said, “Nope.”

  Pete asked if he could pray for Frankie. “Whatever,” Frankie said. Pete prayed softly. He wasn’t making a speech out of this or giving a sermon. This was a prayer he was making on Frankie’s behalf.

  Chip asked Frankie, “Do you want a blindfold?”

  “No,” Frankie said. He paused. “I want to look you assholes in the eye when you do this.”

  “OK, then,” Chip said and smiled.

  The guards put Frankie on the horse. Chip went back up on the ladder and put the noose around Frankie’s neck, came back down and nonchalantly smacked the horse.

  Two seconds later, Franklin Jeremiah Richardson went to hell.

  Chapter 156

  Community Affairs

  (June 7)

  As Frankie swung lifeless on the noose, Ken Dolphson snapped a picture for the newspaper. Right at that moment, Grant knew that the picture would become something big. Iconic and symbolic of a small community taking matters into its own hands and operating without any outside government. It would be hope to Patriots and a threat to Loyalists. Grant didn’t know how, but he knew that the picture of a man hanging at Pierce Point would become famous.

  The impact of the hangings made for a very solemn day at Pierce Point. Some cried. No one talked much. They were deep in thought. Most people were relieved that the thieving tweaker child molesters were dead. No one felt sorry for Frankie. Some questioned whether Josie needed to die, and then wondered whether it was “sexist” to think that a woman should not be hanged. Somehow, seeing a woman swinging on a rope seemed odd. For most people, that image was more jarring and unsettling than that of a man.

  When people started talking again, many were quietly describing why they thought justice had been done. They talked about why the trial was fair and how good it was that Pierce Point had its own courts. And the constables. People were thanking the Team for their heroism in getting these people.

  Then something amazing happened. The rhetoric between the “cabin people” and the “full timers” seemed to go down a notch. The two camps were still divided, but people weren’t arguing with each other. The gung-ho full-timers weren’t talking so tough now that two human beings had just died. The ivory tower cabin people weren’t talking about abstract things like legitimate laws; most of them realized that Frankie and Josie deserved to die, as jarring as watching them actually die was.

  One group that seemed deeply affected by the hangings were the ten-percenter scumbags who were planning on committing crimes if they could get away with it. Some of them had already committed petty crimes and now realized what would happen to them if they got caught. They didn’t like this hanging or jail or court thing one bit. They hated Grant. He was a threat to them and what they wanted to do. They now had confirmed enemies: Grant, Rich, and the Team.

  The ten-percenter scumbags weren’t all poor people. A sizable portion were middle class and even some cabin people. They were anyone who thought it was OK to get something for nothing. They were looking out for number one; themselves. That line of thinking wasn’t limited to poor people.

  The ten-percenter scumbags were joined by another group that hated the hangings: the handful of Loyalists out at Pierce Point. The Loyalists weren’t motivated to commit crimes, necessarily; they just wanted “their guys” back in charge. They knew that Grant’s success with the court, and now the hangings, meant Grant, Rich, and the Team—the teabaggers—were in charge out there. The Patriots weren’t running the place like dictators, which would have made the Loyalists’ job of ousting them much easier. No, the Patriots had been smart in the way they did it. They had garnered the support of the people. They were fair. They followed the Constitution. All of these things were gimmicks, according to the Loyalists. To the Loyalists, “fairness” and the “Constitution” were just words that people said to get whatever they wanted, so they assumed the Patriots must be using those terms as a gimmick. The Loyalists were projecting: accusing their opponents of thinking the way they actually did.

  Snelling, who remained quiet during the hangings, was visibly horrified—for political, not humanitarian, reasons. He understood the power of hanging people. He understood that most of the residents would be rallying around Grant and the Patriots now. Snelling had to be a politician to get all those government architecture contracts like he did before the Collapse. He understood politics and realized how effective the Patriots were being out there. If they were hanging people and the crowd was cheering, what was to stop the Patriots from starting to hang Loyalists? Like him.

  Snelling was the leader of the Loyalists. He was not afraid of Grant and had challenged him in previous meetings. He had a small band of cabin people following him, including Dick Abbott, the retired Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy.

  Abbott fancied himself as a law enforcement expert even though he’d been retired for ten years. He had been a mediocre patrolman when he was on the force, but now he was close to 300 pounds. He had been scamming the California public employee disability system for a fake knee injury for years. The “disability” checks stopped coming when California ran out of money.

  Before the Collapse, Abbott had made his living on shady stock deals. He wasn’t a true criminal; he just had no problem letting “suckers” give him their money. Abbott figured if people were stupid and trusted him, it was their problem.

  Grant had been worrying about Abbott. Being a retired cop meant that he would be the natural challenger to Rich. When Grant saw Abbott and Snelling huddling together at one of the first Grange meetings, he knew that he’d have to deal with Abbott sooner or later.

  Abbott wanted to be the sheriff out there. He wanted people to beg him to arrest or not arrest people. He wanted to be in “command” of the guards and constables. He wanted to be a big man out there. He wanted a cut of the FCards.

  Over the past few Grange meetings, Grant watched Abbott and Snelling talking with their little group. Snelling was the brains and Abbott was the brawn. Well, to the extent a sixty-something stock market scammer weighing 300 pounds who always complained about his knee was “brawn.”

  Grant watched after the hanging as some more people went over and started talking with Snelling and Abbott. These were probably ten-percenter scumbags who were alarmed by the hangings. They were gravitating toward the people who were opposing the Patriots.

  The ten-percenters didn’t care about politics. They wanted the Loyalists to win so they wouldn’t have Grant and the constables to worry about. The ten-percenters knew that the real police would probably never be back. They knew that the Loyalists would be weak and would let them run wild. Perfect.

  Grant knew that the more the Loyalists directly opposed him, the better. His political hand was strong right now. Might as well have the Loyalists show their stripes for everyone to see. That meant prodding Snelling and Abbott into popping off at Grant, which shouldn’t be hard.

&n
bsp; Grant approached their little group. They looked nervous.

  “Howdy, gentlemen,” he said with a sarcastic tip of his baseball cap to Snelling and Abbott. “Whatcha up to?”

  “Just talking about how many crimes you’ve committed here today,” Snelling said, “with your little kangaroo court. Murder. Two counts, actually. Hanging people is against the law.”

  People who were still lingering suddenly stopped talking and tried to listen in.

  Grant smiled and said, “Why don’t you come to the meeting tonight and tell everyone your feelings?” He stared Snelling right in the face for a few seconds, and Snelling was the first to flinch. His eyes darted down at the ground. Grant turned around and walked away.

  He realized he needed to do a better job of keeping track of the Loyalists. He had been so busy lately and, frankly, he didn’t want to “keep files” on opponents. He was trying to apply the Constitution out there, and tracking people’s political beliefs seemed so wrong. But, these people were now a direct threat to everything that was going right out there. These Loyalists would destroy Pierce Point in ten seconds if they could.

  Despite how important it was to keep track of the Loyalists, Grant still hesitated to spy on people and categorize them by their political beliefs. Would he then have informers and secret police? He really didn’t want to go down that road. Was he using “security concerns” to justify a political disagreement—and especially a personal hatred—of Snelling and his group? Kind of like the old government did with him?

  Pierce Point needed to be a model of the Patriot way, and that didn’t include secret police. But Pierce Point couldn’t be a model for anything if the Loyalists took it over. Grant would need to think about this some more. This living under the Constitution thing was harder than it looked. Utopians had never tried to govern anything. Platitudes break down when they make contact with reality.