299 Days: The Stronghold (9 page)

Grant wanted to talk about the “FUSA,” but that would be too much for the crowd, at least at this point. “Legality is very important, Mr. Abbott. Isn’t it?”

Abbott nodded.

“Like paying your taxes,” Grant said. “How many people in this room paid every penny of their taxes the past couple of years?” No one raised their hands.

“Hey, Dan,” Grant said to Dan Morgan, “How are those retirement checks you should be getting from the Air Force? Those coming on time?”

Dan shook his head and laughed.

“Hey, everyone,” Grant said with a smile, “how is that free government health care? It’s against the ‘law’ to deny you all the health care you want. Do you have to bribe receptionists to see a doctor? Why, that’s ‘illegal,’ isn’t it? Is it legal for the government to order the grocery store to limit people to $200 of purchases?” Grant was on a roll.

“The President’s ‘emergency powers’?” Grant said. “The Governor seizing gas stations? You want me to stop now, Mr. Abbott? I’ll bet you do.” Grant was grinning. He was in his element. Maybe too much. It was a rush to destroy these shit heads.

“This is…treason,” Abbott said. “That’s what it is, setting up your own little fiefdom out here.” Abbott was getting desperate.

The crowd was silent.

“Treason?” Grant asked with a smile. “Did you say ‘treason’ Mr. Abbott?” The crowd expected Grant to draw a pistol on this guy. Instead, Grant held his hands out as if to say, “Please elaborate.”

Abbott stormed out.

Grant sat down. That was about all that needed to be done. Grant was done with Abbott and Snelling. But he knew they weren’t done with him.

Chapter 114

The Pierce Point Patriot

(May 11)

The meeting broke up. Many people wanted to talk to Grant and thank him for shutting down Snelling and Abbott. Not all were thanking him, though. Some looked at him like he was a threat, like they were trying to figure out how he was going to screw them. That was fair. Politicians had been doing that regularly for several decades. And now here was a guy talking about following the Constitution; a guy with a scary rifle and a pistol. A little scrutiny was warranted.

There was one last guy who wanted to talk to Grant. He waited around for a while until everyone else was done and then came up and said, “Hi, Mr. Matson, I’m Ken Dolphson. My wife, Barbara, said you needed a copy machine.”
“Oh, great, Ken,” Grant said as they shook hands. “I think your copy machine can help perform an important service for the community out here.”

“What would that be?” Ken asked.

“A newspaper,” Grant said. “A one-page, double-sided piece with community news. Things like an obituary for Mrs. Roth. Updates on how people can help or be helped. Maybe letters to the editor. That kind of thing. Would you like to donate the use of your copier for that?”

“Oh, sure,” Ken said. “I had never thought of having a paper out here. Yeah, that would be great.”
“How much paper do you have out here?” Grant asked.

“Oh,” Ken said, thinking about how much he had, “I got several reams for all the flyers I do for my listings. I got a whole pallet of paper delivered out here a few years ago and have almost all of it. Sales of real estate are down a bit right now,” Ken said with a smile. “Can you design the paper? You know, headlines and that kind of thing?” Grant asked.

“I guess,” Ken said. He’d never put together a newspaper, but had done lots of fliers. Ken realized that, in the Collapse, people were doing lots of jobs they never expected to. “No problem,” he said. “Do I have to go get the stories?”

“No,” Grant said, “but you can if you want to. Anyone can publish a story. I have plenty of story ideas, like that obituary I mentioned. Mary Anne Morrell can write it; she had been taking care of Mrs. Roth.”

“What’s the paper going to be called?” Ken asked.

“The
Pierce Point Patriot
,” Grant said. The name jumped right out at him. The
Patriot
. That’s right. It would be a source of local news and non-political information that people could use. And they could trust it—unlike the news on TV and the internet. There wouldn’t be much, if any, overt political opinion. There wouldn’t need to be. If the
Patriot
told people where to get AA batteries and who was having a canning party to put up the season’s apple crop into applesauce, it wouldn’t need to have an editorial about the Founding Fathers or why the former government was a failure. It would be pretty obvious: the former government was a failure because they couldn’t provide anyone with AA batteries or apple sauce. The Patriots were providing those things. The Patriots were solving the problems that the former government created. That’s the kind of politics that people would gravitate toward: solving their problems, fairly and without force. So, one of Grant’s most political ideas, the newspaper, would not show any signs of being political.

“All I ask,” Grant said to Ken, “is that the name of the paper be the ‘
Pierce Point Patriot
’ and the logo be the ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ flag. Would that be OK, Mr. Publisher?”

Ken laughed at being called the publisher. “Sure,” he said. Ken had been sick of how things had been going for some time. The things the Feds did to the housing market were unbelievable. Ken hadn’t said anything; it was bad for business to be “political” especially if that meant pissing off the government people who held the approvals his business needed in their hands. He didn’t think there was anything he could do except try to eek out a living and pay his taxes. But, Ken had decided quite a while ago that the country needed a “restart.” So now he was the publisher of a Patriot newspaper. Fine with him.

Ken paused. He couldn’t help it, “Can I put in a little ad about my services? I will do property sales—with our own property title records system I guess we’ll have out at the Grange here—in exchange for some barter. Would that be OK?” Another use for the lot numbers: records of property sales.

“Of course, Ken,” Grant said. “Our side is all about free enterprise and small business. You are donating the copy machine and the paper. You’re entitled to a little advertising.” Then it hit Grant. This was the first sign of economic activity he’d seen out there. Donating deer meat to guys on guard duty didn’t count. But ads for realtors and buying and selling property did. For a brief moment, Grant thought that a recovery would be possible. This is how it would start: small and without government. People doing what they always have done: buying and selling things. The rebuilding is already showing signs of beginning, Grant thought.

It was late and Grant was tired. Really tired. He would try to sleep in tomorrow. He said good night to Ken and Rich and found out the Team had already gone back in Mark’s truck. Grant got on the moped and rode home on another beautiful May evening.

It was warm out, even after dark. The stars were out. In the middle of all this man-made mess and misery was beauty. Nature’s beauty.

Grant couldn’t turn his mind off. Today he had gone on patrol and conducted a census, outlined a criminal justice system, a Constitutional governance system, and a civil courts system. He had been elected as judge, kind of; there hadn’t been a vote, really. He had thought on his feet, tried to hand his pistol to a hostile man, and verbally demolished an opponent. Oh, and started a newspaper. Not a bad day’s work.

Chapter 115

The Four Categories

(May 11)

With his mind racing during the moped ride home, Grant thought about Ken and the newspaper. He thought about how Ken had watched the government destroy his livelihood and how he had thought he couldn’t say anything—let alone do anything—about it. About how Ken wanted a “reset.” Ken was like a lot of Americans.

The population, Grant realized, was divided into four groups: Patriots, Loyalists, the Undecideds, and the Oblivious.

It varied by region. The more rural the area, the more Patriots; the more urban, the more Loyalists. The more Southern and Western (except the cities on the West Coast), the more Patriots. The more Northeast, the more Loyalist.

As Grant had seen with his own eyes, the Patriots were furious at what was happening. They weren’t revolutionaries—at least not this early into the Collapse—but, instead saw withdrawing from the former government as self-defense. They were taking actions to protect themselves from a government that had gone from serving them to abusing them.

Pierce Point was a perfect example. They were setting up their own little system to take care of themselves and having armed guards and a gate. They weren’t trying to take on the United States military. They were just doing what they had to do, which happened to mean not recognizing the authority of the federal government. This wasn’t some grand political philosophy; people didn’t sit around talking about revolution, Thomas Jefferson, or any of that. They didn’t sign a document saying they were declaring their independence from the United States. They didn’t care and didn’t have the time for luxuries like heavy political thoughts; they had to do guard duty and get their kids some food. They still called themselves “Americans” and would say the country they lived in was the United States. They just didn’t have any use for the United States government, or what little of it was left.

From years of being one of the only people who thought like he did, Grant realized that the Patriots were the minority; only a few percentage points of the population. Grant estimated that the Patriots he knew in Olympia were only a few percent of the population. But, then again, in the Revolutionary War, only about five percent of the population were Patriots at first and look at how that turned out.

The Loyalists, who made up ten to fifteen percent of the population, were the ones who depended on government and knew that if it fell, they would be out of a job—or worse. Being dependent on government didn’t guarantee that a person would be a Loyalist. The majority of the population was dependent on the government in one way or another, but some of the dependent ones were on the fence or didn’t care. Some of the dependent ones were even Patriots. There were no neat and clean lines.

Most Loyalists did not spend their time thinking about politics. Indeed, as products of the public school system, most had no political knowledge; just feelings about how things should be.

The essence of being a Loyalist was a belief that if the current government fell, then America would end. Loyalists were fighting to preserve what they had been taught that America was all about: fifty states and big federal government. A lot of what fueled Loyalists was fear of the Patriots. Patriots had become pegged as racist, Southern, gun-loving haters. A “Bubba.” The Loyalists were actually afraid that if the Patriots took over that slavery would return and women would be barefoot and pregnant. The cartoon image of the Patriots got more and more exaggerated—but, repeated often enough, as it had been in the schools and media for decades, it became more and more powerful.

Grant was thinking of the reactions he’d seen from many people in the Grange that night. They were on the fence. They were the third group, the Undecideds. They were probably sixty percent of the population, just like during the first Revolutionary War.

The Undecideds were generally angry at what had happened, but were too weak to do anything about it. Weakness wasn’t necessarily cowardice. Some were just not in a position to fight effectively. They might quietly resist, or they might not resist at all. They would complain about the government, but either thought they couldn’t do anything or were terrified to think about opposing the government. All their lives, they had seen what happened to people who opposed the status quo: ridicule, job loss, sometimes even jail. They didn’t want to rock the boat. They didn’t respond to things like passionate speeches about liberty or the Constitution. They had no idea about those things because they were never taught them in the public schools.

More importantly, most of the Undecideds didn’t care for politics and thought it was basically a game played with the people’s money. They were right about that, but thought they were powerless. They were muddling through.

Most of the Undecideds were just plain weak. Timid. Pathetic. Deserving of what they got, Grant hated to say. They didn’t really deserve to be treated like the government was treating them, but it was so completely understandable why the government was doing it—because the government could. This was because the Undecideds were so afraid of their own shadow that they would just take what the government gave them, mutter under their breaths, and hope they got through the day.

The Undecideds were the ones the Patriots needed to win over. Grant knew that this was how the first Patriots—the ones in the Revolutionary War—won. And it was how they would win the second one.

George Washington had it right: feed and protect the Undecideds, gain their confidence because you are taking care of them and showing them you are fair and just and, most importantly, effective at making their lives better. Eventually they will be on your side. Maybe even if they don’t really want to be—they will just acknowledge that the Patriot way works better than the old way.

The last of the four categories was the Oblivious. They made up about twenty to twenty-five percent of the population. They were so ignorant and dependent that all they cared about was what was on TV or when they’d get their next bag of Doritos. The younger ones were completely preoccupied with technological distractions, like cell phones and video games. Constant sex also kept their minds elsewhere. The middle-aged Oblivious were usually just working too hard to pay their taxes or were dependent leaches on the system. The older Oblivious just wanted to live out their golden years and have the government pay for it, just like they’d been promised.

The Oblivious weren’t at the Grange meetings. They were too lazy to show up. They just figured that someone would take care of them. People had been doing that for their whole lives, so what would be different now? The Oblivious were largely hidden, but still made up a sizable portion of the population. They were the most dangerous. They would get hungry and desperate and lash out. Almost all of the criminals were the Oblivious. They caused big problems.