299 Days: The Community (12 page)

John and Wes went in. For the first time in this whole ordeal, they were scared. When they walked in, everyone stopped talking. The other customers, all young Latino men, stared at them. The Latinos weren’t gangsters, just young men.

John said, “Hi. You guys open?” The store owner just looked at him. John pointed over at the fifty-pound sacks of red beans and the twenty-five pound sacks of rice. “How much are those?”

“We’re closed,” said the store owner in a thick Mexican accent. He looked mean.

“We have cash,” John said.

That seemed to insult the store owner. He raised up his hand and the young men started walking toward John and Wes.

Wes instantly drew his pistol with his right hand. With his left hand, he quickly undid the two buttons on his hunting shirt, just as he’d practiced a few times before they left. There was his AK. Out for the whole world to see. Which was the point.

This stopped the young men cold, and they instinctively put their hands up. None of them were armed. John fumbled for his revolver and clumsily pointed it at the store owner.

It was silent for a few seconds.

Wes finally said, “I think it’s time for us to go. Sorry to have troubled you, señor.” Wes was sincere. He realized that the beans and rice in that store were for the store owner’s family and friends. Maybe those young men were a gang, although they didn’t look like gangsters. In the past few days, “gang” had come to mean a group of people connected in some way protecting themselves. Neck tattoos, baggy pants, and gold teeth were no longer a prerequisite. Hell, Wes and John were part of a “gang” now. Who were the well-armed ethnic outsiders in the tienda? John and Wes.

Everyone was still silent. Wes was walking backwards very slowly and deliberately, keeping his pistol on the young men. Everyone in the room could tell that Wes knew what he was doing. John was in shock and walking backwards, too. Wes felt enormous relief when he went out the door and back onto the street.

Wes covered the door as he yelled to John, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

Drew had been scanning the area and saw Wes and John walking out of the store with their guns out. What was going on?

Wes and John jumped in the truck and took off.

“What happened?” Drew asked.

John looked down, obviously embarrassed. “I went to the wrong store.”

“We need to be out of this part of town,” Wes said. “They’ll be looking for us. We didn’t make any friends today.”

Wes was pissed at John, but when he thought about it, he shouldn’t have been. John had not foreseen that the Mexican store would only sell to Mexicans, but he should have realized it. Wes had a feeling not to go in there and should have listened to his gut. Having a pistol and an AK probably made him feel invincible, so he wasn’t trusting his intuition. He wouldn’t do that again. Wes felt like he was making mistakes. He knew what happened when mistakes were made in an environment like this.

They had failed. They didn’t very much get anything on their list. They had to draw guns and now people were out probably trying to kill them. Great. At least they had some cash left over.

Wes got on the CB. “Limit of $200 on groceries. We have cash left over. We’ll be staying out of the Mexican part of town. Anyone need us to go get something?”

Chapter 86

Hardware Store

(May 8)

“You could try the hardware store for some gas cans,” John said. He pointed the direction to the hardware store.

Wes was silent. He was trying not to be pissed at John because they’d be working and living together and needed to be on good terms. Wes lightened up and started to chat with John and Drew as they headed to the hardware store.

On the way, they saw some graffiti. “Don’t Tread on Me” was in yellow spray-paint on the wall of city hall. Interesting.

They found the hardware store. Wes said, “I’ll stay in the truck with the stuff.” John and Drew went into the store.

Drew asked where the gas cans were. The clerk laughed and said, “We sold out two days ago.” Drew and John decided to get all the miscellaneous things they could think of. Things were pretty picked over, but there were still some items. They got duct tape, rope, nails, screws, nuts and bolts. They found some Coleman fuel and some small propane canisters. There were a few packs of batteries left; they got an assortment of every kind they could think of. They didn’t have a list, so they were just guessing what they might need.

John found some work gloves. He put as many pairs as he could into the cart. “You can never have enough gloves,” he said to Drew. “These could save your hands and you’ll need them.”

They went to the checkout line, which was pretty long. They paid for their things. No surcharge there, probably because all the good stuff was gone. They had a little money left over, but not much. It was weird: money didn’t have the same feel it used to. The things in the store were much more valuable than the money.

The hardware store was near the sporting goods store where Mark and Scotty were. They saw Mark’s truck in the parking lot. John and Drew dropped off their hardware store items in the truck and told Wes they’d go over to the sporting goods store to see Mark and Scotty.

Wes was glad to be in the truck, with the AK and scanning for the Mexicans who might be looking for them. Then again, he thought, why would they want to find someone with an AK? All the Mexicans were doing was kicking some people out of their store; that’s not the kind of thing to go hunting people down over. Oh well, even if no one was looking for them, Wes would continue to scan the area for threats. This town was on the brink of being a warzone. Wes could feel it. He was listening to his intuition this time. Bare shelves, no cops, and plenty of sleep-deprived, scared, hungry people who had never run out of anything. This was going to be ugly. But not in Pierce Point. Hopefully.

John and Drew went over to the sporting goods store. It was one of the last local sporting goods stores around. The nearest Wal-Mart was one town away.

The camping and hunting sections of the sporting goods store was picked over. There were plenty of basketballs and golf clubs left, though.

Mark and Scotty had a cart full of fishing gear and crab pots,. Mark had plenty of these things, but he’d need more now that he’d be a full-time fisherman and hunter.

John saw Mark and asked, “Do they have any .280 Winchester?” That was ammunition for a hunting rifle John had. It was an obscure caliber.

Mark smiled, “Yeah, three boxes of it. There’s a one-box limit for the common calibers. But yours is an oddball caliber, so we could have all we wanted. It looks like those boxes of .280 have been on the shelf for a couple years from the dust.”

Scotty was excited about what he found. “Hey,” he said excitedly, “I got ten boxes of .357 Sig. That’s an oddball caliber, for sure.” Bobby had an extra Glock 22 in .40. He switched to 9mm so he didn’t use it much or keep much .40 ammo. But about a year ago, he got a replacement barrel for it in .357 Sig for a hundred bucks from Lonewolf Distributors. It took .40 magazines, which he had. Now, with the .357 Sig replacement barrel, he had a .357 Sig and ten boxes of ammo for his .40 Glock he no longer used. Pretty cool. Scotty thought Bobby was crazy to get an extra barrel in some weird caliber, but now he saw why.

“We could only get one box of the normal stuff,” Mark said. “30-06, 30-30, .270. Oh, and shotgun shells. Forget about it. They’re all gone.” That made sense. Everyone and their dog had a 12 gauge, so those shells would fly off the shelves.

Mark and Scotty’s cart had Coleman stoves and lanterns. Mark pointed to some little packages in the cart, “Best find of all is the water purification tabs. Pure gold.”

They paid and left. It was 11:45 a.m. They headed back to the rendezvous point.

The two trucks and the Hummer gathered and those who still needed to, gassed up. They told each other what they got and what they didn’t, and heard the quick version of the Mexican tienda story. Lisa was horrified. She had no idea Wes was carrying an “assault rifle.” They didn’t have time to be chatting. They needed to get out of town and get back to the safety of Pierce Point.

As they were leaving, there was a disturbance between two gas station customers. They started punching each other. A customer nearby drew a handgun. That stopped the fight. Everyone was on edge. They guy drawing the handgun ran away, leaving his car there.

“Time to boogie,” Pow said. “That guy’ll be back for his car.” They were glad to be on the road back to Pierce Point.

On the ride back, Lisa could not stop thinking about how different things were. Fights, “surcharges” at stores, limits on purchases, people with guns, money not being worth much. And chickens. Lisa hated chickens. They were noisy and stupid. Yet, somehow, she had gone from being a respected physician to an amateur chicken farmer in twenty-four hours.

Chapter 87

Words of the Day

(May 8)

Jeanie woke up in a military barracks. She hadn’t slept in…she didn’t even know how long. It felt great to have slept. The difference was amazing. Now, with a little sleep, things didn’t seem so totally out of control.

She got ready for work. “Work”? Sitting in a military base and spinning the destruction of Washington State to the idiot media seemed like a strange job, but it was her job. She was safe on base, doing something important, and helping to calm down the crisis. Just yesterday, when she was sleep-deprived and terrified, the situation seemed hopeless. Now this mess seemed like a series of problems that could be tackled one by one. Besides, everyone around her seemed to be calm, so she shouldn’t overreact to things.

The more she thought about it, the more she concluded they might actually get through this. They would laugh at how they thought all this was the end of the world. Things always seemed bad right at the beginning, but got better. They’d make it through. Things
would
get better. Especially now that she’d had a good night’s sleep.

She missed her bathroom and her makeup. Oh well. Most of the women around her were military and had no makeup, so she would fit right in. She only had a few changes of clothing, but there was a note on her door that she could leave her clothes to be cleaned. They thought of everything here at Camp Murray.

Her roommate in the two-person barracks had already gotten up or was still awake. She was a National Guard JAG officer. They had met for a minute a few days ago or whenever that was. Time was blurred together.

Jeanie went to the cafeteria or, as the military people called it, the “DFAC,” which stood for dining facility. The food was really good. She had expected slop like she’d seen in the movies. In the past few years, some of the stimulus money had gone toward remodeling the National Guard headquarters at Camp Murray. She noticed the plaque with the date of the work and the contractor’s name. As a campaign person, she recognized the name of the company as one that had given lots of money to the Democrats. But who cared. The place looked really nice. It had kind of a “palace” feel. They were being very well taken care of.

During a breakfast of organic oatmeal and fresh organic fruit, Jeanie wondered about Jim, her boyfriend on Guard duty somewhere. She knew he’d be safe with all those soldiers around him. She also knew that, as a computer guy, he would be in a headquarters away from the fighting, if there was any. She texted him. A few minutes later, he texted back saying he was fine and he’d be back home in a few weeks once this was all cleaned up. For the first time in about a week, she was actually feeling hopeful.

She was also feeling like she wasn’t a bad person to be working for the government during all of this. They were solving the problems that hit them like the “perfect storm.” The electrical outages, internet problems, terrorism, spike in gas prices, the May Day drop of the dollar, the Mexican refugee problem, the Southern states talking like they were leaving the union, and the nuclear exchange in the Mideast. All of this came at the same time. Even the best government would have a hard time coping with all this at once.

Things were bad, but not the end of the world. About 90% of the people were safe in their homes. They were listening to what the government told them to do. Sure, there was more crime than anyone had ever seen. Some people on medications were dying because the just-in-time inventory was screwed up with the internet outages and especially the traffic and gas shortages preventing the semi trucks from rolling effortlessly up and down the interstates. McDonald’s was out of french fries, but people would live. This was starting to feel like a national-scale Katrina, not Armageddon. Sure Katrina sucked and innocent people died, but in a year people were basically back to normal after some adjustments. That’s surely what would happen here.

After breakfast, Jeanie went to the conference room where she was working. Someone told her a briefing would start in a few minutes. She logged onto the internet. They had a reasonably stable connection. She checked the local news. She needed to know what they were reporting because her job was to get information to the local news. It said there was some isolated looting in Seattle, some gas stations out of gas, Interstate 5 jammed and people told to stay home, medically-dependent people flocking to hospitals that were overwhelmed. Lots and lots of “neighbor helping neighbor” stories. Plenty of scenes of National Guard and police helping people. Things might actually be OK.

People started coming into the conference room. Jason, the guy from the Governor’s Office who had been briefing them, opened the day.

“Good morning,” Jason said. “I hope most of you got to sleep last night. I know I sure feel better now that I have. Here’s what’s going on now. First, DC has authorized federal and state authorities—and that would include us—to seize critical infrastructure and supplies under the Insurrection Act. We need a nice word for this. Any PR people want to help me with that?”