Oh, shit. He had to drive through a war zone to get to where he was going. He checked his gas tank. There was half a tank, which was easily enough to get to the cabin if there was no traffic. Given the protests, riots, and crime—looting, maybe even—he didn’t expect smooth sailing.
Grant drove past all the neighbors at the entrance of the subdivision. They waved him down. He just kept going. He saw the bodies of the men he’d killed. Boys, actually. When he got close enough, he could see they were teenage boys. White kids. They looked like dirtbags. They had those damned baggy pants down to their ass cracks. God, he hated that. Those baggy pants alone justified killing them. He chuckled to himself at the absurdity of that thought. He needed that humor to get through this. That chuckle broke up the mood so he could deal with all the things he needed to do.
As he drove close enough to see them, Grant looked at their faces. He knew he shouldn’t. They looked asleep. With blood everywhere. They were not nice boys. Thank God for that. At least he didn’t kill people who looked innocent.
Everyone tried to talk to him. He just kept the window up and kept driving, carefully so he didn’t hit anyone, including the dead bodies.
His neighbors were looking at him strangely. They were pointing and whispering. They were looking at him like…he was a killer. They were afraid of him. They had slight fear in their eyes. They were treating him like a killer. He wasn’t welcome in normal society anymore. He could feel it.
His neighbors looked like people he had known decades ago. His life as Grant Matson—family man, attorney, and resident of the Cedars—was over. These people had known a different Grant Matson. The first Grant Matson. The second Grant Matson was driving that car. He had business to take care of. He drove past like he didn’t know them. Because he didn’t. Except Ron. He had saved Ron’s life that night by risking his own. He nodded at Ron, who was trying to talk to him. Grant kept driving.
Once he left the Cedars, he didn’t see another car until he hit the freeway. As he approached the street that led to the onramp near the old brewery, he could see there was a big a backup on the freeway. It passed right by the Capitol. There were lots of police cars trying to get there and ambulances leaving. Grant had an alternate route planned. He got off the street before it fed onto the on ramp. He took a back street to get to an onramp to the highway leading to the cabin. No traffic at this entrance. Grant smiled. At least one part of the plan was working. So far.
He got onto Highway 101 and accelerated to cruising speed. He was staying at sixty miles per hour because he had a loaded AR in the seat and didn’t want to get pulled over. That was probably not a problem given that the police were all at the capitol, but why risk it.
Grant needed some music. He hit the play button and one of his favorite “survival” songs came on, Long Hard Times to Come by Gangstagrass. The lyrics seemed to be speaking directly to him as he left his family behind to go off to the cabin to… survive?
That summed it. Grant saw “them long hard times to come.” He was doing it by his “lonesome.”
The drive out to the cabin passed like the blink of an eye and felt like a lifetime at the same time. Along the way, he thought about his entire life. He thought about Lisa and the kids all alone in the house. God, he wanted to go back. But he couldn’t.
Maybe he could.
No, he couldn’t. He knew he couldn’t.
You have a job to do out here. You would not be safe back there. You will be here.
What was this outside thought, anyway? Was it just Grant saying to himself what he wanted to hear? But it wasn’t him doing the talking. Actually, no one was talking. It wasn’t a voice. They were thoughts but not Grant’s. Oh well. The outside thoughts had been right so far. They had told Grant to do some things that seemed crazy at the time but now seemed very wise. Like getting prepared.
Grant thought about the sheeple back in town. They’d be clawing each other for the last Doritos in a few days. Maybe they already were.
Chapter 51
The Hideout
(May 5)
When Grant got to the cabin, he wanted to make sure it was ready for Lisa and the kids when they came.
What a stupid thought. They weren’t coming. Grant felt foolish for even thinking that.
But he couldn’t deny that he was in a hurry to get out there. To get away from what was going on in the city.
He couldn’t get Lisa and the kids out of his thoughts. He had always thought he would be so glad to bug out to the cabin and arrive there after escaping from the chaos in the city. He would be arriving at an oasis of security in a violent world.
But that had always assumed his family would be with him. He had always envisioned that he could convince Lisa to come. He had tried to mentally prepare himself for bugging out without her and the kids but he must have done a poor job of it. Bugging out without them was a shock to him. He felt like his whole detailed plan for surviving a disaster was now thrown off. A key element—his family—was not going as planned. He had months of food, but no one to feed.
As he rounded the road that led down to the water, his tactical sensibilities took over. Were there cops there waiting for him? That was completely unrealistic, but he had to start being careful about things like that. He was in a fight right now. He had his fighting wits about him. Like when he was walking around the neighborhood after his dad chased him with the knife and he used that dog collar as a makeshift weapon.
This fighting mode seemed rather natural for him. It was like old times. As much as his childhood sucked, he was seeing that it had equipped him to do things that most other “normal” Americans couldn’t do.
He stopped his car at a safe and very dark spot a few hundred feet from the road that turned onto his cabin’s short private road. He was going to give this a look on foot. Should he bring his AR? Would that scare a neighbor that he didn’t know and…what? Would they call the police? Like the cops could leave the protests at the capitol and come zooming out to the sticks of Pierce Point because someone saw what appears to be the shape of a man with an “Army gun”? Nope, Grant was in a fight right now and wouldn’t show up to it without all the tools he had.