“Let’s go have a look,” Grant said.
Chip was the first out the door and he carefully looked around before going outside. So did Grant. They tiptoed down the incline to the unfinished basement. Grant got his keys out and opened the door. He turned on the lights.
There in his basement were some of the tubs and gun boxes he had seen at the store. Neatly stacked. Cases of ammo stacked and sorted by caliber. Nice.
“Where’s Ted and his load?” Grant asked.
Chip looked around and lowered his voice, which was weird because they were all alone in the basement. “Ted is, um, talking to some people.” Chip was smiling. “That’s all I can tell you. Let’s just say there is some serious shit going down now. Very serious.”
Oh. Grant had an idea what that might be but kept the thought to himself. No need to speculate and blabber. That was not very professional.
“Professional?” Grant thought to himself. What profession was Grant now in? A gun runner? Harboring a fugitive? Oh, wait, he was a fugitive himself from the shootings. He and Chip were officially outlaws now. Wow. From respected attorney to outlaw in a couple of hours. Things were changing, and they could never go back to normal. This was the second Grant; the new and different Grant. He was an entirely different person.
Grant and Chip talked about all the stuff in the basement. Chip had a clipboard and looked at his handwritten inventory sheet.
“Let’s see,” he said, putting on his reading glasses that he kept in the front pocket of his t-shirt. Chip always wore a t-shirt with a front pocket. Tonight he was wearing his usual gray t-shirt with the logo of Capitol City Guns on the front pocket.
“I have twenty-nine ARs and two tubs of various parts,” Chip said. “I probably have enough parts to make two or three more; I think I only have that many barrels. I have most of my AR tools here. I have about 250 AR mags. Some red-dot sights—some Aimpoints and EOs, and some cheap Chinese knockoffs—and some mounts for putting them on carry handles. Some attachable iron sights. A couple of AKs and a handful of mags and parts.” Chip never liked the AK. Ever since Vietnam he didn’t like those things. He respected their durability, but he just didn’t like them.
He pointed at the stacks of ammo cases. “I have twelve cases of 5.56. Six cases of 9mm and three of .40. One case of 7.62 x 39 and some miscellaneous shit.” Chip smiled, obviously proud of the haul. “That about does it.” His smile got bigger when he said that.
“Wow,” Grant said, looking at all those weapons. “Wow.” That’s all he could say. This stuff was worth a fortune, but it wasn’t the money Grant was thinking about. Grant blurted out his first thought, “We can outfit a lot of guys with this shit. A lot of them.”
Chip grinned and said, “Roger that. That’s the plan.”
“What plan?” Grant asked.
“You’ll see,” Chip said with another one of his smiles. He took off his reading glasses and put them back in his t-shirt pocket. He rocked back on his heels and said, “I’m sworn to secrecy for right now. Don’t worry, it’s all cool and legal. Well, not really legal but we’re not going to go on a crime spree,” he smiled and added with a grin, “unless you want to.”
Grant thought he knew what the guns were for. It was on the path, the path of what he was doing and why he was put here. The path led to…it was too hard to believe, but he knew where it led. OK, society was melting down, he had this cabin, and now he had a basement full of guns. He also had a trusted friend with a plan, who had a friend who had even more friends and a bigger plan. It all made sense. To the extent something as insane as this could make sense.
But, things were different now. It really did make perfect sense. The old Grant would have never thought this was normal. But, now, those stacks of guns and cases of ammo were the new normal. And he was damned lucky to have them there.
“How do you want to secure this place?” Grant asked Chip. They talked for a few hours about the guard duty schedule, setting up noisemakers around the basement door, and other things to secure the cabin and the immediate area.
The sun was coming up. Whoa. Was it morning already? In early May way up north in Washington State, the sun rose at about 5:30 a.m.
“Care for some breakfast, my friend?” Grant asked Chip.
“Sounds delightful,” Chip said. He was a thin guy and didn’t eat often. But when he ate, he really ate.
From his frequent trips out to the cabin, which often included overnights, Grant had plenty of eggs and bacon. They fried up a big batch and talked about everything that had happened and how to hide out there. Grant was relieved to be talking to someone about how all the preparations they’d made were coming to fruition.
While they were serving up breakfast, Chip asked, “Do you have any orange juice?” Chip always had orange juice with breakfast. He had some during the day, too, and always brought some to have in the little employee refrigerator at the gun store.
“Nope, but I have a lot of beer,” Grant said. “Let’s kick off our outlaw lives with beer for breakfast.”
Chip got a beer out of the refrigerator, held it up, and said, “Why the hell not?”
This was kind of fun. Then Grant remembered that Lisa and the kids were back in the city. He had abandoned them. No, not really, he tried to…he kept running this loop through his mind of accusing himself of abandoning them and then justifying why he hadn’t.
Chip noticed the immediate mood change in Grant. “What’s up?” Chip asked.
“Oh, nothing,” Grant said. He didn’t want to be a cry baby. Besides, Grant had a family (or at least used to). Chip didn’t. Grant had it better than Chip so he shouldn’t whine.
“Just dealing with some shit,” Grant said. “Hey, let’s eat and then figure out how we’re going to do a bunch of stuff around here.”
After talking for a while, Grant realized he’d been up all night. He was getting tired, but he was operating on adrenaline. He was crashing now that he didn’t have that adrenaline running through his body after the day’s events. All of a sudden, Grant hit a mental wall of exhaustion. He couldn’t keep his eyes open.
Chip saw it and said, “Take a nap. I’ve got the first watch.”
All Grant could manage to mumble was, “Thanks, man.” He went into the master bedroom and fell asleep in his clothes, with his pistol belt on. He had never been this tired. He had never had a day like this.
Chapter 52
“He’s gone.”
(May 6)
When Grant left that night, Lisa heard the garage door go up and then back down. And then waited. She waited for it to go back up, meaning that Grant had turned around and come back. He would just leave for a minute and then return. He had done that a few times when they’d had really bad arguments.
But, the garage door stayed quiet. First, for a minute, then a few minutes, and then all night. It was the longest night of Lisa’s life.
She cried so hard that her ribs hurt. She had the worst migraine of her life. Everything normal was no longer normal. She wanted the normal back. The normal of Grant being in bed with her, the kids not crying, the neighborhood being safe, the world being peaceful.
She looked at the clock. It was 3:20 a.m. She went downstairs to see if Grant was down there. Maybe he never left and was just sitting on the couch making her think that he left. She realized that was unlikely, but she was desperate.
Grant wasn’t downstairs. She went into the garage to see if his car was there. His space was empty. It was real now. He actually left. In the space where his car belonged was a pile of food, a black square case, and green metal box. Those were the green Army boxes he put his gun stuff in. She looked at the sturdy shelf in the garage. It was empty. It used to have those green metal boxes—Grant called them “ammo cans”—stacked up and some big gun cases. They were gone. They looked like missing front teeth.