Mark pointed out the window toward the other cabins. “How are we gonna secure our places? I mean, there is basically no crime in Pierce Point, but things aren’t normal right now. In normal times, the cops would take a half hour to get out here if someone called them. Now it will take a day, if they even come out, which I doubt they would. I think we need to carry at all times. What about a guard at the end of the road?” He pointed to where the county road turned into the gravel road. “You know,” he said with a smile, “keep the riff-raff out. So, for guard duty that would be me, Paul, and you two. I bet John Morrell would do it, and hell, probably Mary Anne. That’s six people. Four-hour shifts. Not bad.”
Chip just listened. He knew the less he said, the less of a chance the “Uncle Chip” story would unravel.
Mark said, “Let’s go talk to John and Mary Anne.” They walked from the front door of Mark’s house, which was up on the hill, down to the gravel road below where Grant’s and the Morrells’ cabins were.
As they came up to the Morrells, Grant looked up to the second story window and saw Mary Anne up there with a shotgun. He was reassured by that. She waved. They knocked on the door and John answered, also with a shotgun.
“Figured you’d be coming around,” John said. “We have some things to discuss.” He looked at the stranger, Chip.
“Hi, John,” Grant said. “This is my Uncle Chip. He’s helping me get the cabin ready for when Lisa and the kids come out. He had to bug out of Olympia, too. It’s pretty bad there.” Grant retold the same stories about Olympia that he told Mark and Paul, except for the part about killing guys and evacuating the gun store. And about abandoning his family.
John thought the guard idea was great. So did Mary Anne. They planned a guard shift schedule. They would do the first few shifts in pairs so they could go over things like code phrases for family and friends who arrived and were OK to have out there. They had one Pierce Point full-time resident with Grant or Chip since the full-time residents knew things Grant and Chip didn’t, like who the neighbors down the other roads were.
The Morrells, Colsons, Chip, and Grant spent the next few hours picking guard spots and fallback positions, alarms, hastily building a little guard shack for when it rained, coordinating which guns people would use, and generally going over all the details of the very important topic of guarding their homes.
The whole time Grant was thinking about Lisa and the kids. He was trying to use the work of preparing the guard system to take his mind off his family back in Olympia. It would work for a while and then his mind would drift back to his family.
He needed a plan to get his family out there, as unlikely as it seemed that it would be possible to pull off. He found that the best way to deal with a problem was to plan for it and work the plan hard. That’s what he had done with preparing for the Collapse and, for the most part, that was working very well. There was just one piece missing: his family.
Grant came up with a plan while he was making the guard shack. It was risky, but just might work. He kept refining it in his mind until it was pretty solid.
By late afternoon, the guard system was set up. Grant and Chip went back to the cabin. They were very hungry. Grant fired up the grill and grilled some of the frozen hamburger patties they had. He had gotten a bunch of them a few days ago because it was early May and the summer BBQ season at the cabin was just beginning. He was glad he did; hamburger would be a rarity soon.
Damn. Those burgers tasted good. Three of them, apiece. They washed them down with a beer. Those would be a rarity soon, too.
Grant was tired and couldn’t stop thinking about his plan to get the family out there. He was ready to get it going.
“Hey, Chip,” Grant said, “I have some shit in my head to deal with. I’d love to hang out and have some beers with you but I need to be alone right now. No offense.”
“None taken,” Chip said. “I felt the same after a fire fight in Vietnam. You’ve been through a lot the past twenty-four hours. Take care of your head, my friend. It’s what will get you through this. Remember that.”
Grant nodded and headed into the master bedroom. He got into the bedroom, closed the door, and took off his 5.11s and his t-shirt. He stank. He had plenty of work clothes to change into because he had been bringing his old work clothes out to the cabin for some time. He got into an old pair of shorts and an old t-shirt that said “World’s Best Dad.” It had a handprint in paint from both Manda and Cole. They got him one of those each Father’s Day when they were little. He didn’t wear them often, but had brought them out to the cabin. Now they had a meaning. He was wearing that shirt to remind him of the good times.
Grant activated his plan. He found Manda’s phone that he had taken. He had thought clearly enough to also take her phone charger and had been charging the phone all day while he worked on the guard project. Grant knew that in emergencies, when everyone is calling, voice calls take lots of bandwidth, and often go down. Texts take a fraction of the bandwidth, and can often still be used.
He had his phone with him too, but he had turned it onto “airplane mode” so it did not transmit and then he turned it off, altogether. While he didn’t think the cops had the time to be tracing cell phones right now, why take the risk? He thought he’d use his phone for the contacts in it, but then he remembered he had made a hard copy of his important contacts, like the Team, and the copy was out there. That way he could keep his phone off permanently.
Grant grabbed Manda’s phone and sent a text to Pow. It appeared to go through fine. His text described the plan.
Grant could finally relax a little. He had launched his plan. At least he had done something about getting Lisa and the kids out there. He went out to the living room and saw Chip getting his pistol belt on. “Time for my first guard shift. I’m with Mark tonight. See you in eight hours. Stay plenty armed. We’ve got invaluable treasure down in the basement.”
“Roger that,” Grant said. Then they went over the codes they would use to identify themselves and to give each other basic coded instructions. “Break!” meant someone was trying to break into the basement. Chip picked up one of his personal ARs, which was leaning against the wall by one on the downstairs couch. He had four extra magazines in the pockets of his Carhartt work pants. That AR leaning on the wall looked so weird, yet so natural at the same time.
A minute after Chip left, John and Paul came over. First they told Grant the news that mushroom clouds were seen in Israel and Iran. No one knew who started it, but it didn’t really matter. They felt bad for all the innocent people who had just died. They couldn’t help thinking about the other consequence: gasoline would be worth its weight in gold now. There had been more suicide bombings in New York and DC and elsewhere. Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed terrorist group that had been openly operating in Mexico with the drug cartels, took responsibility and said it was in retaliation for the strike on Iran. John and Paul said there were protests everywhere. People were furious that everything was coming apart. Grocery stores were being looted in parts of California, although the news showed video after video of calm at grocery stores. No news about Olympia.
Nothing seemed different out at Pierce Point, though. It was like the news was about a different country. At Pierce Point, it was just another beautiful spring day out on the water. The weather was perfect.
After the news update, John and Paul talked about what they came over to discuss, which was fishing in the inlet, and gathering clams and oysters from the beach. They had all the gear and knew all the spots. They would go out in pairs during the days and bring back some food. They all had some regular food stored up. Grant hadn’t told them about his food stores yet; he was saving information like that for people on a need-to-know basis, but he knew he’d be telling his neighbors about it soon.