299 Days: The Preparation Part 12

That was it. Manda. She was the solution. Grant would tell Manda what was going on, making sure not to scare the fourteen year old. He would build up a track record of predictions with Manda, and then, when he needed to, have her tell Lisa all the things he had correctly predicted way back when. He would turn Manda into a junior co-prepper with him and they would work on Lisa when they needed to. Not a bad plan.

"Nothing, Manda," Grant said. "Have you done your homework?" He asked, changing the subject.

Grant had a huge advantage when it came to Manda. She was already a right-wing whacko. During the past election season, Manda told some friends that she was a Republican and they ridiculed her. When some of her friends found out she was a Republican, they wouldn't talk to her anymore. She was stunned. It p.i.s.sed her off. She had the fighting spirit - she did have red hair and it's true how fiery they are - and thought if people would be mean to her because of her beliefs, then she would get in their faces about it because they were stupid. That's my girl, Grant thought.

Grant took Manda and Cole to school most mornings. He had Glenn Beck on the radio for the ride. Grant found out how well Beck was explaining things when he brought up the topic of economic collapse with Manda the next morning on the way to school.

"Hey, Manda," Grant asked, "What do you think will happen with the economy?"

"Oh, it will collapse," she said plainly.

This was going to be easier than he thought. "What do you think will happen?" Grant asked her.

"The government is spending way more money than they," Manda said and then corrected herself, "well, actually, we can ever pay back. They're taking over stuff like those companies. ."

Wow. This was going well.

They talked about it more. Grant had several more conversations with her about what was happening. He asked her if she remembered the things Beck had predicted.

"Yeah, pretty much," Manda said. "He has been right about most things. No one on TV has been saying these things and they've all been surprised by what's happening. But not him."

Now that Grant had credibility with Manda on the issue of whether there was a problem out there, the next step was to establish that something needed to be done.

Grant tried not to alarm her but asked, "Manda, what do you think will happen to Americans?"

"Bad things," Manda answered. "I think food will cost a lot and we won't be able to afford other things. I think I will have to work really hard the rest of my life to pay for all the government stuff." Grant decided to go further. "What do you think happens if food prices go up?"

She thought. "People will get mad."

"Yes, they will," Grant said, thrilled that she got all of this. "You're smarter than most adults. You know what happens when people are hungry and get mad?"

Grant proceeded to describe what a riot was. He told the story about the LA riots. Her eyes were huge. She had never heard such things, but she was smart enough, and open-minded enough, to realize that this could happen right here in America.

"Dad," Manda asked, "what can we do to be safe if this happens?"

Perfect. "We're at school now," Grant said. "I'll answer your question on our next ride." He was so proud of her.

Grant dropped her off and then took Cole to his elementary school. As usual, Cole didn't say much and didn't seem to understand what they were talking about. He was doing so much better than when they first started going to the elementary school for kindergarten. Back then, he only knew about ten words.

But, now he had a few hundred words. It took a lot of speech therapy, but he could get by with the words he knew and hand gestures. He was doing OK in the regular cla.s.ses at school. He was pretty good at math. With his incredible photographic memory, he would just memorize the multiplication tables. He had some trouble with reading comprehension, but he was getting it. He was in the bottom quarter of the cla.s.s, which was respectable given how hard it was for him to process language.

Cole was the happiest kid in the world, though. He was extraordinarily polite. People always remarked about that. He was the most caring little guy and especially liked little kids. He could talk to them because they had the same vocabulary, and the little kids didn't talk too much for him to process. He would play with them and help them. He was like a little day care worker, getting them food, hugging them when they fell down, and helping them potty. Grant knew what Cole would do for a living when he grew up, and he'd be darned good at it.

Very little bothered Cole, except that he had to have a routine, which was very typical for people with autism. For Cole, that meant bed at the same time and the same food for every meal. He didn't melt down if the routine was altered like he did a few years ago, but he didn't like any changes.

This worried Grant. What if there were a collapse, or, as they said in the survivalist world, the "s.h.i.t hit the fan?" (SHTF for short.) How would Cole deal with all his normal routines - one kind of pancakes and one kind of syrup for breakfast, video games after school, hotdogs for dinner every night - when he had beans and rice to eat out at the cabin and there was no school, and possibly no electricity for video games?

Not only would it be hard on Cole, it would be hard on Lisa.

She tried so hard to make sure he was always happy, which was very understandable. In fact, when one of Cole's routines was disrupted, like when they ran out of pancakes, Lisa would get agitated and extremely focused on getting the routine back on schedule. She was a loving mother. If Cole ran out of his pancakes, Lisa would drop what she was doing and go get them. Cole needed the routine and Lisa needed Cole to have his routine. Grant couldn't fault her for being a things broke down and there were no more pancakes in the stores. Lisa might freak out more than Cole. Lisa had a bad case of normalcy bias.

For Lisa, normalcy bias probably meant when the grocery store was out of pancakes, which would be the first day of the crisis; she likely would not believe that the stores were completely out of them. It must be just this particular store, she would think. She might drive around town in dangerous conditions just to find the store that has those pancakes. And she was beautiful and defenseless and....

Another part of normalcy bias was that when there is a crisis, people are so comforted by the normal pre-crisis things in their lives that they do irrational things to have the normal thing back. That would be another reason Lisa might drive around during dangerous conditions to try to find Cole's favorite kind of pancakes; it would be her way of coping with the disaster.

You have to understand this. Lives will depend on it.

Chapter 25.

Cabin Neighbors Work at the State Auditor's Office was starting to suck. At first it was great. Grant got to do things like help the Joe Tantoris out there. He was able to help people from inside government, with the full weight of the State Auditor's Office behind him.

But, after only less than a year in his position, he was being thwarted by his co-workers. He would ask for information from the Auditor's Office staff on a particular agency or a past audit and would be told the file was "lost." That was hard to do because everything was on a computer which was backed up and could be searched by terms. So Grant would have to take the time to find the information himself, which was time he couldn't spend working to help the citizen. He was now spending most of his day finding information that the old staff of the Auditor's Office could have found very quickly - if they wanted to do their jobs instead of helping their government buddies get away with s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g people.

One thing did not suck, though. The cabin. It was a magical place. Sometimes, when he was there he felt an actual buzz of euphoria. He had worked extremely hard his whole life and, thanks to the miracle of an early inheritance, now had exactly what he'd always wanted. His stress would melt away the closer he got to Pierce Point. By the time he drove up to the cabin, he was completely relaxed. The smell of the place, which was a combination of the sea and evergreen trees, instantly put him in a good mood. He actually measured his blood pressure before and after coming to the cabin. It dropped by ten points.

Sometimes, Grant would go to the cabin for just a few hours. It was only forty minutes from his house, so he could swing out there, sometimes at lunch time. He got to work at about 6:00 a.m. and often stayed late, so he figured he could take a two-hour lunch. Besides, no one really kept track of what he did all day. Other times, he'd stay most of the weekend out at the cabin. overnight. Cole liked coming out, too. He loved throwing rocks into the water for hours. He also liked playing his handheld video games there. Grant refused to get a TV at the cabin, so Cole couldn't bring out his bigger video games that used one. Manda loved the campfire and cooking things in the cast iron pie irons on the coals. It was great to have a place where his kids could make such lasting childhood memories. Sometimes Grant thought about how much better his kids had it than he did as child, and he would tear up. He was being a good dad. He was taking care of his family.

But, to completely take care of his family, Grant needed to prep. This meant food storage, the cabin, guns and training, and creating networks of people with skills they would need to survive when the normal things no longer worked.

When it came to prepping, people are more important than stuff. The Team was an example of how important people were when planning for s.h.i.t hitting the fan. One person couldn't know everything, but someone in the group probably knew how to do whatever it was that needed to be done. The idea that a "survivalist" is some weird guy alone in a bunker with cases of military rations MREs was a Hollywood creation to sensationalize a story. There was no way to pull off survival completely independently; trusted communities were critical.

During peacetime, for example, a person would just take their car to a mechanic. But during a collapse, mechanics might not be around, or there may be no way to pay them. To accomplish everyday things, like repairing a car would require people to develop the skills themselves - or, more likely, developing relationships and trading with others.

Grant's cabin neighbors were a natural starting place for creating a trusted small community. He needed to get to know them and see if he could trust them with his life and his family's life. It could take years to build up these relationships, and Grant worried he didn't have years before a collapse hit.

Grant had a few neighbors out there at the end of the Pierce Point development. His cabin was relatively isolated but with a few people around; the perfect combination for a bug out location.

The cabin was almost at the end of a little gravel road called Over Road. There were four houses and one RV before Grant's cabin, and then two more cabins past his. The four houses and RV were owned by part-time residents like him. The two houses past his were owned by year-round residents.

One of the two houses past his cabin, and the house closest to him, was owned by Mark Colson. Mark's place was across the road from Grant's on the hill overlooking Grant's cabin and the water. Looking down Over Road, Mark's house was on the right up on the hill and Grant's was on the left down toward the water.

Mark lived there year-round, unlike most of the people down by the water in Pierce Point. He was a great guy. He was in his fifties, owned real estate in the area, and was semi-retired. He was a hillbilly, though, a country boy through and through.

When Mark first met Grant, he a.s.sumed the new owners of the cabin would probably be uptight city people. Grant driving up for the first time in an Acura didn't help. The first time they met, Grant saw the USMC sticker on Mark's black Silverado pickup and the conversation went to guns. It turned out that Mark was a former Marine sniper. Could Grant have a better neighbor?

Grant started to chalk this up to the many "coincidences" he was experiencing. But he stopped himself. It wasn't that unusual for a guy living in the country to be a country boy. Grant considered Mark to be luck instead of a full-on "coincidence" indicating that Grant had been placed in a particular place at a particular time for a particular role. Grant was always on guard, telling himself not to consider every good thing to be a full-on "coincidence" that pointed to something bigger. That would dilute the real "coincidences" and cheapen their impact. You'll know a full-on "coincidence" when you see one, he told himself. Inheriting the cabin was one.

Mark really liked Grant and thought it was refreshing that a lawyer could be a fellow hillbilly. Mark watched Grant's place when Grant wasn't there. He invited Grant out hunting and fishing with him; Mark loved to seed Grant's beach with oysters. Grant was more than happy to have him do that, and let Mark dig all the clams he wanted on Grant's beach. Grant borrowed tools from Mark.

The first Christmas at the cabin, Grant got Mark several bottles of "Jar Head Red" wine for the former Marine who, Grant noticed, liked to drink wine. That sealed their friendship.

Mark lived there with his wife, Tammy. She was nice; a basic country girl. She worked for the local power company. Their son, Paul, lived with them. He was in his mid-twenties. Paul was recently divorced and had custody of his daughter, Missy, who was in kindergarten. From what Grant could piece together, Paul's wife was a druggie.

Paul was fat. Not heavy, but obese. He must have weighed 300 pounds. He got winded walking around. He was a very unhappy guy.

Although he was really nice, Paul had been beaten down by life, mostly by his wife and being a male trying to get custody of a child in the courts. He was in the local community college in the welding program.

The next house over, and the last house on Over Road, was owned by the Morells. They lived there year-round, like the Colsons.

John Morell was a retired millwright for the local lumber mill, which was now closed. Grant had never heard the term before, and he learned that a millwright is a cross between an engineer and a construction worker. The term came from when a mill needed to be moved. A millwright would figure out how to take apart the mill, move it, and put it back together.

John was a master carpenter, a good electrician, could weld, and knew heating and cooling systems. He was another amazing neighbor with incredibly valuable skills. This was getting weird, Grant thought. He smiled at his luck. Then he got serious. He started to think about all the help he would need for what could be coming. He was grateful for all the amazing coincidences, but he realized how hard it would be to do what needed to be done. The coincidences just made it possible, not easy.

John's wife, Mary Anne, was a retired school teacher. She was a country girl. She loved canning and baking. She had a nice little garden. It was more decorative than food producing, but it was a garden, nonetheless.

John began to view Grant as the son he never had. He loved teaching Grant how to fix things. After Grant had owned the cabin for about a year, they had "the conversation."

Grant was at John's house having a beer with him after he had shown Grant how to turn off the water meter at the cabin. John looked at him very seriously and said, "You know, Grant, we're living in a false economy." Grant knew exactly what John was saying.

"We sure are," Grant said, lifting up his beer to emphasize the point. "The size of this government is completely unsustainable. People are so dependent. They have no idea how to take care of themselves." That was about the extent of the normal political conversation a person could have without showing they were a "survivalist."

Grant decided to take the conversation one step further than the usual "safe" conversation. He looked at John and said, "I wonder what people would do if semi-trucks quit delivering things for a week or so." Grant waited for the reaction. It was like speaking in code.

"Starve, probably," answered John. "They would be shocked that the government wasn't driving around feeding them. They would demand that the stores just give them food. Gasoline would be more valuable than gold. They would realize there weren't enough cops to be everywhere and they'd start stealing from each other. And probably worse. There are a lot of s.h.i.tbags out there just waiting for an excuse to hurt their neighbors."

Perfect. John understood the situation. Grant hadn't seen that John stored food and guns, but at least John had the mindset. That was more important than material things. Grant wanted to see how far the mindset went so he asked the next level of questions.

"I try to be prepared for anything," Grant said. "Nothing crazy, just some simple things. I have an extra five gallons of fuel out here."

Of course, the extra five gallons of fuel was just a drop in the bucket of his preps. Mentioning it was just to show John that Grant had made some minimal preps. Grant didn't want to give away too much information. He liked, and basically trusted John, but didn't want to tell him about the food and guns out there.

"Five gallons of gas is great, but I've got some other things that will come in handy. Wait here a sec." John got up and went into another room.

He came back with a rifle. "A Remington 700 in .270. I can hit anything with this out to 400 yards." John was smiling.

Great. They were at the "show me yours, I'll show you mine" level of the relationship.

"Cool," Grant said. Grant asked to hold the rifle, which showed respect and that Grant knew how gun owners operate. Grant opened the bolt to make sure it was unloaded; another sign to John that Grant was a knowledgeable gun guy. It was also a habit Grant had of always checking a gun to make sure it's not loaded.

"I got quite a few more," John said, with yet another smile. He went back into another room. He showed Grant lots of nice hunting rifles and shotguns and a few revolvers. John liked good guns. He was a hunter, not a tactical guy, but that was fine. He had plenty of firepower and, more importantly, knew how to use it.

"I've got a couple rifles out here," Grant said. By now Grant was keeping a few guns out at the cabin that could get stolen and he wouldn't cry. A beat up (but highly accurate) scoped .223 bolt action and a .17 HMR that was his "crow" gun. He kept his AR and AK and the rest of his guns at his house in Olympia for a few reasons. First, he went shooting on the weekends and needed to have them handy to take to the range; he didn't want to drive out to the cabin each time he wanted to go shooting.

Second, Grant knew that he might need to fight his way out of his Olympia neighborhood and he'd need all those guns for that. Besides, if he couldn't get out of the Olympia neighborhood for a while, he'd probably need to supply the neighborhood people with weapons to fight off looters.

Finally, his house was much more secure than the cabin. He was only out at the cabin on weekends. His Olympia neighborhood had an extremely low crime rate, at least in peacetime.

John and Grant talked guns over a second beer. Mary Anne joined them and showed them her guns. She had a concealed weapons permit and frequently carried a pistol. Then the talk turned to food.

"I keep telling myself every spring that I need to start planting food instead of these pretty flowers," Mary Anne said. "I'm going to do it this spring, for sure. You know, with the way things are going in the economy."

That sparked a conversation about government spending and the millions, actually, tens of millions, of Americans completely dependent on government money to live. Then John nailed the big one.

"Do you know about the Federal Reserve?" he cautiously asked Grant.

"Don't worry," Grant said with a smile. "I don't think you're crazy." They went on to talk about how the Fed purposefully caused inflation, propped up the economy to be a constant orgy of spending, and kept everyone in debt.

The conversation turned to the parallels between modern America and the Roman Empire. Wow. The Morrells were great. Guns, gardening, skills, and an understanding that the collapse was coming. What great neighbors. Grant thought to himself that the Morrells were a full-on "coincidence," meaning a miracle. Right as he did, he heard the outside thought.

You have been placed in the right place with the right people. You will have a job to do here.

Chapter 26.

That's Our Money. We Need It.

Even before he was sworn in as the State Auditor, Rick Menlow was thinking about his next step. After all, there would be an election for Governor in four years.

Many Republicans who were stunned and thrilled to actually have one of their party in a statewide office of some kind, constantly told Menlow that he should run. Day in and day out, all Menlow heard from people around him was how he should be the next Governor. He could save the state of Washington from its current problems. He could do it, they kept telling him.

During one of the transition meetings after he won the Auditor's election, Menlow brought up the subject with Grant and the other WAB staff.

"Should I run for Governor in four years?" He asked them.

"Of course," said Ben. "You'd make a great Governor. You'll have to kick a.s.s during the next four years as the State Auditor, but it could be done. The next election should be a good time to be a Republican, at least nationally. The Ds run everything now so they'll get the blame when all of this stupid socialist s.h.i.t quits working."

Brian and Tom agreed, and talked about things Menlow could do as the State Auditor to improve his chances for getting the governorship.

Menlow looked at Grant and asked, "If I'm the Governor, what role would you like in my administration?"

Grant thought a while. No one had ever asked him that question. "I wouldn't mind being a judge," Grant said finally. "That way, I could help get things back to the Const.i.tution."

Menlow smiled. "I will keep that in mind." Now Grant's career was linked to Menlow's fortunes, exactly as Menlow wanted. It was the oldest trick in the political book: obtain loyalty from a subordinate by promising career advancement to the subordinate when the higher-up wins the next election. Subordinates had been known to do amazing things for that promised plum position after the next election.

There was one non-WAB person in the room when Menlow started charting his course to be the Governor. Menlow made his campaign manager, Jeanie Thompson, his communications director. She handled the press and ran the Auditor's communications efforts. She was in charge of publicizing the good things the office would be doing.

Jeanie was very young, in her mid-twenties. She had just graduated from college. She was an attractive woman, with black hair and green eyes. She tastefully used her good looks to charm the men and get her boss's agenda out to the public. She backed it up by being smarter than h.e.l.l.

Jeanie was a conservative true believer. "Conservative" was the term people used for people like Jeanie and Grant who simply believed less government was better; conservative didn't necessarily mean a social conservative. There were almost no social conservatives in the Seattle area. Conservatives like Jeanie and Grant simply wanted less government. They had strong views on social issues, but didn't want the government imposing social views on people because they had seen how abusive government was.

In fact, it would be more precise to call people like Jeanie and Grant "libertarians." They were moderate libertarians who weren't all the way out there on privatizing fire departments and cutting the military by 95%. People like Jeanie and Grant just wanted to return the government to its past role of carrying out limited and well-defined powers as provided in the Const.i.tution. Was that so radical?

Of course, the liberals used the term "conservative" as an insult. They fully wanted people to think that a conservative was a social conservative because social conservatism was so unpopular in the Seattle area. Oh well. Let them use whatever phrase they wanted, Grant thought. People like Jeanie and Grant knew what they believed, even if the liberals were trying to define them as intolerant people.

Because she was so young, Jeanie realized the problems big government created. She hadn't lived through a few decades of watching government slowly build up. She hadn't had decades of being told how necessary all of these programs were. In her short life, she saw a snapshot of how America was.

And it had way too much government. Unsustainable amounts of government. Baby Boomers were voting themselves benefit after benefit - and handing the bill to her generation. The younger the people were, the less they bought into the big government viewpoint. But that didn't mean that younger people were libertarians. Most were apathetic. Government was huge and stupid and that's how it was. They would rather play video games.