299 Days: The Restoration

Chapter 312 Life in Forks

It was almost midnight in Forks and Steve Briggs was getting ready for tomorrow. It would be January 3rd tomorrow and would be another day in Forks of… surviving. But, in reality, his day tomorrow would consist primarily of just visiting with people. There wasn’t much to do this time of year in the near-constant rain and long periods of darkness; no gardens to tend, no decent hunting, and few fish in the rivers. There were things to repair, but usually no parts, and routine patrols to go on in town, but life in Forks meant doing a whole lot of nothing.

Surprisingly, this was just fine with Steve. The Collapse Christmas in Forks had been monumental. The whole town seemed to pull together. Carolers strolled through the streets singing Christmas carols. People gave each other meaningful, but simple, gifts. And there was that fabulous after-dinner moonshine sipping session after Christmas dinner at city hall. It was not a bad way to spend the winter.

People weren’t eating as well now as they were in the fall or especially summer, but the majority of people stored food from the times of the year when it was plentiful. Not all of them did, and some who did didn’t store as much as they should have. Everyone was losing weight, which wasn’t such an awful thing. Steve had to admit that country living before the Collapse put on the pounds. Big country breakfasts made sense when people worked hard physically all day logging or doing something similarly as exerting, but before the Collapse, that wasn’t exactly the way of life. People just ate like it was. When the Collapse hit, people became physically active in ways they had never been before, while no longer having access to a grocery store full of sausage, butter, and gravy mix. It became common for those XXXL shirts to start draping over men and women like an oversized blanket on their now-L frames.

Crime was still a sporadic issue, but there was no looting. Shooting people early on worked, as much as Steve wished it hadn’t had to happen. Now, with a couple months of the Collapse behind him, Steve could see things differently. The pre-Collapse shitbags in town (and there were quite a few) could be shitbags when the living was easy, when the EBT cards had money on them and the store had plenty of Doritos. Now it was much harder to be a shitbag. They got over their lazy lifestyles pretty quickly now that they had to actually work and no one just handed them anything. Oh, sure, it took a period of adjustment and some of the shitbags never adjusted, but they were quickly shunned by the community or, in some cases, shot when they were caught stealing.

Steve was especially happy to see some of the young people change their shitbag ways and… grow up and become productive. He had to admit it was hard to be a young person in pre-Collapse America and not give in to the shitbag lifestyle. They were told, starting in middle school, that it was okay to get “public assistance.” In high school, the schools were one-stop social service centers preparing the kids for a life of public assistance if that’s what they chose. And there were almost no jobs for them, so who could be surprised that so many got on the dole? He went from being mad at them to feeling sorry for them. It was so obvious that politicians created this. They got votes from people for “caring” and providing “public assistance,” and they got votes from young people, the few who bothered to vote, to keep free stuff flowing. Those “caring” voters and young voters were often just enough for the side proposing even more spending to win. Now, after the Collapse, it was so obvious to Steve.

The perfect example of this was Steve’s nephew, Phil McGuire. He drifted through high school without ever having a summer job or working after school, much to Steve’s chagrin. But it was rare before the Collapse for teenagers to work; they needed time to play video games and text their friends. Phil fit into this category perfectly. After high school graduation, he couldn’t find a job, but he didn’t really try to find one. He lived with his mom, Steve’s sister, and her boyfriend. When he turned eighteen, he was told about all the free stuff he could get, including the magical EBT card. It was free money and he didn’t have to do anything to get it. He spent the next few years on the couch at his mom’s house and having a carefree life.

When the Collapse hit, he was bewildered that he couldn’t sit on the couch and get everything given to him. At first, he was mad. Steve told him that life had changed, but “Uncle Steve” was just being his hard ass self, Phil thought.

But slowly, Phil started volunteering for various jobs. Steve took him under his wing. He had to teach Phil how to work. He had to teach him to get up on time, to wear work clothes, and to actually get a job done. Phil would constantly want to take a break after working a few minutes. He had no concept of finishing a job; he was just putting time in and thought he got credit for just showing up. “We don’t quit until the job is done,” Steve would have to tell him.

Phil improved considerably in the fall. By Christmas, Steve could tell him to do a project and it got done, always slowly and sometimes poorly, but Phil was finally putting in true effort. His transformation was complete when, after Christmas, Steve told him to split and stack firewood for an elderly neighbor lady and, to Steve’s pleasant surprise, the job was done before dark, with no supervision from Steve. Phil seemed much happier because, for the first time in his life, he was productive. He had finally grown up and was a man.

Like so many other things during the Collapse, the good, like Phil’s transformation, came with the other side of the coin, the bad, like all the people dying of simple illnesses that winter.

The big concern in town was the all the deaths from pneumonia and the flu. People were so run down, especially the elderly, and were cold and weren’t getting the nutrition they needed. All the stress from the Collapse also degraded their immune systems. Little colds were turning into full-on serious illnesses and there were no antibiotics. Steve was going to way too many funerals lately. Including that of Grant’s mom.

The talk at the latest funeral Steve went to was about how the Patriots supposedly took Olympia on New Year’s Day. Steve listened politely and was rooting for the Patriots, if the stories were true. But, Steve hated to admit, he didn’t really care. Whoever sat in some capitol building 150 miles away in Olympia wouldn’t affect whether people in Forks had enough to eat this winter or could treat a simple cold before it became pneumonia. Governments didn’t really matter anymore in Forks.