299 Days: The Visitors

Chapter 167 Lives, Fortunes, Scared Honor (July 3)

After Ted and Sap left the yellow cabin, there wasn’t a lot to say. The Team was pretty much silent. They all realized the magnitude of the decision they’d just made. But…they also realized that they had a date with some lovely girls. They’d earned that. They were single and in their twenties. Some things were more powerful motivators than the gravity of life-altering decisions.

Grant knew that he needed to take care of his guys. A good leader does that. He remembered the scene from Apocalypse Now when the commander of an American unit rewarded a brave helicopter crew by saying into the radio, “I’ll get you a case of beer for that one.” That’s what you did. You took care of your guys.

“Hey, you gonna text those girls?” Grant asked the Team. Phones came flying out and fingers and thumbs texted furiously. Smiles abounded.

“Not a frickin’ word to them, understand,” Grant said. They all nodded. “Seriously. Ted can, and will, kill you. He’ll kill your girlfriend for good measure.” Grant wasn’t kidding and they knew it.

“I’ll ask Gideon if a couple of you can have the keys to the night guard cabin,” Grant said. “He’ll be working tonight so he won’t need it.” The guys were glad that Grant was thinking of things like that for them.

“Roger that,” Pow said. “Who wants to join me in the night guard cabin?”

“Hey, ask the girls if they have any hot moms,” Chip said. He wasn’t kidding.

“Or grandmas,” Scotty said. Everyone laughed.

These guys had never been closer than they were right then. They had just signed their lives away. They would be together in the one thing that brought men together more closely than anything else: a small unit that was sure to see action. They would be brothers in arms for the rest of their lives. There was no closer bond. The hot chicks on their way weren’t even a close second.

Grant and Chip wished the guys success in their pursuits that night. They left the yellow cabin. Then Grant remembered something.

“Those guys have protection?” Grant asked Chip. “I don’t want my Team to be disabled from some disease.”

Chip nodded. “Roger that. Taken care of. I have a small supply,” he said with a grin. “Thought I might need them, but…those brothers need them more than an old guy like me. If those girls keep coming over, we’ll need to get some more or figure something out. I dealt with this in ‘Nam,” said Chip the former supply sergeant. “We came up with some workarounds.”

After they had gone the few yards to Grant’s cabin, Chip kept going down Over Road to the Morrell’s cabin where he stayed. He pointed back to the yellow cabin, shook his head, and said, “Kids.”

“Yep. Like we used to be,” Grant said. Chip just nodded and headed down the gravel road toward the Morrell’s and Grant started walking toward his cabin. For the first time all day, he realized how tired he was. What a day. Talking to dozens of people, organizing tons of things, and joining a Patriot guerilla unit. Could he be more tired?

He walked into the cabin and saw Cole and Manda getting ready for bed. Lisa was there and so were Drew and Eileen. There they were. His whole family. Safe and in one place. Happy and loving each other. Things were perfect.

And he had just pissed it all away.

He signed up to join a guerilla unit. Those wonderful, beautiful, and loving people in front of him…that’s what he was sacrificing. They would never approve of what he’d done. They would never understand. Lisa would kick him out of the house if she found out. He’d never see Manda’s wedding or Cole’s various milestones in life. He’d never grow old with Lisa. He’d never see a happy scene again like this with all of them together and warmly welcoming him.

“Lives, fortunes, and scared honor.” Grant remembered that phrase from the Declaration of Independence. Signing it meant the Loyalists would hunt the signers of the Declaration of Independence down if the Patriots didn’t win. So, by joining the Patriots, the signers were giving up their lives, fortune, and sacred honor.

Well, it’s my turn now, Grant thought. My life. That’s probably going to be sacrificed. My fortune. Yep. That had already happened; his house in Olympia was probably burned down by now. My sacred honor? That, too. Polite society, like his pre-Collapse friends, had been told he was a terrorist and a murderer. Many thought he had abandoned his family. Now there was a very good chance he would lose his family by leaving for war or maybe they would disown him. So he was sacrificing his life and everything in it, most importantly his family.

This was the second time he’d had these thoughts. The first time was when he left Olympia without his family. He went through the horrible emotions of thinking about life without his family. He worked through the mental process of saying, “I might be ‘abandoning’ my family, but here’s why I have to do it.” When he left Olympia, he had already realized that he needed to do certain things and that one of the sacrifices he needed to make was his family. He didn’t want to do it, but that’s why it was a sacrifice.

Today, when he signed up with the Patriots, was the second time he thought through the process of abandoning his family. This second time was actually harder than the first time. Grant thought it would be opposite—that it would be easier to come to these conclusions as time wore on because it was no longer a foreign concept.

But, the second time was definitely harder. Probably because he’d already gotten his family back once after he thought he lost them. Grant remembered hearing those car wheels on the gravel road the morning he got his family back. Seeing his wife’s Tahoe, and then seeing them get out and run up to him. He remembered realizing they wanted to be with him. He remembered being so happy he couldn’t speak. He’d gotten a second chance to be with them. To be a husband and father. A second chance.

And that was what he was pissing away. It was bad enough to piss away your family once. But to get them back and then do it again?

For what? Politics?

Then Grant remembered the words just before the “lives, fortune, and sacred honor” line in the Declaration of Independence: “with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”

Exactly. You have a job to do. I picked you and a few others. You will be doing My work. You won’t lose everything.

Wow. That was the clearest outside thought he ever received. He was instantly at peace. He felt a calm that couldn’t be described. A joy.

Grant knew what he needed to do. He needed to keep Ted and Sap secret from Lisa as long as he could. He needed to work with them and simultaneously do all his normal things at the Grange. He needed to help build up the best possible guerilla unit out there. He needed to fight with them. They needed to win. He needed to help rebuild Washington State after the war. If this cost him his family, then so be it. Lives, fortune, and sacred honor. That’s what was required in the past, and it was required now. Besides, he had just been told he wouldn’t lose everything by a voice that had never been wrong. Never. Not once.

Time to put your big boy pants on and go do your job, he said to himself. This’ll be a hell of a story for the grandkids.

Grant looked at Lisa in the living room of the cabin. She was so beautiful. They’d been through so much together. She would be such a fabulous person to grow old with. The catch of a lifetime. The perfect spouse. She was smiling and so glad to see him come home. She thought he was still just doing office things at the Grange. She had convinced him to stop the “gun stuff” and just be safe at the Grange. That’s why she was so happy to see him. He had listened to her and decided to be safe.

But now he was lying to her. Grant couldn’t stand that. He would have to lie to her much more in the coming days, weeks, or however long he decided to keep the Ted thing a secret. She would eventually find out he had been lying the whole time. Repeatedly lying to her. She would hate him forever. How could she forgive him? He had promised to stop the dangerous things and then went off and signed up for a guerilla unit. She would never understand.

Lisa didn’t care about political nonsense from over 200 years ago like “lives, fortune, and sacred honor.” All she cared about was having a husband, and her kids having a father. She genuinely cared about Grant. She wanted him to live. To not get maimed. To not be crazy from all the violence he would see. And all the violence he would commit. She wanted a normal husband and normal family. Was that asking so much?

Maybe not from the majority of men. Most men in America were trying to get by with as little risk as possible. But for Grant—who had these useful skills, had extensively prepared for this, and had the Team, the people at Pierce Point, and the trust of Ted—it was asking a lot of him to just try to get by with as little risk as possible.

Grant was different. He didn’t want to be. He just accepted that he was. So if Lisa had married a normal guy, it wouldn’t be asking much.

“Daddy!” Cole said. “How was your day?” he asked, practicing his social questions. He was grinning from ear to ear. His dad was home. Safe and at home.

Lisa looked at Grant and smiled her warmest, happiest smile ever. Lisa and the kids were so perfect. So wonderful.

Might as well enjoy them all I can, Grant thought.

“I had a good day,” Grant said, lying. The day you decide to commit treason and sign up with a guerilla unit is not a “good day,” even if it needed to be done.

“How was your day, lil’ buddy?” Grant asked.

“Super,” Cole said. “Sissy and I went to the beach and dug clams. We got lots of them and Grandma made soup,” he said with a smile. That must be the great smell in the cabin: clam chowder.

“Cole was talking up a storm today,” Manda said. She told Grant all the new things Cole had said that day. It was amazing. He was doing so well out there. He might be the only person thriving in these conditions.

Grant was so happy. For a little while, right then he wasn’t thinking about war or killing or losing everything. Instead, he was thinking about the new words Cole was saying.

“Were you a good boy today?” Grant asked Cole.

“Roger that,” Cole said.

What? Did Cole just say that? They’d never heard him say that. Autistic kids weren’t supposed to be able to spontaneously say figures of speech.

Everyone burst into joyous laughter. Cole had just said slang!

“Where did you learn that?” Grant asked Cole, knowing the answer.

“You and the Team,” Cole said. “The men with guns who protect us.”

Grant started to cry. It was happy crying. Cole had just summed up exactly why Grant was doing all this. An autistic kid who supposedly couldn’t talk had just said it all.