Free 299 Days: The Visitors by Glen Tate Page B

the most.
    Tom missed beer. He loved microbrews and, before the Collapse, had a beer or two every night. There was no beer out there. There was some God-awful Budweiser available, but he couldn’t drink that. He really, really missed beer. He realized that he was actually missing the “normal” times when he could drink a beer at his house without people trying to kill him. That’s truly what he missed, but he focused on the beer. If he only had his beer, everything would be OK again.
    The farms around the Prosser property were all along Delphi Road. It connected to Highway 101, the main highway into Olympia, which was about ten miles away. There were probably a hundred farms or houses along Delphi. The families got together at the old Delphi schoolhouse and decided to post guards at the exit from Highway 101 onto Delphi Road. That way, they could protect all of them with just one guard station. It was a pretty beefy guard station. They averaged about ten men and women on a shift. There were quite a few ARs and some AKs and lots of ammo, too. Those ole’ boys (and girls) had plenty of firepower.
    The Delphi area residents formed a “bubba guard,” which was a neighborhood guard station. Since gas was so hard to come by, Delphi guards couldn’t just drive to the roadblock for an eight-hour shift and then drive back, so they decided on seven-day shifts with guards staying at the station, which eliminated the need for daily commutes to the guard station.
    Each day for a guard was an eight-hour primary shift spent actively scanning for threats, which became mentally exhausting. So, the next eight hours was a secondary shift. The guards were still there and remained armed, but they were relaxing a little. They were in reserve if an attack started. They also helped with food preparation and other tasks. The third eight-hour shift was for sleeping. They had several donated RVs that served as the sleep quarters at the guard station. They had “hot bunks” which were beds that someone was sleeping in at any given time. The beds stayed warm from constant use.
    Some of the area residents volunteered to feed the guards. (Other residents kept all the food to themselves, which caused them to be outcasts.) An unforeseen benefit from having people from the neighboring area spending seven days together is that people who had never spoken got to know each other. Community was starting from the ground up.
    The Delphi Road bubba guard worked pretty well. There were three drunken hillbillies from one family who were quickly kicked off guard duty. Other than that, the guards got along very well. It felt like a small farming town out there, like it had been 100 years ago.
    Tom grew to like guard duty. He didn’t at first; he had never been a “gun guy,” so he didn’t want to look stupid around all these country people who knew guns. He brought his Sig 9mm pistol and was loaned an AK-47 for when he was on primary duty. Some farm kid in his twenties named Justin showed him how to use the AK.
    Tom had the operation of the AK down in about thirty seconds. Those things were designed to hand to anyone, even illiterate tribesmen in any part of the world, and have them know how to use them very quickly. He was much less nervous about looking like a “city boy” now that he was smoothly operating an AK-47. He slung it over his shoulder like a pro. Actually, he was just doing what he’d seen in the movies, which worked just fine.
    Tom asked to shoot the AK once, to see if it kicked. It wasn’t bad at all. He actually hit the target—a milk jug out at about fifteen yards. Not too shabby, he thought. He realized that he didn’t have to be some military guy. The Delphi bubba guards were all just civilians with guns guarding a roadblock. Tom could do that.
    He was also initially nervous about spending a week with people who were essentially strangers. It was like going to a cocktail party where you don’t know anyone, but the party lasts for