Chapter 34 -- MGIREQMBGJDRSQTIDQBAFD
"Thanks for inviting us," Grant said. "You've met Bill already. These are the other
members of our committee - Douglas Stewart, Arthur Mitchell, and Gerald Duncan.
Gentlemen, this is Luther Pierce - do you have a title or is Luther OK?"
"Luther is fine," Luther replied, smiling. "And we just call each brother and
sister, nothing fancy." He introduced his colleagues and asked if the guests
would like refreshments. They all accepted the proffered iced tea, which was
quite good.
"My wife passed away the year after we came here," he said. "I've learned how
to take care of things, but I'm not much of a cook, or good at making tea. I
keep it simple, black coffee and strong sweet tea."
"This is good," said Grant. "I'm not that good at it myself."
"Well, then," Luther said, "shall we get down to business? Are there any items
in particular you'd like to discuss?"
"Not especially," Grant replied, apparently being looked to as the leader since he
had made the overture. "We wanted to formally introduce ourselves, and if you
have any curiosity about us we'll try to answer your questions. And to offer
any assistance we can, should you ever need it. Feel free to call on us at any
time."
"Thank you," Luther said. "We live a fairly simple life here, try to keep out
of the outside world as much as we can. At the risk of sounding like one of
those fanatics you hear about a lot, it is quite frankly a wicked and corrupt
place."
"We're certainly in agreement there," said Grant. "We're after the same thing.
We're not all of the same faith, so we're not a church. But we do want to be
away from the, as you say, wickedness and corruption. There are a couple
dozen children who are home-schooled. I'm guessing you do the same with any
children you have."
"We do," Luther replied. "We have about thirty."
"You're probably wondering how much longer that will be allowed," said Arthur.
"Some states have already made it illegal, and the federal government is
putting pressure on the remaining ones to stop it. Which brings us to
something we'd like to get your ideas on.
"As you've observed, the situation out there is bad and getting worse fast.
We and people like us are probably going to have to make some hard choices
before much more time goes by. And we don't know how it's going to play out.
Do you have any plans for dealing with the future?
"I don't know if you've heard about it, but yesterday there a bad incident in
Tennessee. From what we've been able to learn so far, it seems like they were
making an example of someone. To warn the rest of us. If it's that bad now,
it's hard to see how any of us are going to be able to avoid conflict."
"We trust God," said Luther. "We don't know what will happen, or if He intends
for things to change, or in what ways. So we wait and watch. If at some time we have to act,
whether it is to hide or fight, we trust Him to guide us."
"We understand," Douglas said. "We have already made our decision, and we
respect yours - whatever it may be. Since we don't know yet how the in the
end the crisis will climax, so to speak, we have to watch events unfold and
react as we decide is right."
"We understand as well," said Luther. "As you say, it's a matter of waiting for now."
"You've probably seen that we're armed around the place most of the time,"
said Grant. "Those of us that are out and around in the open, at least.
There aren't supposed to be any dangerous animals out here, other than some
bears. You don't want to run up on a bear with cubs."
"Or a cougar," said one of the elders. "They've been seen, supposedly, within
twenty, thirty miles of here. Over around Lynchtown."
"Those can be dangerous," Grant said. "They've eaten a few people from time
to time, out west mostly. Anyway, we may carry a handgun or even a rifle
sometimes, but that's about it. As for future problems, however, we are
prepared. We have a sizable arsenal - we're serious about defending ourselves
if we have to. As they say, better to die on your feet than live on your knees.
If you do that, you still die in the end, but your life in between isn't very
pleasant."
"We understand," Luther said. "We have debated the issue and continue to. We
will come to a decision with God's help." He smiled. "As for being on you knees,
it's not always not a bad thing."
"I understand," said Grant. "We'll respect whatever decision you make."
"Is there anything else you wish to discuss?" asked Luther.
"No, that should cover it for now," Grant said. "As we say, anything we can ever do for you, don't hesitate
to call us."
"And we we offer our assistance in any way we can," said Luther.
"Well, we'll be on our way," said Grant. "And let you get back to work."
They shook hands all around and Grant and his colleagues left.
They drove back over to their enclave and went into the meeting house and sat
down to discuss the visit.
"Seems like reasonably a sane bunch," said Arthur.
"Seems so," Douglas said. "You never know with people with a religious
doctrine underpinning their lifestyle.""
"True," said Gerald. "Of course, there's a lot of exaggeration and even
outright lies in what you hear. Our enemies call dissenters cultists, or white
supremacists, almost as a first resort. I'm waiting to hear that that bunch
over in Tennessee yesterday was a religious cult."
"If that's what they're doing now, and just getting started, it's going to get
bad by the time they get here.
"Yeah," said Arthur. "It looks a lot like they just went in there and killed a
bunch of people, as a warning."
"Well, then we know pretty much how it ends," Bill said. "If the next election
just strengthens their control then it's over. They're already working on
those FEMA camps, mainly putting up fences around them. And guard towers.
And they're doing it right out in the open, not caring who sees it.
"We're screwed and we know it. We came out here, hoping it wouldn't get this
bad. But we know it's going to. And I don't think any of us see any way out.
Do we?"
After a moment of silence Grant spoke.
"I've been kicking this around for a while and still don't know what to do
with it," he said. "But tell me what you think. There've been rumors, I'm
sure you've heard them. It's probably crazy because it sounds too good to be
true, but the idea is that there is some sort of big operation that no one
knows about, at least in terms of who it is, how it works. But supposedly
there's a plan to somehow take over the central power structure - Congress,
the President, and do something really disruptive that leaves them open for a
takeover. Like I said, too good to be true."
"Yeah," said Arthur. "There's been some of that, just in the last two, maybe
three months. It was maybe a handful of sites, in the comments on some
articles, someone would mention it. It got my attention because of a common
element that stays consistent, as if it's being done by some sort of
organization. Or a very busy individual.
"You never know," Grant said, "but I have to wonder what chance something like
that has. It would have to be big, well-funded and disciplined, to remain
secret for long."
"Apparently it's something planned as an absolute last resort," said Grant,
"when there's no hope for a peaceful solution, rather than go quietly they
do down fighting. There seem to be a couple of consistent factors though -
the terms 'Samson Option' and 'Mike Charlie'
"Yeah," said Bill. "I've seen that. I suppose they could be using that media
to pass messages."
"The Samson Option is interesting," Arthur said. "That's long been known, at
least to those who pay attention to these things, as a reference to the
Israeli doctrine of massive retaliation in the event
Israel was itself in imminent danger of being wiped out. If they were ever again in a
hopeless position, instead of committing mass suicide as they did at Masada,
they would destroy their enemies and as much of the rest of the world as they
could with their nuclear weapons. Like Samson pulling down the temple and
taking his enemies with him."
"That's something I could believe," said Douglas. "Some of the resistance
that is a little out there would try something like that. Not that any one or
two of them would do a lot of damage. I suppose someone uniting a large
number of them could. How hard is it to make bombs, drive trucks into
buildings? Terrorist tactics are hard to defeat, especially when new ones
appear as quickly as you prepare to deal with the old ones. The problem is that most
of them have no discipline. They're operating on emotion, and that's their
downfall."
"Maybe we should dig into this," said Bill. "Get some of the young more tech-
savvy guys to help. We might be able to pick up patterns, get an idea of how
real it is, and if so, what it is. If we're going down, maybe we can link up
with some others like us and make a bigger impact."
"OK," said Grant. "If this proves to be something real, it's worth
investigating, and being part of if that's possible."