Read Online 299 Days: The Visitors by Glen Tate - Free Book Online Page B

out now, but wait until it got cold and rainy. It never got brutally cold in Washington State, but it did rain for months, which meant people would be huddled inside, coughing on each other. Communicable diseases would go through the roof. The people at Camp Murray had been planning for outbreaks of all kinds of third world diseases that no one thought could pop up in America. Cholera and typhoid were on the top of their lists.
    One thing Jeanie did know from her work was that the government was definitely supplying the friendly urban areas much more than the rural areas. There was a rumor that the government would soon threaten to shut off utilities to rural areas to get them to comply. Jeanine didn’t know if that was true, but she did know one thing. Almost all the food and supplies were delivered to the Seattle area and Olympia. In fact, she was told to brag about this to her urban and suburban VIP tour guests. She would tell them that the government was “doing the most for as many as possible,” which meant feeding the cities. In fact, now that she thought about it, she never had VIPs from rural areas. It was as if the areas outside Seattle, the suburbs, and Olympia didn’t exist anymore.
    They kind of didn’t. There was no government out there. Local government still existed in rural areas, though it was barely functioning. Local law enforcement still operated, but mostly with the help of volunteers. Some fire departments still operated out there. House fires were a problem with all the looting and crime. Criminals would set a house on fire to destroy evidence, eliminate witnesses, or intimidate residents.
    Out in the rural areas, there were no social services, roads departments, tax collection, or anything like that. The most that many cities and towns in rural areas could manage was a semi-professional police force, and maybe a small fire department. Libraries? Parks? Forget about it. The thought of a functioning library or park seemed absurd, given all the other needs of the people in a town.
    The parks reminded Jeanie of the paras, the paramilitary groups operating on all sides, who were rumored to be killing people in parks. All the parks of her childhood were probably now full of bodies, she thought.
    Although she no longer attended the briefings, she still heard murmurings among staff, and those who were huddled in the conference rooms at Camp Murray were really worried about the paras. Not only because they signified lawlessness and because people were getting killed, but more importantly, because many paras were said to be targeting Loyalists, who were the people in that room. Going after the paras was self-defense for the Loyalists.
    The paras also introduced a lot of uncertainty. People wondered if they could trust the person they were giving sensitive information to. They worried he or she may tell the paras. And, if so, which paras? It slowed down operations. A person’s loyalty had to be checked and double checked before they could be trusted to act. It also meant that some of the government’s best plans were thwarted by para informers, and not just informers who were working directly for paras. Regular people with no political agenda were afraid of paras. They would give paras information out of fear even if they didn’t support that particular para group’s politics.
    To try to control them, especially the ones threatening the Loyalists, the government used its insurrection powers to round up suspected Patriots and paras. The government didn’t have enough troops and professional police to do this, so the task fell on the pathetic, but numerous, Freedom Corps.
    Most of the suspects who the FCorps rounded up were sent to hundreds of hastily created medium-security “temporary detention facilities” for a few weeks and then released. Quick releases were required because it cost too much to feed them. Suspects didn’t actually eat too well in the temporary detention facilities, but even a