299 Days: The Stronghold by Glen Tate Read Free Book Online Page A

don’t want to live in a place where a kid stealing a can of gas gets executed for it.” The crowd was quiet. The “shoot ‘em!” guy probably felt a little embarrassed.
    Rich continued, “But, on the other side of the spectrum, I don’t think we want all the bells and whistles of the current…I mean former legal system. It was pretty good at letting criminals go over and over again.” Rich let that sink in. He wanted there to be a little “shoot ‘em!” sentiment in the crowd, just not too much.
    “So,” Rich said, “we have a proposal to have a simple—simple—set of laws out here. Stealing small amounts, and we’ll define those and open it up for debate, would result in jail time. Probably a shorter jail time. Everyone in the community would know who the thief was, which is fine if it means a safer community. Stealing larger amounts would result in more jail time. People in jail would work, of course. We don’t want to give them an incentive to sit in jail and get free food. The community would need to feed them, so they’ll need to work for their meals.”
    “Feed them?” someone yelled out.
    Rich snapped back, “Yes. Feed them. We’re not animals. We need to come out of this with our humanity intact. If we start shooting each other over little things, we might as well be living in Frederickson or Olympia or, God forbid, Seattle. Anyone who wants that is free to go.”
    It was silent. Grant thought that only a respected former law enforcement officer like Rich could have the credibility with the crowd to say this. Grant thanked God that Rich was there.
    “Now, for serious crimes, like rape and murder,” Rich said, “well, we will shoot ‘em.” That got some applause from the crowd. “Maybe hang them. We can decide that. I’m leaning toward hanging. It makes much more of a statement than shooting.” More applause. Everyone in that meeting was afraid of rampant crime. They were afraid that the old way of preventing crime—formal police and courts—was over with. They craved a new solution to this problem.
    Rich motioned for Grant to come up to the front of the room. “Grant here, who was a lawyer,” it was funny to hear that in the past tense but it was true, “has some ideas on how to do all this. Don’t hate him because he was a lawyer,” Rich said with a smile. Rich wasn’t just cracking a joke; he was communicating something important: you may hate lawyers, but you need one now and this one isn’t a piece of crap like most are.
    Grant knew this was an important presentation. There was a lot at stake. He got up to the podium and started off, surprised by the wave of calm he felt in himself. He was strangely confident. He was going to nail this.
    “My basic plan,” Grant said, “is, one, simplicity, two, the Constitution—the real Constitution, not all the made up stuff they’ve come up with lately—and, three, transparency. Here’s what I mean,” he said pointing one finger up to show the number one.
    “Simple. The laws will be simple,” Grant said. “As in, theft of up to $100 in pre-Collapse value is second degree theft. Theft of more than $100 is first degree theft. Second degree theft is a week in jail. First degree theft is between a week and a year. I think we should have a jury decide the sentence. You all live here and it’s your system. You should decide. I’m just throwing out the week and year thing to give you a sense of what I mean by ‘simple’ laws. Every single person out here needs to know what price will be paid for a crime.”
    “Second,” Grant said, “the Constitution is how we run this. No unreasonable searches. In an emergency, of course, the constables…”
    Right then and there, Grant just picked the term “constables” out of thin air. He needed a term for “cops,” but one that didn’t have any negative connotations to it like “cops” had developed prior to the Collapse. “Constable” had an old English or New England feel to