Against the Grain by Ian Daniels Read Free Book Online Page B

All a person would have to do was actually pay attention to past and current history to put the pieces together and see what path we were on. Clint believed it. I believed it too, and our lifestyles helped us to be able to ease into the transition we found ourselves in when things started sliding downhill faster than most could keep up with.   
    We had also used it as a victimless hobby. We put tactics and gear to use when we went out into the woods or played paintball, but we never took it, or ourselves, too seriously. We enjoyed hiking around and staying out in the woods overnight with just a small pack and rifle, crossing through land with no one ever the wiser. We mapped routes and role played a little and it was fun... up until it wasn’t just for fun anymore.  
    A few years back we went to a climbing and mountaineering emergency medical workshop. The way we conducted ourselves, our approach, familiarity, and comfort didn’t go unnoticed. The local Search and Rescue and Sheriffs office’s each had representatives attending the same training, and a dialog was established. A few handshakes and business cards later, we went on our merry way until a month afterward when we were contacted to assist in a rescue in our area.  
    We ended up helping out with a handful of different issues, with a handful of different agencies, but the unpaid volunteer status for what was essentially a part time job, never sat well with me. Still I played nice for a while longer. We never received much respect from the official paid guys, which I didn’t like, although I could understand it. They didn’t like needing guys that knew the land or could read a map when they were used to having the budgets for updated electronics, helicopters and dog handlers.  
    More and more though, I caught on to what others in the underground media buzz-worded as the “militarization of the police.” I essentially had no qualms witnessing a no knock, warrant-less search of a cabin with a meth lab in the front yard, or the rough handling of a escaped convict, but after a while, too much got to be too much for me and I started having other things to do when the next call to volunteer would come in.  
    And it was the truth. Between still having a real job at a small local company that was on life support in what was left of the economy, building a house, and having to work harder and harder just to have food to eat, there wasn’t much free time left for me anymore. The calls for volunteers slowed down and eventually stopped when lost, missing or escaped people stopped being looked for.  
    The country’s slide down was slow, the decline was happening, but life had gone on and we adapted as best we could. Jobs were lost and crime went up. Gasoline and oil prices rose and deliveries of food, along with everything else, started being less and less consistent. The power grid, along with all the other utilities, was old beyond its years, stretched by an exploding population and an outdated system with no money to make the needed upgrades. Patches in the water and sewer lines were made in the largest concentrations of urban centers in exchange for letting other systems that fed less inhabited areas fail altogether. There was no budget for road repair, and most utility companies didn’t have enough new and trained employees to replace their retiring workforce anyway.
    Medical care was only looked for in the most serious of cases as insurance companies dissolved. Doctors and hospitals started requiring payment prior to treatment. Simple aliments became deadly, and those unfortunate enough to require long term or maintenance type care or medications for things like diabetes, blood pressure and heart disease, they no longer had the options available to continue their treatment.  
    Break-ins for living essentials by desperate, but still essentially good people just trying to feed their families, matched the number of drug and alcohol motivated robberies by addicts