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trail.

    â€œDamn, Max. There’s a lot of poison ivy in there. Not going to be much fun for whoever decides he’s worth pulling out.”
    â€œYeah. We’ll be gone by then.”
    We made sure we left nothing behind. I reloaded and pocketed the brass. A pocketful of spent brass was like having a pocketful of quarters now. Some places, you could spend them like change, too.

CHAPTER FIVE
    We pushed on after eating. Despite the interruption, we were actually out here to plan our exit strategy. We needed to move but the big question was how to do it. By road, bicycle, or foot?
    It was starting to look as though our move would be on foot. The government had really clamped down hard around D.C. Iceland was reporting that government influence was waning in certain states. The federal government was, if you believed the Icelandic News, starting to have a serious problem projecting authority and collecting revenue.
    The Icelanders aired an interesting program on it. It wasn’t that our federal government was hated, although that sentiment was certainly rising. People still saw themselves as Americans and flew the flag. The abstract idea of America was still valid, but the reality wasn’t.
    The change was gradual at first and then picked up speed. But there wasn’t a single tipping point. It depended on the state, where in that state you lived, and,
often, how well established the area was. Religion played an important part, too. Utah was well on its way to becoming an autonomous province: the Quebec of America.
    The breakdown started with the states. They couldn’t afford to provide basic services anywhere near what people needed. The counties tried to pick up the slack by not forwarding their revenue to the state. In some cases they managed to provide some of service, but over time their own falling revenues ate away at that.
    In theory the Feds should have stepped in but there was no money to do so. The previous administration followed a policy of “Hope for the best. Ignore the West.”
    That policy failed. Badly. Ignoring California meant abandoning a state whose GDP would have put it in the world’s top ten if it were a country. The Pacific Northwest was ignored because its residents had turned out in huge numbers against the previous administration.
    So what we had at this point were states with partially functioning services in some areas, partially functioning towns and counties, and no-go zones–—areas that were run by gangs or religious or political nut jobs, or were just in free fall. The Burners ran huge parts of California, Oregon, and Washington State. Mexican gangs controlled southern Arizona, except for pockets of Maricopa County.
    The Apache and some of the other tribes were also making their moves. The casino years had given them the money to make hardware purchases. The Sioux were bringing back the buffalo and beginning to burn out the AgriCorp holdings if they got in the way.
    Halfway through the program, Max had turned to me and said, “Damn, we brought the ’Stan home with us.” There wasn’t much I could do in reply other than shrug.
Max would walk or bicycle for miles when he wasn’t walking with me. Sometimes he left again after dinner. He was out talking to people. Watching the roads. Making phone calls with disposable phones.
    The roads were no longer safe for us. The new administration was determined to hold and pacify the area surrounding Washington, D.C. In phone calls to old friends still on active duty Max learned more from what was not said than from what was. Often he would meet them at Top’s house in the suburbs. Top was retired but he knew a lot of people from all the years he had spent on active duty.
    From them, he found out that the Feds had canceled a decision to send a team to hunt us down. As long as we kept a low profile and didn’t get stopped by anyone other than a sheriff or local law enforcement outside the