Read American Exit Strategy: Book 1 for Free Online Page A

then, his phone rang.
    "I'm here" Karen said over the phone.
    Matt spotted her walking in the door and waved her over. "Matt, we are already prepared for this. We have at least 6 months worth of food at home."
    "We also have a lot of neighbors." Matt replied. "I doubt any of them have more than a few days worth of food. We may need to help them out if things get bad. A few hundred bucks is a small price to pay to be able to help out. Besides, we may need help from them as well. If we share what we have right now, it will last about two weeks."
    Karen saw the chaos in the other lines and started to think that maybe Matt was right about all of this. She knew he kept his ear to the tracks when it came to economics and these sorts of things. Even more than that, she trusted him.
    They checked out, took that cart and loaded it into the trunk of Karen’s car, then went back with two more carts. They filled them up with more rice, beans, canned meats, canned vegetables, powdered milk and other dry good staples. Once the carts were filled to the top, they went back to the "Cash Only" lane. Three lanes down from them, four EBT card users were in a physical confrontation with two male stock clerks and a male manager. One cart had overturned and groceries, including a busted two liter of soda, were all over the floor.
    It seemed that the larger stock clerk had pinned the main trouble maker and three others were attacking the clerk to try to get him off the pinned trouble maker. The other stock clerk and the manager were trying to fight them off.
    People were trying to get away from this madness. Several customers walked out of the store and left their carts in the lines. All of the cashiers were watching the action. This froze the progress of the slow moving lines. No one seemed to mind as they were so engrossed in the ongoing commotion.
    "Don't get involved." Karen said sternly.
    "Don't worry." Matt replied. “I have my mission and I’m not planning to be distracted from it. These people who walked away from their carts will be sorry tomorrow."
    Matt and Karen finally got checked out and proceeded towards the parking lot. As they were leaving, five police cars arrived to address the fight. All of the attackers were gone except the primary trouble maker. The big stock clerk still had him in a total submission hold.
    "Why are they blaming the cashiers and the store for their benefits being cut?" Karen asked. "It’s not their fault; they had nothing to do with it."
    Matt answered "The majority of those people have been trained for generations that they are not responsible for anything, but that everybody else is responsible for taking care of them. The store employees are part of ‘everybody else.' The wicked politicians that rely on these people to continue to get reelected have worked hard at convincing them of that idea."
    They loaded the contents of the carts into the bed of Matt's pick-up and started heading home.
     

 
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER 8
     
     
    "I, however, place economy among the first and most important republican virtues, and public debt as the greatest of the dangers to be feared."
    -Thomas Jefferson
     
    Sonny Foster busted through the door of Paul Randall's Kerrville, Texas office. "Sir, you must turn the television on now!"
    Kerrville, TX was the base of operation for Randall Ranches Cattle Corp, the family grass fed beef business.
    "Sonny, settle down! What is happening?" Paul asked surprised by the interruption. "Are we at war?"
    "Yes sir, but we have been at war for fifteen years now. That's not the news." Sonny replied while he scrambled for the remote.
    Paul found the response to be amusing and couldn't help but smile to himself. This reminded him of why he liked Sonny's quirky personality so much. They had been through a lot together over the past few years. In the same way marketing campaigns for Christmas started in late August, now, unofficially, presidential campaigning started in the back rooms