by Logan Jacobs
He pulled the slanted box from the bottom of the grip again and held it out for my inspection.
“This is the magazine,” the ex-trooper explained. “The bullets are loaded in here, and then you place that in here.”
He jammed the slanted box into the bottom of the grip, and I heard a click as it moved into place. He pointed it out over the trees again, this time with both hands on the gun and pulled the trigger. Of course, nothing happened beyond a faint click, but I could imagine the sound for myself.
“Now, the Glock is a semiautomatic,” Darwin said as he handed the gun to me.
“It’s really light,” I said in surprise as I held the gun for a moment, felt it imprint upon my hand, and then started to point it toward the trees.
“No!” Darwin snapped and I froze in place.
“What?” I asked in confusion.
“Rule number two,” he snapped.
“Ummm, always treat every gun as if it’s loaded,” I recited as I lowered the gun and stared at it. “But you just showed me….”
“Doesn’t matter,” the ex-trooper insisted. “You need to check it for yourself.”
“Okay,” I stammered as I thought about what he had done.
“Point away from anyone and anything else while you’re doing it,” Darwin warned.
I nodded as I turned the gun toward the surrounding woods. I took a deep breath, told myself it was simple, pressed the button on the grip, pulled the magazine from the grip, and peered inside. It was still empty, so I slid it back into place, then pulled back the rear of the gun and looked inside the hole on the side of the barrel. It was empty as well, so I pushed it back into place and glanced at Darwin.
“Better,” Darwin grunted. “Everytime someone hands you a gun, check to see if it’s loaded. Even if you have just seen them check to see if it’s loaded. Get it?”
“Got it,” I said as I smiled down at the weapon in my hands.
“Now, the nine mil can fire a lot faster than anything else you’ve handled so far. That can be handy in a bad situation, but you can’t let yourself get carried away either. You’ll shoot through those fifteen bullets and have nothing left for the rest of that army of mages that’s descending on you.”
“It seems very easy to use,” I commented as I lifted it to my shoulder.
“Even with a full magazine, it’s nice and easy,” Darwin agreed. “Very little recoil and accurate as all get out, especially if you’re careful with your bullets.”
I aimed toward a distant tree and pulled the trigger. I heard the faint click, but when I tried to pull the trigger again, nothing happened. Confused, I lowered the gun and studied the trigger.
“When you fire the bullet in a Glock, the recoil forces the slide back,” the ex-trooper explained. “That allows the extractor to remove the spent cartridge and the firing pin to reset so you can pull the trigger again. To load the next bullet, you have to move the slide forward. That strips the next bullet in the magazine and forces it up the ramp and into the chamber. It’s a system built around the energy of the bullet resetting the mechanism.”
Darwin promptly demonstrated by pulling the slide back again, then pushing it forward. When he pressed the trigger, I heard the weapon click.
“Do I have to slide it forward after every shot?” I asked.
“Let me show you,” Darwin replied. “There is a spring in the front part of the gun around what’s called a ‘guide rod.’ This rod always forces the slide forward. You probably felt it pull when you yanked the slide back to see if it was unloaded.”
“Yeah,” I said as he pulled the slide again. Sure enough, I could see the guide rod at the front of the weapon that was pointed in the same direction as the barrel.
“This lever on the left side is the slide release. It hooks on the slide and keeps it back. Then you can insert a full magazine, press the release button, and then the slide will move forward and load your next bullet into the chamber.”
“Wow, that’s really smart,” I said.
“Yeah,” he snickered. “Glocks are great guns, but something to consider is that not every weapon empties with the slide back like this. So, it wouldn’t be a bad habit to always rack the slide back to get that first round chambered.”
I nodded as he handed the weapon back to me. I pulled the slide back, as I had seen him do, then pushed it forward. When I pulled the trigger, I heard the faint click, and I smiled like a kid who’d just discovered a secret horde of candy.
The Glock was so light that I could imagine myself pulling it out in all sorts of tricky situations. I pictured a fast moving mutant and swiveled the gun as if I was tracking a target. Then I tried shooting one-handed from around the edge of the building. Before I knew it, I was testing one-handed shots from all sorts of crazy poses, and I completely forgot that Darwin was even there as I lost myself in a fierce battle with a group of fire mages.
“Now, in a pinch, you can fire with one hand,” Darwin interrupted as he watched me. “But for best control, you should always try to keep both hands on the weapon. Especially with Glocks. They tend to have FTEs if you don’t really have a tight grip on them.”
“FTE?” I asked.
“Failure to Eject,” Charles answered. “It’s when the brass gets stuck in the slide after the bullet is fired. You’ll have to rack the slide to clear it. Glocks are very reliable weapons that will fire covered in mud or gunk, but if you don’t have a tight grip, the weight of the slide will pull the lightweight body up and back too much and the casing won’t line up with the ejector.”
“So keep a tight grip,” I replied sadly as all my grand visions faded away.
“Let’s move on,” Darwin suggested as he held his hand out for the Glock. I reluctantly returned it to its owner, who checked again for bullets before he returned it to its case.
“You do that every time,” I said.
“Every time,” Darwin agreed as he smiled at me. “You are starting to get it.”
Darwin picked up the gun he’d carried when he had confronted Sorcha and I after Freya’s arrest. It reminded me a bit of the Maverick, with two stacked barrels, but the bottom barrel was sealed except for a small hole, and a grooved canister surrounded it.
Darwin held the gun toward me, with the barrel pointed toward the trees. Without saying a word, the ex-trooper pointed toward a button on top of the gun, which he pushed backward until it covered a red dot. Next, the silent guru turned the weapon upside down, and held it up to show me the bottom. It wasn’t solid on the bottom, but had a small chamber where I could just see the metal end of a big bullet.
The ex-trooper then pointed toward a small clip that held the bullet in place. With his thumb, he pushed the clip downward and a bullet in a red plastic case, just like the ones we’d found in the mutant wasteland, slid into the chamber.
Darwin repeated that three more times until no more bullets appeared in the chamber. Then he turned the gun over, pulled back the canister that slid along the bottom barrel, checked along the edge of the gun, then pulled back the canister one last time.
“Do you know what this is?” the ex-trooper asked as he finally held the gun up for my inspection
“A rifle,” I replied with certainty.
“A rifle?” he sighed. “This is a Mossberg five hundred Thunder Ranch tactical pump action twelve-gauge shotgun with dual extractors, twin action ejectors and breacher style muzzle. It holds five shots, and it’s hard to miss with any of them. It’s very reliable and easy to maintain. Probably one of the best no-nonsense guns ever built.”
With that, he held the gun out toward me. I accepted it gratefully and let myself soak in the feel of the gun for several seconds as it imprinted upon me before I ran through the same sequence I had just watched Darwin perform. When he nodded at my inspection, I actually smiled in reply.
Having successfully completed Rules One and Two, I could take the time to study the Mossberg five hundred. The weapon was lighter than I expected, but there was someth
ing about the shape of it that spoke of power. It was flat black in color, which also added to its sense of menace, and I had a feeling that firing this would be unlike any of the other weapons I had fired before.
“Now, you don’t just pull the trigger with a pump action,” Darwin noted as he took the shotgun back. “The guns you’ve used so far have all made it easy for you.”
“You have to slide the canister or something to reload it?” I guessed as I tried to make sense of the images that had flashed through my head when I held the shotgun.
“That’s right,” Darwin said as he set his stance and pointed the gun over the tops of the surrounding trees.
I watched as he aimed at a target, then quickly pulled back the canister before he pulled the trigger. I was disappointed when nothing happened even though I knew there was no ammunition in the weapon.
“Try it,” Darwin instructed as he handed the weapon back to me.
I completed the first and second rules, then copied his stance, and picked out a nearby tree. I pulled the pump and then the trigger, and for the briefest of moments, I thought I could hear the rumble of the weapon as it fired.
“Now, since this is a tactical weapon and meant to be fired quickly and repeatedly, the recoil is more than manageable, even if you use a more powerful load,” Darwin noted. “But it’s still gonna kick ya. Remember, whatever you add in power leaving the gun will come back to you as recoil in the arm and shoulder. You always need to adjust accordingly.”
“You can change the type of bullets you use?” I asked. “Or does this just use the buckshots?”
“It’s a shell when you’re talking about shotguns,” Darwin corrected me, “And, of course, you can change your ammo. Buckshot is a type of shotgun shell. Sprays small pellets in a cone where you point it. You can also get big old hunks of lead to shoot out, but instead of calling it a ‘shotgun bullet,’ we call them a ‘slug.’ What have you been using anyway?”
“It just appears with the gun,” I replied lamely.
“Well, there must be some way for you to adjust what you’re using,” he mused. “It doesn’t do you much good to have a five hundred if all you can use it for is tossing out chicken feed.”
“Well, I know the Maverick has Buckshot,” I said quickly. “It was on the box we found with the Maverick.”
“Did it tell you anything else?” the ex-trooper pressed.
“Ummm….” I stalled. “Zero-zero? With twelve ga?”
“Double-ought,” Darwin corrected. “Twelve gauge. Probably two and three quarters with nine pellets. That’s the most common.”
“Yeah, that’s what it said on the box. You really know a lot about guns.”
“I’m just an old fart that knows old fart things,” Charles scoffed. “Everyone used to know all this stuff before the meteorite hit and the mages outlawed guns. Do you know how to load the Maverick?”
“Uhhh,” I hesitated.
“We can cover that, too,” Darwin sighed.
“I guess I hadn’t thought much about all this,” I replied. “This sounds complicated.”
“I suppose it can be,” Darwin conceded. “But we’ll learn ya. Now, let’s move on to an actual rifle.”
He took the Mossberg shotgun from my hands, placed it on the table, and then opened the last case. Inside nestled a sleeker, longer weapon, with a silver barrel, a dusky gray stock, and an hourglass shaped addition above the top of the barrel. This one looked elegant next to the work-a-day features of the shotgun, like the wealthy matron next to the dowdy floor scrubber.
“That’s a rifle,” I declared happily as I recognized the familiar shape.
“A Winchester Model Seventy,” Darwin intoned as he ran through his bullet check, “extreme weather version with a twenty-two-inch barrel. It uses three oh eight bullets, which is the perfect round for killing anything on this planet from up close or about three hundred yards away. On a good day, I can hit targets at five hundred, but the bullet is a bit of a heavy guy, so you really have to account for drop for any distance over three.”
He handed the rifle to me once the check was complete, and I ran my hands over the smooth metal of the barrel and the patterned surface of the stock. The feeling of the surge of power as the rifle imprinted was as glorious as always, and I had to force myself to focus on the matter at hand and not become lost in the euphoria. When the ex-trooper started to reach for the weapon, I repeated the check I’d just watched, in exactly the same order. When I heard a grunt of approval, I flashed another smile, then turned my attention back to the rifle.
It was about the same weight as the Mossberg shotgun, though it didn’t feel like it was all concentrated into one tight spot. I held it up to my shoulder and cheek, the way Evan had shown me, and let out a sigh of pleasure at how beautifully aligned it was. I realized then that the strange device on top let me see far away objects as clearly as the trees right in front of me, and I was reminded of the telescopes that the pirates in the ancient stories always carried.
“Wow,” was all I could say. “And I like this close-look device on top. It’s like one of those pirate things.”
“That’s the scope,” Darwin explained. “Helps you locate and focus on your target. A must-have if you plan on shooting from any real far distances. Now, this rifle only holds five rounds, but it’s easy to reload. And there’s very little difference between firing hot or cold barrel.”
“Is that a problem in other guns?” I asked.
Darwin stared at me for a moment, then shook his head.
“I can see we have a lot of ground to cover,” he sighed. “But yes, that can become an issue. Now, if you’re just hunting something for dinner, then you probably won’t fire enough shots to really heat up the barrel that hot, but if you’re fending off an army of mages, well, that could be a problem.”
“But not with the Winchester,” I said as I pulled it down and studied its length again.
“Main issue with this rifle will be the recoil,” Darwin added. “It does have that pad for the shoulder, but you’ll still feel a kick with any high performance cartridge.”
“Like the snub nose,” I offered.
“Well,” Darwin hesitated, then finally nodded. “I suppose you could make that comparison, although they’re really two very different weapons, and the Winchester is going to pack more punch with most of the cartridges it uses.”
“But you can use this to hunt large animals?” I asked as I thought about his initial description.
“Yep,” Darwin replied. “Wild boar, elk, moose, bigger deer, or even bears. It’s not something that you would keep by your bed and pull out to shoot an intruder. It’s more for long-distance shooting, and it will kill a human if you hit him pretty much anywhere.”
“Even on the foot?” I asked.
“Will blow it clean off. Like I said, this is a hell of a round. It’s made for big game. Humans can be killed with just a twenty-two if you get ‘em in the head or chest.”
“That’s the rifle I have,” I said. “And yeah, I’ve been making sure I aim for the head or chest. I noticed if I hit them anywhere else, they wouldn’t go down.”
“A twenty-two is fine for hunting varmints and such,” Charles said as he nodded, “but you’ll love this three-oh-eight.”
“I could have used this on the way here,” I sighed as I gazed down at the beautiful rifle. “We ran into a bear just outside the wastelands.”
“Noise usually works well to frighten bears away,” Darwin noted. “Unless it’s a mamma bear with cubs.”
“It was frightened away by noise,” I replied, though I didn’t mention the scavengers who had been the source of the noise.
Darwin took the rifle from my hands then and placed it carefully into the case.
“So, I thought the mages said that no one made bullets anymore,” I said as I studied the Mossberg shotgun that still sat on the table.
“I mostly make my own ammo these days, though I still have a few rounds of the good stuff
squirreled away,” Darwin replied. “Have the basics I’ll need to make more in some of those boxes you carried over.”
“Oh,” I said in surprise as I tried to imagine what was required to make a bullet. “I thought it was some big, complicated process.”
“Pffft,” Darwin chuckled. “You can make a basic bullet easily enough. In fact, in the Old West, most hunters and trackers made their own bullets at some point. You might find yourself in the middle of nowhere and running low on bullets, or find yourself in town without any money. As long as you had lead you could melt and a mold, and gunpowder to fill it with, you were good.”
“But don’t you have to make the gunpowder also?” I asked.
“These days you do,” Darwin agreed. “I’ve worked out my own formulas over the years, based on what I could scavenge. Spent some time north of here, near the Picatinny Arsenal. I found all sorts of great supplies there. Enough to last two or three lifetimes.”
“Is that what was in the rest of the boxes?” I laughed.
“Partially,” Darwin admitted. “Because a gun isn’t any good if it doesn’t have any bullets.”
“That’s true,” I agreed as I remembered telling Sorcha she could use the Maverick like a club if we couldn’t find any bullets. “Would you like to see the Mossberg Maverick we found in the wastelands? Maybe you could show me how to load the bullets-- I mean shells, we found.”
“That would be nice,” Darwin agreed. “I haven’t seen a new gun in ages.”
I ducked back inside the treehouse and searched through our satchels until I found the Maverick and the box of shells. I grabbed those and returned to the deck where Darwin was running a cloth over the shotgun.
“An old over-under shotgun,” Darwin sighed as he took the weapon from my hands and quickly checked both barrels for ammunition. “People normally used a design like this to hunt birds, but this one has a short barrel, so it’s for home defense. It just has a single trigger, so that means it fires one barrel and then the other.”