"It's nice if you can hit what you are aiming at and it absorbs your bullet. But people make mistakes, or the wind might blow, or the target might move, or your bullet might pass through the target, or a whole bunch of other things can cause your bullet to go flying off in some manner. Make sure that the potential area where your bullet can go is actually a region where you don't mind your bullet going."
"That's four," said Dave sighing.
"Don't worry about it," said Jane. "It might be tough remembering them at first but soon they'll be engraved into your brain and they'll be a part of your life."
"I'm sort of surprised that there aren't more rules."
"There are plenty of rules, but often they are situational. For example, some people say that you should carry a double barrel shotgun with the action broken. But how does that rule apply to other firearms that don't have actions that can be left open? Some situations might even contradict the previous rules, like trying to use a firearm in a dusty or sandy area. In that case it might be actually dangerous leaving a firearm action open.
"As long as you know the basic rules and are familiar with firearm usage you can usually figure out or learn rules that apply in different circumstances. And in our current situation we could probably ignore a lot of firearm rules and it would be okay. The crowds of people that would normally be around us are gone and doing something stupid with a firearm hurts less people if there are no people around."
"I feel like I'm trying to drink from a fire hydrant."
Jane laughed. "It's like that at first. I guess that it's like that with everything. When you first learn to drive a car there's probably a million things to know but with practice it all becomes habit."
"I feel like I'm going to shoot my foot off."
"Don't worry," said Jane. "I'm here and I'll be watching you really carefully. And as long as we double up on our safety practices, we'd have to have many levels of failure before we have any real accidents. Besides. This is just a twenty-two calibre so we shouldn't worry about doing too much damage."
"Well, that might make sense if there were still some hospitals open nearby."
Jane frowned. "That's a good point. Even a small injury is a serious problem these days. We should then take safety really seriously then."
"Although I feel I need some time to get comfortable with what I learnt, let's keep the pace fast."
"When I leave, I'll leave this rifle with you so that you can practice with it. You don't even need to shot it. Just getting used to holding a rifle and being thoughtful about it is a great skill to have. I do expect you to take the time for some target practice but even a few minutes of holding a rifle and practicing stances will help."
"Okay. What do you mean by a stance and how many are there?"
"That's a tricky question. That book on firearms that you have will probably list dozens of stances. But this is a crash course and we'll basically use just one - standing."
"Why not the others?"
"Well, in the old days most shooting was done while at a range or while hunting. I wouldn't mind you learning those extra stances just to give you extra options, but in terms of being practical you'll probably just run into one of the dead while exploring and have no choice but to shoot from the shoulder. Read that book to learn and practice the other stances. For now I'm keeping your knowledge as practical as possible. I want you able to use a firearm to defend yourself as soon as possible."
"Thanks for that. I get the idea that if you tried to teach me everything all at once then my brain would explode."
"With that explanation done it's time for you to hold a rifle."
Jane lifted the rifle and turned its butt towards Dave's shoulder. "Are you right handed?" asked Jane.
"Yep."
"That's helpful. I just noticed that this is a right-handed rifle and though you could use it left-handed it would be rather awkward."
Dave reached up to the rifle and Jane guided his hands into place. With Dave now holding the rifle, Jane now stepped back to inspect his stance.
Jane moved her left foot forward and angled her right foot slightly. "Move your feet a bit more like this," said Jane. "You don't have to exactly copy what I do. Just take a moment to get familiar with the rifle. Let your body adjust to it naturally. If your posture is too weird I'll give you a quick jab to fix it."
"How am I doing?" ask Dave sounding unsure.
"You're doing really well. A bit stiff but that's common for people holding a firearm for the first time. Like I said before, even if you aren't taking shots, spend some time each day just holding a firearm. It sounds weird but just holding a firearm will let you become more comfortable with using it."
"Okay," said Dave as he slid his cheek around on the butt-stock.
"I see that you're trying to aim. This rifle has a simple telescopic optic on it. If you align your right eye to it you should be able to see through it."
"Oh. I get it. But it feels weird."
"That's where the practice will be needed. Just move your head around a bit. Keep your eye looking through the 'scope and slide you head around until you feel comfortable and you have a good connection between your cheek and the butt-stock."
Dave fiddled with his head location for a moment. "It still feels weird."
"I guess that you just need some more practice. Your form is good so let's put that aside and move on. Try lowering your rifle while keeping in mind the four rules of safety that we talked about earlier."
Dave lowered the rifle while keeping it level. To make it easier for Dave, Jane stepped around to his side while avoiding walking into the muzzle of his rifle.
"Good," said Jane. "Come over to the wall here, and look down onto the street. Remember your rules and at the same time don't stub the barrel into the wall."
"I'm so damn self-conscious."
"That's okay. You need to be. Even when all those safety rules become habit it will still be important to articulate them regularly. Now look across the road at the sign for the shop over there. Take up the shooting stance and aim at the sign."
Dave obeyed. "That looks weird."
"What is?"
"My eyes are all over the place."
"That's because the 'scope has magnification. One eye is seeing normally while the other eye is seeing magnified. Your brain is probably struggling with the signals that it's getting."
"Should I close my left eye?"
"A lot of firearm purists would probably tell you to just get used to shooting with both eyes open. I'd also recommend that, but I want you being able to shoot sooner than latter so close your left eye. However, in the future I'd like you to learn to keep both eyes open. That's going to require a lot of practice, but over time your brain will learn to handle the mismatched data that you send it."
"Huh," said Dave amused by the flexibility of the human brain.
"Now we get to the fun stuff. Hand the rifle back to me."
Dave kept the rifle pointing at the store across the street while handing the rifle to his left where Jane was standing.
"Good," said Jane taking control of the rifle. Dave noticed that Jane had placed one of the boxes of bullets on top of the wall and opened it. She picked up one round from the open box and placed it inside the rifle. "Did you see what I did?"
"Could you repeat that? I wasn't expecting you to do something like that."
Jane gently pushed the rifle bolt mostly forward and then partly back. She rested the fore-stock of the rifle on the crook of her left arm so that she could put the fingers of her left hand over the ejector port of the rifle. Then she used her right hand to gently snap the bolt fully back. She caught the ejected cartridge in her left palm. She transferred the cartridge to her right hand.
She then grasped the fore-stock with her left hand and held the butt against the left side of her hip. The rifle being angled up at forty-five degrees. She held the twenty-two round in the finger-tips of her right hand and showed Dave.
"Now watch this. I'll try to keep my
fingers as clear as possible."
Jane tilted the cartridge vertically and maneuvered its rear into the breach of the rifle. She pushed it against a movable plate within the magazine and pushed the cartridge down. She then turned the cartridge forward and it clicked into place.
"That looked fiddly," said Dave.
"And it is," said Jane. "I was just demonstrating what happens inside the rifle. Normally, to load this rifle you need to take out the magazine."
Jane turned the rifle on its side and pressed a button near the trigger guard. The magazine popped out a small distance. Jane grasped the magazine with her right hand and pulled it out. She showed the top of the magazine to Dave.
"Do you see the round that we pushed in before?" asked Jane.
Dave nodded.
"Okay. Let's put that magazine back in," said Jane reversing the movements and giving the magazine a simple jab to cause it to lock in place. "Remember that click sound. That's tells you that the magazine is now firmly in place. Although it's a good idea to give the magazine a quick pull to check that it is actually in place instead of just relying on sound. Sadly, this magazine is flush with the rifle body and it's hard to give it a good pulling.
"Now let's take a shot with it. Firstly, let's put our ear muffs on. I'd like some safety glasses as well but I didn't see any. We'll just have to risk it for now. Watch how I push the bolt forward and camber the round from the magazine. This here is the safety. It's currently off and I'm going to ignore it. Read your book and practice using the safety on your own. For now remember your four safely rules that you quoted before and study up later. Now watch this."
Jane lifted the rifle, took aim across the street and fired. She lowered the rifle butt to her hip and worked the bolt open and back, causing a smoking casing to flick towards Dave.
"Sorry about that," said Jane, "but now it's up to you. Take this rifle and let's do some shooting."
Dave took the rifle from Jane and held it on his hip like Jane had done.
"I don't know how comfortable you find that pose," said Jane. "I was doing it because it's easier for both of us to see what is happening. I normally load my rifle while it's on my shoulder and pointing forward. But that's because my rifle can do that while doing a simple mag change. A bolt action is a little more fiddly."
"Tell me about it. At the moment everything seems fiddly."
Jane laughed. "And that's why we're going to practice shooting for a bit. Try to take out the magazine and hand it to me. I'll load a single round into it and let you fire that. When you get used to that we'll let you load the magazine. And not just one round at a time but fully. That will pick the pace up substantially."
"I'm feeling rather overwhelmed."
"Don't worry about it. I'm right here. If you make any mistakes I'll just point them out. Keep focused and we'll make good progress."
"Sounds like a plan," said Dave smiling. "Let's get into it."
* * *
It was mid-afternoon. Dave and Jane we sitting on some foldable chairs and resting. Their day hadn't been a physically demanding one, but Dave had to learn a lot and he was glad to get off his feet and let his mind start to rebuild itself.
"You really picked things up quickly today," said Jane.
Dave looked over his shoulder to the stretcher where he slept. A twenty-two rifle lay there on its side with the bolt open. Also on the stretcher were a few boxes of cartridges. One box was mostly used up.
"I feel pretty overwhelmed," said Dave. "I hope that I remember it all."
"Don't worry if you don't remember everything perfectly. Keep practicing and it will become second nature."
"You certainly have a lot of faith in me."
"You're doing something that I'm sure isn't being attempted by other people. You are trying to understand what has happened. I'll not go so far as to say that you are deeply scientific about it. What you are doing is building an initial intuitive overview of the topic. But it's an overview that we need. It will give us a place to start and it could very well bring hope."
"Now I know you're exaggerating. I don't really feel like I'm doing anything amazing. I'm just letting my curiosity get the better of me. I'm just the same old useless fool that I've always been."
Jane looked straight at Dave with a serious expression. "I never knew you before all this, but know that you really are important. It's been hard but the people of DOA have been working hard at getting a communications network up."
Dave was shocked. "You're talking to other people? How are they? Where are they?"
"I should have worded that in a more subdued manner. All that we've achieved was to get a basic communication network up for the DOA members to use. It's just voice and only for for a hour or so at night. Its range is terrible. If you want to communicate a long distance then you have to send a message by word of mouth."
"Doesn't sound very secure and if you are relying on memory then there's a good chance that the message will get scrambled."
"I don't think that I'm been too arrogant when I say that the DOA people are some of the most trustworthy people around. If you wanted to send a message to someone on the other side of the country then you could trust the message to remain secret even though a few dozen DOA operatives would be involved. Obviously if you want a message delivered accurately then you'd keep the message short."
"How far can you communicate?"
"Honestly I don't know. I know that there are only a few DOA people scattered about this city and neighbouring area."
"That doesn't sound like too many."
"It gets a little messy when we try to communicate outside this city area. From what I gather there's one person north, one south and no one west. Oddly, there is someone east. It looks like they are on a boat, which explains how they survived. So we can sort of communicate outside this city region, but with just one person at either end I fear that it would be too easy to have an accident and lose them."
"Could you send some people to help."
"That would take people from the city area. We were understaffed before this happened, and we're in a woeful state now."
"Why are you telling me this? Shouldn't you keep it a secret so as to provide hope?"
"If I was talking to someone else, then I probably would keep it a secret. But I have another reason. Do you remember how I was talking about how we've been setting up a basic communication network? Although that communication network is a bit fragile at the moment, we've had some rather interesting discussions. You might be surprised to hear that a lot of those discussions are about you."
"I am surprised. And perplexed."
"I've said it before. The way that you're trying to understand what is going on is completely unique. Obviously our communication network isn't very big and the operatives within that network haven't really explored that much. But so far we've come up empty. You are the only person who even has a hint of a plan. To all of us in DOA this is very special."
Dave looked down at the tea cup in his hands. He gave the dregs a swirl. He then looked up at the sky as if trying to find some answers.
"I've just felt that I've been blown along by events," said Dave. "I can't possibly say that I was working to some sort of plan. I know that I realised that I've been a useless moron all my life and that only now am I motivated to do something about that. But I've not got any answers. I can't see the way forward. I still can't shake that sense of uselessness that is within me."
Jane nodded. "I've heard this about people in the middle of major historical events. When people are in the middle of a time that gets remembered in all the history books, those people often don't fully realise the significance of what they are doing. You're too caught up looking at trees to notice that there's a forest."
"Surely you're talking about people who are a part of something major. Like a soldier who is a part of a huge army. He goes and does something heroic and that becomes a turning point in that war. But if he hadn't been the hero he was still surrounded
by a whole army with other men who could have stepped into that role of hero had the original hero not been there."
"I know that you are the hero. Because you are the only person actually trying to do something, no matter how small you think your efforts might be. There is no army of alternatives."
"Come on," said Dave sitting back. "You are a part of DOA. It looks like DOA is the only organisation left in this country."
"That might be true, but DOA has an intentional structural defect that stops DOA from even trying to take control."
"What is the defect?"
"It's not really a fault. Oddly it's a feature."
Dave laughed. "I worked in software development. We'd use that phrase a lot."
Jane smiled. "DOA stands for Defenders Of Australia. It was understood that in order to truly defend this country that the organisation needed some sort of militia ability. And a militia could be misused to create a tyranny. To avoid such an outcome the DOA was stripped of all political leanings. If you had any political view point then you couldn't join the DOA. By keeping political motives out of the organisation it was hoped that the members of the DOA would always serve the people and do all that they could to protect them."
"That sounds challenging."
"It was. It really slowed down the hiring of staff and resulted in our weakened state right now. A surprisingly large proportion of DOA members survived to today, but since there were so few to begin with our numbers were just too insignificant to matter when we were needed the most."
"Earlier you were singing my praises. That just felt annoying. I've not achieved anything that deserves praise."
Jane grinned. "That's because it was a test."
"Huh?"
"Although we had decided to help you, this contact between you and me was a test. We wanted to see what happened if we stroked your ego. We were curious how you'd react."
"It was an odd test."
"Agreed. But what else could we do in times like this?"
"I still don't get what is going on?"
"We want you to join us."
Dave blinked. "Although I wouldn't consider myself political, I do have strong opinions. I'm not sure that I could be as neutral as you'd like."
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