by Joshua Gayou
“What was the status of the camp when you were last out there? I mean exactly?” I asked.
He considered my question for a moment and shrugged slightly before saying, “I could tell it’d been picked over a bit, if that’s what you mean. They was some areas all torn up, and such…others not so bad.”
“Did you see any field kitchens?”
“Not sure,” Otis said. “Saw a lot of tents and trucks.”
“It would have looked like a basic mess kitchen; stainless steel boxes, rolling racks with food…possibly inside a really large tent. It would be big enough to house several rows of tables and chairs.”
He perked up at the mention of the large tent. “We did see something like that. We just never went in it.”
“Amanda, did you ever eat in anything like that while you were there? Did you see such a tent?” asked Jake. Otis and I both looked at him confused; those tents would have been used by the military staff but the people under quarantine wouldn’t have been allowed anywhere near that area. They would have been kept in the sealed medical tents with their meals brought to them, as I had been during my own time in quarantine.
Amanda saw the confusion on our faces and explained, “Jake never stayed in a tent city.”
“How the hell did you avoid that?” I asked.
“Things fell apart pretty fast in my area,” he said without looking up from the map.
“The point is: there’s probably something like that out there, so keep an eye out,” said Amanda. “I kept to the outskirts with Lizzy. I was terrified that we’d be stopped and locked down if we got too deep toward the center. I wasn’t really myself then, either. I don’t remember a lot from then…”
“That’s fair enough,” I said, not wanting to work her up. She looked uncomfortable just thinking about it.
“Okay,” Jake said while pointing further south on the map, “your next stop is here. It’s just off the side of the 15 in the middle of nowhere with big, red letters on the front that say Barnes. They were an ammo supplier of some note from before. We loaded a vehicle full the last time we were there a few months ago and didn’t even scratch the surface. There’s so much in there, I don’t think you could get it all out, even with the truck and trailer together. Or, at least, there was.”
“Sounds good to me,” said Davidson. “Are there specific calibers that you want more of?”
“Everything,” Jake emphasized. “Grab everything. As much as you can. I suggest you use the entire truck bed for food and use the entire area of that trailer for ammo and weaponry.”
“Jesus, Jake,” whispered Otis. “You fixin’ to go to war with…who? Russia?”
“I’d like to avoid future trips like this for as long as possible,” Jake said. “Every time we send someone out, it’s a risk…a risk that seems to increase with the amount of distance travelled. You guys need to get out there, grab what you can as fast as you can, and get home.”
“What’s the total distance?” George asked.
“Well, that brings me to my next point,” Jake said. “If you guys cut the trip off here, that hundred gallon reserve tank will be enough to get the job done.”
“If we cut it off there,” I said. “You said you had designs on Vegas, though.”
Jake nodded and moved along to the more detailed Vegas city map. “I do. At this location…here, is a warehouse that was owned by a company called Botach. They had just about everything you could imagine there. Every kind of rifle, pistol, self-defense gear, you name it. It’s where we got those body armor vests you guys use. They even served law enforcement, so you’ll find riot gear there as well.”
“Won’t the place have been emptied out? That doesn’t sound like the kind of stuff that just gets left lying around,” Wang said.
“It’s off the beaten path in a nondescript warehouse,” Jake said. “It was the reason Billy made such a point of stopping by when we passed through that area. All the obvious places like outdoors outlets and such had been cleaned out but he theorized that a place like this,” he pointed at the map with his index card, “would have been relatively unknown. He was right too; we had to break the lock to get in.”
He leaned back from the table and crossed two thick arms across his chest. “It’s a risk versus reward thing. It’s quite a drive and there’s a real possibility that the place is empty when you arrive. On the other hand, it’s safe to assume that not many people knew about it before the world fell. Now, given the percentage of people who are gone, that number of people in the know becomes exceptionally small. There’s a good chance that place bears fruit.”
“Right. So we go to Vegas,” I said.
“Not necessarily,” Amanda interjected. Jake looked to be on the verge of saying something but held his silence. “You guys get to Barnes and then evaluate the situation at that time. If you’ve had a good run and you’re feeling okay about things, maybe you decide to head south. But if things have gotten bad out there…” She hesitated, looking down at an undetermined spot on the map. A hard line formed between her eyebrows and I was shocked to realize that she had become enraged. “Just come home if it looks bad.”
Jake let out a breath and said, “Absolutely. That’ll be your call.”
“So the Vegas trip is why we’ll load up the fifty-five gallon drum, I take it?” George asked.
“That’s right,” nodded Jake. Directing his attention to me, he said, “I want you guys to refuel from the drum first before tapping the reserve tank. When the drum is empty, leave it on the side of the road. That will get you more cargo space for the return trip.”
“Drive in shifts,” said Amanda. “You guys are never idle at any point. You’re either driving, refueling, or scavenging, understood?”
“Crap,” Wang said, sounding annoyed. “I’d hoped that was an exaggeration. We can’t stop to rest at any point? Like, at all?”
Jake and Amanda only stared at him, Jake’s expression flat while hers said, “You’re shitting me, right?”
“We don’t want to spare the space for a tent, anyway,” I said. “Don’t worry about it. You can rest all you want when we get home.”
Wang twirled his finger in the air and offered an unenthusiastic, “Hooray.”
“Gibs, I understand you’ve been looking into some things with Fred, is that right?” asked Jake.
“That’s affirmed. I was looking into armoring the truck.”
“Oh, shit. Nice!” Davidson laughed.
I continued on without slowing down, “We took some heavy fire getting out of Colorado. I’d say we got out lucky except for the fact that two of us were killed in the process. If we were lucky, it was only in the fact that our bus was shot full of holes and yet the only casualty taken was a minor crease to my arm. It happened once so it can obviously happen again. I’d like to hang some armor off that truck.”
“What would something like that take,” asked Jake.
“Some high grade steel plate, mostly,” I said. “Unfortunately, you can’t find a lot of that just laying around. The metal sheets that you can find up at Ace and some of those other hardware stores are no good. Even if you sandwich them together, a high powered round will punch right through.”
“There may be some other areas around here that we could check,” George said thoughtfully.
“No time,” I said. “Like we’ve all been saying; snows are just around the corner. We have a week to get ready.”
“Well, you wouldn’t bring this up if you didn’t have some idea, so…?” prompted Jake.
“That school bus has leaf springs,” I said, gesturing in the general direction where we left it out in the field. “We’ll jack it up, disassemble the axle, and pull them right off. Each leaf looks to be about a half inch thick or so. We can drill holes in the ends and mount them along the rear window of the truck on a frame that Fred will fabricate and bolt into the body.”
“Is there enough to cover the whole window?”
I thought for a minute and sai
d, “Eh, probably not, but that’s okay. We can leave gaps between each band. A bullet might find its way through but it’s unlikely.”
“And those bands will stop a bullet, huh?” Davidson asked.
“I think so,” I said. “Your basic rifle and pistol rounds, sure. It might dent or crack, I guess, but I don’t think they’d shatter. Fred was explaining about the kind of steel they’d have to use to make a leaf spring; how it would have to perform? I think it’ll do the job. Besides, I’m going to test it. Each leaf spring has a series of plates stacked on top of each other and the closer you get to the top of the stack, the smaller those plates get. The topmost plate is very small; damned near useless for armoring the truck. I’ll take that piece to the range and put some rounds into it before we devote too much time to this and see how it holds up.”
“Anything else?” Amanda asked.
“Yeah, I think I can make a kind of bullet stop to hang off the back of the trailer, too.”
Jake’s eyebrows rose. “Oh? Do you have enough leaf spring for that?”
“No, but that’s not what I want to use. I think I can make a barrier that will absorb a bullet’s energy and basically stop it; kind of a soft target. Only thing is that I need you guys to clear me running out to the home improvement store.”
“What do you need?” asked Jake.
“Ceramic tile, epoxy, and fiberglass fabric. Probably some metal sheeting and plywood as well.”
“What the hell are you going to do with that?” asked Wang.
“I think I can make something that functions like a Kevlar plate carrier,” I said. “I’ll start with a sheet of plywood, smear some epoxy over it, and then cover it in ceramic tile. Then some more epoxy, a couple of layers of fiberglass, a couple of layers of metal sheets, and then another sheet of plywood; basically make a big goddamn s’more. Clamp the hell out of it with a bunch of weight (we’ll basically stack a lot of heavy shit on it) and wait for it to dry. Once it does, you should have something that’ll either stop bullets or slow them way down, provided the bullets don’t hit a seam between the tiles.”
“And you want to make one big enough to span the back of the trailer?” asked Amanda, looking dubious.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “We’ll just stand it up against that ramp gate in the rear and secure it with strap ties.”
“How well would something like that work,” George asked. “Is it worth all that effort?”
“I believe it would stop at least a couple of 5.56 rounds to the same, exact location. More than that or higher caliber and we might have some problems. But I believe if there’s a chance it stops only a single bullet we should do it.”
“Agreed,” Jake said. “I don’t care if it holds you here past a week. Let’s risk the timeline to see that done. Divert both Fred and Oscar to help. Anyone else you need as well. Keep me up to date on progress, please.”
“Rah,” I said, almost by reflex, and double-timed it out of the cabin.
“Well, what do you think?”
I looked over to my right to see Fred, standing a few feet off from me and staring down range at the little hunk of metal that we’d balanced on a wooden stand. He idly wiped axle grease from his hands with an old rag before tucking it into his back pocket. That Darth Vader voice of his had floated out to me all muffled due to the ear protection I was wearing. He had a set as well, which looked almost comically small wrapped around that bucket head of his.
“One way to find out, I guess,” I said, and pulled the HK to my shoulder. I exhaled and squeezed, feeling it chug against my shoulder in time with the crack of the bullet, made almost apologetic by the earmuffs.
Off in the distance (I’d paced out about fifty yards), the little hunk of steel from the leaf spring pinged and tumbled into the air. It landed unceremoniously in the dirt a few feet away. I set my fire selector to safe and repositioned my earmuffs around my neck. From my peripheral vision, I saw Fred do the same.
“Well, let’s head over and see how it looks,” I said, praying that we didn’t just waste two and a half hours’ worth of time under that fucking bus.
As we approached, I noted that there wasn’t a hole anywhere in the wooden stand. Taking that as encouragement, I stooped to pick the plate up from the ground. There was a black smudge just left of center where the round impacted.
“That looks pretty good,” I muttered, rubbing my thumb over it.
“Did it deform at all?” Fred asked from behind me.
“Not by much. I can’t see it with my eyes but if you rub your finger over it I think you can just feel where it dimpled. I might be imagining it, actually.”
He took it from me and rubbed his thumb over the smudge. His eyes unfocused as he concentrated on detecting any imperfection in the surface, after which a slow, satisfied smile spread over his face. Looking down at me, he said, “I think we got something, here.”
“Can you drill that?” I asked.
“I’ll have to see what Jake has in the shop,” he said, turning the plate over in his hands. “If not, we have that torch. I can always cut a hole through. Be janky as hell, but it’ll work.”
We were collectively able to put such a focus on the Weaponized Ford project that my team was ready to go only four days after Jake originally announced the trip; that’s counting the modifications I ended up making to the ceramic armor we attached to the rear ramp of the trailer.
These modifications occurred (you might say they were “suggested”) when I was initially laying out all of the layers that would compose the armor sheet to plan how I was going to get the whole thing put together. I’d gotten my hands on several buckets of this two part Scotch-Weld stuff that was supposed to have a ninety minute work life, which sounds like plenty of time, but I was still concerned about how much area I had to cover. The folding gate off the rear was seven foot wide by five foot high. For you math whizzes, that meant I had to cover thirty-five square feet in two sheets of plywood, a bunch of ceramic tiles, a whole shit ton of fiberglass, and a few layers of sheet metal. The sheet metal itself wasn’t all that thick, honestly; it was thin enough to cut with tinsnips. I just wanted it there to add a little heft and to try to spread the shock out just a little bit more along the ceramic under layer.
I was just getting ready to crack the first epoxy bucket when Jake strolled up to see how I was getting along.
“How’s it going, Gibs?” he asked.
“We’re in good shape. Fred’s just about finished mounting the frame to the truck and the spring plates will go on after that. I’m getting ready to put this whole mess together.” I gestured at the various piles of material in the dirt.
“Will the frame hold, do you think?”
“You saw it, huh?”
Jake smiled and said, “Yeah. You have to admit it’s a bit ugly.”
“Well, Fred mentioned that the right way to do it would have been welded square tubing but we don’t have an arc welder, so he had to make due. Considering he just had the grinder, nuts, and bolts, I think it came out pretty well. You sure can’t flex it in any direction.”
“That’s good,” he said. “I didn’t have a chance to tug on it; I only saw it from a distance as I was coming over.”
“All that fugly will be hidden once the spring plates are mounted, anyway. It’ll look better.”
He had begun to walk among the different supplies as I spoke; stopping over the boxes of tile I laid out. “What size are these?”
“Something like twelve by twelve. I figured the big ones would be easier to arrange. Why?”
He scratched his chin before answering. “Do you think a large or a small tile would do better in spreading out the shock from a bullet impact?”
I looked down at the box and scratched my ass absentmindedly, feeling slightly shocked at his question. “Well…fuck, I don’t know, man. I’m just making this shit up as I go.”
“Well, do you think it would hurt to have a layer of both?”
Forcing back frustration, I a
sked, “Do we have a large selection of smaller tile lying around, Jake?”
“No.”
“Well, then yes, it would hurt my fucking feelings quite a bit to have to go back into Jackson and get a few more boxes of the tile.”
Jake raised his hands and said, “Okay, okay. Don’t get worked up. I was just asking. If you’re comfortable that this will be enough, I trust your judgement.” He put his hands in his pockets and ambled back up the path to the garage, presumably to piss in Fred’s ear, while I stood there fuming.
I looked at the first plywood sheet, followed by the epoxy, and finally the boxes of tile, trying to convince myself I was good with it. I almost succeeded before that deep, nagging, little bitch voice inside my head spoke up and said, “Another layer will only make it more effective, you know…”
“Goddamned, cock sucking, shit eating, smarmy little taint chewing, bent legged, knuckle dragging, dog fucking, Democrat, ball fondling…” is just a selection of the philosophical musings that spilled from my mouth as I walked up the hill to retrieve the keys to the Dodge as well as my rifle and rig.
Davidson happened by at the time, face fresh and completely pink from having just been shaved, which was a practice I’d noticed him observing with far greater frequency ever since his little dance with Rebecca; there were little patches of toilet paper stuck to his chin from where he’d cut himself. Seeing me lugging my gear, he said, “Hey, Gibs! Where you off to? I thought you were working the trailer this morning?”
“Damn it, Davidson, did you shave your face with a dick? There’s white everywhere!”
“I…what?” he asked. The poor kid had come to a dead stop and, I suspected, was in the process of mentally rebooting.
I sighed and wrestled myself back under control. “What I meant to say was to grab your shit. We have an unexpected shopping trip to make.”
“More tiles, huh?” he asked.
“What? How the hell did you know that?”
“I heard Jake mention something about it earlier. Said he’d ask you to thicken things…uh, are you okay?”