You Study Your Weapons

You wake early the next morning, well before the sun starts to come up, and start studying the weapons you found yesterday. The rifle you realize is a Colt AR-15. This is a lightweight, 5.56×45mm, magazine-fed, gas-operated semi-automatic rifle, or so the book says. There is also a shotgun, a .22 hunting rifle and seven pistols. You knew nothing about guns until a few weeks ago, but you realize to live in this new world you need to become an expert. The manual is a wealth of information and within a couple of hours you’ve learned to load, clean, and keep the weapon operating.

You wonder if the building has a basement. It would be a perfect place for a gun range as the noise would be suppressed by being underground. You look in on the girls who are just beginning to stir. “I’m heading downstairs for a bit. I want to find a basement we can use as a gun range.”

They both mumble at you so you head off. You step outside just as the sun is beginning to come up, the brightness of day coming swiftly. The world is quiet and you don’t hear, see or smell anything amiss. The building you just came out of looks as dead as the rest of the world. You head back inside and with a little searching find a door heading down into the darkness. You light the lantern and head down the stairs. The basement is mostly empty and has dirt walls on two sides. Perfect for what you want. Now you just need the girls to listen outside as you fire a gun and see how much noise it will make.

You head back upstairs and find them drinking some coffee and munching on energy bars. You grab a cup and bar and tell them how you have spent the last few hours.

“I want to learn how to shoot too,” says Tomi.

“Me too,” chimed in Grace.

“Yes, I want you both to become proficient. We should have someone on guard at night just in case. We all need to be able to defend ourselves from the evil mother-fuckers out there. I think we should keep a couple of cars stocked with food, weapons and ammo that we keep hidden nearby so we can get away quickly if we are found by the Colonel's men again. Let’s work during the day and then we can practice shooting tonight.”

Both girls agreed with him and they had their day planned.

“The next step is to locate any other survivors and find out if there's anyone alive that we can trust, or if everyone has become predators.”

“We already know the answer to that,” Tomi chimed in making her feelings known.