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"It's not my rule anyway," Shari said with a shrug.
"Whatever," Cally replied. "You go
"Will it be safe?" Shari asked, looking at the odd little rifle in trepidation.
"Of course it will," Cally said. "The first thing to cover is range safety."
She ran through an abbreviated range safety briefing covering hearing protection, ensuring that the weapons were safed and cleared if anyone was to be downrange, keeping fingers off the triggers and always assuming a weapon was loaded. "The most important thing is that; never, ever point a gun, even an 'unloaded' gun, at anything you don't want destroyed. For the purposes of safety, every gun is loaded. Guns aren't evil magic; they're just tools for killing something at a distance. Treat them as useful, but dangerous tools, like a circular saw or a chainsaw, and you'll be fine."
She picked up the rifle and flicked on the laser sight; a tiny red dot settled on the cinderblock. "If not, this is what happens." Holding the weapon by her side, the dot barely shivering on the block, she opened fire.
The weapon was quiet: a series of pops like a distant, poorly tuned outboard motor. An outboard motor going very fast.
Wendy shook her head as the cinderblock disintegrated. The individual rounds were tiny, an individual .22 round was about as big around as a drinking straw. But the gun was spitting dozens of them in under a second and with negligible recoil; Wendy could see the rounds impacting in the haze of dust and the laser aiming point still wasn't moving.
After a few moments the bolt clicked on an empty chamber and Cally pulled the drum off, a single round falling into the dust at her feet, and replaced it. The cinderblock had been hammered into a pile of dust and chunks no larger than a thumb.
"It runs through its rounds in a jiffy," Cally noted, setting the weapon down. "And it's no good at any sort of range. But it's good in close, even against Posleen, and it's fun as heck to fire. However, if we're going to fire anything else, we need to put on our earmuffs."
Cally gestured to Wendy to hand over the Steyr then waved to Billy. "Your turn."
She jacked a round into the chamber and settled the weapon into his shoulder. "Left hand on the stock, right hand on the pistol grip, finger off the trigger," she continued, gently moving it away. "Safety is by your right thumb. Look through the rear ring, lay your cheek onto the stock and find the front sight and focus on it. Lay the top of the front sight on the target. Take a breath and let it out and when you're comfortable, slowly squeeze the trigger. Squeeze it gently; the shot should feel like a surprise."
Billy looked at her and nodded then leaned into the rifle, pulling it into his shoulder hard.
"Don't tense up so much," Cally said. "This is a bittly little .308 round. The recoil is not going to knock you on your ass."
Billy nodded again and slowly squeezed the trigger, putting a round into the center of the man-shaped target and knocking it down.
"Good," Cally said as he gri
Billy looked unhappy, but eventually shrugged and nodded. So Cally popped up the target.
The Posleen was twenty-five meters downrange, a cold shot for a rifle, and in line with where the human silhouette had been. Billy was so startled that his first round went high, but he quickly settled down and put the second one into the target area.
"You don't like Posleen, do you?" Cally asked. Billy shook his head.
"They die," she said with a grin. "You shoot 'em and they die. Fall down and go boom. The point is that you have to shoot 'em, and you have to shoot 'em before they shoot you. Now shoot it again."
They spent the next few hours on the range, eventually going back to the house for a picnic lunch, feeding the baby and more ammunition. All the children were permitted to fire something, even if it was the target air gun from the armory. After putting a couple of thousand rounds, combined, downrange, Cally called a halt.
"I think that's enough for one day," she said, taking a Sig-Sauer .40 from a reluctant Kelly; the six-year-old had just scored two bull's-eyes at twenty-five meters and was suitably awed with herself. "Maybe you guys can come back some time and we'll do some more. But I have to go make sure the pig hasn't caught on fire."
"That would be a shame," Wendy said. "I'm going to be hungry. And I'm sure the walkers are as well."
"Speaking of which, I wonder where they are?" Shari said.
From high on the mountains a resounding "Booom" echoed across the holler.
"Somewhere around Cache Four, it sounds like," Cally said.
"What was that?" Wendy asked.
"At a guess, Granpa's hand ca
"Is he all right?" Shari asked, shading her eyes against the glare to fruitlessly look up the mountain.
"Oh, yeah," Cally said, setting the kids to policing the brass. "If he wasn't you would have heard everyone else open up as well."
* * *
Papa O'Neal pointed down what appeared to be a sheer bluff about fifteen meters high then to a hickory sapling growing on the edge.
Looking closely, Mosovich could see where there was a worn patch on the trunk of the sapling. He nodded and gave the farmer a quizzical look.
Papa O'Neal smiled, shouldered his rifle and swung his feet out over the edge, dropping straight down.
Looking over the edge, it was clear now that there was a thin ledge below, upon which O'Neal was now perched. With a grin he ducked and disappeared into the mountain.
Mosovich shrugged and grabbed the tree, repeating the maneuver. He noted that O'Neal was now crouched in a cave opening, apparently prepared to catch the sergeant major should the likely event of his falling outward have occurred.
Mosovich shook his head at the local's grin and shuffled to the side; Mueller would have a tougher time than he did. Mueller, though, came down slightly more circumspectly, grasping a hand– and foothold on the wall and lowering himself carefully to the ledge. He then shuffled past O'Neal and deeper into the cave.
Elgars looked down the cliff and shrugged. She grabbed the tree and dropped, landing slightly off-balance. But before Mosovich or O'Neal could react, one hand reached up in a smooth slow-looking maneuver and grabbed a small protuberance between index finger and thumb, seizing the tiny handhold like a mechanical clamp. She slowly pulled herself vertical then ducked to enter the cave.
There was a short passageway, high enough at the center that a person could duckwalk through, and then the cave opened up and out to either side. On the right the roof sloped quickly down to the floor, bringing with it a trickle of water that collected in a small apparently man-made basin. On the left the wall was more vertical and the floor extended further back. At least, it seemed to; the actual left-hand wall was obscured with boxes.
There were metal and wood ammo boxes, plastic "rough tote" waterproof containers and even a few Galplas ACS grav-gun and grenade cases. There were also about a dozen cases of combat rations.
"It's not all ammo," Papa O'Neal said, going over and hauling down a long, low case that had "Ammo, 81mm, M256 HE" stamped on the side. The box turned out to contain several old style BDU combat uniforms, wrapped in plastic and packed with mothballs. "There's a full outfit, including combat load out, for a squad. And four days rations. Water?" he gestured to the pool. "And there are filters in one of the boxes."
"How many caches like this do you have?" Mosovich asked, shaking his head. "This is . . . Jesus, just the thought of the cost makes my teeth ache."