Chapter 5

That evening at supper, I asked, “Ann, can you shoot a gun?”

“Yes, if you count a shotgun. I was a member of the local skeet club.”

“Oh, my God, that’s wonderful. Have you ever fired an automatic shotgun?”

“Well, yes, I did once. The club was invited to the Marine base, and we were given the opportunity to shoot the AA-12. But, I only did it that one time. Why do you ask?”

“I asked because we never go any place unarmed. It simply is too dangerous to do otherwise. We have encountered renegade humans already, and we could meet at any time whoever it was who put out the fog generators. I am issuing an AA-12 to everyone competent to use it. I also want you to learn to handle a pistol. At the minimum, you should use a 9 mm automatic, and a larger caliber if you can manage it. That is a requirement for remaining with us. If you want nothing to do with guns, then you will have to leave. How do you feel about that?”

“Oh, my God, I don’t want to leave now that I have found you. Yes, I will learn to use a pistol, and I will be happy to show you how well I can shoot a shotgun. When do you want to do that, and when do you want to start the lessons with the pistol? I have never shot at a person, but I am sure that I could if it meant protecting any of us.”

“We have a .22 automatic that you can start off with, and we can start that training tomorrow. Once you learn the basics, then it is just a matter of practicing. We’ll set up a crude shooting range for the .22 the first thing after breakfast. How fast you progress will depend entirely upon you.”

“That’s fine with me. I hate the thought of being defenseless.”

The next morning, Bob and I set up a shooting range with a backstop consisting of two layers of ¾-inch thick plywood and a salvaged mattress before and behind the plywood. That would be adequate for even a .22 Long Rifle cartridge. We will have to do better than that for a 9 mm cartridge or something larger.

It took us about 90 minutes to get that set up, and the training started. I went through the usual gun safety routine with Ann. Of course, since she was familiar with shooting a shotgun, I had no real work to do, except to point out where safety with the pistol differed from the requirements of the shotgun. She was taking her first shots within 45 minutes.

We concentrated on the two-handed grip. Later on, Ann could work on the one-handed grip if she wanted to. That was up to her. My God, that girl was a natural. By supper time, she had learned about all that the .22 could teach her. Tomorrow, we were going to a gunshop to find a suitable 9 mm pistol. Actually, I was thinking about switching to a Glock from a Beretta simply because of the greater supply, but the main thing was to find a pistol that Ann felt comfortable with.

While we were doing that, Bob and Joan would go to a junk yard to find a suitable piece of sheet steel to stop the 9 mm slugs. We figured that ¼-inch thickness should do well enough. Anything thicker was welcome, but I didn’t want to take a chance with anything thinner. We didn’t think that a very large piece was required because a person would be well skilled with the .22 before he or she was turned loose with a 9 mm.

We were able to find a Glock G19 GEN4 that was an excellent fit for Ann’s hand, and we picked up a full range of magazines. Of course, I also had her fitted for a crossdraw holster to wear at her waist. Her breasts were already large enough to make a shoulder holster a nuisance. While we were about it, we cleaned out the stock of .22, 9 mm, .45, and 12-gauge shells.

When we got home, Bob and Joan had re-configured the backstop for the shooting range, so Ann was able to begin right away practicing with her new toy. By the end of the week, Ann was an expert with that pistol at close range, 15 yards, and was ready to try for 35 yards. Anything farther than that was pretty much a waste of time. At the end of two weeks, I was sure that Ann was entirely competent to defend herself with the pistol. My only question was whether or not she could bring herself to shoot a human, and there was no way to practice that.

Ann did try my .45, but that gun was just too large for her to handle easily. The recoil was a real problem for her, so we decided to stick with the 9 mm. That pistol with hollowpoint ammunition should be all that she would need.

There was one problem that we had not yet conquered: what to do about drinking water. We had been using tap water for bathing and washing clothes, but we had been using bottled water from the supermarket for drinking. However, that supply was running short, and we needed a more reliable supply.

We discussed the problem and concluded that we needed a well. Several of the towns nearby had used driven pipes to go deep enough to tap artesian water, and we wanted to do the same. The water from that deep was safe enough for direct consumption, so we wanted to go that route.

Unfortunately, none of us knew how to do that, so we found a company that had been in that business and paid their shop a visit. We found the necessary equipment to drive in the pipe and a gracious plenty of pipe in stock. We were really lucky to find a complete set of instructions on how to plan such a well and how to use the equipment. The only catch was a minor one in that the machine that drove the pipe into the ground was gasoline-powered, but we could get that much gas without any difficulty.

We moved what we needed to the house and started work. We were slow because this was our first try, but we had running water after four days, so we had no serious complaints. It turned out that the major headache was in changing the house plumbing around. We had originally planned to split the use of water between the city water for washing and such and the artesian water for drinking, tooth brushing, and that sort of thing. However, when we considered how much water we were really going to use, we decided not to worry and just went 100% to the artesian water.

We were about to give up on the radio broadcasts because we had not heard anything for five weeks. Then it hit us pretty hard—we had three phone calls in one week. The first was a family of four with no husband around. The second was a pair of high school boys, and the third was a single man. That was more people than we could process in one day, so we decided to take them in the order that they had called.

We had to go into San Diego for the family of four, so we decided that Bob, Ann, and I would take the van to pick up the people. When we started out, we realized that we had made a mistake by not getting a lot of information with that first phone call. The mother had talked to Emma, and had sounded so desperate that Emma had let her sympathy get in the way of her brain. As a result, all we knew was that the woman was 34 years old and two of the children were in their early teens.

We had no experience with the city of San Diego, so we went in fully armed. We were afraid that we might encounter some renegades and were prepared to fight if we had to. We had the address we were headed for, but we did not realize until we were almost there that this was a very low income section of the city. Therefore, we were not surprised to find that the family we were meeting turned out to be Black. None of us thought of ourselves as being bigoted, so that fact was no more than an interesting, but unanticipated, observation.

The family consisted of Jenny, 34, La’Donna, 13, Nathaniel, 14, and Samson, 16. I will admit that I was guilty of stereotyping. I expected Samson to be a snotty bastard who was not going to let some damned honky tell him what to do. I was delighted to find out how wrong I was. Samson was a charmer and what looked to me to be a near genius, if he wasn’t actually one.