Chapter 562

The Prison Planet

...”I did have a wonderful orgasm, well ... maybe a whole lot of them all stacked together before I passed out last night, not to mention your practically screwing me blind this morning with the girls watching. And ... as best I can remember, you seemed to enjoy yourself when you had me on my hands and knees.”

“As Jeff would say, ‘Damned straight,’ Woman,” Morales replied with a grin.

“Do you think they will ever learn to shoot well enough to be safe out here by themselves ... well, with the wolves as escorts, too, of course?” Morales asked his wife.

Jasmine shrugged, but with her cold-weather gear on, it didn’t show as they made their way back to the entrance. “No way to tell at this point. They have their degrees in engineering, so they’re intelligent, but they’ve lived in the city all their lives, and I assume, never had to fight for what they needed. Oh, I think we can teach them to shoot well enough, but will they stand their ground and accurately fire when something is charging them...”

“ ... or scream and try to run?” Morales continued for her.

Jasmine stopped and turned to him. “That saber-tooth certainly shook me. I wanted to turn and run, but I knew it would kill me in a second if I did. But... I don’t think I could have stood there and carefully aimed without you.”

“Blllaaattt,” Morales yelled loudly enough to startle Jasmine. “In case you didn’t recognize the noise, that was the bullshit horn. You put your round dead between his eyes.”

“Maybe so, but I’m still amazed that I didn’t pee on myself while that monster was charging us, the same for when the snow leopard charged us. My knowing that you would stand and fire, gave me the courage.”

“Well, if you were scared, you damn sure didn’t show it.” After a moment of thought, he went on. “Hmmm, I think we should go hunting soon.”

After their topic of discussion, Jasmine was astonished, to put it mildly. “What... Why? We have plenty of meat?” she demanded as she struggled to understand why he would say such a thing.

“Oh, the ice cave will keep the meat no matter how much we bring in, but that isn’t what I meant.” His expression changed, “There are just too damn many carnivores prowling around. For some reason, there seems to be more now than when I first came here.”

“I doubt that,” she said as she looked up at him, “but ... it might be that they have smelled us. You’ve been all over the area for months. We’re different – not from this world – and curiosity might have added to the mix, plus they might think we’re easy prey. I know that’s stretching things, but why else would there be an increase of carnivores in the area – if there is an increase. It might just be chance.”

“Whatever, but I’m getting tired of creeping out the entrance while trying to look in every direction at once. What say, once we have the girls trained, we set up a hunt?”

Jasmine frowned. “I don’t know, Baby. They are both quite intelligent. I think we can teach them to shoot – if we can get them past their nervousness around guns – but we won’t know how they’ll act under stress before it happens. Until we know for certain, we can’t fully trust them during an attack. There just isn’t any way to know before the fecal matter hits the air circulating medium.”

Morales chuckled. “Is that the doctoral version of when the shit hits the fan?” Before she could answer, “Agreed. Now, let’s go see what the Matthews sent – as if it isn’t obvious in that long box.”

Inside, the girls had put the box in front of their seats but had made no effort to open it.

“Hey, why didn’t you open the box?” Morales asked as he and Jasmine put their rifles in the racks and hung their coats up.

“We are just city girls, but with all the ammunition stacked nearby, even we have an idea of what’s in the box,” Ashley said with a worried look on her face. “Remember, though; we have been taught all of our lives to be afraid of guns and that was reinforced by some of our college professors, particularly when there was a shooting.”

“Then we’ll have to teach you to change that fear to respect,” Morales said as he opened the cardboard box and lifted out a beautiful display case that already contained two rifles. “Oh, good. It looks like they’re identical to ours,” he said as he watched the girls’ faces blanch.

“I think I’m jealous. The Matthews sent a display case for your rifles,” Jasmine remarked.

“That will be a great place to keep them, providing I can find a way to secure the case to the wall firmly enough to hold it in place. The cave wall in this area is mostly dirt, and while the pegs driven into the hard-packed dirt will easily support each of our rifles, I think I’ll need to bury my supports a lot deeper to hold the case and both of your rifles.”

Christine looked pleadingly to Jasmine. “I suppose they are wonderful weapons, but Ashley and I are still afraid of them, right, Ash?” Christine asked barely above a whisper while Ashley nodded her agreement.

“Well, politics aside, they’re a lifeline here. You should try killing one of those cats with a crossbow, not to mention a buffalo,” Morales groused. “That would make you very thankful for what’s in there,” he said while motioning. “Look,” he added while trying to speak in a reasonable tone, “It’s one thing to admire big, jungle cats at the zoo, but when they are out there with you and expecting you to be their next meal, well ... it isn’t the same thing. It becomes life and death.

“It’s this simple,” he continued as Jasmine moved to stand beside him, If you want to live, the two of you had better learn to shoot, not to mention quickly, accurately and without hesitation. Just imagine one of those big cats eating your partner there. Get a strong image and hold it in your mind as you look at the other person. Would you like to see her guts and blood spilling out as the cat eats her?”

“Easy, Baby,” Jasmine whispered into his ear. “They’re gonna upchuck if you keep going with that image.”

“Well, they need to hear it,” he insisted, not bothering to keep his voice down. “Look, Ladies, you know how much I love you, but Jas and I can’t watch your every move for the rest of our lives. You have to learn how to take care of yourselves and us. We have to take care of each other, and that means learning to shoot and to do it very well, indeed, if you expect to survive here. Seriously, these animals will kill you on sight.”

“We know that ... intellectually,” Ashley returned with tears in her eyes, “but it doesn’t stop us from being worried about shooting those guns. We’ve always been told that bad people carry guns and that there is no reason for good people to do so, that it just makes for more violence. Logically, we can understand what you’re saying, but please, just give us time to get used to the idea.”

“Ladies,” he said as he walked over to take the girls into his arms, then to kiss them on their cheeks, “why don’t I spread out a hide on the floor where we can all sit down while Jas and I explain the various parts and how they go together to make the rifles work? Maybe that will help with your fears.”

“We will, of course, work in gun safety while we’re doing it. Once you fully understand, you might not be quite as uncomfortable with them,” Jasmine offered.

“We don’t have to shoot them right now, do we?” Christine asked.

Both Jasmine and Morales chuckled before she turned back to the young women. “We have no intention of your firing the rifles without us giving you a full safety course to go with an understanding of what makes the rifles work. Neither of us wants to be shot in the back because one of you didn’t know to keep the muzzle pointed in a safe direction, your finger off the trigger and with the safety engaged.”

“But don’t they kick? I think that’s the right word, isn’t it?” Ashley asked.

Jasmine and Morales passed a glance. “I think you should answer that, Jas.”

“The answer is yes – with a big qualification. If you hold the weapon correctly, you will barely notice the recoil after you get used to firing the rifle. The first few times, while you’re still afraid of the kick, and you don’t put the stock firmly against your shoulder as we will have instructed, it will kick. Once you pay attention, mount the stock against your shoulder the way we’ll instruct you, and you get over worrying about the kick and focus on the target, you won’t even notice it.” Until you shoot fifty rounds practicing and your shoulder starts to ache. Not that my husband ever seems to notice.

“Note, Ladies, that Jasmine isn’t any bigger than you two, yet she shoots very well, indeed. To spell it out in a little different language, she outshoots the hell out of me.”

“Now that might be an exaggeration,” Jasmine returned with a grin. “We both hit the tiger in the head.”

“Yeah, at ten yards. And ... as usual, your bullet was a half second ahead of mine. At least I’m catching up a little, but we both know that my pattern at two hundred yards is twice the size of yours. Move that out to four hundred yards and half my rounds would miss completely.”

“I took my time,” she teased.

“I know that you’re teasing, but you always get your round off before I can, and I doubt that I’ll ever be as fast or as accurate as you are,” he said as he went for the hide they used as a soft surface to put their rifles on when they cleaned them.

Jasmine and Morales spent the next couple of hours explaining what the various parts of the rifles were and what they did, as well as teaching the young women to disassemble and reassemble the weapons, all the while working in their safety lectures. They taught them to properly clean and oil the rifles while getting in as much handling of the guns as they could while doing so.

As they were finishing with the cleaning, “What are those?” Morales asked his wife as he looked in the display case. There were two clear plastic packages containing what appeared to be two oddly colored .30-06 bullets in each.

“Something I wish I had when I was teaching you to shoot the rifle,” Jasmine said. “They’re Snap Caps. Dummy rounds that you can use to dry fire with. And we’re at that stage now, don’t you think?”

“Dry fire?” Christine asked with a frown.

“Practice rounds that you can chamber, sight and pull the trigger without having a live round to contend with. They should help get you over your fear of shooting the rifle.”

“Oh,” the girls said in unison while both of them thought that it would take a miracle to get them past their nervousness around guns.

Despite what they thought, the disassembling, cleaning of the various parts, and reassembling until they felt they could do it in the dark, had somewhat soothed the jangled nerves of the girls to the point that they could shoulder the rifles and look through the scopes without apparent worry. Eventually, Jasmine had her husband put a bucket farther into the cave with a lantern setting close enough to shed light on the target.

Jasmine showed Ashley and Christine some fired brass with the indentation the firing pin had left in the spent primer. She pointed out that with the snap caps, the firing pin would land on the fake primer which gave the pin something to hit, thus preventing damage to the firing mechanism. She reiterated that this would also allow them to practice squeezing the trigger while sighting, as well as giving them practice working the bolt to chamber another round without doing it with a live one.

Jeff had left a note with the rifles saying that he had sighted them in at 100 yards.

After the girls had worked the action of their rifle and dry fired at the bucket through many cycles while Jasmine coached them, Morales and the wolves left to go set up a couple of targets. When he returned, Jasmine, Ashley and Christine had a snack and coffee ready.

“We’ll only be going to the top of the hill, but that’s past where I shoveled, so you need to put your snowshoes on while we’re in the entranceway. I noticed that your snowshoes are new. Have either of you used snowshoes before?”

The girls passed a glance before Christine answered, “When we were in our teens, we did some hiking with a couple of boys we knew, but that was only for an afternoon. They were both too touchy-feely, and we didn’t date them again.”