Chapter 19

The next night, they went to the last three gun shops in town and took what they could find from there. They didn't see any cops this time, so they pondered what to do while they waited for the Canadians to show up. George thought that keeping pressure on the authorities was a good idea, so they decided that another raid like the last restaurant raid was appropriate. However, they decided that, for a little variety, they would go for a theater.

This theater had four emergency exits and a stage door, plus the front entrance, which was actually four doors which could all be opened at the same time. They decided to go all the way on this attack and include a bomb. George had seen the inside of theaters on TV, so he had some idea of the construction and layout. He decided to put a bomb in the front of the first balcony. That way, it would hit the audience, but likely miss anybody on stage.

A bomb was available, and a theater was running a Broadway play on tour. The presentation was scheduled to start at 8:00 PM, so they set the bomb to explode at 8:15. They knew nothing about the play, so they couldn't be sure when it would have an intermission, so they figured that they would take a chance on missing a few women who arrived late in order to catch the majority already in their seats.

They had no idea how to hide the bomb, so George decided to hide it in plain sight. He got a corrugated carton large enough to hold the bomb and planted it during the afternoon between the matinee and the night performance. He boldly stuck it down near the railing at the front of the balcony and in the middle of the center aisle. The women who were inconvenienced by the box would complain to each other, but would not deign to speak to the management or to one of the ushers.

They had some toluene left over from the previous raid, so they added that to the box and hoped for the best. This building had a metal roof and masonry walls, so George didn't know how much luck they would have in getting the building to burn. They might have to settle for what the bomb could do. Otto had his Molotov Cocktails along, but they didn't know how much use he could get from them.

Anyway, the rebels hid on adjacent roofs and waited for the bomb to go off. There was a very satisfactory bang when it did explode, so they enjoyed that, though they could hear nothing else from inside the theater. George didn't have much hope for the result, but he had coated the nails with the pepper extract on a just in case basis. He hoped for some luck with the nails, but he was not going to hold his breath.

They were really curious about what was going on inside the theater, but they had to wait for an amazingly long time before people tried to escape from the building. The opened doors belched a hell of a lot of smoke, and they shot at anybody they could see coming out of the building away from the stage. Near the stage, they waited until they could identify whether the escapees were actors or were patrons. At first, only actors came out, but then patrons started showing up, and they began shooting.

They had shot off about half their ammunition when fire trucks and cops started showing up. At that point, George ordered a change of targets and the city employees began to fall like hailstones. This was when George was able to use his Molotov Cocktails against the trucks and cop vehicles. Damn, George made a point to notice the return on investment one got from a Molotov Cocktail.

Some of the people escaped from the theater before it dawned on Otto to pitch his Molotov Cocktails at the doors. That got a reaction, all right. Nobody came outside through those doors for some time, though George, Nancy, and Lena were very busy at the front door.

The fact that the building failed to burn took some of the fun out of the game as far as George was concerned. He decided that they had wrung most of the fun out of this adventure and ordered everybody to retreat to the truck. They hurried home by a circuitous route, just in case, but they arrived home without any problems.

The next morning, they eagerly awaited news on the TV about their latest raid, and they were not disappointed. They had killed a number of wealthy women, either with the explosion and the nails or with the fire that did burn for a little while, but never really got started because of the nature of the materials used in the construction of the theater. Somebody should really be proud of her work.

They had killed 27 fire and police women and 22 civilians who had been shot trying to leave the theater. None of the cast or other workers in the theater had been injured. The big news was that the daughter of the governor had been badly burned by the toluene fire and might not live. They were surprised to find that Phoenix was the capital of the state, and the governor lived in the city. George just realized that he had not been aiming high enough by going after the mayor. No wonder the Governor was disturbed by the "minor civil disturbance."

Their latest foray was not as satisfying as George had hoped. They had simply picked the wrong target. He blamed himself for being too cocky and not working out the important details before picking at target or picking a mode of attack. The next question that he needed to answer was whether or not they dared to take on the National Guard. Well, they'd just stall around and wait until he could talk the situation over with John Hunter. George just hoped that John was up to the challenge. A little rest wouldn't hurt them, and it might actually do them a lot of good.

George suddenly remembered, "Oh, shit! We don't have enough beds or chairs or some of the other things we need. We have to go out tonight to pick them up before John's group gets here."

About that time, there was a knock on George's door. "George, come quick. There are two RVs parked at our loading dock!"

"Damn, Hunter must be here, already. Get everybody assembled in the dining room while I go down to let him in." George dashed down stairs and ran to the loading dock. He opened the door and found himself facing a man nearly as big as Otto, and looking twice as grim.

His voice was not threatening at all, though. "Hello, are you George? I'm John Hunter. We're a little bit early, I know, but I hope that you can take us in before we are spotted."

"Sure, come this way inside the building. We have plenty of space, so your RVs will be easy to park."

"Right! We'll get right to it." John raised his arm and waved for the RVs to follow him as he walked into the building.

George said, "Just pull in anywhere. We'll get sorted out later after you've had a chance to meet everybody." George held out his hand. "I'm sorry that I haven't taken the time to greet you properly. You just surprised me by getting here so quickly."

They shook hands, and John said, "Our trip through the desert was much easier than we expected. We saw absolutely no one since we got off the boat. I had heard about the drop in population in the USA, but I had no idea that it was so drastic. I was amazed at the number of abandoned houses that I saw."

"Yeah, I don't know if it was deliberate or an accident, but government policies have made the birth rate decline so much that it can't keep up with the death rate. That's one of the things we need to change, but I don't know what we can do, yet. Maybe you can advise us on that, too."

Three other men climbed down from the RVs and were introduced as Bill Jones, Bob McIntyre, and Jim Bonner. George led them to the dining room to meet the rest of his people. After the introductions and a short speech by John, the men were invited to join them for breakfast. The men were pleasantly surprised by the quality of the food they were served and praised it highly. John asked, "How do you manage to eat so well? We figured that you would be on tight rations."

George answered, "Oh, no. We eat quite well. I don't know how much longer it will last, but we have discovered a way to enter any store we wish without setting off alarms. Under normal circumstances, we can go into a grocery store and take anything we need or want. We do try to spread out our visits so that no one store gets hit so hard that they try to trap us. So far, we have been very lucky."