008: Final Preps

Ours are a bit better... maybe

12th of September, 2000
Steve:

Jimmy finished the more difficult parts of his chemistry experiments, stuff he didn't want us messing with. As far as heavy weapons go: We now have 47 fragmentation grenades and 30 satchel charges. Jimmy assures that fuses and detonators should be about as reliable as factory models... we'll see I suppose.

Caleb has been keeping himself busy with his machine tools. You know you've run out of useful things to do when your mechanic starts screwing suppressors onto every rifle you have. Even the old Remington Rolling Block got one.

Kate spent the last few days re-zeroing them. She doesn't entirely trust Caleb's modifications, nor does she like being forced to use Jimmy's questionable reloads for non-combat shooting, but it will help us avoid whatever passes for game wardens these days, and may even have some tactical uses.

It's a good thing all those grenades/pipebombs we made are roughly the same diameter. Caleb suggested sticking wood dowels on the end of them, sticking soup cans to the ends of our shotguns and using them as grenade launchers. Jimmy didn't like the idea of wooden dowels going down the barrel (potentially dangerous, causes barrel wear) but he did approve the soup-can launchers and now even our old breech-loading bird guns are militarily useful.

We fired off a few dummy rounds and the things seem to be accurate out to 100 meters. Shame we can't suppress them too.

[Caleb: We probably could, actually.]
[Kate: No.]
[Jimmy: Shotguns can indeed be suppressed; used to be legal and common for fowlers in Europe to do so. Grenades I'm not so sure about.]

Kate:
It's a good thing I keep our guns are in such good condition, because poorer-quality weapons wouldn't react well to that nasty stuff these people want to put in them.

Jimmy's smokeless powder… isn't. And he's still working out the kinks with his primer reloads, so duds are pretty common. As said earlier, the stuff is only good for target shooting and hunting, and even then I'd want a back-up weapon loaded with reliable, professionally-made ammunition (remember last time, with the coyotes?)

He spends most of his time in the ruins of the forge, working alone just in case the thinkable happens. When Caleb ain't helping, he's working on his own projects. Steve helps those two when he can, and Maria and me? We go fishing.

And hunting. Squirrel, pheasant, raccoon, the occasional deer. Thank God there's more in these woods than coyotes. It had been so long since we last had to eat any that I'd forgotten how awful it tastes.

We spent the last two days pretending to be migrant farm workers and helping our landlady and her grandkids (seems to be a lot more of them than I remember) cut hay. Jimmy didn't like it but Steve said that no one would connect two peasant girls with an insurgent movement. Yesterday, we even had some help from a bunch of county workers… some kind of new Civilian Conservation Corps thing. Or perhaps it's more like the Reichsarbeitsdienst.

Maria:

More like Reichsarbeitsdienst, I think. Interesting arrangement they had with landlady: offer to help could not be refused, and neither could payment for service. But then again, is that not nature of all government assistance?

A couple of the sheriff's deputies were working as guards (why does entirely-volunteer work program need guards?) and talking about how eventually all farm workers, all across the country, were to be registered under programs like this. Officially it's to weed out "illegals" and prevent abuses at hands of landowners, but more likely the UN is simply collectivizing the farm workers as prelude to collectivizing the farms. There was more talk, about how farm animals would also be registered, about how farm animals would be chipped and monitored… wonder if they make us bend over for branding iron, too?

In Afghanistan, every year the Soviets would declare rural areas to be free of insurgents, only to be driven from them as soon as the last harvests were in. Same thing as happened to the Americans in Vietnam. It took them years to realize that the insurgents had never left, merely disguised as harmless-looking laborers in the farms and villages, working jobs where they could come and go as they liked and would seldom be remembered. Our occupiers seem to be catching on quicker. Remains to be seen what they'll do after tomorrow.