Chapter 31: A Taste for Blood — Part 6

Aside: Nita at the Break, Part 2

Nita ties the horses off to a rusting guard post and walks through the broken glass front. Racks and cases of ruined rifles lay everywhere, the elements destroying them. The rust on them forces Nita’s eyes to focus elsewhere, and she is looking for a part of the building in which the roof is still standing and the elements have been kept in check. She heads into the storeroom, where she finds a recent shipment of perhaps thirty boxes, and pieces of one of the rifles at a metal table, now in disrepair due to the salt air. The remains of a man that had once been sitting on the stool, undoubtedly fixing the rifle, is now crumpled on the ground, mostly bones and dust retained by a shell of rotten clothes. She sees the parts of the rifle in construction and pauses. This isn’t the mechanism she is more familiar with: it isn’t a killing machine driven by an explosive mix of chemicals.

Careful not to upset the body on the floor, Nita reaches over and reads the manual, mouthing quietly, “PCP, 22 caliber, 450 fps . . . ” She frowns. It’s not the kind of power she wants, and it is only a single shot. Curious, Nita finds herself staring at the boxes just shipped in. Most of them are smaller caliber target pistols and rifles, as well as accessories. Toys, she thinks, dismissing them, starting to turn, until her eyes light on two boxes, set lower to the ground. The two are from Korea: “Career 707 ultra 9mm . . . and . . . Sam Yang Big Bore 909S” The specs are on the box. Nita’s mouth waters at the thought. The boxes are unharmed, the contents still sealed. An accessory pack in a separate box is waiting for each of them.

Nita lets out a hoot. She has found a nine-millimeter repeating rifle and a 50-millimeter single shot. Looking closer, she finds pistols marked at .22 caliber, and gets curious. The building is brick and looks sound, so she decides to get to work. The roof is solid over the store room, and her only companion, while eerie in its dark puddled outline, should be harmless, so she starts organizing brands, power and names, knowing she will have to load up the horses with ammunition and supplies, and knowing she will have a lot to learn about these new weapons with their incredible specs, so she can be certain to leave with everything she needs.

She’s already decided she’s taking the rifles, and so sets their boxes by the door. Now she begins to review the pistols. At first she is unimpressed. All the ones on top are targeting pistols, and nothing she can rely on to rattle a skull or stop a heart. Then she comes across Four Evanix Hunting Master, AR6 models, their handles sculpted with death in the design. The four are a quartet, the same caliber and style, all with a 1000 FPS capability, and as she holds them, her heart skips a couple of beats. Nita takes a moment to thank a number of Dieties of war, assassination, and protection for her find, and then gets down to the methodical process of ensuring that she knows everything about her new friends.

The night is spent loading weapons and setting sights, reading manuals, and applying her knowledge of gunsmithing to ensuring the ones she has chosen are ready to deliver when she leaves. The pellets for the weapons she has are all set up front, and Nita peruses the store, finding plastic containers of lead pellets, and then stops in a corner, smiling. Copper and brass pellets of every caliber have been set up in a new ‘green’ section. More expensive, she decides to take them in place of the lead ones, because she has plenty of copper wheat pennies in a jar at home, and she knows how to melt them down for pouring into molds. The pellets are all stored in plastic tins that remind Nita of tobacco. She then takes all the extra carbon fiber compressed air chambers in the store for her models, as well as every other part she can find. She finds the kind of sights she likes, and using the dead man’s tools, stool, and bench, Nita gets to work making new friends.

She’s finished setting up the pistols when she looks up and sees fifteen black binders all in a row, marked by company, brand and then by model. Her head tilts as she pulls three thin binders down and finds advanced technical notes for each of the weapons she has chosen. She looks back at the gunsmith, thanks him for his professionalism, and starts reading. She frowns first, and then smiles with what she finds, setting the pistols back out on the bench. Saving the Career 707 for last, Nita will have the weapons scoped and sighted, calibrated, modified to new specifications, tested, cleaned, and cased for riding. When she leaves, she will take with her six weapons and their respective cleaning kits, all the bench tools, every last package of copper ammo in the store, weatherproof cases for her weapons, as well as a list of accessories, spare parts, three specialized hand pumps, half a dozen carbon fiber tanks, and the three technical manuals for her weapons of choice.

She won’t stop smiling for hours.