“Shotguns?” asked Mike.
“Those we have, mostly pumps. And three shotgun shell reloading machines.” Santee liked how Mike didn’t ask stupid questions like “Are you sure?” or “Where did you look?” Let the pros do their job and get out of the way. “The military calibers you asked me to look for, we have more of those than I thought. Mostly hunting rifles, .30-06 and .308. Also some .223 for the mouse guns.”
Frank murmured “Civilian M-16” to Mike, who nodded.
Santee continued. “Problem with the .223 is it’s a wimpy caliber, made to wound instead of kill, and we’ve only got a few of the rifles. Some miner got a couple of cases of .308 for his M-14, but he’d loaned the rifle to his brother in Pennsylvania, so we have an extra twenty-four hundred rounds for, well, anything that takes .308.” Santee didn’t know about Frank’s M-60 machine gun, possession of which was a felony (or would be in a few hundred years), but he suspected it from hints Frank had dropped. He’d let Frank handle that his own way.
“A bunch of .22 rimfire—rifles, pistols, and ammo. Maybe thirty thousand rounds. Still a drop in the bucket, and .22s won’t punch through any armor—good for small game, though. And then there’s one real oddball…”
He paused, and Mike and Frank looked at him expectantly. “You know that big, huge, ugly house those rich assholes own, out off the highway?” They nodded; the owners lived in Washington D.C. and had only visited occasionally. The house was scheduled to become public property when they had the time.
“Well, I had a hunch, and I got Eddie to sneak in through an upstairs window. They must have been planning one hell of a safari. I found this big motherfucker there.” He hauled out a gigantic bolt-action rifle, inlaid with gold leaf, with fancy hunting scenes engraved in the metal. “It’s in .577 T-Rex, which is another way of saying ‘You didn’t need that shoulder.’ It throws almost two ounces of bullet real fast. It’s meant to stop charging elephants. This sucker probably cost him twenty thousand bucks. He had over a hundred rounds of ammo, too. What the hell he expected to shoot in West Virginia is anyone’s guess.”
They looked over the rifle and its exquisite workmanship. Frank said, “Dude must have had a small peter,” which drew smiles from Mike and Santee.
“I don’t suppose we’ll have much use for it,” Santee said, shaking his head, “but it sure is something to behold.”
They discussed which guns to assign to various groups in the army and which to keep in reserve. It wasn’t much of a discussion because there weren’t all that many guns and most of their army was still unorganized and untrained.
Finally, Santee summed up. “Bottom line, here’s what we can do. We can shoot up all our ammo. We can also reload for most of the center-fire calibers we have. Only enough powder for twenty or thirty thousand rounds of rifle, and maybe that much pistol. Sounds like a lot, but you’ll have a lot of shooters, and you can only do so much with dry-fire practice. Then we go to the local black powder, if we can get it.” Frank and Mike nodded, they had thought of that themselves. “We lucked out with primers, I found a couple of cases of old ones in the back room at the hardware store, and they store pretty well. There are about fifty thousand there, and lots more in basements and workshops all around town. A bunch of folks around here reload; I’m trying to get all the spare equipment brought together so we can set up a reloading workshop. Bullets we can make from lead if we have to. But once those primers run out, that’s it. Flintlocks, if we live that long.” He looked disgusted. “I played with flintlocks once. They fired about eight, maybe nine times out of ten. Not good enough. Not fucking good enough.”
The others nodded soberly. He knew his report wasn’t too encouraging, but they’d have to make do. The alternative… well, there was none.
July 5, 1631
Eddie Cantrell was in the reloading shed, carefully pouring powder into brass rifle cases. It was a tedious, fussy job. Santee had been with him most of the afternoon but had gone outside to talk to Mike Stearns and Frank Jackson. The three were now standing in the shade outside the window, talking loudly.