There was a lot of gear to sort through. There were more guns than they knew what to do with. There were backpacks and water bottles and protein bars and bags of food. Whoever these people had been, they’d been extremely prepared, not to mention armed to the teeth.
“Come on,” said John, standing up. “I don’t think any of this food is good. We’ve got plenty upstairs anyway.”
“Good,” said Cynthia, sighing. “This place gives me the creeps.”
“It’s just a basement. We’ve been through worse.”
Cynthia shrugged. John could just barely see her gesture in the flickering candlelight. Since he’d met her, her appearance had changed. She’d lost some of the extra weight she’d been carrying. Her body had become lean and more muscular. She looked attractive, wearing a t-shirt that fit her tightly. They’d found it, along with other clothes, in the farmhouse.
At first, it had been difficult to figure out what had happened at the farmhouse. John’s brother, Max, had definitely been there, along with Chad. John still couldn’t figure out what Chad was doing there. The only thing he could guess was that somehow Chad had wound up there accidentally. John couldn’t see Max and Chad hanging out. They were too different. But Max probably felt some protective instincts towards Chad, even though he was, as they all were, completely fed up with him.
Once John and Cynthia had finished sorting through all the things in the house, they’d started to see patterns. Not everything could have belonged to the dozen men they’d found dead in the farmhouse. For instance, there were women’s clothes, at least three sets. But there were no women’s bodies to be found. The only logical thing to think was that Max lived there with other people, three of them women and one of them Chad. Who they were, John had no idea.
But it seemed as if Max and the others had left. Possibly they’d fled the dozen dead men. Or possibly they’d left earlier, and then the farmhouse had been overtaken by these gun-slinging mercenary types.
Many of the dead men seemed to have been convicts, judging by the crude tattoos that covered their bodies when John and Cynthia undressed them before dragging their corpses into the woods.
“We can’t let anything go to waste,” John had said. “We might need all this stuff.”
“I know,” said Cynthia, as they were trying to tug the pants off of a completely stiff corpse. “But this is just too… intense.”
“We’re going to have to get used to it,” John had said. “There are going to be plenty more corpses.”
“You don’t need to tell me,” Cynthia had said, making John think of her husband’s dead body lying in the yard. That had been when they’d met, and he knew that the memory wouldn’t soon leave Cynthia.
John and Cynthia had taken everything they could find that was useful and put it in the large living room of the farmhouse. Finally, the farmhouse was starting to get organized. But it didn’t look like it. At the very least it was free of dead bodies, so far as they knew. The gear they’d found formed huge piles in the living room. They’d done their best to sort through it, separating things into piles of weapons, food, clothing, backpacks, first aid.
They had so much gear that they didn’t know what to do with it. Literally. Neither of them knew how to start a fire or shoot a gun. Cynthia knew a little bit about first aid, and John had enough common sense to know how to use a compass. But that was about it.
They’d been so hungry when they’d gotten to the farmhouse that they’d gorged themselves on the food they’d found. They’d eaten huge amounts of beef jerky. Their bodies had been craving animal protein. Finally, they’d had their fill of protein, and moved onto whatever sugary snacks they could find in the backpacks of the dead men.
“What do you think we should do?” said Cynthia, sitting down on the steps of the porch.
It was an all-too-common question. They must have asked each other the same question a dozen or so times each day.
And neither of them had an answer.
That was why they kept asking.
John, seated next to her, shrugged. He didn’t even bother saying “I don’t know.”
There were too many questions that hung over their heads.
The sun was shining. The “yard” of the farmhouse, if you could call it that, looked beautiful.
They didn’t know what month it was, but they knew fall was approaching. A couple of the trees had started to change their shade of green. The air had a bite to it at night, and the slightest chill crept into it during the day.
They remained silent for a long while.
Finally, John spoke. “I think we should see if there’s anybody else in the area.”
“Are you crazy? You mean more people like the ones we found in the house? Mercenary types? People with guns?”
John shook his head. “No,” he said. “I mean friendly people. People who can help us. And maybe we can help them. We’re going to need to team up with others if we’re going to defend the farmhouse.”
“So you think we should stay there, then?”
“What choice do we have? We have nowhere else to go and no way to get there.”
“Maybe we could find a car. You know, find a car and some gas.”
John shrugged. “Maybe,” he said. “That’ll be our backup plan. This place just seems too perfect in a lot of ways. And we’ve got all this gear. All these guns.”
“We need to figure out how to use those, by the way.”
“I know,” said John, nodding. “Have you ever shot a gun before?”
Cynthia shook her head. “Have you?”
“Nope. I mean, I’ve never had a problem with them or anything. I just never got around to it, I guess. I probably should have, though.”
“Same for me,” said Cynthia. “My brother used to go shooting with my dad as a kid. They invited me along, but I never wanted to go. It didn’t exactly fit in with my interests at the time.”
“Let’s start now,” said John. “We can learn. How hard could it be?”
“Right now?”
“We’ve waited too long, anyway,” said John. “And if we’re going to go exploring the area around here, we’d better be armed and we’d better know how to use the guns.”
Cynthia nodded. “OK,” she said.
They had an enormous stockpile of weapons left over from the dead men. There were a couple hunting rifles, some assault rifles, a shotgun, and about a dozen handguns, of all different types.
As far as identifying the guns, John and Cynthia were at a loss. They knew the basic types and not much else.
“I think this one is a revolver,” said Cynthia, picking up one of the pistols.
“Careful with that,” said John. “Make sure to keep it pointed away from anything you don’t want to shoot.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s OK. But we’ve got to be careful. We can’t deal with a gunshot wound.”
“Yeah, that’s the last thing we need.”
John regarded the gun Cynthia was holding. “I don’t think that’s a revolver,” he said. “Look, it loads from the bottom, not the side, like in those cowboy movies.”
“I want a revolver,” said Cynthia.
“What’s the difference?”
“I don’t know. It seems more ‘classic’ I guess.”
John laughed. It was the first time he’d laughed in a long time. “Still thinking about being stylish.”
Cynthia smiled at him. “Come on, let’s go shoot some cans in the yard or something.”
They took the guns and the ammo out into the field and spent some considerable time becoming familiar with them. They had to work off their instincts, common sense, and what they’d seen in the movies. They started off slow, just getting familiar with the handguns. They decided they’d leave what seemed like the more complicated guns for later.