Chapter 17 #2
“It’ll protect you,” he said. “There’s a rebreather in there, integrated with the lining of the coat. Filtration system, too, and a water supply. With this on you could time jump into the middle of an acid-rain shower or a nerve-gas attack and be fine.”
“You think that’s likely?”
“Which one, the acid storm or the nerve-gas attack? Who knows? That’s why we’re doing this, to prepare for anything.”
“I don’t know. If I appear like this, dressed like an extra out of Thunderdome, people are going to freak out, right?”
“Thunderdome?”
“Never mind.”
“Well, whatever. Any way you dice it, you’ll freak them out popping into existence in front of them. Might as well be prepared for whatever you pop into.”
I sighed, nodded, and tried the helmet on.
He gave me boots, too, thick black things that strapped themselves around my shins and ankles. Then he gave me a backpack full of even more survival items. It was heavy, but once it was strapped on, the balance across my back was just right.
“How’s it feel?” he asked, his voice distant and muffled by the helmet.
“Heavy. And hot.”
“Try this,” he said. He opened the flap of my coat and touched something. A flexible electronic pad lit up and he tapped a command. The clothing cooled around me.
“Wow,” I said.
“It’s an integrated system, designed for broad exposure levels and controlled via the overcoat. CCTs wear these in places like Siberia and Syria, which are about as far apart in terms of outside conditions as you can get.”
I fiddled with the little pad. It was intuitive, just a few button presses to set the temperature. I switched the system off and tugged off the helmet. “CCT?”
“California Counter Terrorism. Our contribution to the ongoing War on Everyone.” He helped me take off the backpack, coat, and tactical vest and had me sit on the couch as he dragged over a coffee table.
He placed the backpack next to the table and set the heavy gray box with the rounded corners in front of me. “A couple more things.”
“Such as?”
“Guns.” He popped the gray box open and pulled out a black pistol. It was smooth, sleek, and deadly looking, all sweeping lines and harsh angles. “This is a Merovingian SD-4, made in Lyon.”
“France?”
“Yep. It’s the DDM’s standard-issue sidearm.
Reinforced body. Seven millimeter with fully automatic capability.
Fires ultrahigh-velocity chemical-propelled rounds.
” He turned it over and tapped the end of the barrel with one finger.
“Integrated sound suppressor and muzzle brake, both pretty much a must with the chem rounds. It’s still noisy and kicks like a horse, but it’ll knock down anything short of a rhinoceros. ”
“Are there any of those left?”
“Rhinos? Not outside a zoo.” He turned the pistol again and pressed a button on the side.
A long box fell out of the grip and into his waiting hand.
“Magazine holds twenty-four rounds. The seven-millimeter slugs are small, but they have such a high muzzle velocity, they hit like sledgehammers. I filled your magazines with alternating bullet types. Explosive and AP.”
I sat there for a long moment, staring at the gun and my militarized son. “AP?”
“Sorry. Armor piercing.” He slapped the magazine back into the grip and handed it to me. “It’s not primed yet, and the safety’s on. Just feel the weight for a minute.”
“Jesus.” It was heavy, too heavy for its modest size, but finely balanced. The grip had a soft, slightly sticky material on it, and it felt comfortable in my hand. Distressingly comfortable.
“Have you ever fired a gun before?” Lyle asked.
“Um. Yeah, yeah, your grand—your great-grandfather liked guns. Loved guns. Drove your great-grandma crazy. He took me to the range a couple times when I was younger, before college. It’s been a while, though, and I was never a good shot…” I trailed off and looked up. “God, Lyle. You think this—”
“It’s necessary.” He turned and opened the backpack.
“We don’t know anything about where you’re going or what you’ll be jumping into.
The world’s fucked right now, and it’s getting worse.
Tomorrow morning you’ll jump almost forty-five years forward, and you could end up in the middle of a war, for all we know.
You have to be able to defend yourself. We’ll go out back and do some target practice.
” He pulled a rectangular box out of the backpack.
It was about the size and shape of a tall hardcover book, but solid.
The outside was crisscrossed with faint diagonal and straight lines, like etchings.
I realized, watching him, that there was more Lyle was leaving unsaid.
He didn’t know if he would be around the next time I jumped forward.
He was already fifty-one years old. That, in part, was what he was preparing me for.
Not having him there to help me. Nudging, carefully, at even the broadest contours of this idea made my heart clench.
The world without Lyle seemed inconceivable.
Lyle was watching me. Expecting my attention. I took a breath. “Lyle. I don’t know if I can shoot someone.”
“You might surprise yourself. But let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. Maybe you’ll jump into a paradise, where all the crass bullshit of the last couple millennia will finally be sorted out and everyone will be dancing and eating lollipops all day.”
I let out a half laugh, half cough.
Lyle held up the box. “This is an Afrikaner Model K-1 hunting rifle.”
“Really?”
“Watch close.” Lyle held the box in both hands, glanced up to make sure I was looking, and started moving his fingers.
He twisted and pulled, and the box came apart, unfolding and extending.
Within seconds I recognized the distinctive shape of a rifle, and after a few more seconds, Lyle snapped the last few components around and into place and held up the gun for my inspection.
It was small and almost skeletal in its appearance, like the bones of an actual rifle.
But it had a stock, a barrel, obvious handgrips, and a trigger.
“Fires seven-mil chem rounds. Same as the SD-4. The pistol, I mean. I did that on purpose to keep things simple and have only one bullet type to worry about.”
I took it gingerly. I put the stock against my shoulder and looked through the scope, out the wide windows of the living room and over the evergreen-covered landscape beyond.
Lyle reached over and flicked something.
Numbers and readouts popped up on the view.
I was facing west-southwest, the barrel at a six-degree decline, and the tree between the crosshairs was one hundred sixty-three meters away.
A little readout told me the crosshairs had adjusted for bullet drop, but wind speed could not be determined. “Wow.”
“It’s an accurate little thing. With the chem rounds you should be able to take down anything from a rabbit to a bear if you have to.
Just watch the kick. The rifle is so light there’s very little compensation, so it’ll hit your shoulder hard.
If you don’t hold it tight to your shoulder, it’ll kick the scope right into your eye. ”
“This is for hunting?”
“Primarily. At least, that’s what I envisioned. Again, preparing for anything.”
I handed him back the rifle and looked around at the various pieces of equipment, the SD-4 pistol, the rifle, the overcoat and tactical vest, the pants and defense shirt I still wore. “How much did this all cost you?”
He coughed. “Thing is, Dad, a lot of this stuff isn’t strictly legal.”
Jesus, Lyle. I almost said it. That urge to father, to scold, even this version of my son who was fourteen years older than I was. He was a grown man. He’d made hard decisions to do what he thought was necessary to protect me. But I couldn’t just turn off my worry for him.
He saw the look on my face. “It’s okay. There’s a big market for this stuff, for survivalists and people who think the world’s heading straight into a fiery Armageddon.
It’s not hard to get your hands on it if you’re discreet and talk to the right people.
And the price, well, I do just fine for myself. Don’t worry about that.”
I made a noncommittal sound.
“Come on. You need to learn how to do this.” He started working the parts of the rifle, changing it back into an innocuous gray box. I sighed, leaned forward, and watched.
“Okay, Dad. Remember, breathe slow, focus on the forward dot, and let the target blur. Feel your heartbeat. Let your breath half out, then squeeze, don’t pull, the trigger.”
I concentrated, holding the sleek pistol in both hands, feet apart like Lyle had shown me, aiming at a piece of firewood he’d set on a log behind the cabin.
I was in full regalia: vest, overcoat, boots, even the helmet.
More realistic that way, Lyle told me. I needed to get used to it all.
I let my breath out, feeling my heart. The little neon-green dot at the end of the barrel bobbed between the two closer dots on the rear sights.
I lined up the three dots on the firewood fifteen paces away.
I squeezed the trigger.
The pistol barked and jumped in my hand, white-hot gas bursting in a flash from the barrel and disappearing. A fleeting impression of an explosion. The firewood split and jumped back, a sliver of wood flipping up into the air.
“Good. That’s much better. You hit it that time.”
“Thanks,” I muttered.
“You’re still tracking a little to the left. That was an AP round. The next will be explosive.”
“Right.”
I moved the pistol to the next piece of firewood sitting on the log. I repeated the process, walking mentally through each step Lyle described. This time the firewood disappeared in a cloud of dust and fragments of smoking wood. The heavy pop of the explosion drifted back to us.
“Nice, almost dead center.” Lyle clapped me on the shoulder. “You’re no Darrel McKnight, but for someone with just a few hours’ practice you’re doing great.”