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Stories from the Verse
Con Verse Lea
Chapter 39: Beam 136
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Takano 69
It was an unpleasant task, stripping guns and ammo from the bodies of the dead who had been left outside to fester overnight, but Beam wanted the bullets and wanted a few of the rifles as well, so he got Bron and Ashleigh to help. While he was doing this, though, he noticed something.
“Wait a minute,” he said, and he pulled one of his own bullets from his pocket to compare. “Dawn!” he called, and she responded immediately.
“Sir, yes, sir.”
“I think this is a forty-five caliber bullet. Would it work in my revolver?”
The girl examined it closely but briefly.
“Sir, yes, sir.”
Not that he doubted her, but just to be certain he loaded one into his revolver, aimed at the trees, and fired it. It had a bit more kick than the ones he was using, but didn’t seem to have any problems.
“Excellent. I guess we don’t have any other guns that would take them, other than the new rifles we’ve commandeered?”
“Sir, no, sir.”
“Thank you, Dawn. Everyone gather all the bullets you can find. They’re even more useful than I anticipated.”
That afternoon, after a light lunch, Beam arranged for them to get a bit of practice with the new rifles, firing into the trees. He said he’d set up targets another time, but for now he just wanted to know that they knew how to use them. Dawn fired her gun once, taking a branch off a tree rather cleanly, and went back to watch. It wasn’t much trouble for Bron, but that he was accustomed to the shotgun and was going to need to practice aiming. Ashleigh had never fired a long gun before, and it took some coaching for her to get the basics. Bob’s short arms weren’t adequate for such a weapon, so Beam excused him from the session.
For himself, he spent quite a while familiarizing himself with the gun and seeing what he could do with it. It was a bolt action rifle holding six bullets in the stock. He found it took him about six seconds to insert a bullet, and that to throw the bolt to clear the shell and load the next round, then aim and fire the gun took him about fifteen seconds. Obviously his revolver was faster, but the rifle clearly was more accurate at a longer distance and probably did more damage with the same bullets at close range. It would be a useful weapon, although he was going to need to practice with it.
It seemed likely that he would get that opportunity.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with twenty other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #465: Characters Wander. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
