you’ll are warned now the grammer and spelling will suck. I’ll try and keep the technical details stuff in check but you know how us gear junkies are.

Love to hear your thoughts. I’ll steal the good er – I’ll use the good ones …

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The ‘Old Gyrenes’ has selected interesting weapons as their standards. Auto Ordinance Thompson Carbines T1C models to be exact. They weighed a ton well a lot almost 12 lbs. w/o ammo but they figured they weren’t going too far these days. With it they had Auto Ordinance 1911s, plain Jane USGI models. They had other guns of course and even a few compound and cross bows but those were for either hunting or fun.

The advantage of the chosen weapons was only a single caliber of ammo was needed. Each man had at least two ammo cans full of Winchester White Box ball. Not little 30 cal ammo cans either, big honking 20 mm ones. Each had even more boxes of 230 gr round nose reloads, these had plated cast Berry’s bullets in them as a less expensive alternative to ball. Every man also had several little 30 cal ammo cans full of reloads topped with 180 grain cast lead Lyman Devastator bullets cast by the groups master caster Raphael also known as ‘Raf’ also known as ‘No Excuse First Sergeant!’. The bullets looked like flying ash cans, they functioned 100% through everyone’s Thompson carbines and 1911 pistols.

Casting bullets was not hard but casting hollow points was a bit of a black art. Raf was a master of it and liked nothing better to sit with a big pot of molten lead and Mr Rush Limbaugh on the radio and cast bullets. The bullets had proven themselves on one nice big doe, slightly afoul of the game laws but every scrap of the meat went into the freezer they rationalized. A solid body shot at 40 yards yielded a dead doe not 10 yards from where she stepped into the corn field. The bullet or boolit as casters called them had transformed itself into something that looked like a wad of bubble gum, fully three quarters of an inch across.

The center of the site was an old slip form concrete silo 20 feet wide and 50 feet tall. Inside the tower were platforms every 8 vertical feet. At the top was an observation platform of sorts. The very top was an aluminum dome. It had been modified with plexi-glass sky lights and a photo-voltaic cells. You could see quite a ways in all directions.


Next to the old silo was a 40 x 80 pole shed that used to be a cattle confinement system. It was the old style with a 4’ manure pit and concrete slat floor. The pit had been completely cleaned and now made a nice if low basement. The ‘cow barn’ as they called it had several semi transparent roof panels to let in light. The building was made to have lots of ventilation.

They all had diesel peekups (hat tip Mr J W Rawles) and diesel powered ATV’s. The trucks were older models restored by W03 ‘Wheels’ Dons. The ATV’s were a piece of brilliant work by ‘Wheels’. They were made by Polaris for the oil field trade so only one type of fuel would be needed in the oil camps. Polaris took orders and then made the vehicles in even number batches. Wheels , knew a guy and scored a few. They were slow compared to gas versions and a bitch to start in the winter. But they had power ….

There has a nice creek , the Duke Run, bisecting the property. In good years it flowed enough to have bull heads, channel catfish and Asian carp in it. The Knife River ran along the south boarder. The Knife was over flowing with Asian carp anymore.

The bug out went well Martin and his German Shepherd were up in the ‘the tower’. Max rather liked it up there. He had a choice of a dog style hammock or an orthopedic dog bed with a real sheep skin cover. Max was himself a retired Marine, granted he was a dog and had lost a leg to an IED in Afghanistan. Just now Max was supervising from the hammock. “You’d have made a good split tail officer you worthless mutt.” Growled Martin. Max came over and sat looking up. Martin pulled a hunk of jerky from his pocket bit off a hunk and gave the rest to Max who carried it back to the hammock and munched happily.

Martin was getting tired. He’d been up all night playing with various radios and scanning the horizon for lights. He was relatively sure most of his radios had survived but with all the static how could he tell? The sky was overcast so he couldn’t tell if there was air traffic overhead or not. He’d not heard any far off train whistles. The buddy heater had warmed the lookout to the point he took off his outer coat. A cup of super coco sounded good. He wasn’t sure where Phil got the stuff but it was darn good. It came in a green miliaryish Mylar bag. Inside the bag looked like an oversized portion of normal instant coco mix but this stuff was different it had the caffeine of two strong cups of coffee, B vitamins, 20 grams of egg based protein plus some crazy acid ammo or amino acid or something to keep alert. It really did the trick and didn’t even seem to make you need to pee like coffee. It could even be mixed with just a little cold water to form a sort of pudding. He put water in a canteen cup in front of the buddy heater to warm.

Cup of super coco in hand he went back to scanning the country side. It was ****ty outside, 35 raining and wind. The insulation they had put onto the walls was well worth the effort now. Doing anything with ‘building’ that was round as a doughnut was a PITA. He opened a container and
Tossed Max an extra-large dog bone.

Off in the distance he thought he saw …

Well, I would like to read more...





TriumphRider