Scenario 7 (The Rifle)

[NorthernRaider]

Scenario 7 (The Rifle)

Dammit, Dammit, Dammit, he muttered under his breath as he searched by flashlight through the dark recesses of the sporting goods shop, there’s almost nothing I can use he said to himself.

"What good is a rifle or a shotgun without ammunition is something I should have paid more attention to years ago" he thought to himself.

The problem was the old one of what is the best choice in times of plenty, is not necessarily the right choice in times of strife. His .338 Sako was a great hunting rifle for stalking red deer, but it is not much use for fending off gangs of displaced refugees, especially as I can not source any more ammo. I should at the very least invested in a reloading machine. The problem was not helped by the fact that the only other gun he had was a pump action 20 Gauge shotgun also in desperate need of ammunition as well. After raiding a chemists shop and a Machine Mart for an assortment of tools including a hand cranked fuel lifting pump he headed back to his vehicle and set off the find a gas station that sill had some diesel he could lift for his vehicle.

After much map studying and endless driving around blocked roads littered with abandoned vehicles he found an agricultural supplies depot that had a huge tank of red agri diesel that had not been pilfered. He quickly snipped off the padlock securing the filler cap with a pair of bolt cutters and set too refilling his vehicle.
A neat find this vehicle was. It was a forestry service IVECO van converted to all wheel drive by Ferguson, and because it spent so much of its time in remote woodland it had also been fitted with twin 90 litre fuel tanks. With both tanks filled to the brim it gave him a range in excess of over 800 miles. But he needed more fuel capacity as much of his time he would be exploring out of the way rural locations looking for somewhere to set up as his new home, and looking for other survivalists to join him. So inside of the van his jerry rigged camp bed sat on top of a row of 12 x 5 gallon Jerry cans plus another four cans chained to the wide rear step at the back of the vehicle. This gave him a good range and safety margin for his expedition. Every time he rested his head he thought to himself “There’s no way on earth I would do this if I was carrying cans of petrol instead of diesel.”

By early evening he was back on the road looking for someplace to laager up for the night, he liked to be parked up before dark in case his running lights gave away his position to people with evil intentions. He also liked to be in place and settled down so he could look for lights from houses and buildings after dark in order to record places where other survivors could be living.

As dusk was falling he had found a somewhat slightly overgrown lay-by on the side of a road about 150 feet up the side of a hill, it was ideal to back the van into as it was almost completely obscured by vegetation from the main road. 40 minutes later after a bite to eat he decided on a quick walk around his rest place for the night to not only ensure it was safe, but in order to relieve himself of the 4 cans of Pepsi he had consumed earlier in the day (he no longer trusted tap water and had yet to find a good water filter).

Walking carefully along the lay-by until it rejoined the road he could see quite clearly that no smoke or fires could be seen nearby, but something was not quite right about the layout of the geography in front of him, something seemed not quite right. Walking along the road edge he realised that the foliage in one spot was different to the rest of the hedgerow, it was not as high and looked as if something had knocked it down at some point in the not to distant past.

Peering through the hedgerow perched about 40 ft down the slope was a power transmission pole, an 11 KV pole to be precise and rammed up against it in quite a bad way was a police car. He clambered through the hedge and work his way down to the vehicle which clearly had been going very fast when it left the road, were it not for bad luck the car would have probably careered down the slope for another 100 yards and got stuck in the hedge at the bottom. But unfortunately for the car and its occupants it had hit the power pole going from 70 to 0 mph in one second, airbags were no use in that crash.

When he reached the vehicle which was once a pristine POLICE 4x4 BMW X5 Estate car he could instantly see the two occupants were long dead, probably been there since the collapse that brought society down. He clambered over and around the vehicle out of curiosity and was just about to give up and go back to his vehicle when he noticed that one of the dead cops was wearing a tactical leg holster, empty but still a leg holster. This meant the vehicle was a Fire Arms Response Vehicle and this offered our survivor the chance of possibly some useful pickings.
Reaching through the side window he pulled the tailgate release then went to see what the trunk contained, he found a large metal locked box bolted to the floor of the vehicle along with other items such as flashlights, traffic cones, radios and assorted tactical kit. Using a flashlight he soon found the keys for the box as they were on the same ring as the cars keys thus still in the ignition.

On opening the box he found to his delight two 9 mm pistols and two 9 mm carbines, the pistols from SIG and the carbines from H&K. He also found 4 magazines for each weapon and 400 rounds of 9 mm ammunition plus cleaning kits. This was the security concern he had for his safety well and truly covered. He transported the weapons to his vehicle along with the tactical flashlights and spare batteries and spent the night getting use to handling his new found tools. He knew he would soon need to find how to strip, clean and maintain these weapons so at some point he would have to seek out the operators handbooks, but that could wait for now.

After a nights sleep he woke thinking that actually the 9 mm pistols were ideal for his close quarters protection but the carbines were actually of limited use ( but still a 100% better than throwing rocks) but the finding of the guns got him to thinking. Cops have 9 MM weapons, Soldiers on the other hand have 5.56 and 7.62 calibre weapons, and those would be ideal for long range security and hunting. What he needed to do was to find TA centres or military bases that were fitted with armouries, but NOT main large scales bases, and also some place that hopefully other survivors had not already raided. Thus with that thought our erstwhile survivor set off again in search of a safe haven to try and rebuild a life for himself.