Chapter 6

MCLEAN, VIRGINIA

Infection Date 11, 1300 GMT (9:00 a.m. Local)

Noah dressed for work listening to TV in the large suburban home he’d bought four years earlier when, at thirty-five, he came into his trust fund. The brick, columned house was too big for their family of four, but they’d outgrown the three-bedroom Georgetown townhouse. Natalie had wanted to have kids while young, reasoning she could more easily regain her figure in her twenties. She had gotten pregnant with Chloe after graduating from college and while Noah was still in law school. He had to admit her plan had worked.

Natalie, in a short robe, put her coffee down to straighten his tie and pluck at his hair. He pulled her against him. Her taut back and slender butt felt great under silk.

“Easy there, cowboy,” she said, twisting free, but coyly. “You’re in the doghouse.”

“For what?” he asked.

“For something I’m sure you’ve done,” she hung the robe on its hook and was naked, “but I haven’t found out yet.” She was beautiful, with a perfect body. One in ten thousand. She stepped into a thong. “Oh come on! That was funny, Noah. You never laugh at my jokes!”

Our match, Noah thought, only made sense when me having money mattered. What happens when how well you fight and hunt and fish are better measures of a man?

“And in international news, major unrest has broken out in Heilongjiang Province, China.” Noah raced to the small set in the master bath. “Before all Internet access was cut,” the picture switched to a violent street scene, “a citizen posted this video from Fuyuan, which has since been taken down by authorities.” The video was grainy, shaky, and taken from a distance. But the poor quality did nothing to diminish the obvious ferocity of the mob that overran the police, or of its result—security troops dropping riot shields and batons and fleeing for their lives. “The crowd reportedly carried no banners and made no demands before suddenly launching an unprovoked attack on police. No explanation was given for the violence by the blogger, who referred to the rioters by the Chinese character that means treacherous person, evil spirit, or demon.”

“So you’ll remember to pick up the lamp?” said Natalie as she headed for the closet wearing only her thong. “Noah? Noah!” She crossed her arms over her breasts to reduce the distraction. “Honestly, we need separate bathrooms. Remember the lamp?”

“Oh yeah,” he said. “Sure.” He had totally forgotten. “It’s at, uhm, . . . ?”

“No-ah! I’ll text you the address . . . again.” Natalie would survive, Noah realized, on some combination of her physical fitness and men doing absolutely anything she wants.

Before leaving, Noah stopped at his laptop in the study. One post translated the Chinese character repeatedly used by the anonymous blogger mentioned on TV as fiend, as in hyperbolic reports such as “The black-eyed fiends tore the policemen to pieces!”

Noah was perplexed at feeling a strange sense of relief. Isabel was right about the impending doom. He took a deep breath, then typed his new search.

* * * *

“You here to buy a gun?” asked the salesman at Big Jimmy’s Gun Store. He was skinny, had a pencil-thin mustache, and wore a Western-style shirt, big belt buckle, jeans, and cowboy boots. His baseball hat read: Work Hard—Millions on Welfare Are Depending on You. His eyeglasses had darkened in the sun and not quite cleared.

Noah nodded self-consciously but concluded that he wasn’t being judged, at least outwardly. They went over a federal form. Noah answered background questions and supplied his social security number. “They’ll do an online check while we chat.”

Noah said, “Good. Good. I’d like to look at a few things.”

“And what kinds of things would those be?”

“Uhm, firearms,” replied Noah.

“Well you’ve come to the right place, sir. Any particular type?” When Noah said all types, the guy suppressed a grin. “Then let’s take an overview, shall we?” He walked Noah through the store, saying, “We’ll come back to shotguns,” as they passed glass cases filled with brutish-looking, thick-barreled weapons. The prices rose from $200 to $400 in the bypassed shotgun section, to $500 to $1,200 in the pistol section, despite the latter’s smaller size. The salesman’s commission presumably rose commensurately.

“Glooocks,” the man said too loudly, though no one looked their way. Noah reminded himself that this was legal, ethical, moral even. Second Amendment and all. A case displayed the full line. “Low maintenance, high reliability. Nine millimeter is where it’s at in ammo. Now an aficionado such as yourself might say 9mm lacks stopping power, but that was your daddy’s nine-mil. Today, you’ve got yer 147-grain Speer Gold Dot G2. Hollow point, elastomer tip in the cavity. The FBI, which is the fashion setter in these matters, left the 9mm back in ’86 and tried the 10mm and .40 caliber before scientifically concluding they were way too damned heavy and coming full circle back to nines. The upgraded ammo penetrates deep to get at vital organs. And you’ll never run out of good ole NATO nine by nineteen Parabellum.” Noah nodded but had no idea what the man had said.

The coolest-looking gun was the Glock 26. “The Baby Glock!” the salesman said, noticing Noah’s interest. “Subcompact. A pound-and-a-half loaded. That’s half-a-pound lighter than a .40-caliber Glock 22, and nine-mil is more shootable. Less recoil means faster rate of fire. I wouldn’t go any smaller on mag capacity. Ten rounds in a Glock sure beats a five-shot revolver. But the Glock’s double-stack mag makes it thicker and less concealable than a revolver or a five-shot single-stack automatic. Some like revolvers ‘cause there’s less fear of a snag, but the Glock has an internal hammer and draws smooth.”

The Gen 4 cost $500. “I’ll take two,” Noah said. The kids? “No, four.” The salesman smiled. Two dozen empty mags—$40 each. Fifty bucks for each belt holster.

The salesman almost shouted, “Next stop—black guns!” He swept his arm forward as if leading a column of troops.

Noah astutely but nervously noted, “Almost every gun here is black.”

The salesman lowered his voice respectfully. “Assault weapons.”

“Would I need those,” Noah asked, “I mean, if I already have the pistols?”

“You know what they say. A pistol is what you use to fight your way to your rifle. That’d be your primary weapon, right? Among your long guns?”

“Uhm, yeah.” Sounded right. “Among my long guns. But I might, ya know, I guess, carry a pistol, like, around the house.” That sounded unsafe. “We’ve got a big backyard, out in the country, with a . . . a pond and everything,” he lied, thinking on his feet.

“Sounds beautiful. And I bet you wanta keep that pond safe, do you not, sir?”

“Yep. Now that you mention it, I’m concerned about, ya know, crime.”

“And so your targets will be human?” the salesman asked. Noah failed to summon a response to such a question. “I mean you’re not hunting, or sport shooting, or competition shooting, or even plinking at tin cans or rodents. You’d be shooting people?”

Noah shrugged, but finally nodded. “Criminal types,” he clarified.

“Of course, damn them all! But knowing what you’re trying to shoot matters. If some angel-dust-crazed home invader charges at you from your bedroom door, you get one shot. One. You want him to go down right there, not a couple blocks away when he bleeds out after causing God knows what mayhem . . . at your pond and whatnot. But use a big gun on a bothersome squirrel and it makes a mess. You match the gun to the target.”

Noah was nodding like a bobble-head doll. He should be taking notes.

“Long guns. Five-point-five-six-millimeter, AR-15-style, twenty-eight-inch barrel so you can reach out and touch people. It’s considered bad form to bring a pistol to a rifle fight. And like nine-mil ammo, there’s a never-ending supply of five-five-six. Ammo’s the real cost of a weapon. If you shoot a few thousands rounds a year to stay proficient—which you can do right here at our air conditioned indoor range—you’ll spend ten times as much on ammo as on the gun over its life. Stick with NATO-spec, 5.56 by 45 mil.”

Noah pointed at one. “A beaut. Telescoping stock.” He slid it to full extension and handed the rifle to Noah. It was heavier than he’d imagined. It looked plastic but felt and smelled metallic. The salesman seated it firmly against Noah’s shoulder. “Hard up in the hollow. Keep that butt plate from poundin’ on you. It bruises and it wrecks your aim.”

Noah quickly handed the rifle back, but said, “I’ll take it.”

“Would that be four, then?” the salesman asked, grinning at his joke.

It was expensive, and therefore presumably among the best. “Five, actually.” He had forgotten about Isabel joining them. Isabel? “And make it five Glocks, etc., too.”

“Yessir.” The guy saluted crisply. “The family that shoots together, stays together.” And lives, Noah thought. It was $880 per rifle, before options. The salesman explained the Picatinny rail system on the foregrip, which encased what would be a hot barrel, onto which you could attach goodies. Small, powerful flashlights for $120. “Five please, plus five spare batteries.” A giant thermal imager costing $5,000. “No, thanks. Well, maybe one.”

Five bipods with bayonet mounts—$30 each. Ditto the vertical foregrips, which with the bipod added a full pound to the five and a half pounds of the base rifle. Another $38 per for M7 bayonets and $12 for M10 scabbards.

Brass catchers might come in handy for reloads. Fifteen bucks each. He’d seen tactical slings that hold rifles at the ready across your chest in war coverage. Only $30 a pop. Same price as starter scopes, but he upgraded all of them to the $90 model.

Noah balked at $600 for laser-aim pointers but changed his mind and bought five. Next, five bug-out bags, each with three pouches, holding six mags plus room for extra gear, for $65 apiece. “In woodlands camo,” Noah chose from his color options.

Fifty empty thirty-round AR-15 magazines, which Noah sensed from the salesman’s reaction might be too many, at $25 apiece. Next, ammo. In boxes of fifty, the 9mm pistol ammunition came to almost $0.75 per round. Noah revised his order up, and up again, buying fifty boxes—2,500 rounds. Then for only fifty cents more, at $1.25 per round, Noah bought five huge boxes of 5.56 x 45 NATO-spec rifle ammo—5,000 rounds.

He worried about going to excess when two new salesmen began assembling his order. The tour led back to shotguns. “Maybe I’ve got enough. Five pistols? Five rifles?”

The salesman picked up a pump-action shotgun. “What have we learned so far? Do we want obscure types of ammo?” Noah shook his head. “So, in scatter guns, we go twelve-gauge, the Big Mac of shotgun ammo. Always available and, well, it’s a shotgun.”

Noah could only guess that the shotgun packed a higher order magnitude of wallop.

“Your basic choice,” the salesman said, “is semi-auto versus pump.”

Noah tried to compose an intelligent question. “What, uhm, are the differences?”

The salesman grinned. “Wellsir, the semis are newer auto-loading technology. Most people consider pumps more reliable, but the semis are catching up. The semis do, though, require more pampering and cleaning. The gas blow-back holes in the piston assembly get gunked up. And they’re also more expensive.”

“So which would you suggest?” Noah asked, certain it was the more expensive gun with the higher commission.

“If it was me, protectin’ my pond, I’d go pump.” Noah had guessed wrong. “In confined space, a shotgun is game over. Nobody stands in against a determined shotgun shooter. Plus, there’s this.” Holding the gun one-handed by the ribbed foregrip, he pumped it—kerchunk. Noah was sold the instant he heard the sound. Mechanical. Serious. “If that don’t do the trick, say your intruder is of the aforementioned angel-dust variety, then this is what you’d call a one-shot stop.” Noah chuckled—it sounded like a play on “one-stop shop”—but the salesman didn’t get it. “I gotta warn ya, though, clean-up’s a bitch.”

A trickle of nervous sweat ran cold down Noah’s side. His choice came down to the Remington 870 and Mossberg 500. Both cost only $325, identical pricing indicating head-to-head competition. He went with the Remington, which was configured slightly cooler with a pistol grip, sling, and flashlight.

“Great choice. Bottom-loading, side-ejecting, internal hammer. Magazine holds four rounds, five if you’re not hunting and you unscrew the plug, plus one in the chamber.” A thousand rounds of personal defense loads cost $1.50 each.

He was pleased, until the bill arrived. $31,458! Shit. Natalie is gonna freak! But that was nothing, he rationalized, compared to the millions he’d committed to converting the Old Place into a fortified, self-sufficient compound, and the millions more in cash still sitting in his brokerage account that might soon be rendered worthless.

Noah’s passport, which he had thought to bring, provided proof of his age, residency and, for the assault rifle purchase, citizenship. The sale of multiple firearms would have to be reported to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, but they wouldn’t do anything, the salesman assured him. He also informed Noah he had passed his National Instant Criminal Background Check while shopping.

“Have you thought about our gun courses?” came the man’s final act of salesmanship.