Chapter 16

MCLEAN, VIRGINIA

Infection Date 21, 2000 GMT (4:00 p.m. Local)

“W-T-F?” said Chloe. Noah cautioned his daughter on language. “They’re letters, dad. This is your surprise?” He’d given Natalie a Groupon for two spa days and picked the kids up from school. “A gun store?” Her thirteen-year-old brother, Jacob, looked ecstatic.

“We’re taking a little course,” Noah said, opening the tailgate of their new giant SUV. The rifle he handed his aghast daughter sagged in her grip. Chloe held it like a bomb awaiting defusing. They each carried their rifles inside. Their pistols were in Noah’s bug-out bag, and he also lugged the shotgun. “Dad?” Chloe whispered. “Have you gone nuts?”

Salesmen watched the news on a small TV even though the previously empty store was now full of shoppers. A small woman inspected a large shotgun. A man in hospital scrubs perused pistols under glass. Two pierced girls, hair shaved on one side and dyed pink on the other, nodded wide-eyed as a salesman demonstrated how to load their new rifle.

Noah’s Western-wear-clad salesman peeled away from the TV and ambushed Noah’s children. “It’s Miller time!” He apologized. “Lost some hearing in the Corps.”

Chloe glared at her father. On the walk to the back, the salesman asked Noah, “You followin’ that Chinese flu? Those customers back there don’t believe a word outa the president’s mouth. Think he’s coverin’ up some plague that turns people bloodthirsty. You were my first big customer, so I was wondering if maybe you know something?”

“Just what I see on TV,” Noah replied. Chloe looked at him, knowing he was lying. “But I think it’s gonna get bad,” he added, feeling guilty.

They stopped at a countertop and laid the imposing arsenal on a carpet remnant. The muffled sound of firing came from beyond a door labeled, “Range.” Chloe kept trying to get Noah’s attention. She had lots and lots of questions. The salesman fitted them with headphone-like over-ear protection and large, amber shooting glasses.

“No, thanks,” Chloe said, doing emergency repairs on her mussed hair. “Pass.”

“You’re doing this, Chloe,” Noah said. “It’s all paid for.”

“Does mom know you did this?” It was more threat than question.

“Shh,” Noah replied as the salesman led them into the firing range. There were half a dozen shooters at the dozen positions. Each used a cable to reel targets out and back in. A young man wearing a private security company jacket fired a revolver. A woman and her two daughters took turns with an antique double-barreled shotgun. A heavier man, probably a veteran, fired an AR-15 three times in rapid succession.

Chloe turned, “Okay!” and almost collided with Noah. “I know experiences are all the rage now, dad, and this one has great selfie potential, but I’m a no.”

“Chloe,” Noah reasoned, “I’m looking for things we can do as a family.”

“So you picked this?” she said at glass-breaking pitch.

“Humor me. Please. I’ll make it up to you. What do you want?”

“I wanta pierce my belly button.” Other than that. “A car at sixteen.”

“Done,” Noah said disingenuously. It will probably never happen.

They passed an elderly white couple with a hunting rifle, an African-American man with a daughter in a plaid school uniform loading a huge handgun, and a young Asian-American couple with a tiny automatic. They laid their weapons at their position.

Chloe joined the salesman and pretended to be attentive by nodding a lot.

“Why don’t we start the young lady on the Glock,” he said, instructing them on range safety amid intermittent shots from the others. “First rule is, always treat weapons like they’re ready to fire. Even if you just unloaded it, assume it’s loaded. Keep the barrel pointed downrange, or up at the sky, or down at the ground. Never swing the muzzle across anybody, ever, unless you plan to kill them.” Noah avoided Chloe’s urgent glance. The salesman displayed the empty pistol, pulled the slide back till it locked, released the slide with a clack, dry fired it, click, and returned the pistol to the table. The whole time, it never pointed anywhere but toward the targets.

Chloe whispered to Noah. “A nice car.”

The salesman showed Chloe, with Noah and Jacob watching, how to press 9mm rounds into a magazine. Twice she squealed, “Ow!” on pinching her thumb. She held her nail up to Noah and said, “Chipped,” as he filled his own magazine. Both kids had trouble loading the ninth and tenth rounds. “That spring’ll loosen up some,” the salesman said. “Ladies first.”

Chloe grew less cocky. Her glances at Noah were now more for reassurance than complaint. The salesman showed her how to seat the magazine firmly, grip the pistol in her right hand, and rest its heel atop her upturned left palm. At full extension, her toothpick-thin arms labored. She attentively followed the salesman’s instructions, carefully flicking the safety to fire by feel. Cringing, teeth bared, she finally said, “It’s not shooting.” The salesman told her to squeeze a little bit . . .

Bam!

Everyone but the salesman reacted. Chloe looked shocked, as if after an accident, then adopted a sickly smile. “Doin’ good,” her tutor said. “Nine more. Have at it.”

She fired again and again, grimacing more than aiming. The salesman reminded her to put the bull’s eye atop the pistol’s front post, and that post in the notch between the twin forks in the rear. Smokey casings rattled around the firing position and onto the floor. Finally, the slide locked in the rearward position.

“I think we hit paper there with those last couple,” the salesman said.

Chloe turned around and stuck her tongue out at Jacob, who noted that she’d only hit the paper, not the target on the paper. “You try it,” came Chloe’s retort.

Jacob, intimidated, did only slightly better. When Noah’s turn came, he was underwhelmed by the pistol’s minimal kick. The salesman called “hit” eight out of ten shots and reeled in the target, which was riddled with randomly spaced holes. Some were even inside the outermost “five ring,” the salesman called it. One had nicked a clothespin holding the paper, causing it to droop.

Noah gave both kids a pat on the back. The salesman said, “Good enough to scare ‘em away from your pond at least,” undermining a bit of Noah’s confidence.

“What pond?” Chloe asked. “We don’t have a . . .” Noah shushed her.

The salesman chose not to hear. Noah said, “What about the shotgun?”

“We’ll do that last,” the salesman replied, hoisting Chloe’s “AR,” he called it, onto its butt.

“Oh, no,” she said, her hands in a defensive stance. “No way, Jose . . . Nuh-uh.”

“I’ll shoot it!” Jacob said, gamely trying to regain his place in the family order.

“Chloe, come on,” urged Noah. “We have a deal.” She frowned as the salesman showed her how to load the magazine. Noah and Jacob filled their own magazines nonchalantly, as if boys naturally knew how to do such things. But they carefully monitored the instructions given to Chloe. For some reason, they only loaded twenty-seven rounds into thirty-round magazines. Chloe finished last, checked her nails, and cast a mock sneer at Noah as the salesman placed the rifle against her boney shoulder.

“It’s too heavy,” she said, unable to steady it. The salesman, who had sent the target twice as far downrange as for the pistol, had her rest her elbows on the counter. Chloe finally gave up aiming, closed both eyes and pulled the trigger.

Crack! Fire blazed from the muzzle. The whole thing—flash, blast, recoil—came and went in an instant. Only God knew where the bullet had gone. “You got a scope there, young lady. Simple crosshairs. Try ‘em out,” suggested the salesman.

She took more time, with the salesman telling her to breath in, let half her breath out, steady, steady. Crack! The salesman held a detached rifle scope up to his eye. “Hit!”

“Hah!” Chloe said to Jacob. But by the time she’d fired ten rounds, she rubbed her shoulder and announced she was done. With a little more goading, however, she squeezed off the seventeen remaining rounds, the last couple in the general vicinity of the target.

Even Jacob, for all his boyish thrill at shooting guns, appeared sickly after he’d emptied his magazine. He rolled his shoulder in circles as if to work out a kink.

Noah raised the smooth, cool plastic stock to his cheek. The range stank of spent gunpowder. The target looked large in the sight, but the crosshairs wobbled up, down, right, right, left, up, everywhere but the center. After he controlled his breathing better at the salesman’s direction, it was his pounding heart that threw his aim off with each pulse.

“Any day now,” Chloe said.

The next time the crosshairs passed the vicinity of the bull’s eye, Noah pulled hard. The recoil wasn’t as bad as he’d expected. Just a jerk against his shoulder. But his brand-new target remained intact. He squeezed off his second shot, which struck paper inside the five ring. “Hit!” More than half of his shots now scored. He got so good, in fact, that the salesman didn’t call “hit” if he missed the outermost ring.

Noah laid the rifle down, and the salesman reeled in the target. “Way to go, Dad!” Jacob said, high-fiving him. If that were an Infected, Noah thought, its torso would be a bloody pulp now. For some reason, however, that made him feel queasier.

The salesman forced his lips into a smile. Noah surmised from that that he might not be as good as he thought. “This is pretty short range inside, right?”

“In the Corps,” the salesman said, “we qualified at two and five hundred meters.”

“Meters?” Noah whistled. “How tiny is the target in the scope at those ranges?”

“Don’t know. We used open, iron sights, no scope.” Hmm, Noah thought. The salesman lifted the shotgun onto its butt.

“There’s no friggin’ way I’m shooting whatever that is,” Chloe said.

Noah urged her, but the salesman said she may be right. Even Jacob shook his head, so Noah stepped up. After getting Noah’s okay, the salesman used a tool dangling from his belt to unscrew a plug in the tubular magazine beneath the barrel and showed Noah how to load the shotgun. Noah pressed five rounds up into the tube with his thumb, the last couple requiring hard shoves. As instructed, he pumped the gun to chamber a round and gave Jacob a wink at the sound. He then filled the empty space left by the chambered shell.

“Five in the magazine,” the instructor said, “one in the chamber. You always—always—keep count of how many rounds you’ve fired, and how many are left.”

Noah raised the heavy gun to his sore shoulder. Chloe retreated and pressed on her ear protectors. Jacob joined her. Noah aimed at the target, which was at pistol range, and flicked the safety to fire. His heart pounded. BAM!

Flame exploded from the muzzle. “Hoooly shit!” Noah faintly heard Jacob say.

Noah felt jarred and out of sorts. He tried to fire a second time before realizing he hadn’t pumped the gun. Kerchunk. BAM! “Can I wait outside?” Chloe asked. Kerchunk. BAM! Kerchunk. BAM! Kerchunk. BAM! Kerchunk. BAM! Kerchunk. Click.

“Five in the mag, Dad,” Chloe said. “Plus one in the chamber makes six.” She stepped up. “I’ll shoot the thing. Once!”

The target and the clothespins had disappeared. The salesman hung a new target, sent it downrange, and loaded a round in the magazine with a slight smile on his face.

Chloe groaned dramatically on hoisting the shotgun to her shoulder. The salesman again had her rest her elbows on the carpet remnant. Wisps of smoke swirled at the shotgun’s muzzle and from the open ends of spent casings. BAM! “Owww!” Chloe laid the weapon down. “I’m thinking BMW,” she said on passing Noah.

“How ‘bout you, scout?” the salesman said to Jacob. He could hardly refuse. BAM!

Jacob too lay the weapon down immediately. “Hurts, huh?” Chloe asked. Jacob denied that he felt any trace of pain, so she poked at his sore spot and he slapped her hand.

“Helluva weapon,” the salesman pronounced. “Those Glocks put 340 foot-pounds of energy on a target. But that Remington packs 3,000 foot-pounds of stopping power.”

Chloe, ready to leave, was none too happy when the salesman had them attach holsters. “So that’s why we had to wear belts.” They holstered pistols and, with help, slung rifles across their chests in patrol carry and headed for the exit.

But it wasn’t an exit. The door lead into a cavernous, darkened metal building. Chloe looked at her father quizzically before entering. Two men wearing identical black pants bloused into combat boots, ear and eye protection, and black T-shirts emblazoned with the words Tactical Instructor, awaited them. “Fresh meat?” the older man asked.

“Daaad?” Chloe whispered plaintively.

“That was just the checkout,” the salesman explained. “This is the class. Four hours today, four tomorrow.” Even Jacob seemed uncertain. As Noah’s eyes adjusted to the gloom, he saw a maze built out of stacks of tires filled with dirt that leaked from holes.

“Young lady,” one black-clad man said, “this is one of the finest tactical training courses in the country. Over the next two sessions, you’re each gonna fire six hundred rounds with those Glocks, another six hundred with those ARs, and your dad’s gonna be icing his shoulder for a week after blasting away at pop-ups with that blunderbuss.”

“Daaad!” whined his daughter through bared teeth.

Noah took a deep breath. “BMW,” he offered. “Three Series. Late model year.”

“Fully loaded,” she countered. “Top-of-the-line stereo. Brand freakin’ new.”

Noah shook her hand. Chloe put her ear protectors on and said, “Okay, let’s shoot some stuff.”