Free Aftermath by D. J. Molles Page B

a forty-mile buffer...just in case.
    This left them at 120 miles, or approximately a third of a tank.
    Which still meant they had to come up with at least twelve gallons.
    Coming up with a few five-gallon gas cans was the easy part. Almost everyone that had come to Camp Ryder in a vehicle had packed a few extra cans of gas and had since used them up. They now sat around as useless as their fuel-less cars. However, Harper felt that given the edgy climate of the camp, begging and borrowing from others would prove to be troublesome. As luck would have it, he knew of a supply shed around the back of the Ryder building. When the survivors had first made camp here, Harper had been tasked with looting everything inside the compound for useful supplies, and recalled the shed having a few empty gas cans.
    While Harper went to retrieve the gas cans, Bus met Lee at the rear of Harper’s old Nissan Frontier, which they planned to use for their gasoline-finding mission. Lee greeted the big man with a reserved smile and leaned against the side of the pickup’s bed. Bus carried with him an olive-green duffel, much like the stuff sack Lee had been issued in the army. Hopefully it contained something worth smiling about. “Turned up anything good?”
    Bus pulled the tailgate down and set the duffel on it. The bag made a heavy clank as it hit the rusty bed. “Well, it’s not an arsenal, but it’ll get the job done.”
    Lee peered into the truck bed as Bus opened the duffel and pulled out a Mossberg 500 shotgun, a Savage Axis in .308, a black revolver, and a small black pistol. Judging by the tiny bores of both the handguns, Lee correctly guessed that they were both .22 caliber.
    The Mossberg was a no-frills ass-beater, designed to put rounds down range and not much else. The tube held five rounds of 12-gauge ammunition, of which Bus had managed to scrape up ten rounds of buckshot.
    The Savage Axis was a reasonably accurate rifle chambered for an excellent man-killing round. The .308 caliber round was rated to take down any animal in North America, and that included humans. Bus had managed to score thirteen cartridges of .308 in mix-and-match brands. Most of them were “Full Metal Jacket,” but a few had little red ballistic tips. The FMJ’s were pretty standard issue, but the ballistic tips were designed to expand on impact, increasing trauma to the target.
    The revolver held eight .22 rounds, and the small pistol held ten. Of the ubiquitous .22 caliber, Bus had been able to gather fifty rounds. While the .22 wasn’t a show-stopper in terms of power, the cartridge was small enough that anyone could carry a massive amount of ammunition on them without truly weighing themselves down. In reality, while the round wouldn’t stop anything bigger than a squirrel past a hundred yards, in close-quarters it was known to have just enough power to get inside the body cavity, but not quite enough to get out, causing the projectile to ricochet around a bit and rearrange a few organs. The .22 caliber projectile was the same size projectile as in the 5.56 mm cartridge Lee used in his M4, just with much less oomph behind it.
    Bus slung the empty duffel over his shoulder. “Keep in mind, that’s what I was able to scrounge up, so don’t waste it all today when you guys go out to get your gas. Avoid a fight if you can.”
    Lee smiled. “Goes against my nature, but okay.”
    Harper came walking up lugging two red five-gallon fuel cans. He set them on the edge of the pickup’s bed and slid them in. He looked at the four firearms in front of him. “You choose your weapons already, Captain?”
    Lee gestured politely. “You first.”
    “ Okay,” Harper rubbed the back of his neck. “I’ll take the shotty and the pistol. You take the rifle and the revolver.”
    “ Sounds good.” Lee agreed.
    Bus had turned and was now looking out beyond the perimeter fence. There was about thirty yards of overgrown weeds that built up into old-growth forest with