This is a fictional story. All names, places, and viruses are used fictitiously. Resemblances to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events, past or present, are intentional.
If you haven’t read from the beginning, please start at Chapter 1 here.
***
Due Date: 119 days away
Our garage tended to be less of a home for vehicles and more of a storage unit for junk. We’d clear it out, a couple times a year maybe, but it always gathered clutter. We’d put stuff out there to donate to the Good Will, and it would somehow multiply every month. We ended up keeping other stuff out there too, just in case we ever needed it.
I remembered most of the tools, some of the decorations, hardly any of the toys.
Unfortunately, what I was trying to find fell in that last category.
I opened the side door and flicked on the light. It always felt like another bulb had burned out.
We had piles scattered across the floor, not to mention on the shelves around the sides. A random sheepskin, draped over who-knows-what, caught my attention in the middle of everything. To my right, I spotted the pile of pool inflatables, balancing precariously on a built-in shelf. Between me and the inflatables, our little BBQ grill. A friend bought it for us when Liz and I got married. It was meant for camping: small enough to fit in a passenger seat, if it was cleaned off. A set of tongs and spatulas leaned against it, along with what I was looking for.
Kenneth’s BB gun.
I picked it up, inspecting the muzzle.
I couldn’t remember if it had one of those orange plastic covers on it. It didn’t. And of course it wouldn’t, since it would actually shoot BBs.
Could this thing pass for a real firearm?
I had two considerations. One, could I use it to scare someone, in a pinch? With enough yelling, I felt like an unsuspecting person would rather believe it was real than take a chance it wasn’t. Two, could I actually do some damage with it as a weapon? That felt less certain. The sting of a BB could frighten someone off if they weren’t otherwise threatening, a trespasser in the backyard, for instance. If I tagged someone in the face, I might be able to take out an eye, or temporarily blind someone, especially if I hit them with multiple BBs in succession.
The problem with both of those, though, was if the enemy was armed. They might think it was real, or even take a few BBs to the face, and then pull a gun of their own and blow me away.
That seemed like a problem. Hence, the “in a pinch” qualification.
I held it up to my cheek with the stock pressed into my shoulder. Pointing it toward the opposite wall, I aimed at one of the saw handles hanging on the plywood there. It felt harder to line up the sights than I’d anticipated. In one quick motion, I switched to another target, a bolt on the garage door, trying to feel like I knew what I was doing. As I moved, I heard BBs slide inside the barrel. I lowered the gun to my hip.
“What are you doing?”
I spun around to see Kenneth coming out of the house toward me.
“Just… just checking out your BB gun,” I said.
“What for?”
I hadn’t planned on telling anyone.
“Oh, nothing,” I said. “I wanted to see if we could use it in case we got into a fire fight. Probably not a good idea, huh?”
He walked up beside me.
“You know it’s broken, right?”
I didn’t.
“The BBs don’t stay in.” With the gun still in my hands, he tilted the barrel toward the ground. BBs rolled out onto the floor. “I don’t know what happened to it.”
“Well, that answers that,” I said.
“You might be able to scare someone with it.”
He took the gun in his hands, pointed it straight up, and pumped the lever.
“That’s kind of scary,” he said. “Or beat someone with it. But you might break the stock.” He smiled. “It’s kind of cheap.”
“Let’s go with this instead. Seems better for beating someone.” I picked up an aluminum tee-ball bat propped in the same nook. “I always said this was the best option in a zombie apocalypse anyway.”
“What are you going to do with it?” he asked.
“Just bring it inside for now.”
“I’d still take a crossbow,” he said, and we headed back for the house.
