Republic Firearms,
As William Taggart finally settled on a good infra-red (night vision) scope, he took the scope and rifle inside, pulled out a laser-boresight unit, and proceeded to replace his old Bushnell-scope. When just as suddenly he heard a noise overhead... a plane, the horse gave a few short noises, a bit frustrated that something was irritating its hasty sleep amidst a pile of disused T-shirts and other store-merchandise.
Peeking from a window with a pair of binoculars, he laboriously scanned the sky until he found the source of noise, a drone of some sort.
He kept note of it, as he continued to work unnoticed by his new mechanical visitor; soon, it would go away. Hopefully it would not bring a horde upon them.
With this, he resolved that he
must check-out the airfield, tonight; making himself ready to go out there on foot.
He would leave his greatcoat behind, and took only his Mosin (incl. bayonet), helmet, spotting-scope (no tripod), and utility belt of ammunition. He re-dressed the T-shirts he
repurposed into socks and placed the package into his shoes before wrapping similarly improvised puttees around his ankles to keep his legs dry and free of cuts or crawler-bites.
The 300 yard trek, much like the previous one, felt very claustrophobic in the dark; going more by sense of sound and touch than by his limited vision, much preferring not to rely on the newly-acquired technology unless he had to, as the scope was mounted to a rather ungainly full-length Mosin 91/30.
Finally he came to a pond, and knew the strip lay due-south of him as he checked the northern-sky for Polaris and the little-dipper. With his bearings secured, he bent low and began to stalk the airfield like it were a wild animal, ready to flee...
After about 200 paces, the trees thinned into scrubbery, the tarmac was in view, and the scrub continued for about 100 more paces along his right. Here, he also encountered a primitive fence; a new addition with dead walkers piled upon its entire length. A defense-perimeter.
Drawing his spotting-scope, he tried desperately to see what was happening be the control-tower. But to no avail... then he took out his rifle, and set it to passive... and the scope lit-up... indicating a plethora of IR-searchlights... Tracing them back, he could also see surveillance-radars and the fumes of a well-muffled generator. He turned off the scope and laid still for a bit, occasionally peering through the spotting-scope until he could see the doorway of an RV parked in the field open to briefly reveal its illuminated contents. A woman was being dragged out of it, he could not tell what was happening, but eventually he heard a shot... and then she went limp.
Now he knew he had to leave. These people had power, of almost every definition, and all of it was getting to their heads. If the drone was theirs, then they knew of the gun-store. If they had raided it already, they knew it had tools and plenty of easily finished firearms; if they had not already looted the place, they were going to ransack it for all its worth.
Carefuly, but with little time to lose, he backed into the treeline on his stomach until he felt comfortably far enough away to safely stand without betraying his presence. He then made back for the rails at a dead-sprint... but was suddenly confronted by a walker that had been stalking him. With little time to think, he clubbed it in the jawline and floored it to the mud with a pile-drive of the rifle-butt before turning his gun over and plunging the fifteen-inch bayonet through its rotten skull and giving it a good swirl to make mush of the insides before pulling-out and moving-on.
He reached the relative safety of the gunshop pretty easily afterwards, and gathered anything useful-looking into the carriage as his newfound equine companion whinnied as-though questioning what was the matter with him. William responded by beckoning the horse to stand and be hitched to the trailer. All the while trying his best not to show fear or panic.
They were just going-out for a midnight-stroll.
@ everyone, feel free to tell me to run into some random problems along the way.
