by Laer Carroll
"Actually, Brandon, the gentleman's question is a valid one. Let me see if I've got it right. I heard you say 'I'd like to know how that little girl would do shooting a real man's gun.' Did I get that right?"
She said it almost straight-faced, but with a wicked gleam in her eye. The people near the two men who had heard what he had really said burst out in laughter. The rest of the people in the tent and those spilling out of its shadow looked puzzled.
Martha, who rarely missed anything, was frowning at Camo Man. "Crockett, I can't believe you said that. You better hope I say nothing about this to your mother."
Meanwhile Sasha had bent and taken her Practical Pistol case from under the podium. Sitting it on the table she unlocked it while the room buzzed with conversation, those close to the action passing it on to the less-informed. Laughter swept away from the two men in a widening circle. It left behind it people watching her, wondering what she would do next.
She took her time to let everyone get up to speed, while taking out a pair of butterfly holsters and stringing them onto her belt, one to each side. She tripped the lock on each open to receive pistols. Those she removed one at a time, pointed them downrange, and racked the slides open to a locked position. She showed each to the audience to let them know they were unloaded, according to range rule: wear OK, loaded not.
"These are both .45 automatics. For target and practical shooting I've read that middle-weight lead balls are best to minimize shatter off of the target. I think Crockett here, who is so interested in what real men do, would agree that one or two of those would slow down a man of even Crockett's, erh, sturdy proportions."
Everyone laughed, even the victim of her joke. He carried more than a little extra weight.
It seemed as if the older she got the more she appreciated her mother's wisdom. A defeated enemy well-treated may come to identify with their victor. They may even brag how ferocious their victor is, since only such an enemy could have defeated themselves. With warnings to watch out for exceptions.
"This—" she hefted one weapon so they could see it better. "—is a Glock off-the-shelf. It's tolerances are tight enough to be used in matches. This—" She hefted the other. "Is an ISL Premium Grade Colt 1911-inspired weapon, with little extra touches up the ying-yang, as my brother Brandon would elegantly put it." She got laughter at that, and approving glances for her brother from not a few women.
"It's also match grade. But with tolerances to let it handle the dirt of practical situations."
She holstered the weapons with a flourish, clicking the locks on the paddle holsters closed. She could now do acrobatics and the pistols would stay put, but a finger's press would loose them for a draw.
She gazed out at the audience. They were wholly caught. The men and not a few women by the twin appeals of a lightly and tightly clad pretty woman and deadly weapons. The women (and not a few men) proud to see one of her sex so gloriously competing with men.
"If you're wondering why I brought these guns, and bought them, I've been thinking lately—" (that being just a second ago) "—of getting a degree in criminology in college and joining a police force, maybe the FBI. Today I'm thinking of participating in the Practical Pistol shoot. Maybe my old pal Crockett here could give me a few pointers when I do. Maybe even show me how it is done."
He nodded back sheepishly.
"Meanwhile, we've still got twenty minutes of our session on Olympic Pistol. All of you who came here just to see Crime-buster Canaro get out of here. The rest of you who want some pointers while we do a bit of shooting, come on up here where Martha and Linda can get you situated. Quick, now!"
She clapped her hands sharply and turned to Martha. That worthy woman was already giving her own commands and the tent's occupants hurried to do her bidding.
At the hour the firing stopped and people began to leave the tent, thanking Martha and Linda and Sasha as they went.
Martha said, "Good job, Sasha. And thanks for treating Crockett so gently. I like his mother and am hoping some of his edges will rub off soon."
Brandon said, "If they don't someone will rub them off him."
Martha continued, "Linda and I have to stay at the tent till noon. We'll be relieved then. Suppose we grab a bite to eat at the open-air cafeteria. It's food is not too bad this year."
"Because Martha got onto the organizers for that," Linda said. She and Brandon were watching each other more than their two companions. Sasha wondered if anything would come of it. They were near the same age and compatible in a number of ways.
"See you then." She and her brother walked away to browse the many product tables.
A little before noon Sasha and Brandon wandered into the long tent that covered the food area. A dozen vendors of fast food had set up ad hoc shop on one of the two long sides. Long fold-up tables covered the sawdust-covered remainder of the shade. At regular intervals on the other long side large green plastic garbage cans stood, their interiors covered by huge black plastic garbage bags.
Waving arms from one table in the middle of the room turned out to belong to their two friends. Sasha and Brandon left their gun carry cases with them and separated to get the food of their choice. Hers was a huge pizza covered in every condiment available and two large fruit drinks. His was an equally large bowl of beef bourguignon stew with rolls and a pitcher of ice water.
Martha eyed Sasha's pizza, then her trim muscled waist. "Are you eating for two, baby girl?" She was nibbling on a salad.
Sasha sat and laid out her food and drink, using it as cover for thought.
Too many of the changes in herself after her resurrection were visible. She had to have some explanation. And one that suggested the changes had begun long many months ago.
"You're pregnant? Who's the unlucky guy?" Brandon's face took on a look of wide-eyed innocence.
Sasha turned toward him and used her free hand to punch him none-too-lightly in his closest bicep. She turned back to Martha.
"I've had another growth spurt. Starting maybe a year ago. Then a few months ago I had an accident and went into a coma. That's where I got this." She bit into a slice of pizza, tapping the hair on a side of her head and the skin on one of her cheeks with two fingers of her free hand.
"The growth came with extra speed and strength, but I have to eat more."
"What are you now?" said Linda. She was finishing a burrito and Pepsi and had finished several more burritos earlier to judge by the debris on her plate.
"Little over five ten."
"Good thing you switched out of gymnastics." Tiny Linda knew all about the square-cube law and how it affected agility.
"Yeah. At five six I could have still competed, but even then it was getting hard to do the spins and rotations. But enough about me. It's getting boring. "
"You can say that again," her always supportive older brother volunteered.
She gave him The Look. He managed heroically not to shudder.
Martha, it turned out, had gone into event planning several years ago. Sasha knew this, but not Brandon nor, apparently, Linda.
"I've got three people working for me full-time and a couple dozen temps I can call on. For bigger events—" She gave an all-inclusive gesture at the tent. "—I can subcontract."
"With good results," Brandon said, lifting his nearly empty bowl of beef bourguignon. "How did you get to know Martha?" he asked his sister.
"She was my first skeet and trap instructor. Helped me pick my first shotgun."
Martha said, "How's your game now?"
Sasha polished the first of her two quart soft drinks. "No one even comes close to me."
Martha raised a skeptical eyebrow.
"Come to the Tactical Shotgun free-for-all and see for yourself. I signed up for it online and talked to the lead organizer over the phone to get a waiver for the safety meeting. It turned out they knew me from the World Cup competitions."
Brandon turned to Linda. "Sasha placed several seconds and thirds and one first."
Linda nodded. She had said little but listened with great interest to Martha and Linda.
Martha looked closely at her. "You feeling all right, baby girl?"
"Never better, luv. Don't fuss."
Martha looked at Sasha and Brandon. "Linda had chemotherapy last year, and has boosters every few months. They think they got it all."
Sasha had detected Linda's cancer earlier and commanded the woman's body to become perfectly healthy. Now she laid a hand on Linda's wrist and leaned toward her with a concerned look as she used this action as a cover to check underneath.
The last of the cancer had been dealt with and would never recur. Nor would any other illness. The scourging of the cancer had left Linda a bit weak and euphoric.
Sasha released her friend's wrist and leaned back. She healed mostly by commanding the body of her "patients" to heal itself using its natural resources. In emergencies some of her shapechanging ability seems to go inside their body and take over command of the healing. But she could not, at least yet, control well how fast the healing happened.
"Honest," Linda said. "I feel really good. I think I just went a little too long between eating.
"Now, shouldn't we get back to the tent? We always have more people in the afternoons."
Brandon had his own gun enthusiasms. He especially liked the old "cowboy guns" like the single-action Colts Peacemaker and the Smith and Wesson Russian Model. They looked at several at some vendor tables. One table held a small flat screen TV showing loops of men and a woman drawing and firing long-barreled black-powder cavalry revolvers.
Brandon was impressed at the huge bloom of smoke that attended each shot. "I'll bet they couldn't even see each other in bar shootouts after a few shots."
Sasha nodded. "Very likely."
At the Cowboy Fast Draw exhibition no one was firing real bullets downrange, only electronic ones. There was too much chance that an amateur would shoot themselves (or someone else!) in the leg. Brandon did pretty well at point and shoot at close ranges. Few others did. It was much harder than it looked.
He said, "I'll bet in those old gunfights they only hit each other if they were lucky."
The older grey-bearded "cowboy" helping them said, "Yeah. They came at each other with guns already drawn. And shot two-handed aimed fire. Or shot from ambush. Or with a rifle.
"Little lady, you want to try?"
She shook her head.
"You sure? For you it would be free. Give you just a taste."
Suddenly both Sasha's pistols were in her hands, pointing down-range. Brandon and the man blinked. It had seemed like magic.
"Ah, little lady. Are those empty?"
"Yes. You can double-check if you want."
"Uh, yeah. If you don't mind. Better to be safe than sorry."
She surrendered her pistols while he checked. While he did so Brandon told him she was a competitive shooter.
"Pretty good, are you?"
She agreed with the man that she was indeed pretty good.
As they walked away Brandon prodded her in the ribs with an elbow.
"Don't do stuff like that. You almost made me shit my pants."
Sasha especially wanted to see sniper rifles. They could hit targets more than a mile away, which might be a real challenge to her. Most sports had become so easy that they were no longer fun.
There was a section of the long firing line dedicated to those rifles. Trailing off for over a mile were two lines of yellow flags delineating the path bullets should follow. At the base of a set of tall hills a half-dozen yellow man-sized targets were flanked by targets with the outline of a military vehicle of some kind.
The tables for the sniper rifles were tended by a half-dozen men and one woman in pale grey and brown desert camouflage. A long sign on a high framework a few yards back framed a marquee view of the downrange area. The sign read in olive colors against a cream background A FEW GOOD MEN. Between the "good" and the "men" had been crammed a bold black WO to correct the "men" to "women." It was part of a new Marine Corps recruitment campaign.
Brandon stepped up to a middle table and spoke to a young sergeant there who was about his size.
"You're up from Camp Pendleton?" The northern border of that huge Marine military base was a dozen miles to the south.
"Yes, sir, we are."
Sasha's attention were all for the guns, most lying pointing downrange on a set of firing tables further in from the first line of tables, which contained mostly recruiting pamphlets. But one of them lay, magazineless and its action locked open to show it was empty, on the table they had walked to.
"Can I shoot one?"
The boyish sergeant glanced between the two siblings before him, eyed Sasha's two holstered pistols, and examined the tall athletic figure so well-displayed by her brief clothing. The exam was professional with a liberal dose of personal. Sasha had always been pretty but since her death had become almost shockingly beautiful. She tried to tone it down, but had indifferent success.
"Yes, ma'am, you can. If you'll step this way?"
She and then Brandon followed him to a firing table. "Have you had some experience with rifles?"
"I compete in Olympic-style shooting. It's not very practical, but I know the basics."
"Well, I'll skip most of the basics." He then gave her a brief intro to the weapon on the table and how to fire it.
"May I pick it up?"
"It's a bit heavy."
Brandon grinned. "Sergeant, she can pick up a dinner table one handed and hold it at arms length."
The sergeant looked over at an older man with several stripes on his lapel. Before he could say anything his superior glanced at him and spoke.
"You're doing fine, Sergeant Wilson. Carry on." With that he turned back to another civilian to whom he was speaking about the advantages of signing up for the Corps.
Sasha picked up the gun. It was quite long, almost four feet, much of it barrel, had a simple spring-loaded recoil butt, and a flash suppressor on the tip. The shot magazine could hold ten cartridges, each about five inches long.
She looked through the scope, slid one hand back to the weapon's center point to support it single-handed, and reached up to adjust the scope. The previous handler had misadjusted it.
She sensed a motion to one side and turned her head to see the boyish sergeant abort a grab. He had been worried that she could not hold the heavy weapon. She looked calmly in his eyes. He stared back, shifted his gaze to look at her single-handed grip on the balance point of the weapon. Watched a few seconds while her grip wavered not at all. Nodded.
Sasha placed one hand on the pistol grip of the weapon, trigger finger alongside not in the trigger guard. She shifted her other hand forward so that she held the weapon in a secure firing grip.
"May I fire a ranging shot?"
"Not standing up, miss. That thing really kicks."
"Just one shot, standing."
"No, miss, I can't allow it."
Damn it, was she going to have to buy one of these things to play properly with it?
The master sergeant came to stand nearby. "I think we can allow it, Sergeant Wilson. Very carefully."
He came forward and the other sergeant stepped aside. He picked up a fat magazine, clicked it into place in another sniper rifle, chambered a cartridge and laid it down.
"Now, I'm going to fire a round the way you want to. Put these ear protectors on over the ones in your ears. Then stand over here to the side. Watch my body as I fire."
He glanced around. Sergeant Wilson had been talking to the other people nearby. Everyone had stopped what they were doing and donned cup-like hearing protectors, or were standing at least twenty feet away poised to stick their fingers in their ears.
The woman sergeant picked up a microphone.
"One shot. Ranging. Ready on the right? Ready on the left?"
She glanced both ways, eased her ear pads on, and spoke.
"Fire when ready."
The master serg
eant sighted, breathed in then slowly out. Sasha saw the instant when the trigger "broke" and the gun fired. The sturdy sergeant's body rocked back maybe a foot.
A Marine corporal standing off to one side had been looking through a long fat spotting scope mounted on a tripod. He lowered his ear protectors to his neck.
"Number one man, head shot, about two inches right of center."
The master sergeant adjusted the scope. "We have a strong cross-wind downrange. It seems to have moderated. It's been pretty steady all day, but nearing sundown it would begin to gust. You could not get consistent shots. This is a pretty heavy bullet, though, so you might still be able to make your target."
He lifted the heavy rifle. He had not taken his ear cups off, so he'd been speaking loudly.
"One ranging shot."
The female sergeant went through the same routine as before.
This time Sasha watched downrange. She saw the bullet disappear, a bright line in the air for a few seconds that wiggled, wiggled worse, and disappeared.
Apparently her body had decided it was time for her to begin seeing heat waves, or so she guessed that was what she was seeing.
She also saw a slight wavering brightness in the air below the targets. There was an area of bare rock there, and the heat from it was imitating a fire causing an updraft.
"I imagine you also get updrafts from all the hot rock out there," she said.
The master sergeant nodded.
"Man one, head shot, center."
"OK, it's your turn," the sergeant said. He extracted the magazine and automatically fed into it two cartridges to make up for the fired ones. He also loaded a single cartridge into an empty magazine and loaded the magazine into the weapon he had been using .
He lead her through positioning it against her shoulder and supporting its weight with her shoulder and forward hand while she released the slide to chamber the cartridge.
Sasha felt her nipples tighten. They tingled. So did something in her vagina. His odor and touch had triggered it.
Damn! What a fine time for her hormones finally to kick in and bring her to full maturity. It didn't happen to some female athletes until they reached twenty.
