Chapter 8 Bullet town

John and Luna arrived back at the Sheriffs office. After knocking on the door, they were allowed entrance. The three men including Oliver were sitting around a bonfire cooking a rabbit they had caught earlier. Once Oliver spotted John, he quickly got up and gave him a hug “Ahh, you are alright, I was worried they got you. Did you get them?” Oliver asked after letting go. “Yeah, I got them, they are all dead. You were right they were hanging out around that truck stop. Although they seemed like a bumbling bunch of idiots, couldn’t you have taken care of them yourselves?” John asked suspicious. Oliver scratched his head “Ahh, well no we, we were to busy here, as I said earlier, there are a lot of looters around these parts just waiting to sink their teeth into our armory” Oliver said nervously.

John wasn’t convinced and he would be correct in his suspicion. Because these men could have taken out those highway-men, however when there is no one above you to tell you what to do, it gets very hard to risk your life, without gain. So instead of helping the local populous, they instead choose to lock themselves in here only going out to hunt now and then. Some would call this cowardice, and they would be right, however if no one is paying them for their work, do they still have an obligation? Times like these bring out the worst in people.

John simply decided to feign ignorance, since he really didn’t care to much, he just wanted to get away from this god forsaken town. “I see, well I guess I will be on my way then” John responded. “Leaving so soon? Where too?” Oliver asked. “Oh, yeah that reminds me, have you guys heard of a place called bullet town?” John answered. Oliver looked at the other men and everyone shook their heads “I don’t think so, where is that?” Oliver asked. “Just a couple hours drive southward, well anyways I’m leaving now, here is your rifle.” John responded as he gave back the rifle he had been lent. “Thanks, John, I’m sorry we caused you trouble” Oliver responded as John picked up his old R700, that one of the men had fetched and left.

John and Luna continued driving south, in John’s pickup truck. Although John and Luna could travel in their werewolf form, John didn’t want to, he was still not completely comfortable with traveling in werewolf form. While he had tested out his abilities earlier by running around a lot, he still had not ran continuously for 4 hours at top speed, and he wasn’t sure whether doing just that would drain his batteries, if he had any that is. So, while going in his werewolf form definitely would be smarter, he wanted to make sure that if he met a dangerous situation, he was at top performance. He would have to test this out at some point however now was not the time. Besides you can’t listen to Johnny Cash while running around as a werewolf.

John and Luna conversed a bit along the way, about trivial things, though it was mostly John asking or stating, and Luna agreeing. “Alpha why are we going here anyway?” Luna suddenly asked out of the blue. “Oh, well I just wanted to drive by and see what this place was, after that I want to go find my sister, I fear that something might have happened to her. However, she has her husband, so I’m not too worried, he’s quite the badass.” John responded. “Oh, I see” Luna stated

After a four or so hours of driving John and Luna saw a massive billboard along the way that. On it there was a bedsheet with “Bullet town” painted on it. John took the first exit of the highway. After driving for a while they eventually arrived at another sign, that had a wood board across the previous sign. Of course, the wood board spelled out “Bullet Town”. John continued driving and after a short while arrived at a checkpoint. This checkpoint had two guards stationed at each side of road. The checkpoint itself was a bright red and white steel beam going across the road, with a small glass booth next to it, on the left side of the road. However, what surprised John was that on both sides of the checkpoint wood barricades stretched into the forest, going away form the checkpoint. This wood barricade was also clad in steel plates on the lower parts. All in all, it looked very impressive and time consuming to construct something like this.

John drove up to the guard who had a AR-15 slung across his shoulder, he didn’t look to fazed about the John and his gigantic wolf, riding shotgun. “Fee please” he said, looking extremely bored. “Uh, you want money?” John was confused, from what he had seen so far money had no value, since there was no government enforcing said money anymore. “No, idiot, bullets. Are you new here or something?” the guard said a bit annoyed that some guy who didn’t understand the rules came by. “Oh well, how much is the fee?” John asked confused. “Depends on what you have, bullets have different values” the guard answered, even more annoyed. He obviously had better things to do than explain this, like sleep. “Alright well here I have some .308 rounds.” John said as he handed over a single round. “yeah, whatever that’ll do” the guard said, while already lifting the roadblock up allowing access to the town.

John made sure to speed through, he was expecting the guard to drop the road block any minute. Eventually he made it through and on the inside, he saw a town that looked far better than his hometown. After just a few feet however, there was another road block, however this was the concrete kind, he was not allowed to drive down this road. John followed the signs to a parking lot on the left side. They both left the car and started walking down the main road. After a little of walking past empty stores and sagging buildings. They eventually arrived at what seemed like a bazaar. There were hundreds of people walking around looking at different stalls.

Nobody, paid much attention to John, besides the few glances people gave Luna. However, he noticed that almost every single person here was wearing some kind of weapon, be it homemade rifles, AR-15s, different versions of SCARs, even fully automatic rifles like the m416 or m16s. John now understood why this place was called bullet town, since everyone here had tons of guns and bullets. At this point, John felt happy that he hadn’t barged in here as a werewolf, or he surely would have been shoot until he looked like swiss cheese.

John continued walking forward looking at all the stalls, there were vegetables, fruits, meat, even candy and other vanity items however the prices for those were outrageous. However, they had most of the things one needed for survival, which is as good as it gets in these far-out places. John continued to look around until he spotted a what he could assume is a blacksmith. Having worked with steel for over five years of his life, he knew quite a bit about steel, despite hating his job at the mill.

He walked up the blacksmith, who was hammering on something. “Hello” John said. The blacksmith stopped hammering and looked at John “G’day, can I help you Mr.…?” the blacksmith responded. “Oh, my name is John, and you?” John responded. “Mm, nice meeting you John, I’m Dave” Dave answered, obviously in a good mood. “Nice to meet you to, Dave, what are you working on?” John quizzed. “Oh, this? I don’t know what it is However it is some kind of metal that the boys in the mines found. They sent it over to me since they couldn’t tell what it was” Dave responded. “Oh, is that so? I used to work at a steel mill, mind if take a look?” John asked, with quite a lot of interested, as there were few types of steel he hadn’t seen in his life. “Sure, go ahead, but I don’t think you will have much luck, since this ain’t steel.” John looked at Dave a bit perplexed, what did he mean this wasn’t steel?

However just as John leaned in to look at the steel he noticed that the oversized hammer that was In Dave’s hand disappeared. He was wholly confused and looked at Dave puzzled. “What, you never seen a spirit tool before?” Dave asked, like this was the most obvious thing in the world. “No, I haven’t, what is it?” John asked with a face full of confusion. “Well I’m not entirely sure what it is either, however I know that it comes from God” Dave answered.

“Before Gods started changing things, I worked as a blacksmith for 30 years. However, after God announced his change, one day my favorite hammer just disappeared. However, I could feel it inside me, like my hammer was part of me and that is what I have figured out so far. Spirit objects are things that become a part of you for some reason” Dave added.

“Incredible, so you can just pull it out whenever?” John asked, with gusto.

Dave gave a broad smile before he answered “Yeah, however it gives me a lot more goodies than just that. At first when you came here and claiming to know something about steel, I though you were joking, but I see now that you really did not know. Whenever I hammer on something, I gain knowledge about it, this way I can tell the exact chromium, vanadium, carbon, etc. content of a steel type, very useful stuff. However, this piece of metal here, I can tell its not made of iron, but something else. Yet, the more I hammer it, the more I feel like its missing something, even though this material is much stronger than any other metal on earth, I can’t do anything with it. There is like there is something missing from it. However, the more I hammer the more knowledge I get, but no matter how much I hammer all I see is just the outline of some pointy purple thing”

John thought about what Dave had just said, however when he though about the last sentence he realized something. John quickly started looking through his back pack. Where he found the four pieces of two sword like purple crystals that had been snapped when he ran away from that extreme pressure, it couldn’t be this easy he wondered. He quickly brought one out, and showed it to Dave “Did it look like this?” “Oh lord, that’s it, where did you find that!?” Dave asked with excitement clearly in his voice. “I killed some strange creature in the forest, however I would advice against going there. There are a lot of dangerous creatures in there that snap you like a twig” John answered with some lingering fear.

John brought out the rest of the pieces. However, when Dave saw them, he got a bit dejected. “ah, shoot, they are broken? For this to work properly they have to be whole, or at least that’s the feeling I’m getting. However, they should still be able make some subpar items or at least combining the two will give me more information to work of off. While they are broken, I will give you 10 .50cal m2 rounds for all of the pieces” Dave answered. Either he was a very honest man or he was a very good salesman, but john didn’t mind, even though he had no idea what 50cal rounds were worth, they had to be worth quite a bit. John accepted the deal.

At this point it was starting to get late and most of the stalls were closing. “Say, Dave you don’t know where I could get some sleep?” John asked. “Yeah, sure just walk down that road and you will find an inn, that has nice beds and warm food” Although John could sleep on the street or in some of the abandoned buildings, he decided against it, since most of them were old, moldy and looked like shit. He also wanted to sleep in a nice bed for once. As well as most of the good buildings had already been taken by the local populace. Of course, if the prices were ridiculous he would rather sleep on the street.

John and Luna arrived at the inn with no problems and got a room with no food, for just 5 9mm rounds which is the same as half a 308. The innkeeper didn’t seem to care about Luna at all, she simply said if she shits inside, John would have to wash it, or reimburse them. Luna was a little offended by the idea that she would shit on the floor, but didn’t show it. John realized now that the guard at the entrance might have scammed him, however, he wasn’t to fuzzed about it since he still had another 48 .308 rounds, as well as ten m2 rounds and five 9mm rounds.