So, what else? He scanned some more. His light landed on a stack of rifle slings. He’d been concerned how he was going to carry all this hardware up the ladder while negotiating the wreckage, and now he had his answer.

Each of the Bushmasters had single-point sling lugs. He clipped a bungee to each of them, and then slung them both, one over his left shoulder, and one over his right, so they dangled as an elongated X against the front of his body.

He did another pass with his headlamp and decided he’d done about all the damage he could in here.

Until he saw the case of dynamite. “Seriously?” he asked aloud. “Welcome to Coal Country.”

He’d never used high explosives, but he’d studied how. Modern dynamite was a lot more stable than the old stuff, and it packed a bigger wallop than TNT. He had no idea how much bang you could get per stick, so he grabbed five and put them on the top of the stuff in his ruck. He could organize the pack later.

“Damn good thing the fire didn’t get to the basement,” he mumbled.

Now he needed a way to set it off if he needed it.

Knowing the folly of storing detonators and secondary explosives together, he spun around to face the other side of the vault, and sure enough, there they were, wrapped in what looked like brown wax paper. They were labeled: Pyrotechnic Initiators.

He opened the end of the package and he recognized the blasting caps. He stuffed them into an outside pocket on his ruck, and decided it was finally time to go. He shrugged into the ruck, settled all the gear on his back and his front so the rattle was as quiet as possible.

When he got to the top of the stairs, Emma was waiting for him. “Can I help with anything?”

“Nah, it’d be more effort to take the ruck off than it is climbing over shit with it.”

“Good Lord, how many guns did you take?”

“Two rifles, two pistols. Lots of ammo.”

“What, are we going to war?”

He gave her a look. Really ?

“Oh, I guess we are at war.”

There was a brief instant—just half a second as he was heaving himself over the collapsed rafter—that he nearly lost his balance. But he recovered. “Did you find any good stuff?”

“A couple of camping lanterns. Some batteries. Everything’s a little melted, so it might not work, but I put it in the Bronco.”

“Excellent. No food?”

“Sorry.”

“Where are the SpaghettiOs when you need them?”

They climbed through the maze of lumber, and Adam led the way through the door back outside. He damn near shit himself when he saw what was waiting for them.