When the food was gone and the lessons were done, George motioned for Allistor to follow him.  They stepped inside a gas station, then turned into the attached garage.  Allistor took one look at what was inside and whistled.   “Damn, George!  With this you could have taken out Evan and all his guys.”

George shook his head.  “Only if I could have gotten it up on the wall somehow.  We didn’t want to risk opening the gates long enough to use it.”

Inside the garage was a military Humvee.  Painted in desert camouflage, it was fully armored and had a fifty caliber machine gun mounted on its roof. When George opened the rear hatch, Allistor saw the back was filled with ammo cans.   “Where did you get this?”

George looked slightly uncomfortable.  “There was a train wreck right after it all happened.  The tracks are five miles north of here, but we heard it and saw the smoke.  A few of us went to investigate.  There were a bunch more of us back then.  The killing hadn’t started.  Anyway, when we got there, we saw the train was loaded with tanks and vehicles and artillery batteries.  Most of them were damaged or half buried.  But there were a couple of these babies still intact on a flatbed.  We rolled this one down and brought it back.”

Allistor looked alarmed.  “Did Evan and his guys get the rest?”  He didn’t like the idea of facing an angry bunch of guys with machine guns when they left.

George shook his head.  “As far as we know, they don’t even know the wreck is there.”  Their place is south of us.  Don’t think they ventured that far.  At least, not yet.

Allister’s pulse was racing.  “Were any of the artillery still intact?

George stroked his chin.  “Maybe?  I mean, I didn’t look all that close.  They were all spilled off their rail cars.  Might be one or two?”

Allistor hugged the man, lifting him off his feet.  “With those, we could even kill a titan!  Or the big-ass turtle we have to pass on the way home.  Let’s go see if Sam knows how to fire cannons!”

George snorted at him.  “Son, I was fightin’ in the dirt ‘n’ snow before Sam was a glimmer in his daddy’s eye.  Artillery can’t be all that different now.  Between us, I’m sure we can figure it out.”

Allistor practically pulled the old man out of the garage, yelling for Sam.  When they filled him in, the old marine started laughing.  “Oh, hell yeah! Let’s go find us some big guns!”

They unhitched the trailer from the pickup and emptied its bed.  Then Sam and George got in the pickup, and Allistor and two other men followed them in the box truck.  All of the food and equipment from the back had been transferred into the RVs.