Journey Into The Aftermath |✔

Chapter ten: It Will Rain

I searched the back and behind the counter and saw a set of arrows along with a quiver. This quiver had a wide opening and a smaller bottom with a fabric strap instead of string while the arrows were made of a polished black plastic and had metal tips topped with fancy designs. There was a truck load of arrows in that shop. It was then I realized that this was a part archery store and there was an archery range out in the back.

I collected every arrow and filled the quiver as much as possible while bagging the rest. On my way out, I grabbed a pulse grenade that seemed to have been hiding out under the counter.

Pulse grenades are one of the newest types of warfare before the fall. When detonated, they release multiple energy waves that blind you and will act as a taser, sending electricity through your body that will immobilize you for a long periods of time. It's incredibly painful too. I found four magnetic grenades also and made my way back to the truck.

Once I unloaded the arrows into the truck, I stashed the grenades in my glove compartment.

Getting creative, I saw matches and other flammable materials. At this moment, I had over a hundred arrows. The twenty I already had added onto the entire inventory of this store made me want to experiment a little. Some arrows were a plastic material, so I took a couple of the ones that were wooden and laid them out in front of me on a craftsman table I saw in a room behind the counter.

I gathered tree resin and rosin and left over charcoal that I kept from my encounter with the bear. There was a pot that used to hold random little things like screws and other knickknacks that are easy to lose track of along with half a bottle of water. I grabbed two uniform shirts that I saw were left in a little storage closet, a container of gasoline, and a lighter.

I cut off the metal tips and rounded the arrow's head, sharpening it just a little bit for obvious aerodynamics. After I continued through about five of so arrows, I made natural glue out of the tree resin, the charcoal that I had to grind down in the pot. The pot had water inside and I chucked that over a fire I got started. I dipped the arrow heads into the pot of newly made tree glue and ripped up the shirts into strips. I wrapped those strips around the heads of those arrows and they stuck tightly, looking like they would stay for a long time.

I was careful not to use too much of the shirts in case this worked, and gathered them up to take them outside to the archery range to test them out.

I grabbed one arrow and set it up on my bow, but instead of firing it at one of the distant red and white circled targets, I took out one of the matches. These matches are kind of like lighters, but instead of burning your thumb or striking a box five times to get a fire going, all you have to do is put pressure on the soft rubber on the front. Fire will emit out of the little exhaust tube at the top.

Designs of that little tube vary to match the design on the face of the lighter. Some look like a busy city with the tallest building set in the middle, being where the fire emits from, and others would have a silver dragon with its mouth open looking at the sky and when you turn it on, fire discharges out of its mouth. People have gotten more and more creative with lighter designs before the fall now that I think of it.

The one I currently had possession of was skull and ribbon themed with a black skull that sat at the top. When you turn the lighter on, fire passes through the skull, lighting up the eyes and mouth. A candle-shaped flame flaps back and forth on top of the head. The fire did sway side to side, but fire from the lighters are practically wind-proof because they are made with special chemicals that make them much hotter than normal lighters and will, for the most part, stay perfectly still.

The strength of the flame also depends on the amount of pressure applied to the rubber button. The flame rose as my thumb dug deeper into the button. The flame reached max size, which was bigger than the actual lighter now and held it under the head of the arrow. All of the cloth from the shirt lit on fire instantly. The glue was already hardened, but I assumed that if I left the fire sitting on it long enough it may melt off. I decided to test the theory anyway and saw that since I mixed it with grinded charcoal, it was far more resistant to the fire and charcoal was a natural burner so it not only did the glue not melt, but it held onto the fire, making the glue and the fire last longer.